The Democratic race, which Clinton once led handily, had narrowed to a nearly a draw in recent national polls.
Obama held a slight lead in California and was virtually tied with Clinton in New Jersey and Missouri -- three states voting on "Super Tuesday" -- in a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.
February 3, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Ask Not What J.F.K. Can Do for Obama
By FRANK RICH
BEFORE John F. Kennedy was a president, a legend, a myth and a poltergeist stalking Americas 2008 campaign, he was an upstart contender seen as a risky bet for the Democratic nomination in 1960.
Kennedy was judged an ambitious but superficial playboy by his liberal peers, according to his biographer Robert Dallek. He never said a word of importance in the Senate, and he never did a thing, in the authoritative estimation of the Senates master, Lyndon Johnson. Adlai Stevenson didnt much like Kennedy, and neither did Harry Truman, who instead supported Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.
J. F. K. had few policy prescriptions beyond Democratic boilerplate (a higher minimum wage, comprehensive housing legislation). As his speechwriter Richard Goodwin recalled in his riveting 1988 memoir Remembering America, Kennedys main task was to prove his political viability. He had to persuade his party that he was not a wealthy dilettante and not too young, too inexperienced and, above all, too Catholic to be president.
How did the fairy-tale prince from Camelot vanquish a field of heavyweights led by the longtime liberal warrior Hubert Humphrey? It wasnt ideas. It certainly wasnt experience. It wasnt even the charisma that Kennedy would show off in that falls televised duels with Richard Nixon.
Looking back almost 30 years later, Mr. Goodwin summed it up this way: He had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation his message grounded on his own intuition of some vague and spreading desire for national renewal.
In other words, Kennedy needed two things. He needed poetry, and he needed a country with some desire, however vague, for change.
Mr. Goodwin and his fellow speechwriter Ted Sorensen helped with the poetry. Still, the placid America of 1960 was not obviously in the market for change. The outgoing president, Ike, was the most popular incumbent since F. D. R. The suburban boom was as glossy as it is now depicted in the television show Mad Men. The Red Panic of the McCarthy years was in temporary remission.
But Kennedys intuition was right. Americas boundless self-confidence was being rattled by (as yet) low-grade fevers: the surprise Soviet technological triumph of Sputnik; anti-American riots in even friendly non-Communist countries; the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. at an all-white restaurant in Atlanta; the inexorable national shift from manufacturing to white-collar jobs. Kennedy bet his campaign on, as he put it, the single assumption that the American people are uneasy at the present drift in our national course and that they have the will and strength to start the United States moving again.
For all the Barack Obama-J. F. K. comparisons, whether legitimate or over-the-top, what has often been forgotten is that Mr. Obamas weaknesses resemble Kennedys at least as much as his strengths. But to compensate for those shortcomings, he gets an extra benefit that J. F. K. lacked in 1960. Theres nothing vague about the publics desire for national renewal in 2008, with a reviled incumbent in the White House and only 19 percent of the population finding the country on the right track, according to the last Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. America is screaming for change.
Either of the two Democratic contenders will swing the pendulum. Their marginal policy differences notwithstanding, they are both orthodox liberals. As the partys voters in 22 states step forward on Tuesday, the overriding question they face, as defined by both contenders, is this: Which brand of change is more likely, in Kennedys phrase, to get America moving again?
Lost in the hoopla over the Teddy and Caroline Kennedy show last week was the parallel endorsement of Hillary Clinton by three of Robert Kennedys children. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed article, they answered this paramount question as many Clinton supporters do (and as many John Edwards supporters also did). The loftiest poetry wont solve Americas crises, they wrote. Change can be achieved only by a president willing to engage in a fistfight.
That both Clintons are capable of fistfighting is beyond doubt, at least on their own behalf in a campaign. But Mrs. Clinton isnt always a fistfighter when governing. Theres a reason why Robert Kennedys children buried the Iraq war in a single clause (and never used the word Iraq) deep in their endorsement. They know that their uncle Teddy, unlike Mrs. Clinton, raised his fists to lead the Senate fight against the Iraq misadventure at the start. They know too that less than six months after Mission Accomplished, Senator Kennedy called the war a fraud and voted against pouring more money into it. Senator Clinton raised a hand, not a fist, to vote aye.
In what she advertises as 35 years of fighting for Americans, Mrs. Clinton can point to some battles won. But many of them were political campaigns for Bill Clinton: seven even before his 1992 presidential run. The fistfighting required if she is president may also often be political. As Mrs. Clinton herself says, she has been in marathon combat against the Republican attack machine. Its antipathy will be increased exponentially by the co-president who would return to the White House with her on Day One.
