Just like a young Bill Clinton once did, Barack Obama has wooed Democrats by playing to the center while using his biography to maintain his credibility with the left.
Remember that Clinton, before he alienated the far left by “triangulating” to save his own skin in the White House, was once the hope of liberal America. Politically frustrated baby boomer radicals eager to see their long-ago aims finally achieved once bet heavily on him.
Clinton’s non-inhalations, draft avoidance, anti-establishment associations and even his, er, appetites reassured a key component of the Democratic base that, despite sometimes sounding like a Republican and being from Arkansas, Clinton really was down for the struggle.
As for Obama, his multicultural background and unorthodox upbringing are almost enough to prove liberal solidarity, and his work on Chicago’s SouthSide and ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright cinches it.
Obama will finally get the job done, no matter what he says about bipartisanship or really, really liking Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma GOPer with whom he collaborated on the landmark Federal Financial Accounting and Transparency Act of 2006.
After the Clinton administration allegedly killed big government, reformed welfare, opened up free trade, launched plenty of cruise missiles at Third World targets and gave up on openly gay soldiers, universal health care and environmental crusading, he and, by extension, his wife, lost the support of conscientious liberals.
Such icky compromising is still down the road for Obama. Now, he stands as Bill Clinton stood in the summer of 1992 — a candidate with a secure base who is able to risk an appeal to more conservative swing voters.
And for Obama to win in the fall, he’ll need the same two advantages Bill Clinton enjoyed against George Bush the elder — a Republican nominee whose fractured conservative base was successfully exploited by a third party candidate and an electorate unconcerned about foreign policy.
How much trouble John McCain will have on his right flank depends on whether he overreaches in his own appeal to the center and how anxious Republicans really are about a President Obama.
If McCain gasses on too long about greenhouse gases and Obama can reintroduce himself, post-Rev. Wright, to Republican voters in a way that makes him less Huey Newton and more Huey Lewis, McCain could get blocked by Bob Barr and the Libertarians.
Ross Perot had more money and more zany appeal than Barr, a very serious fellow. But the Libertarians do have the organization and enthusiasm that Ron Paul whipped up in his run. No campaign did more with less this year than Paul’s.
But it also remains a party with appealing ideas and unappealing members. Just about the time a Libertarian has you feeling good about smaller government, he tells you what he wants to do with all that freedom. Yuck. Barr will struggle to keep cannabis enthusiasts and Wiccans from sinking his candidacy.
If McCain gets too cheeky with conservatives and Obama can come back from his bitter, clingy period, though, Barr is credible enough to throw some swing states, and thereby the election, to Obama.
Obama, meanwhile, is having some troubles of his own on an unexpected front. The issue that won Obama the Democratic nomination — his opposition as a state senator to the Iraq war — is proving to be more noisome for him in the general.
As evidenced by his tetchy refusal of John McCain’s invitation for a joint visit to our friends on the Tigris and Euphrates, Obama strangely finds himself looking for solid footing on the one foreign policy issue he thought would be a strength.
Obama’s strategy seemed to be to hit McCain on insensitivity to domestic issues and then light him up on Iraq. That combination, with liberal use of the phrase “third Bush term,” was a simple, if reasonable, approach.
But Iraq casualties are declining and voters seem resigned to the impossibility of a quick exit. Now Obama’s shots give McCain the chance to talk about “no surrender”again. And as long as things are stable or improving in Sadr City, surrender won’t sell well in Rapid City.
That leaves Obama with nowhere to turn on foreign policy. If the election isn’t the referendum on Iraq Obama hoped for, he’s left with avoiding war with Iran to justify his election. Then, he’d sound about as balanced as Bob Barr’s most enthusiastic supporters.
