Clinton Is a Resume, Obama Is Instinct
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Commentary by Margaret Carlson
Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- A long campaign makes everyone look experienced (well maybe not Duncan Hunter or Mike Gravel).
Instead of seeing a rookie reacting to a tragedy like the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we see candidates who now know how to express their sympathies and take a stab at convincing us they can fix a world that looks like it's going to hell in a hand basket.
In Iowa in the final days before the Jan. 3 caucuses, the Bhutto assassination is likely to change the subject, but won't change the race unless there is a coup that puts nuclear weapons in the control of an unstable leader or terrorists.
On the Democratic side, the two frontrunners were low-key yesterday. Before delivering prepared remarks, Barack Obama said, ``We are shocked and saddened at the death in Pakistan of Benazir Bhutto. We mourn her loss and our thoughts and prayers are with her family.'' He pledged to put an end to such terrorist acts, a routine exaggeration at such times.
Obama looks a lot less naive than his critics would have it by calling for the U.S. earlier in the campaign to get tougher with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who has looked the other way as Osama bin Laden found sanctuary in mountains between his country and Afghanistan while the U.S. has been tied up in an unnecessary war in Iraq.
For her part, Hillary Clinton got to remind voters of all those miles logged as first lady visiting world leaders. As she would have it, that should count as frequent-flyer credits toward being a world leader herself. She said she had known the former Pakistani prime minister for many years and was ``honored to visit Bhutto'' on a trip with daughter Chelsea.
Experience in Doubt
A day earlier, Clinton's claim to foreign policy experience took a hit from a front-page New York Times article that showed that as first lady she didn't have national security clearance, attend national security meetings or have access to the president's daily intelligence briefing. There is no record of her weighing in on any military decisions.
When Bill Clinton was deciding to bomb bin Laden's suspected training camp in Sudan, it was at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal when Hillary Clinton says she wasn't speaking to her husband.
Obama didn't know Bhutto but he had the good fortune to be joined yesterday by real-life Top Gun, retired General Tony McPeak. A former fighter pilot who rose to be Air Force chief of staff, he was at one time prominent in Veterans for Bush. McPeak explained that he had left his family over Christmas in Oregon for Iowa because he is convinced that Obama should be commander in chief.
Switching topics is all to Clinton's benefit as her much publicized ``likeability tour'' designed to change the image of ``the best known person you don't really know'' failed to end Obama's surge in opinion polls.
No Secrets
Is there anyone who doesn't know everything about Clinton, from her cattle futures to her chronically faithless spouse? So many books have been penned about the Clintons they are a genre unto themselves. Aside from the biographies, there are thousands of pages from depositions, grand jury testimony and a report full of seamy details from a special prosecutor.
Likeability week included an ad in which the camera moves to a smiling Chelsea as Hillary says she is proud to pass along to her daughter the lessons her mother taught her about standing up for those who can't do it on their own. She doesn't say how that lesson is playing out at the hedge fund where Chelsea works.
At almost every stop, Obama gives the speech he first gave at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in November that stirs crowds larger than Iowa has ever seen, some to tears, all to cheering.
Giving Back
As Obama was racing out of one gathering, he encountered the kind of situation most candidates dread and usually fumble. A young Kenyan man carrying his 3-year-old thrust him into Obama's arms. The boy started crying. After hugging the child, Obama tried to return him. ``But he wants you to hold him,'' the man said to Obama, who wrote longingly of his father whom he last saw when he was 10. ``But he wants his dad to hold him more,'' he said, as he gently handed the boy back.
John Edwards might win Iowa, of course, but it's likely to matter less for him than how it affects Clinton and Obama as they head to the New Hampshire primary. A vote for Clinton is a vote for a resume, the person you know everything about for good and for bad. A vote for Obama is a hunch that the person you really don't know holds the greatest promise. In the shadow of Bhutto's death, that hasn't changed.
(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Last Updated: December 31, 2007 00:03 EST |