Its legitimate to wonder whether sweeping policy change can be accomplished on that polarized a battlefield. A Clinton presidency may end up a Democratic mirror image of Karl Roves truculent style of G.O.P. governance: a 50 percent plus 1 majority. Seven years on, that formula has accomplished little for the country beyond extending and compounding the mistake of invading Iraq. As was illustrated by the long catalog of unfinished business in President Bushs final State of the Union address, this has not been a presidency that, as Mrs. Clinton said of L. B. J.s, got things done.
The rap on Mr. Obama remains that he preaches the audacity of Kumbaya. He is all lofty poetry and no action, so obsessed with transcending partisanship that he can be easily rolled. Implicit in this criticism is a false choice that voters have to choose between his pretty words on one hand and Mrs. Clintons combative, wonky incrementalism on the other.
Theres a third possibility, of course: A poetically gifted president might be able to bring about change without relying on fistfighting as his primary modus operandi. Mr. Obama argues that if he can bring some Republicans along, he can achieve changes larger than the microinitiatives that have been a hallmark of Clintonism. He also suggests, in his most explicit policy invocation of J. F. K., that he can enlist the young en masse in a push for change by ramping up national service programs like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.
His critics argue back that he is a naïve wuss who will give away the store. They have mocked him for offering to hold health-care negotiations so transparent (and presumably feckless) that they can be broadcast on C-Span. Obama supporters point out that Mrs. Clintons behind-closed-doors 1993 health-care task force was a fiasco.
A better argument might be that transparency could help smoke out the special-interest players hiding in Washingtons crevices. Youd never know from Mrs. Clintons criticisms of subprime lenders that one of the most notorious, Countrywide, was a client as recently as October of Burson-Marsteller, the public relations giant where her chief strategist, Mark Penn, is the sitting chief executive. Other high-level operatives in her campaign belong to Dewey Square Group, an outfit that just last year provided lobbying services for Countrywide.
The question about Mr. Obama, of course, is whether he is tough enough to stand up to those in Washington who oppose real reform, whether Republicans or special-interest advocates like, say, Mr. Penn. The jury is certainly out, though Mr. Obama has now started to toughen his critique of the Clintons without sounding whiny. By framing that debate as a choice between the future and the past, he is revisiting the J. F. K. playbook against Ike.
What we also know is that, unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is not hesitant to take on John McCain. He has twice triggered the McCain temper, in spats over ethics reform in 2006 and Mr. McCains Baghdad market photo-op last year. In Thursdays debate, Mr. Obama led an attack on Mr. McCain twice before Mrs. Clinton followed with a wan echo. When Bill Clinton promised that his wife and Mr. McCains friendship would ensure a civilized campaign, he may have been revealing more than he intended about the perils for Democrats in that matchup.
As Tuesdays vote looms, all thats certain is that todays pollsters and pundits have so far gotten almost everything wrong. Mr. McCains campaign had been declared dead. Mrs. Clinton has gone from invincible to near-death to near-invincible again. Mr. Obama was at first not black enough to sweep black votes and then too black to get a sizable white vote in South Carolina.
Richard Goodwin knew in 1960 that all it took was a single significant failure by Kennedy or an act of political daring by his opponents for his man to lose especially in the general election, where he faced the vastly more experienced Nixon, the designated heir of a popular president. Thats as good a snapshot as any of where we are right now, while we wait for the voters to decide if they will take what Mrs. Clinton correctly describes as a leap of faith and follow another upstart on to a new frontier.
FEMS,
namba ulotoa hapo juu ni kongwe, latest Obama 44, Hillary 43 in Cali!!.
Turn overs zitawauwa Giants......ads za mwaka huu si nzuri, kama ile ya budweiser yenye ma-farasi, gademu, too long and confusing. Hili la life water lenye Naomi Campbell kidogo limetulia!!.
ndio michezo wewe, kuna kushinda na kushindwa.............Jints played a good game!!! Pats wenyewe wali-create monster in week 16, this was a payback.
Back to back Mannings wanachukua superbowl..........tusubiri monday morning quarterbacking/armchair quarterbacks watakavyo criticize Brady na offensive line nzima!!
By Peter Wehner Sunday, February 3, 2008; Page B07
Barack Obama is not only popular among Democrats, he's also an appealing figure to many Republicans. Former GOP House member Joe Scarborough, now a host on MSNBC, reports that after every important Obama speech, he is inundated with e-mails praising the speech -- with most of them coming from Republicans. William Bennett, an influential conservative intellectual, has said favorable things about Obama. So have Rich Lowry of National Review and Peggy Noonan. And so have I.
A number of prominent Republicans I know, who would wage a pitched battle against Hillary Clinton, like Obama and would find it hard to generate much enthusiasm in opposing him.
