Category — Leading From The Center

To counterattack or not to counterattack, is one of the most vexing questions campaigns face. Democrats – with the dramatic exception of Bill Clinton and his War Room – have frequently taken the high road when attacked, and lost. The failures of Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004 to respond to Republican assaults seem to justify more aggressive responses. But sometimes, silence is golden. Sometimes counterattacking simply publicizes the initial attack. Looking at last week’s great appeasement brouhaha, Barack Obama overreacted by counterattacking, and may have fallen into a White House trap.

George W. Bush clearly was being mischievous when, speaking to the Israeli Knesset, he quoted Senator William Borah’s tragically naïve and utterly self-involved exclamation at the start of World War II. Dismissing talk of negotiating with “terrorists and radicals” as a “foolish delusion” we have heard before, Bush said: “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,” Bush proclaimed.

Obama condemned this “false political attack” and led a chorus of Democrats shocked that a president would politick on foreign soil. All innocence, the White House press secretary Dana Perino denied that the Knesset remark had anything to do with Obama: “I understand when you’re running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you. That is not always true. And it is not true in this case,” she said. This was White House speak for the old schoolyard taunt, “if the shoe fits, wear it.”

Presidential pronouncements from Israel about American-Israeli friendship rarely generate headlines. But all of a sudden, whether or not Obama had been accused of appeasement – and was an appeaser – dominated the news. As a result, Obama’s name became more linked than ever with the appeasement charge. This linkage is doubly problematic for Obama. Not only does the controversy broadcast the Republican charge that Obama is too soft, too left, too willing to negotiate away American honor. It also publicizes the broader question: having talked his way from obscurity to the precipice of the presidency so quickly, will the 46-year-old wunderkind be too enamored of his own skills, too swayed by his own silver tongue? By contrast, John McCain, the grizzled war veteran, looks sober, mature, reliable.

In fairness to Obama, he also has to prove that he is not a wimp. Especially after the “swiftboating” of John Kerry, Democrats are anxious for a return to the days of the Clinton counterpunchers – although it seems without a Clinton in charge. One of Bill Clinton’s great triangulating skills was playing off two political personae, as the populist and the progressive, as “Bubba” and the Yalie, or, as was often said “Saturday night Bill” and “Sunday morning Bill.” Obama has a harder task here. Having floated to the top so quickly as the saint of centrism, as a seeker of civility, Obama cannot emphasize the hand-to-hand political combat skills he must have picked up during his apprentice in Chicago politics. At the same time, if Republicans smell weakness, they will pounce.

Fortunately for Obama, McCain is encased in a similar pair of silk handcuffs. McCain also has built his reputation as the Republican rebel, as the party maverick always willing to cross lines, build bridges, promote civility. It is hard to make nice while brandishing a stiletto.

Moreover, while Obama took the White House bait and bristled defensively that he was not an appeaser, the White House trap did not help McCain as much as it could have. One of McCain’s great strengths is appearing to be the Republican most distant from Bush; embraces from an unpopular lameduck president are not what the party maverick needs. And, as in 1992, when another young, relatively unknown Democratic politician defeated an older, more experienced, former war hero, this election does not appear to be about foreign policy thus far – it is, as it was in the election wherein Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton unseated the incumbent President George H.W. Bush, “the economy, stupid.”

Hillary Clinton’s crass appeal to “hard-working,” white voters, along with her big victories in mostly white states like West Virginia, risk making this race about race. Lower-class white men, once overwhelmingly hostile to Hillary Clinton, have rallied around her. Unfortunately, it took a black man to rehabilitate this most hated woman. Barack Obama’s North Carolina victory last week, based on the large African-American vote, reinforced the impression of growing racial polarization. It is easy to blame America’s tortured racial past for this unfortunate development. But Republicans and Democrats are also guilty of stoking the race issue.

