A Pilgrim’s Digression

Obama is losing his cool. Yesterday, when asked to respond to Geraldine Ferraro’s remark that Obama wouldn’t be winning today if he were white or a woman, Obama responded that her statement was “ridiculous, wrong-headed, and divisive.” At one point, he seemed to be struggling for the right word, maybe thinking about saying the other “R” word–”racist”–but finally settling on “ridiculous.”

For the first time since I’ve been paying attention to him, though, Obama was not believable. He didn’t seem outraged, but he was trying to seem outraged, or at least upset. He looked grimly at the camera as he settled on the word “ridiculous” for Ferraro’s remarks. He seemed emotionless, for the most part, which I suppose is how one looks when one is trying to feign a certain feeling. Obama isn’t used to feigning anything.

In the past, when confronted with broadsides or racist remarks by the Clinton campaign, he has kept on smiling. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” is the advice Dori (in the voice of Ellen DeGeneres) gives to Nemo in the famous children’s movie, and that’s good advice for Obama, too. Don’t look back at the sharks behind you.

But I can also understand the need to take advantage of every slip of the tongue by one’s opponents or her supporters. However, it just looks bad for someone who once seemed so cool and teflon-tough that he didn’t need to respond to the ignorant attacks of his opponent.

This campaign is ugly, divisive, and it has gone on far too long by anyone’s standards. Obama needs to remember what got him this far, though. He has always been the optimistic one. He has never taken advantage of the “race card,” until now, although he has certainly allowed his surrogates in his campaign and the media to take advantage of it for him (i.e., the slap-down given Bill Clinton over his dismissive comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson). Through it all, Obama has just kept on swimming, against the current of traditional politics.

Something else, recently, that kind of broke my heart was Obama’s appearance with several of those “retired Generals” that politicians like to trot out in order to show they have support within the higher ranks of the military officer corps. The Obama “brass band” appearance seemed almost like a calculated response to Clinton’s similar recent meeting with old military geezers, in which she looked like the President huddled in a war room session with military advisers.

Just once I’d like to see a Presidential candidate hold a press conference with a group of ordinary soldiers who support him. It is, after all, never the Generals who actually fight the wars. But I guess I am just too much of a populist in that regard to ever be chosen to advise a Presidential campaign. I’d do everything possible to make my candidate be as natural and down-home as possible, but in the end, he would probably lose because who wants to think about their neighbor, or the guy next to them in the bar, as the next President of the United States?

It may be correct that we aren’t fooled by the showmanship of a Presidential campaign, but we still like for the candidates to try to fool us. That’s why all the men wear dark suits with either a red or blue tie and Clinton seems to only wear red pantsuits, these days. You have to suggest that you are powerful and you know what you are doing. A candidate who wears khakis and a flannel shirt (we had one of those once…remember Lamar Alexander?) doesn’t make the grade.

It’s all appearance, but appearance is important. I think the difference with Obama is that there was a sense that it wasn’t just appearance. Even Republicans could find little fault with him, in terms of his personality. He seems like an honest, forthright, natural guy. His smiles don’t strike us as false or manipulative.

Compare that with Clinton’s initial response to Ferraro’s comments: “Well, I don’t agree with that,” she says, smiling that evil smile. We know this woman fakes it every day of her life. Not so much as a genuine word crosses her sinister, smiling lips.

However, we also don’t expect anything better of her. She’s a Clinton. Obama was…is…different.

I hope Obama wins in Pennsylvania. Let me put that more forcefully: he has to win in Pennsylvania. The delegate math, the popular vote…these things don’t matter. As long as Clinton can maintain her lead in Super Delegates, she maintains her deathgrip on the nomination. The only way Obama can break that grip is by prying her fingers from the throats of Pennsylvania’s voters. Viewed in that way, reporters have had this campaign wrong from the start, mainly because they don’t understand the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton’s nomination to be the next Democratic President of the United Sates is still inevitable, unless he beats her decisively in Pennsylvania. I hope he realizes that and is planning accordingly (my suggestion, go back to what got you here and be the funny, smiling, optimistic candidate you once were). Otherwise, he may be the one waking up in June to the cold realization that Bill Clinton was right after all, and his candidacy really was just a “fairy tale.”