Is Obama Overrated?
(updated below)
That's what John Fortier--a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute--claims in a new column in The Hill entitled, you guessed it, "Obama is Overrated." Fortier's argument, at least as far as I can make one out, is that Obama is unseasoned and is unlikely to pose much of a threat to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Fortier devotes most of his column to praising Hillary's political skills and doesn't seem to have all that much to say about Obama, despite the title of the column. What little he does say about Obama comes at the very end of the column where he lays out what he thinks Obama would have to do to knock off Hillary. He writes:
Does that make any sense to anyone? The three "personas" that will supposedly be "hard to blend" are 1) being black, 2) being anti-war, and 3) being "fresh-faced." Let's see: Obama is black. Check. He came out publicly against the invasion of Iraq all the way back in October of 2002. Check. And if he decides to run, he will, almost surely, be the freshest face in the race. Check.
Given that all three of these "personas" are fixed and immutable, why in the world would Obama have a difficult time "blending" them? His mere existence necessarily blends those three characteristics. What am I missing here?
I have no idea what Fortier is talking about. I do think he inadvertently makes a pretty good case for why Obama is not overrated, though. As he points out, Jesse Jackson managed to win an astounding one-third of the total delegates at the 1988 Democratic convention. All told, Jackson won 15 primaries and caucuses that year based almost entirely on the votes of black Democrats (he pulled in nearly all of the black vote while only receiving one-eighth of the white Democratic vote). He also managed to register nearly 2 million new voters, almost all of them African-American.
Now, of course, simply being black does not guarantee that Obama will win the African-American vote (just ask Carol Moseley-Braun or Al Sharpton). There's no guarantee that African-Americans will turn out for Obama the same way they turned out for Jackson in 1988, but I see no reason to doubt that they would. Obama is a more legitimate candidate than Jackson ever was. He's more qualified, more mainstream. His candidacy would represent the first opportunity Americans have had to vote for a black presidential candidate who has a real shot at winning. That will be a compelling story line if it happens, and believe me, the other '08 presidential aspirants know this.
Moreover, unlike Jackson, Obama seems likely to do pretty well among the rest of the Democrat primary voters. Had Jackson been at all competitive among non-black voters in '88, he would have been the Democratic nominee.
As to Fortier's other points, Iraq seems likely to remain a relevant issue in 2008, which would give Obama a leg up on both Hillary and John Edwards, both of whom voted for the war. And the "fresh face" factor will also clearly cut in Obama's favor. Fortier is right that Obama's lack of experience is his chief liability, but then again, it's not as if Clinton or Edwards have all that much more relevant experience.
Obama would by no means be a lock for the nomination should he decide to run, but I don't see any of the other potential candidates (save perhaps Al Gore) having any inherent advantage over him in a primary contest. Obama would be a formidable candidate, and I think Hillary has at least as much reason to fear him as he does to fear her.
Note to readers: For those of you who are sick of this topic, I say: fair enough. It is a little silly to be focusing on the '08 horse race when an important midterm election is looming. I promise to return to more pressing and relevant issues soon.
UPDATE: I see Jonathan Alter and I are on the same page here:
That's what John Fortier--a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute--claims in a new column in The Hill entitled, you guessed it, "Obama is Overrated." Fortier's argument, at least as far as I can make one out, is that Obama is unseasoned and is unlikely to pose much of a threat to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Fortier devotes most of his column to praising Hillary's political skills and doesn't seem to have all that much to say about Obama, despite the title of the column. What little he does say about Obama comes at the very end of the column where he lays out what he thinks Obama would have to do to knock off Hillary. He writes:
So how could Obama win? First, he could run, hope that Clinton implodes, and emerge as the replacement. But short of implosion, Obama must take on three political personas and merge them into a cohesive whole.
First, do not underestimate the strength of a dynamic African-American leader in the Democratic primary. African-Americans provided nearly one quarter of John Kerry's vote against George Bush, and Jesse Jackson received the votes of almost one third of the delegates in the 1988 convention.