What is at the core of Obama's appeal?
Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with his personal grace and dignity. By all accounts, Obama is a well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly) transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn't seem disagreeable. "You know what charm is," Albert Camus wrote in "The Fall," "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to Democrats.
A second reason Republicans appreciate Obama is that he is pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt. Among the effects of the Obama-Clinton race is that it is forcing Democrats to come to grips with the mendacity and ruthlessness of the Clinton machine. Conservatives have long believed that the Clintons are an unprincipled pair who will destroy those who stand between them and power -- whether they are political opponents, women from Bill Clinton's past or independent counsels.
When the Clintons were doing this in the 1990s, it was viewed by many Democrats as perfectly acceptable. Some even applauded them for their brass-knuckle tactics. But now that the Clintons are roughing up an inspiring young man who appears to represent the hope and future of the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment is reacting with outrage. "I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons," writes Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Many conservatives respond: It's about time.
A third reason for Obama's GOP appeal is that unlike Clinton and especially John Edwards, Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment. He stresses that "out of many we are one." And to his credit, Barack Obama is running a color-blind campaign. "I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina," Obama said in his victory speech last weekend. "I saw South Carolina." That evening, his crowd of supporters chanted as one, "Race doesn't matter." This was an electric moment. Obama's words are in the great tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Obama, more than any figure in America, can help bind up the racial wounds of America. In addition, for the past eight years, one of the most prominent qualities of the American left has been anger, which has served it and the country very poorly. An Obama primary win would be a move away from the politics of rage.
The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal. And while rhetoric and character matter a lot, politics is finally and fundamentally about ideas and philosophy. Whether we're talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts, the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the views of the special-interest groups on the left. In this respect, he should borrow from the Clinton strategy in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran as a "New Democrat," championed free trade, promised to "end welfare as we know it" and criticized, on hawkish grounds, the "butchers of Beijing."
Bill Clinton ran an intellectually creative race whose ideas appealed to non-Democrats. Barack Obama has shown no such inclination so far (his speeches, while inspiring, mostly avoid a serious discussion of policies). If he wanted to demonstrate his independence from liberal orthodoxy, for example, he could come out in favor of school choice for low-income families, which would both help poor families and demonstrate support for some of the best faith-based institutions in America: urban parochial schools.
If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and fails to take steps such as this, his liberal views will be his greatest vulnerability. Obama will try to reject the liberal label -- but based on his stands on the issues, at least so far, the label will fit, and it will stick.
Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can reach beyond his ideology. The writer, formerly deputy assistant to President Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Wakati huo huo polls za Zogby/Reuters/C-Span zinaonyesha Obama ana Lead in CA, MO. Wakati Polls za Gallup zinasema Mama anapoteza support ya kina mama, Maria Shriver naye jana alikuwa bega kwa bega na Michelle, Oprah na Caroline kucampaign patamu hapo!!!
YR, don't you think Obama yuko mpaka the last day kwenye Convention pale Denver late August? Maana pundits na bloggers wanasema the longer the race goes on the better for the Wonder Boy.
By David Catron
Published 2/4/2008 12:08:09 AM
For conservatives, watching Barack Obama challenge Mrs. Clinton's claim to the Democratic Presidential nomination provides no small amount of schadenfreude. It's good to see Hillary grind her teeth as Obama calls her on some whopper during an otherwise tedious Democrat debate. It is sweet to watch Bill's face turn puce when questioned by some reporter about one of his sly racial allusions. And it is truly satisfying to see the gruesome twosome writhe in frustration as Obama accepts the endorsements of former allies like Ted Kennedy.
It would, however, be far less pleasant to watch the eventual Republican Presidential nominee grapple with Obama in the general election. The Illinois Senator would be much harder to beat than Hillary. He is not only younger and more charming than Mrs. Clinton, he also carries far less political baggage.
Moreover, Obama's positions on most issues are wrapped in gauzy, soft-focus bromides which would make it hard to yoke him to the scary, big-government liberalism that most voters already associate with Clinton.
Health care reform provides a useful case in point. Although Obama's views on the issue are, as Shawn Macomber has pointed out, informed by the same nanny state philosophy that animate those of every other Democrat running for President, his "reform" proposals are deliberately packaged to seem far less threatening than Hillarycare 2.0. On a variety of health care issues, including insurance mandates, tort reform, and even federalism, Obama's positions are deceptively innocuous.
Obama's refusal to overtly endorse the kind of comprehensive health insurance mandate that figures so prominently in Hillary's "reform" package is typical of his "don't scare 'em" approach to policy. His plan to "cover every American," as his campaign website puts it, "will require that all children have health coverage." It does not, however, include a mandate for adults.