It is tragic that race now looms so large. In his magnificent national debut at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama positioned himself to heal America’s great divides, not exacerbate them. Moreover, although Toni Morrison’s labeling Bill Clinton “our first black president” may have been one of the stupidest, and racially stereotypical, comments made during the whole Monica Lewinsky farce, no one can deny the once-strong ties between both Clintons and the African-American community. Throughout 2007, as Obama and Hillary Clinton gathered support, he seemed less like the “black candidate,” she seemed less like the “woman candidate.” Clinton’s problems were that she was “Hillary” and a “Clinton” not that she was a she. Obama’s obstacle was he was too green not too black.

Unfortunately, despite America’s tremendous racial progress, both political parties frequently make racial appeals. The elusive white, male, working class voter, sometimes called Joe Six Pack, sometimes called the Reagan (formerly Roosevelt) Democrat, has been subjected to steady if subtle racially-based appeals. Since Richard Nixon demanded “Law and Order” in 1968, too many Republicans have indulged in subtle racial demagoguery. The failure of the society – and particularly of liberal Democrats – to face the challenge of crime made it easier, but this politics of resentment has not just been a politics of fear. Fights over busing and affirmative action in the 1970s and 1980s exceeded the rational clash of interests, becoming irrational – and pathological. Ronald Reagan was not personally racist – and took great offense when he was accused of bigotry. But he was tone deaf to African-American sensitivities. I have found no evidence that he ever discouraged the Republican Southern white strategy, using crime, busing and affirmative action to gain white votes by stirring white fears.

Jack Kemp, the veteran Republican Congressman and 1996 vice presidential nominee, stood out as the rare national Republican who wooed African-Americans. Describing himself as a “bleeding-heart conservative,” Kemp proved it as George H.W. Bush’s Housing Secretary. In visiting inner-cities repeatedly, constantly denouncing South African Apartheid, and recoiling at racist appeals, no matter how subtle, Kemp showed how to be a tax-cutting but not race-baiting conservative.

At the same time, the Democratic commitment to identity politics guaranteed that race and gender would become major factors in 2008, as they have been for decades. So much of Democratic politics is predicated on identity politics, treating individuals as part of their subgroup rather than as independent-minded Americans. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have tapped into that consciousness. Obama has used his base in the black community, and the exciting prospects of becoming the first black president, just as Clinton has exploited her shot to become the first woman president.

Moreover, both have had major supporters quick to characterize standard campaign criticism as sexist or racist. The New York Times op-ed page has been particularly complicit here. The Times published a William Julius Wilson op-ed claiming that the Clinton campaign’s ad wondering who should be in charge at 3 A.M. was rife with racist allusions. The Times also published Gloria Steinem’s equally absurd lament that Hillary Clinton’s well-deserved loss in the Iowa caucus proved that Americans were more sexist than racist.

Identity politics demands a one-way street. Blacks can appeal to blacks, and perceive racism, even when it may not exist. Women are praised for reaching out to their sisters, and crying “sexism” if criticized. True, campaigns are about mobilizing key supporters and trying to turn any criticisms back on the accuser. But, as long as blacks, women or members of other groups perceive prejudice in the normal flow of campaigning, identity politics will breed Balkanization not unity.

This campaign has already demonstrated how emphasizing the racial component or gender appeals damages the body politic. American race relations and gender relations remain fragile. But in a polyglot democracy, subgroup appeals are inevitable. In 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis tapped Greek-American pride to raise Greek-American money in his bid to become the first Greek-American President. Twelve years later, Senator Joe Lieberman tapped American Jewish pride to raise American Jewish money in his bid to become the first American Jewish Vice President. These actions were less fraught with baggage, because the white ethnic immigrants who were perceived as so foreign when Al Smith ran for President in 1928 are today so much better integrated.

Barack Obama’s campaign testifies to the great racial progress achieved in twenty-first century America. But given some of the poison that has seeped out from the grassroots – or been stirred by his rivals – Obama’s quest for the presidency shows that America still has a long way to go. In fact, Americans no longer are even sure if they desire an America without any subgroup consciousness, which is hard enough to achieve, or the impossible dream of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too society where Americans have strong but only positive subgroup associations with no attending backlash or rival resentments.

