The presidential campaigns of Bob Dole and John Kerry had several things in common: they were veterans whose service apparently counted for little, they were personally unexciting, and they ran weak campaigns. There was one other common factor: both were fatally afflicted with the tendency to lapse into ‘Senate-ese.’ While candidates with executive experience (mostly governors) could address a problem directly, long-time Senators tended to wander off into legislative minutiae, and by the time they got around to answering a question, the listener had lost interest. With the benefit of hindsight, commentators told us that Senators like Dole and Kerry started the campaign with two strikes against them, because their speaking styles were formed in the Senate. Steve and Cokie Roberts wrote a little while ago about the cursed affliction, and how it hurt Hillary Clinton:
Clinton talks about being “cursed with the responsibility gene,” but her bigger problem is the Senate gene. Just ask her fellow sufferer, John Kerry, how damaging that genetic handicap can be. His suicidal statement — that he actually voted against the Iraq war before he voted for it — was pure Senate speak. Senators often vote on both sides of an issue, depending on the amendments offered and the legislative package that eventually emerges. But executive leadership is very different from legislative leadership. The best executives craft visions, not coalitions; they paint in bright strokes, not pallid pastels. Almost every successful presidential candidate has already held an executive job — governor, general, vice president (or in Herbert Hoover’s case, cabinet secretary). The most memorable presidents say “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” They don’t say, “I’m still fighting to get those 60 votes” to pass a non-binding resolution expressing disapproval of the wall.
Against this backdrop, the tenor of the debate/discussion at Saddleback is rather shocking. John McCain — a veteran of decades in the Senate — demonstrated why he has a reputation as a straight talker. And despite having served in the Senate for just a few months before he started his presidential run, it was Barack Obama who proved almost unable to answer the questions asked:
Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue I think is not paying attention. So that would be point number one. But point number two, I am pro-choice. I believe in Roe v. Wade and come to that conclusion not because I’m pro abortion, but because ultimately I don’t think women make these decisions casually. They wrestle with these things in profound ways, in consultation with their pastors or spouses or their doctors and their family members. And so for me, the goal right now should be – and this is where I think we can find common ground and by the way I have now inserted this into the democrat party platform is how do we reduce the number of abortions because the fact is that although we’ve had a president who is opposed to abortions over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.
As a candidate, Obama has almost no experience that qualifies him for the office he seeks, yet it’s clear that he’s already been in the Senate too long. How much longer before he starts referring to himself in the third person?
