Letting Hillary Be Hillary

Obama knows the terrain, and works it quietly. Forty-eight hours after New Hampshire, he was in Charleston, S.C., and invited 35 pastors and religious leaders to a private session after a huge College of Charleston rally. "He wanted to speak clearly to our historical role as a voice—particularly the African-American churches," the Rev. Charles Heyward, an influential minister in suburban Charleston, tells NEWSWEEK. "But he was also clear to acknowledge that even in that room there could be folks supporting other candidates. He didn't take it for granted, and I thought that was very professional and appropriate."

Perhaps because he does not have to—his very appearance says "change" loudly enough—Obama speaks of race as part of a broader American narrative. In conceding defeat in New Hampshire (in what he had expected to be a victory speech), he evoked civil rights in the gentlest and, to whites, least threatening of ways. Speaking of an American spirit of "Yes, we can," Obama said: "It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes, we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes, we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes, we can. It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our New Frontier and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land. Yes, we can, to justice and equality."

When he speaks more extensively about civil rights, he tells the story from the perspective of black and white Freedom Riders, not simply from the viewpoint of southern African-Americans. Rebutting the criticism that "hope" is not enough, he says: "That's what those young people did as they traveled down South and marched and sat in at lunch counters and suffered fire hoses and beatings and attack dogs and some gave up their life for freedom's cause. That's what hope is." And, as voting begins to play out in the West, he—like Clinton—will have to speak even more extensively to address the concerns of Hispanics, who in large measure have been greatly alienated by the debate over illegal immigration.

Obama has implicitly mocked Clinton's critique of his gospel of hope. Cynics, he says—meaning Clinton—would have dismissed going to the moon as naive. In her post-New Hampshire mode, Clinton is honing a two-pronged approach: telling more of her own story, but always connecting, in campaign-speak, rhetoric to reality. No matter how bad things have been or may get again—and they usually do with the Clintons—Hillary says: "I always find those moments of grace, and I always see something that makes it important enough to keep going. When somebody says that if it hadn't been for me they aren't sure their son would have survived because I fought with some insurance company to get them health care, I think, well, that's what politics is supposed to be about. I love that, and that's why I do what I do. And after President Bush, it's maybe more important than ever because a lot of people made a decision to vote for him that was not connected to any political narrative. It was a totally personal narrative. I have always been a little suspicious, to be honest, with a personal narrative … There were some of the demagogues, Huey Long and others. For their time, they were unbelievable communicators and they gave people such a feeling of, on the one hand, hitting back against the forces that had undermined their futures or, on the other hand, that it was going to be automatically better if we elected that person. I have always been suspicious of that. How do we find a space in our politics for someone who, as I am, is committed to being a workhorse, not a show horse? I love saying that faith without works is dead, but works without faith is too hard." She mentions no names. She does not have to, and one suspects that such subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—exercises in what Clinton calls "contrasts" will come with ever-greater speed and force in the days and weeks ahead.

With that, she is soon gone, out into the California sunshine. She has money to raise, then, ultimately, a flight to South Carolina, where folk like the Reverend Bing are waiting.

With Allison Samuels, Karen Breslau, Arian Campo-Flores, Raina Kelley, Chris Dixon, Martha Brant, Richard Wolffe and Eleanor Clift

© 2008