http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21231...
While it's true that the two remaining Democratic candidates have few substantive differences, they have very different approaches to campaigning, which give us clues about the differences in how they would govern—and that, after all, is what this whole thing is, or should be, about. It's useful to try to imagine these people in the White House, and, from their campaigning, to try to figure what they will be like there: how they will use power; how well they would sustain their appeal over a considerable period of time.
It's been long said among politicians that "the Clintons will do anything to win." Unfortunately, they are increasingly proving the point. As the primaries in Texas and Ohio approached, the Clinton campaign, which has a tendency to announce its next steps, said that it would use a "kitchen sink" strategy against Obama—and so it did: with the famous and apparently effective "red phone" ad questioning his fitness to be commander in chief; and in frequent and heavy-handed conference calls to reporters (an innovation), in which Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson makes charges against Obama, raises questions about him, or moves "goal posts" designating what Obama has to do to win. (Obama "has to win Pennsylvania," which few think is likely.) This propaganda makes its way onto cable and other news outlets. But where does, or should, a "kitchen sink" strategy belong in a presidency?
Hillary Clinton is employing conventional politics, while Obama is trying to create a new kind of politics. Similarly, as they respond to the country's desire for change, they have very different concepts of what "change" means: briefly, for Obama it means changing the very zeitgeist of Washington, creating a new way to get things done by building coalitions that transcend longstanding political divisions. For Clinton it means passing bills—though sometimes she has suggested that it means electing a woman president. ("I embody change," she said in a debate in New Hampshire.)
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That the presumed neophyte Obama has stood toe-to-toe with the Clintons (for all of Hillary Clinton's complaints about being "ganged up on," Obama has had to face both Clintons every day), has beaten them more often than not, and still might prevail is in itself remarkable. But in one important way his campaigning has fallen short. A great many people who follow politics closely simply don't "get" Obama, and can become quite angry about him. (This election is dividing friends and families like no other I've seen.) They see him as offering empty rhetoric, as simply building a movement, even a cult; the huge crowds he has drawn, his rock-star appeal, have only reinforced these suspicions. Actually, Obama is a serious student of policy—even, in the words of one adviser, a "geek"—and highly informed as a result. In Wisconsin, in some frustration—as Clinton was calling him "a talker, not a doer"—Obama said:
Everybody has got a ten-point plan on everything. You go to Senator Clinton's Web site, my Web site, they look identical.... The problem is not the lack of proposals. The question is, who can bring Democrats, independents, and Republicans into a working majority to bring about change. That's what we're doing in this campaign. This is what a working majority looks like. That's how we're going to move the country forward. That's what I offer that she can't do.Obama has a big idea: he believes that in order to change Washington and to get some of those ten-point programs through, and to reduce the power of the lobbies and "special interests," he must first build a large coalition—Democrats, independents, Republicans, whoever—to support him in his effort to change things. He has figured out that he cannot make the kinds of changes he's talking about if he has to fight for 51–49 majorities in Congress. Therefore, he's trying to build a broader coalition, and enlist the people who have come out to see him and are getting involved in politics for the first time because of him. If he can hold that force together, members of Congress, including the "old bulls," according to a campaign aide, "will look back home and see that there is a mandate for change." Thus, Obama talks about working "from the bottom up" to bring about change. When he says he will take on the special interests and the lobbies, to him it's not as far-fetched as most jaded Washingtonians think: he intends to do that with the army he's building.
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