POLITICS
Barack and a Hard Place
by Stump Connolly
The victory party was in North Carolina, but the struggle for the hearts and
minds of America took place in Indiana –– and, up until the last
four days, it looked like Barack Obama was losing it.
Hillary Clinton came into Indiana with a full head of steam. In the Pennsylvania primary, she’d proven that a coalition of older, whiter and more rural voters was still a potent force in Democratic politics; and Indiana was filled with them.
By slugging down whiskey shots and tenaciously promising to fight for "jobs, jobs, jobs," a woman who graduated from Wellesley College and Yale Law School, who lived eight years in the White House and owns mansions in Washington and Chappaqua, was suddenly transformed into a working class hero; and by bowling a 37 and wearing tailored suits, a true African-American who put himself through Harvard Law School on scholarship and returned to Chicago to organize laid-off steelworkers on the South Side, was cast in the public eye as elitist and out of touch.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd captured the dichotomy perfectly:
Talking up guns, going to the Auto Racing Hall of Fame, speaking from the back of pickup trucks and doing shots of populism with a cynicism chaser, Hillary emerged from a lifetime of government limos to bask as queen of the blue-collar prom.
Just as Obama spent his youth trying not to be threatening, so as not to unnerve whites, Hillary spent her life learning to be threatening so she could beat back challenges to her and her husband – from Republicans and from “bimbo eruptions” and now from a charmed younger rival.
As Obama learned to accommodate, the accommodating Hillary learned to triangulate and lacerate. As he learned that following the rules could get you far with adoring mentors, she learned from Bill and Dick Morris and Mark Penn that following the rules was for saps.
A bad week for Obama got worse when The Rev. Jeremiah Wright resurfaced before the National Press Club to defend himself –– and repeat his incendiary remarks.
The flare-up pulled Obama off the campaign trail in an attempt to douse the flames. Time better spent courting Indiana’s voters was eaten up in press conferences and on the morning talk shows fighting a rear guard action against his former pastor.
And then, in what should have been Obama’s darkest hour, Clinton threw him a life raft -- the federal gas tax holiday.
I went down to Indianapolis Saturday to see how Obama was handling the whole thing. Before I left, I gassed up in Chicago (at $4.09 a gallon) and, around Merrillville, stopped off for a Big Mac (thus blowing the $2.76 I would have saved had I traveled during Clinton’s proposed gas tax holiday.)
“The most irresponsible policy idea of the year,” Jonathan Alter dubbed it in Newsweek. A paltry savings of $30 a person, causing more gas consumption not less, and thus even higher prices from the oil companies, 200 economists wrote in the Washington Post.
And a three-runner homer for Obama in that Clinton’s plan 1) aligned her with John McCain's bad idea, 2) stole focus from Obama’s pastor troubles, and 3) gave Obama a chance to get back on message criticizing cheap political “gimmicks” that could only come out of “the same old politics in Washington.”
I expected to find Obama re-energized and on the attack, but soon discovered Saturday was a planned “family day” on the campaign trail – a very well-planned family day set up by a campaign staff that had, up until Pennsylvania, always been two steps ahead in the game.
The schedule called for a noon speech in a suburban high school, a picnic outing in Republican Hamilton County, a visit to the homestead of his great, great, great grandfather Jacob Dunham (on his mother’s side) and a final appearance at an ice cream social in a roller rink in LaFayette. For the first time since Iowa, he brought along his wife Michelle and two daughters, Malia and Sasha, all part of a deliberate attempt to “Americanize” Obama in one of our most red, white and blue states.
Obama’s speech at the Lawrence North High School was timed to give networks sound bites for the evening news, but it was a low key affair, staged in a small school auditorium instead of a raucus gymnasium, and largely ignored.
But I could feel that something was up. My first clue was a new sign on the lecturn that read “Reclaiming the American Dream.” My second was a quiet David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, lurking in the back watching reporter reactions to various lines and phrases.
As Obama waded into his remarks, large chunks of new copy spewed out, all centered on “the dream we all share.”
