E. J. Dionne: A Candidacy's Prose and Cons

[babylonsister]

A Candidacy's Prose and Cons
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008; Page A19


CONCORD, N.H. -- Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally written the obituary for the Iowa and New Hampshire phase of her presidential campaign, and perhaps her candidacy, when she told voters on Sunday: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose."

Clinton has not heeded her own lesson. She is campaigning in prose and has left the poetry to Barack Obama. She has answers to hard policy questions, but he has the one answer that voters are hungering for: He offers himself as the vehicle for creating a new political movement that will break the country out of a sour, reactionary political era.

The most telling laugh line in Obama's stump speech is his description of the dreadful charge his opponents make against him. "Obama's talking about hope again," the candidate says, mimicking his foes. Then his tenor drops to a low, conspiratorial pitch: "He's a hope monger." His audiences roar.

There is a certain melancholy in watching Clinton do battle. Obviously aware that the bottom is falling out from under her, she choked up Monday during her last day of campaigning here. By way of proving her tenacity and the depth of her policy knowledge, she has subjected herself to unremitting rounds of questions from voters about every issue from health care to global warming.

Clinton knows her stuff and would pass the most rigorous test available under any "No Policy Left Behind" program for politicians. If we chose a president by examination rather than election, she would win. In Hampton on Sunday night, Maggie Wood Hassan, a prominent state senator, said of Clinton's savvy on health care: "There isn't a single piece of the puzzle she hasn't figured out." True, but voters right now are not thinking about intricate puzzles.

There is compassion in Clinton's wonkiness. At a rally in Penacook on Saturday, she spoke with energy about the struggles of foster parents and the suffering of foster children. She pledged to make their problems a priority of her presidency, even if there are no headlines in it. She sounded absolutely believable.

Yet if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702263.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[CTyankee]

1. Thank you for posting this. I have always liked E.J. Dionne. A good guy.

I think he's right: people yearn for the "poetry" that makes sense of their lives and offers them hope. And Dionne is sensitive enough to correctly point out Hillary's very strong areas of both strength and compassion.

Edwards is still my candidate and will be to the end, for me on Super Tuesday with our CT primary.

For right now, I want to see how this "hope" thing plays out...so far I have not heard much substance to go along with the hope message...

[Inuca]

2. A very good article

And much as I do not like Hillary, it is sad in a way...

[Colobo]

3. Beautifully written.

[DrFunkenstein]

4. She is Trying to Do What Kerry Did in Iowa

When he exhaustively took everyone's question, and I mean everyone's. That's one of the lost lessons of Iowa. People talk about Dean and Gephardt squabbling, but Kerry really sold himself. Unfortunately, Clinton doesn't have as much to sell.