Fighting Words

I may be wrong, but I doubt that tarnishing Obama's halo will be as easy. First, the guy's got some Teflon coating. Reporters combing through his past have had trouble finding enemies. While a certain number of people have consistently loathed the Clintons going all the way back (while others adored them), the same has not been true for Obama. Even damaging details, like his confessed cocaine use in high school, haven't stuck. Ronald Reagan was Teflon, too. (Al Gore was Velcro). Certain people are just harder to take down than others.

Then there's the racial dimension. In some ways, Obama transcends race. Why else would he be doing so well in a state that's nearly all white? But it's still there as an important subconscious factor.  Despite a widespread view that his race will eventually doom his campaign, the more likely consequence is that it will shield him from harsh attacks. As long as Obama doesn't play the race victim card (and so far he has strenuously avoided saying that any criticism of him is racially motivated), his opponents will always have to worry about going too far.

Finally, Hillary Clinton is a much more formidable candidate when she appears to be above the fray. This plays to her strengths as a leader and conciliator and explains why she has done so well in debates. For all of her talk about "turning up the heat," it's when she goes into brawler mode that she gets in trouble. Remember her 1998 comments on the TODAY Show about the "vast right-wing conspiracy"? Hillary has a playful sense of humor, but on the attack she seems humorless. She has a passion about issues, but on the attack she seems cold. Given what her husband endured, raising "character" seems especially foolhardy.

A week ago Sunday, I accompanied Clinton to the Methodist Church in Des Moines, where, without prior notice, the minister gave a sermon about children, mentioning the Children's Defense Fund, where Hillary once worked. Afterwards, I joked with the senator that we were in her log cabin-close to two of her central passions. She laughed, but not when I asked if in the closing days of the campaign she would be returning to the wellsprings of her life in politics-a passion for children's issues. She admonished me for not paying enough attention to her stump speech, which lists improving the lives of children as a central goal of her presidency. I didn't have the gumption to tell her that it felt like an agenda item rather than something close to her heart.

On hearing this story, an old friend and strong supporter of Hillary, who is convinced that going negative is a terrible mistake, winced. Why? Because people who understand politics know that candidates close the deal with voters when they draw on their own deepest motivations-their reasons for being in public life. In 2004, John Kerry won in Iowa by connecting voters to his story of wartime service. Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt blew early leads by going negative.

One of the things that keep elections interesting is that all the rules are made to be broken. Sure, negative campaigning works. It has in the past and it will in the future. But as John Edwards has already learned this year, the price can be steep. With all the sophisticated polling and war-gaming, American politics is, like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," not in Kansas any more. But for another month, it's still in Iowa.

© 2007