“This economy doesn’t just jeopardize our financial well-being, it offends the most basic values that made this country what it is. The idea that America is the place where you can make it if you try, that no matter how much money you start with, or where you come from, or who your parents are, opportunity is yours if you are willing to reach for it and work for it,” he said.
“It's the idea that while there are no guarantees in life, you should be able to count on a job that pays the bills, health care for when you need it, a pension for when you retire, and an education for your children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential. That’s who we are as a country. That’s the America most of us here know,” he added.
And finally, a quote from Robert Kennedy, speaking 40 years ago in Ft. Wayne. "'Income and education and homes do not make a nation. Nor do land and borders. Shared ideas and principles joined to purposes and hopes, these make a nation,’" Obama quoted Kennedy saying. "And this is still our task today," he added. "In the face of all cynicism, all doubts, all fears, I ask you to remember what makes a nation. And to believe that we can now make this nation again a land of endless possibility where you can still make it if you try."
When Obama came to the part of his speech where he usually relates his own biography –– the "improbable" story of the son of a goat farmer from Africa and a woman from Kansas –– there were a lot more probable details thrown in: A grandfather who fought with Patton, went to school on the GI bill and bought his first house with an FHA loan. A mother who once had to go on food stamps. A father-in-law –– a city worker in the Chicago water department –– who, stricken by multiple sclerosis at the age of 30, relied on a walker to get to work “and yet, every day, he went, and he labored, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the finest schools in the nation.”
Reporters covering the speech seized on some of the more red meat quotes for the nightly news. The sea change in attitude and approach went largely unnoticed. Obama's thoughts on what it means to be an American did not jump off the page of the prepared text, and his soft sell delivery did not stir many reporters away from checking their email. But across the span of his remarks, it was clear Obama was doing nothing less than trying to redefine the narrative arc of his own story.
Here, there, and everywhere in Indiana, he was listening to the words voters used to talk about their lives and blending in his own experiences to find chords of agreement that resonated. In none too subtle ways –– "this election is bigger than flag pins or sniper fire or the comments of a former pastor" -- he was casting off the exotic image of his fiery pastor’s robes and his own unusual upbringing and wrapping himself in the Midwestern mantle of a family man who “pumps his own gas.”
The new Barack Obama came through in both words and pictures, On the picnic lawn in Hamilton County, he shed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, playfully smiling while his wife made the introductions and invited listeners to let their own kids play with hers on a nearby swingset. In the Great Skates Roller Rink, he kissed every baby in sight, danced along to the YMCA song and stepped out onto the rink (sans skates) for a touching video of him welcoming his unsteady daughter into his arms.
The next morning, in an hour-long Meet The Press interview with Tim Russert, he kept up his low key demeanor, even during 20 minutes of questions on his former pastor. There was no question he wouldn't answer, and no answer that didn't seem to come from some core values he was proud to profess.
The high energy charges and countercharges in the closing days of Pennsylvania, his handlers believed, had not served him well. His campaign trademark was the rock star political rally, but last minute attempts to insert digs at Clinton into the flow came across as condescending. "It got kind of sloppy at the end," Axelrod told me. "We held too many rallies and the word we were getting was that Barack seemed to be detached from the people."
Indiana was a chance to correct the record, but the change in style would have to come organically, one day at a time. "We want to close tough here, but we want to close upbeat. We want to show people who Barack really is," Axelrod said.
By the time Election Day rolled around, the Obama campaign was back on track. He did not win Indiana, but, more important, he did not lose it. Clinton won by 14,000 votes (out of 1,275,000 million cast.) The final tally, however, did not did not come in until early Wednesday morning so all that America will remember is that Obama "mathematically" closed out Clinton's quest for the presidency Tuesday night with a decisive win in North Carolina -- and Obama delivered another tour de force speech.
In it was a message of hope, patriotism and family values -- the opening salvo in Obama's attempt to reshape America's impression of him for the fall elections. It was a message forged in the crucible of Indiana, a hard place for Obama to solve a hard problem, and we will have to wait until November to see if it works.
But if you want to see where Obama's campaign is headed next, it's worth your while to watch it, and judge for yourself.