"The reason people don't have health insurance," Obama often says, "isn't because they don't want it, it's because they can't afford it." Thus, his "plan" consists of low-voltage platitudes about "lowering costs."
IN ADDITION TO making him seem far less threatening than Hillary, Obama's mandate position would serve him well in the general election. As Jonathan Cohn pointed out in the New Republic, Obama's argument resonates not only with "liberals who worry a mandate simply cannot work in practice," but also "among conservatives who simply don't like the government telling anybody what to do."
Ironically, that gives him an advantage over at least one of his potential Republican opponents. In a general election campaign against Mitt Romney, Obama could claim to be the more moderate of the two on the issue. Romney did, after all, sign into law a universal health care program whose many pernicious features include a health insurance mandate.
The Illinois Senator also makes "moderate" noises on malpractice lawsuit abuse. His web site stays within the bounds of liberal orthodoxy: "Obama will strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians." But his speeches have occasionally included heresies such as, "Anyone who denies there's a crisis with medical malpractice insurance is probably a trial lawyer." In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, he explained that his career choices have been animated by a commitment to public service, adding "That's why I didn't become a trial lawyer."
Like his position on mandates, Obama's stance on malpractice abuse would be harder to run against than Hillary's orthodox Democrat position. It would be an easy matter to depict Hillary as a bought-and paid-for mouthpiece for the trial lawyers who have contributed so much to health care inflation. In addition to her opposition to serious tort reform, she has received more campaign cash from lawyers than any other presidential candidate, including John Edwards. Obama, on the other hand, can cite his heretical statements as proof that their considerable generosity to him has had no effect on his positions.
Running against Obama's health care positions is made more difficult still by the presence in his plan of what could be termed "Federalism Lite," which his web site describes as follows: "Due to federal inaction, some states have taken the lead in health care reform. The Obama plan builds on these efforts and does not replace what states are doing. States can continue to experiment..." That sounds sensible enough, and it would be much harder to attack than Hillary's clear intention to swamp state reform efforts with a tsunami of federal regulations.
Obama's notion of "flexibility for the states" comes with a caveat to the effect that they can create their own version of reform only if "they meet the minimum standards of the national plan."
That caveat wouldn't be a liability in the general election because it echoes the positions of his potential Republican opponents. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney have put forward proposals for encouraging state-level health care innovation that are in many ways similar to Obama's brand of watered-down federalism.
This soft-focus federalism, like Obama's views on tort reform and mandates, is of a piece with his positions on most other issues. On Iraq, he criticizes Bush but doesn't advocate a precipitous withdrawal of American troops. In fact, he won't commit to removing all U.S. troops during his first term as President.
On the economy, he is similarly reluctant to call for radical solutions, confining his remarks to the usual bromides. He has gone to great pains to appear unthreatening.
Thus, while it is indeed pleasant to watch Obama bedevil the Clintons, conservatives should not become so drunk with schadenfreude that they forget how much harder the Illinois Senator would be to beat than Hillary.
Mrs. Clinton's capture of the Democratic Presidential nomination could unite conservatives, generate an avalanche of cash for the Republican nominee, and produce a record-breaking turnout of Republican voters on election day. Obama's nomination would bring none of these benefits. Indeed, his presence at the top of the Democratic ticket could mean a Democrat victory in November.
Icadon,
nimeona hiyo, sidhani lakini kama safari hii ita-work!!
Suffork University wametoa poll inaonyesha Obama anaongoza kwa asilimia 46 while Clinton 44.........kwa upande mwingine loss ya Pats jana itasaidia turn out ya young voters ambayo ni good news kwa Obama, kama wangeshinda watu(vijana) wangeenda kwenye parade!! jamaa ana rally usiku huu pale world trade center east in east Boston, nafikiria kuibuka kuona heavy weights wanavyo-court votes!!.
Guys and Gals,
We are witnessing history in the making. Obama is a phenomenon and Super Tuesday is going to be a revelation. I have been watching the polls and listening to the pundits, something is in the air. Stay tuned.
jioni kwenye east coast, poll stations are closing. namba zinaanza kuingia, it looks good kwa Obama!!! it is going to be a loong night kwa sisi "mashabiki."
jioni kwenye east coast, poll stations are closing. namba zinaanza kuingia, it looks good kwa Obama!!! it is going to be a loong night kwa sisi "mashabiki."
FMES,
mzee unasemaje juu ya ile escape ya Manning kwenye drive ya mwisho iliyozaa touchdown!!? mie nilijua wamesha m-sack, to my opinion, it was a great play!!.
Hopeful parade ya leo imepunguza turnout ya Clinton supporters in NY......
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