Today’s New York Times notes the differences between Barack Obama and the last Democratic President:
CHICAGO — Though their politics have much in common, the man who aspires to be the next Democratic president could hardly seem more different from the last one in terms of temperament.
During the 1992 presidential race, Bill Clinton aggressively pushed to have one of the televised debates use a town hall-style format, and George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot agreed. The format fit Mr. Clinton nicely: When he was unshackled from a podium, his body language, tone, and emotions all seemed unshackled, too, as he sought to make a personal connection with voters.
Indeed, when an audience member asked the three candidates to stop “trashing their opponents’ character,” you could sense Mr. Clinton bristling, and his answer confirmed it.
“I’ve been disturbed by the tone and the tenor of this campaign — thank goodness the networks have a fact check, so I don’t have to just go blue in the face anymore,” Mr. Clinton said. When Mr. Bush tried to interrupt him, Mr. Clinton snapped, “Wait a minute,” and rolled over the president to finish making his point.
But Senator Barack Obama is a very different kind of candidate, judging by his performance at his own town-hall-style debate on Tuesday night and on the campaign trail. There are no volcanic explosions with Mr. Obama, rarely any finger-waving or lip-biting, and far less of the undisciplined campaigning that Mr. Clinton perfected.
Mr. Obama goes to the gym like clockwork most mornings, works out for 45 minutes, and then is on his way, as he was in Nashville on Wednesday after the debate the night before. He did not skip the gym because he was too busy reading the coverage of the debate, or because he was too tired from staying up late replaying the debate in his head, advisors say. On Wednesday evening, he got home early to spend time with his two young daughters and take one of them to a bookstore in their neighborhood.
Senator John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and their Republican allies are increasingly trying to tag Mr. Obama with the word “radical,” arguing that he prefers radical friends (Bill Ayers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and has a radical tax plan and health care plan (even if both are fundamentally Democratic).
Mr. Obama’s response has been to keep firm control of his public image: That of a very cool customer, someone who is deliberative and not easily distracted, who is willing to risk appearing a bit remote if it means that at the same time he appears unruffled by pressure and crisis.
Given the serious nature of the problems that the next President is likely to be dealing with, and considering that Barack Obama looks likely to be that next President, this isn’t necessarily a bad quality to have. Contrast it with some of the things we’ve seen from the McCain campaign — for the past six weeks it’s been one seemingly panicked Hail Mary pass after another from picking Palin to suspending the campaign to proposing a senseless mortgage plan to repeating the Bill Ayers line over and over again. Unlike Obama, they’re not projecting image of being cool under pressure and, I think, the public is starting to notice.
This contrast in styles, both between Obama and Clinton and Obama and McCain is also the reason why, so far, the McCain campaign’s efforts to tag him as a reckless radical haven’t worked; the American public has been exposed to Barack Obama on an almost daily basis now for more than a year and the image that McCain and Palin are trying to create is inconsistent with the image the Obama projects to the public. If he keeps that up, he’s likely to win.
