There has always existed an almost paradoxical tension within the Obama campaign. If the Illinois senator had attacked Hillary Clinton with the same ferocity that Hillary has applied against him, then, some have argued, this would have been a much different contest. He might well have smoked her in Ohio and Pennsylvania and she would already be political history. Still, had Obama gone after her as she has gone after him, he might well have smoked himself, because playing the old attack game would have violated the basic and (so far) successful premise of his "new politics" -- the very politics that could yet hold the seeds of its own destruction.
It's a bit of a mind-bender -- and is likely to remain one.
Obama hasn't been shy about attacking Hillary on the issues, when it comes to the few they actually and fundamentally disagree on. Such as the "McCain-Clinton gas tax gimmick," as he has rightly called it, which Hillary has somewhat melodramatically hung her hat on. "At best," he has charged on the stump, "this is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months ... unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap, which is just what happened in Illinois when we tried this a few years ago." In addition, "Unless you can magically impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday," Obama has said, "it could imperil federal highway funding, and cost Indiana more than 6,000 jobs." In a nutshell, Hillary's plan is "more about scoring points than solving problems."
But his silence on other issues -- those of the "old politics" of personal but usually quite effective destruction -- raises an interesting question, which The Politico has pursued: "What arguments has Obama taken off the table, even though he thinks they are true?" The answers provide a peek not only into some real gold he could have mined but hasn't, but also a preview into what the GOP attack machine would have cranked up against Hillary had she landed the Democratic nomination.
Despite Hillary's claims to having been "fully vetted," there's a lot of material with which the public is little familiar, because the media have explored it so scantily. Some of it regards "old issues," reports The Politico, "like Hillary Clinton’s legal career, which includes lots of cases that never got much public attention even during the Whitewater era."
Then there's the new, "like recent stories raising questions about the web of personal and financial associations around Bill Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has traveled the globe to exotic places and with sometimes exotic characters, raising money for projects such as his foundation and presidential library and making himself a very wealthy man." And some of this wealth, as Obama could have strenuously argued and the GOP most certainly would, has perhaps found its way into Clinton's campaign coffers.
As for guilt by association, Jeremiah Wright-style, "How about ... a trail of associations that includes golden oldies like [convicted-felon] Webb Hubbell?" Or Marx Rich, "the former fugitive financier who won a controversial pardon from Bill Clinton [and then] gave money to her first Senate campaign." Or Hillary's brother, Hugh Rodham, who "took large cash payments for trying to broker presidential pardons."
And then there are the more proper political issues that Obama nevertheless has remained relatively -- almost curiously -- silent about. For instance health care and Hillary's lambasting of him "for not being sufficiently committed to universal" coverage. "Why is it, his team asks, that Democrats have done so little to advance a long-time progressive goal for the past 15 years? The answer has everything to do with Hillary Clinton’s misjudgments when she was leading the reform effort in 1993 and 1994."
Furthermore, reports The Politico, "Most irritating of all to Obama partisans is what they see as her latest pose: that she is selflessly staying in the race despite the long odds against her because of devotion to the Democratic Party and the belief that she is a more appealing general election candidate." Yet what you won't hear Obama echoing on the stump is the "article of faith among most people" who surround him: "that the Clintons were a disaster for the party throughout the 1990s. When Bill Clinton came to town in 1993, Democrats were a congressional majority, with 258 seats in the House. When he left in 2001, they were a minority with 46 fewer seats. There were 30 Democratic governors when he arrived, 21 10 years later."
Which brings us back to the Obama campaign's internal tension.
"The Obama side is frustrated with the news media," says The Politico, "for not carrying more of its argument." But, as is correctly noted -- and it's a big but -- "If he really wanted, Obama could generate all the coverage he wanted about Clinton’s past by leveling accusations in his own words." The media would have a field day, each accusation would be front-page news, and all us junkies would have an old-fashioned shootout to revel in.
Yet now he can't personally generate the coverage, even if he were so inclined. "Politically, he correctly believes that he would be called out as a hypocrite if he practiced the conventional art of attack politics after preaching against it."
Hence he is forced to limp -- not soar -- to the nomination. Still, that's something of a remarkable feat, considering Hillary's original "inevitability." How much of the new and rather genteel politics he'll be able to salvage in a longer campaign against John McCain and the GOP's brutality, however, will be fascinating to behold.
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