Second, Obama must excite the anti-war crowd. In his favor, he was not in the Senate to cast a vote for the Iraq War, but his pragmatic persona may not be as suited as Howard Dean's to capturing this vote.
Third, Obama can run as a "fresh face," especially since Clinton, Kerry, Gore and even last election's fresh face, John Edwards, are well worn in the public's eye.
These three roles will be hard to blend, but if Obama emerges as the fresh faced, African-American, favorite of anti-war crowd, then Hillary Clinton should watch out.
Does that make any sense to anyone? The three "personas" that will supposedly be "hard to blend" are 1) being black, 2) being anti-war, and 3) being "fresh-faced." Let's see: Obama is black. Check. He came out publicly against the invasion of Iraq all the way back in October of 2002. Check. And if he decides to run, he will, almost surely, be the freshest face in the race. Check.
Given that all three of these "personas" are fixed and immutable, why in the world would Obama have a difficult time "blending" them? His mere existence necessarily blends those three characteristics. What am I missing here?
I have no idea what Fortier is talking about. I do think he inadvertently makes a pretty good case for why Obama is not overrated, though. As he points out, Jesse Jackson managed to win an astounding one-third of the total delegates at the 1988 Democratic convention. All told, Jackson won 15 primaries and caucuses that year based almost entirely on the votes of black Democrats (he pulled in nearly all of the black vote while only receiving one-eighth of the white Democratic vote). He also managed to register nearly 2 million new voters, almost all of them African-American.
Now, of course, simply being black does not guarantee that Obama will win the African-American vote (just ask Carol Moseley-Braun or Al Sharpton). There's no guarantee that African-Americans will turn out for Obama the same way they turned out for Jackson in 1988, but I see no reason to doubt that they would. Obama is a more legitimate candidate than Jackson ever was. He's more qualified, more mainstream. His candidacy would represent the first opportunity Americans have had to vote for a black presidential candidate who has a real shot at winning. That will be a compelling story line if it happens, and believe me, the other '08 presidential aspirants know this.
Moreover, unlike Jackson, Obama seems likely to do pretty well among the rest of the Democrat primary voters. Had Jackson been at all competitive among non-black voters in '88, he would have been the Democratic nominee.
As to Fortier's other points, Iraq seems likely to remain a relevant issue in 2008, which would give Obama a leg up on both Hillary and John Edwards, both of whom voted for the war. And the "fresh face" factor will also clearly cut in Obama's favor. Fortier is right that Obama's lack of experience is his chief liability, but then again, it's not as if Clinton or Edwards have all that much more relevant experience.
Obama would by no means be a lock for the nomination should he decide to run, but I don't see any of the other potential candidates (save perhaps Al Gore) having any inherent advantage over him in a primary contest. Obama would be a formidable candidate, and I think Hillary has at least as much reason to fear him as he does to fear her.
Note to readers: For those of you who are sick of this topic, I say: fair enough. It is a little silly to be focusing on the '08 horse race when an important midterm election is looming. I promise to return to more pressing and relevant issues soon.
UPDATE: I see Jonathan Alter and I are on the same page here:
Hillary Clinton's folks are quaking about the possibility of his running in 2008. There's even speculation an Obama race might preclude her getting in. Here's why: Hillary's game plan is to raise enough money and generate enough momentum to survive a loss in Iowa (perhaps to John Edwards, who is well-organized there) or New Hampshire (to the flavor of the moment), but then secure the nomination by running the table on Super Tuesday. The reason she thought she could do that is that Super Tuesday primaries in the Democratic Party are dominated by African-American voters, who generally love the Clintons. But there's someone they would love even more, namely a certain senator from Illinois.
To make matters even tougher for any other Democrat, an Obama adviser told me that if he runs, he would launch a huge voter registration drive in the South. The aim would be to so expand black registration that Southern states would no longer be gimmees for the GOP. At a minimum, it would pin down Republicans defending their base in the South. The little-known clincher is that Obama has personal experience in voter registration. Before entering the state Senate in 1996, he ran a registration drive that registered more than 100,000 new black voters in Chicago alone.
