The Iowa Message
January 5, 2008; Page A8
Iowa's caucus-goers shook up the conventions of American politics Thursday night, and to our mind mostly to the good. Barack Obama's convincing Democratic triumph, based on a huge increase in Iowa voter turnout, is at least a historic cultural moment and maybe a political one. Mike Huckabee's Republican victory probably has less long-term meaning but also has some salutary effects.
Mr. Obama's message of "change" and a new national unity clearly captured the imagination of Democrats, drawing in nearly double the number of participants who have ever attended an Iowa caucus. As a black man running in a nearly all-white state, Mr. Obama's triumph should also put to rest the canard that Americans won't vote for a black President.
We've long believed the country is ready to do so and might have elected Colin Powell had he run. But Mr. Obama is the first serious African-American candidate who has explicitly avoided race-specific appeals. Like Catholicism to Jack Kennedy, Mr. Obama's race is part of his political character but doesn't define it. His success marks a watershed in American political history.
The Illinois Senator's performance is also welcome as a sign that most Democrats want to "move on," as some of them like to say, from the Clinton era. Bill Clinton has described his wife Hillary's campaign as a case of "back to the future," even as she too has claimed to be an agent of change. But inevitably, if she were the nominee, the baggage of their earlier co-Presidency would attend her campaign and might help defeat her in November.
Primary Math: How the Candidates Match UpSomething like half of the American people say they could never vote for Senator Clinton, and Democrats who are eager to retake the White House know this. Mr. Obama promises a break from these polarizing politics, as well as from the dynastic Presidential chain of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. Mr. Obama's call for change has its ambiguities, to say the least, but one of its explicit themes is a promise to end the partisan feuds of the last 15 years -- which for the Clintons are nearly bloodfeuds. This strikes us as healthy both for Democrats and the country.
Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric is also notable for its optimism, in contrast to John Edwards's angry populism. Mr. Edwards is now citing his second-place Iowa finish as a vindication of his call for "change." But he's taken to running essentially like the trial lawyer he is, as if he is prosecuting a giant tort case against all of American business and politics. Mr. Edwards speaks of villains and victims, Mr. Obama of aspiration and opportunity. The latter is what Americans want from a President.
This is not to say that either Mr. Edwards or the Clintons will go quietly into retirement. The Clintons in particular are experts at attack, though Mrs. Clinton has to guard against making herself even more unlikable than she already seems. She might have the most luck hammering at Mr. Obama's greatest liability, which is his lack of national security experience. This remains a post-9/11 country, and Americans know they are electing a Commander in Chief in wartime. Mr. Obama has often sounded naive in the extreme in discussing Iraq, Iran and the overall war on terror, and Mrs. Clinton can point out that Republicans are sure to make that argument in the autumn.
Mr. Obama's other potential weakness in November is his orthodox policy liberalism. We can't recall a single issue on which he has broken with a Democratic interest group. On taxes, he is to the left even of Mrs. Clinton in that he wants to raise the income limit on payroll taxes above its current ceiling of $102,000. Combined with his vow to repeal the Bush tax rates, this would be the biggest tax increase in history by far. Sooner or later this liberal agenda, assuming Mr. Obama believes it, will have to be squared with his rhetoric of "bipartisanship" and national reconciliation.
As for Mr. Huckabee, he shares at least one trait with Mr. Obama -- both come across as likable men with an easy charm. But we have our doubts that the former Arkansas Governor's victory will have the same political impact. He won in a caucus where his fellow evangelicals were 60% of the vote, and this won't be true in other states. Mr. Huckabee is also only now being discovered by most Republican voters. His innocence (or ignorance) on foreign policy, penchant for borrowing liberal economic attack lines, and even his rejection of Darwin's theory of evolution deserve to be understood by voters before they make him their standard bearer.
Yet there is also something refreshing about Mr. Huckabee's rise from nowhere to win in Iowa. He showed that money matters less than message in politics, defeating Mitt Romney despite being vastly outspent. His victory has jumbled the GOP field in a way that means John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and even Fred Thompson will all have more time to make their case. Just when you think that politics is dominated by cynics and pollsters, along come the voters to show us again that it is also about idealism and our better aspirations. For a change.
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