Obama Facing Two-Front War
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Heavy Fire From Clinton, McCain
By JONATHAN WEISMAN And SHAILAGH MURRAY
The Washington Post
March 5, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and his campaign could face a scenario that a barrage of advertising, phone calls and door knocking could not avert — a protracted, two-front war against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.
Even before the votes were cast in Ohio and Texas, Obama campaign officials were dreading an outcome that would keep Clinton, D-N.Y., in the race at least through the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Those seven weeks will cost Obama at least $10 million and possibly much more, campaign aides say, as he battles a rejuvenated Clinton who will have every incentive to force him into a major mistake.
Obama aides also expect to take concentrated fire from McCain, R-Ariz., and his Republican allies, who have already begun raising questions about the 46-year-old Democratic senator's credibility, authenticity and even his patriotism.
For several months before his victory in Iowa, doubters questioned whether Obama had the stomach to deliver the blows necessary to wear down Clinton's natural advantages. Now, the question is whether he can take a punch.
Some Obama supporters are increasing pressure on him to shift tactics, frame more sharply his criticism of his opponents and begin inoculating himself from the GOP attacks, but Obama remains reluctant to change the approaches that he still believes will secure him the nomination. "I have said consistently that we do things differently," Obama said. "It's worked for us so far. And I'm not going to do things that I'm not comfortable in doing."
To be sure, Obama campaign aides think Tuesday's outcomes should not block his path to the Democratic nomination. He will maintain a lead in pledged delegates, and any diminishing of that delegate lead is likely to be recouped in Saturday's Wyoming caucuses and next Tuesday's Mississippi primary.
They stressed they will not be drawn into a fight for Pennsylvania on Clinton's terms, with an expensive, all-out campaign focused on her. Instead, confident that their delegate lead will stand, their main target will shift to McCain.
But Democratic leaders outside the campaign are worried that a candidate who cruised through his only Senate campaign, in 2004, does not know what is about to hit him. Republicans are already planting the seeds for a negative campaign designed to make one overarching point, said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., an Obama supporter and informal adviser: This man is not who you think he is.
"You have to question whether he is equipped to deal with the complex and serious issues that are facing the nation," said Danny Diaz, the Republican National Committee's communications director.Diaz said Republicans will question whether Obama has "a certain level of experience, a certain understanding of the world, of who these leaders are."
Republicans such as Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia have used Obama's decision not to wear an American flag on his lapel to question his patriotism. Virtually every day, the Republican Jewish Coalition sends e-mails to Jewish voters questioning Obama's commitment to Israel. And darker e-mail and Internet campaigns continue to suggest that Obama is everything from a Muslim to a terrorist sympathizer.
McCain has already made clear how he will try to brand Obama if they meet in November, drawing on his Senate votes on abortion, taxes and guns as evidence that he is outsidethe mainstream. "He was judged … as the most liberal senator in the United States Senate," McCain told reporters last week.
But more broadly, Republicans are poised to offer what they consider a stark contrast between McCain's lifetime of experience — in war, in the Senate, in politics — and a caricature of a young, inexperienced neophyte with little but fancy rhetoric to offer.
That is a line of attack that Clinton has labored to make stick for weeks. But McCain advisers think their candidate will be more effective in convincing the public that Obama is not ready to lead the nation, especially during an economic downturn and two wars overseas.
As part of the wide-ranging case they have begun constructing, they plan to follow some of the threads Clinton has already exposed: Obama's ties to Chicago businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko; the senator's failure to hold hearings on Afghanistan in his Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee; his decision to repeatedly vote "present" in the Illinois legislature.
David Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, acknowledged he is receiving a variety of advice from Democrats, including changing Obama's stump speech to emphasize his American roots and pushing for a second round of changes in the nation's welfare laws, this time aimed at stray fathers.
Davis said Obama needs to immediately disarm attacks on his patriotism by reprising the theme of his 2004 speech to the Democratic convention — that only in America could the son of a Kenyan immigrant and a woman from a small-town in Kansas aspire to the heights of power. Other Democrats worry that Republicans might find some nugget from Obama's days as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago to paint him as a radical who will be unwilling to challenge liberal orthodoxy on social and poverty issues.
But Obama has resisted such entreaties. "There's no reason why we would want to change our approach," Obama said Tuesday.
Obama is accustomed to doubts about his ability to withstand an opponent's attacks. During his 2004 Senate race, he kept above his desk an image of Muhammad Ali, light on his feet and lightning quick, upsetting the conventional puncher, Sonny Liston, for the heavyweight boxing championship. But that campaign turned into a cake walk when, first, his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Blair Hull, and then his expected Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, self-destructed over revelations from their divorce records.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe scoffs at the notion that Obama will not be prepared for the coming attacks. "The Clintons are the gold standard of negative tactical campaigning," he said. But that attitude worries many Democrats.
"Hillary's team is the most experienced and most successful Democratic operation in 30 years," one unaffiliated Chicago strategist said. "What Barack has shown is the ability to raise a prodigious amount of money. The one thing I don't know that Barack has proven is, can he take a punch? Can he take a sustained attack?" |