No wonder that when I saw Obama at an off-the-record book party on New York's East Side last week, the crowd included several of Hillary's biggest backers. They know this thing is changing fast.
posted by A.L. at 10:08 PM
5 Comments:
YES!!!! HE IS OVER-RATED!!!!!
Is it possible that Fortier is pumping Clinton because he thinks she can't win? Could this be reverse psychology?
Maybe I'm just projecting. Personally, I think Hillary is not a good candidate. Any female presidential candidate is going to have a certain segment of the population not vote for her because she is a woman. And Hillary has the added baggage of being married to Bill, another polarizing figure. On purely a political note, I'm not excited about her center-straddling strategy. Lately she's made some strong remarks about the administration, but I think she's jumping on the bandwagon, like a lot of Dems who talk tough then buckle on the voting.
Oddly, Obama is underrated by the very people -- commentators on this blog, for example -- who seem determined to make the Democrats the minority party for generations to come by overanalyzing everything.
Obama needs to prove himself on the campaign trail (which he can do only by running), but otherwise he has the potential to be a spectacular candidate.
1. Personal appeal. He's emphatically, and by the longest stretch, the most personally appealing Democrat short of Bill Clinton, and he doesn't have Clinton’s baggage.
2. Idealism. He can reclaim for the Democrats what Karl Rove has called the "mantle of idealism," a characteristic near and dear to Americans.
3. Communication. His speeches are extraordinary. They put the progressive tradition in a broader historical context (again, similar to Bill Clinton). That's another way of saying he can single-handedly "rebrand" the party, which is, needless to say, in sore need of it.
4. Accessibility. He can communicate with just about anyone, including, most importantly, people of faith (read his speech on the subject -- not the commentators at Kos).
5. Experience is overrated. Without all the experience of Kerry, Edwards, and Hillary, he did the unthinkable -- he looked at the facts and made the right decision on the issue of the day. He won't spend half his time explaining a vote. And exactly how is it that no one asks about the experience of, say, John Edwards, who did one term (and one unremarkable term at that) in the Senate? Nor, for that matter, the leadership of Hillary Clinton, who, as the most visible Democrat in the nation, has taken up exactly nothing of great import?
6. His actual record. He's got a more substantial record for a freshman Senator than he's given credit for, including cosponsoring bills on such things as loose nukes and Congressional integrity. And on top of that, he’s got experience in civil rights, community activism, and voter registration, and he’s not a greenhorn.
The only unknown about him is how tough he is, and this is the only area that Hillary is attractive. We know she won't run a crap campaign, a la Kerry or Gore. But, again, put him and her on the same stage, and she’ll have you snoring in five minutes
I think Obama is overrated because who the hell knows who he is politically? He has no record. All we know is that he is against the war, is moderate, and is obviously attractive. But, we know nothing about his positions on foreign policy--believe it or not, there is foreign policy other than Iraq--or anything else other than the vague generalities about protecting the middle class that Democratic candidates spout. And the lack of experience is significant; granted, Clinton doesn't have much executive experience either, but at least she has been in government. At this point, we know very little about Obama. He is sort of like Jack Kennedy when he first came on the national scene, except that even Kennedy had served a couple of terms in Congress and the Senate. I have nothing personally against Obama, but right now his buzz seems to be more about his persona than about his qualifications.
As for Hilary, I think the percentage of the population that would not vote for her SIMPLY because she is a woman is small--but she has enough other liabilities to make her a bad candidate in my opinion--even though I think she would probably be a pretty good president. I think her strategy makes a lot of sense--taking liberal positions and bashing the administration isn't going to do her much good in 2008 when Bush won't be running.
Obama is overrated.
He is also a phony. He has no experience. Living in Indonesia as a kid for about 4-6 years does not give you Foreign Policy experience in the adult world. Shame on anybody that supports this atrocity.
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