RobertEmmet

By John Aloysius Farrell

Barack Obama sells himself as a transforming politician, a man who hopes to lead America to a new era, free of the influence of self-serving partisans and grasping special interests.

The challenge he faces, as have many before him, is to prevail in the old-style politics while he waits for the new era to dawn.

That was clear in last night’s debate on CNN. Obama climbed down from high ground, to attack Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill. He was justified, given how they have pounded him in recent weeks, but in doing so Obama lost more than a bit of the sheen that makes his candidacy special.

Obama sought the fight. He criticized Clinton for dithering on her plan to stimulate the economy, and for waffling on free trade. He accused her of lying about his record, and scorned her for playing “the same typical politics that we have seen in Washington.”

All three Democratic candidates are nothing, if not good lawyers. Now Clinton went to work. She challenged Obama’s fealty to Democratic principles and, after suitably praising the anti-war speech he gave before the invasion of Iraq (showing she has learned from his technique of preceding each razor-like critique with a gauzy compliment) asked him why his opposition to the war flagged after the invasion seemed so successful and popular.

Obama responded with what, in Hyde Park, Georgetown, Cambridge and other progressive precincts, was supposedly a haymaker. He had been fighting for Democratic principles in the streets of Chicago, he said, when she was just “a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart.”

(Wal-Mart, which millions of Americans view as a business success story and/or a place to save money, occupies a special place in hell for liberals, who believe it contributes to suburban sprawl and does not adequately pay its employees.)

Clinton smiled. Obama had set the tone for the evening. He had gotten belligerent, and personal, and in doing so exposed himself to in-kind retaliation.

“I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, (Tony) Rezco, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago,” Clinton replied.

And when the audience ooohed at her audacity, she promised: “We’re just getting warmed up.”

Clinton used the opening given her by her foe to introduce the general public to two new lines of attack – that the Illinois senator has ties to Rezco, an indicted slumlord who joined the senator in a land deal, and that Obama has a record of dodging tough votes – which served to portray him as just another politician. And a hypocrite at that.

Obama kept it up, railing at Clinton for supporting a pro-business bankruptcy bill. She replied by noting he had voted to let credit card companies charge more than 30 percent interest.

“I thought 30 percent potentially was too high of a ceiling,” Obama replied.

Here, from the CNN transcript, is how the rest of that exchange went:

EDWARDS: You voted against it because the limit was too high, is that what you just said?

OBAMA: That is exactly what I just said, John, because…

EDWARDS: So there’s no limit at all.

OBAMA: … there had been no discussions…

(APPLAUSE)

Hold on, John. Hold on. Listen to this. There had been no discussion about how we were going to structure this and this was something that had not gone through the committee and we hadn’t talked about.

It didn’t make sense for us to cap interest rates…

CLINTON: So you voted with the credit card companies.

OBAMA: No.

CLINTON: That’s the bottom line.

OBAMA: Hillary, I opposed that bill and you know I did.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Well…

OBAMA: And consistently did and unlike you and John who voted for it previously.

But here’s the point. What we have to do is we’ve got to have consistency in how we vote. You can’t say one thing during the campaign trail and then apologize afterward and say it was a mistake, and that has repeatedly happened during the course of this campaign…

(APPLAUSE)

… and I think that tells you the kind of president that folks are going to be.

CLINTON: Well, you know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.

You, in the — now, wait a minute. In the Illinois state legislature…

(AUDIENCE BOOING)

CLINTON: Just a minute. In the Illinois state senate, Senator Obama voted 130 times “present.”

That’s not yes, that’s not no. That’s maybe. And on issue after issue that really were hard to explain or understand, you know, voted “present” on keeping sex shops away from schools, voted “present” on limiting the rights of victims of sexual abuse, voted “present” time and time again.

And anytime anyone raises that, there’s always some kind of explanation like you just heard about the 30 percent. It’s just very difficult to get a straight answer, and that’s what we are probing for.

It wasn’t a terribly damaging exchange for your average politician, but with its cautions and caveats and shades of bickering over something that really matters to economically hard-pressed Americans at the moment – predatory interest rates – it left Obama looking like just another Beltway prevaricator.

Edwards, showing the talents that made him a feared trial lawyer, took the estoque from Clinton and plunged it in Obama’s back.

EDWARDS: The question is, why would you over 100 times vote present? I mean, every one of us — every one — you’ve criticized Hillary. You’ve criticized me for our votes.

OBAMA: Right.

EDWARDS: We’ve cast hundreds and hundreds of votes. What you’re criticizing her for, by the way, you’ve done to us, which is you pick this vote and that vote out of the hundreds that we’ve cast.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: No.

EDWARDS: And what — all I’m saying is, what’s fair is fair. You have every right to defend any vote. You do.

OBAMA: Right.

EDWARDS: And I respect your right to do that on any — on any substantive issue. It does not make sense to me — and what if I had just not shown up…

OBAMA: John — John, Illinois…

EDWARDS: Wait, wait, wait. Wait, let me finish.

OBAMA: Hold on a second.

EDWARDS: What if I had just not shown up to vote on things that really mattered to this country? It would have been safe for me politically. It would have been the careful and cautious thing to do, but I have a responsibility to take a position…

OBAMA: John, you…

EDWARDS: … even when it has political consequences for me.

(APPLAUSE)

Howard Dean. Bill Bradley. Paul Tsongas. Gary Hart. Eugene McCarthy. Jerry Brown. George McGovern. All of these good gentlemen ran as anti-establishment candidates. All soared like Icarus, then fell to earth. Only Jimmy Carter, in modern times, has managed to ride an insurgent campaign to the White House.

Obama, like Carter (and unlike the others) has an appeal among Southern Democrats that may buy him the time to do what Dean and Hart and the rest could not, and build a following beyond high-income, trendy liberals. In the second half of the debate last night, Obama wisely dropped the pit bull mode, and showed more wit and sophistication.

But he has to make the transformation quickly. Obama’s voting record, and his relationship with Rezco, are now grist in the campaign. A few more nights like last night, and the man from the Land of Lincoln will seem just another pol.