Historians should be careful not to pronounce a contest over till it’s over, so I will not join the pundit pile-on eulogizing Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, the conventional wisdom about this fight’s impact may be wrong. Hillary Clinton’s relentless push for the nomination may have strengthened Barack Obama not weakened him.

The lengthy American presidential campaign does not proceed in straight lines but in waves, with dramatic ups and downs. This is not necessarily a natural phenomenon but usually a media-driven mania. Reporters frequently build up candidates, then knock them down or build them up after knocking them down. Skilled – and lucky – candidates can win by having the inevitable downturns far enough away from Election Day not to hurt. John McCain, for example, benefited from bottoming out last summer and fall, long before Republicans started choosing their nominee. He was able to come on strong in the winter when it counted.

Moreover, Democratic primary voters are prone to buyers’ remorse. The modern politician who has most benefited from this tendency is that old warhorse, Jerry Brown. Brown, the current Attorney General of California and former wunderkind Governor of the same state, enjoyed late surges in two presidential campaigns. Each time, Brown eventually lost but only after giving a relatively inexperienced contender enough of a scare so that the come-from-nowhere Democrat became the eventual winner in the general election campaign. In 1976, Democrats turned to Brown when they started wondering about Jimmy Carter; sixteen years later, Brown’s campaign attracted votes in the spring from Bill Clinton, as he marched toward the nomination.

In fact, thanks to Brown, the rise of Ross Perot, and his own scandal-laden past, Bill Clinton faced a major crisis in the late spring of 1992. His advisers launched the grandiosely named “Manhattan Project,” a secret initiative to analyze Clinton’s weaknesses and figure out the secret ingredients needed to propel him to victory. Given Clinton’s victories in 1992 and 1996, people tend to forget how unpopular he was, even after he had clinched the nomination.

When his advisers presented him with data detailing how little Americans trusted him, Clinton exploded: “So far as I’m concerned, we’re at zero,” the Arkansas governor fumed. “We’re a negative. We’re off the screen. We don’t exist in the national consciousness. We might as well have been like any member of Congress and kissed every ass in the Democratic Party. I don’t think you can minimize how horrible I feel, having worked all my life to stand for things, having busted my butt for seven months and the American people don’t know crap about it after I poured $10 million worth of information into their heads.”

Ultimately, this crisis helped Clinton and his advisors recast the campaign’s message – and take the White House. Candidates need to be tested. One of the unlucky breaks Hillary Clinton experienced was that she — and her staffers – floated to re-election during the 2006 New York Senate race. As a result, they entered the 2008 presidential campaign soft, relatively un-tested, and far too self-assured.

Similarly, had Barack Obama seized the nomination after his meteoric rise in February, his campaign would have been an overinflated balloon, soaring high but easily popped. Most notably, given how deep Obama’s ties are to the ministerial hate-monger Jeremiah Wright, it was far better for that embarrassment to be aired this spring than next fall. Obama has had time to figure out how to deal with this and — after repeated hesitations — make the necessary break. Timing counts. Just as the Clinton campaign probably could have derailed the entire Obama phenomenama had Hillary’s people done their homework and exposed the wrongheaded Wright in January, if Obama is lucky, by the fall Americans will be more concerned with “the economy, stupid,” than with Obama’s passivity in the face of Wright’ repeated affront to American values.

Hillary Clinton’s tough fight against Barack Obama has toughened Obama. The Democratic primary campaign has focused Obama on the need to hone a message that reaches working class whites. The early exposure to the Wright controversy may have inoculated the public against further outbreaks of this particular affliction. If – and I make no predictions – Barack Obama ends up winning the White House, he just may have to thank Hillary Clinton for her unintended help along the way.

Now that Senator Barack Obama has denounced his pastor in clear, unequivocal language, he should make two more statements to put this unhappy episode behind him. For starters, Obama should apologize for not breaking with Wright sooner, and for failing to stand up to him over the years, especially after Wright’s hurtful “chickens coming home to roost” remarks after 9/11. In this apology, Obama could acknowledge what so many Americans in this nation of armchair psychologists seem to know already – that Wright served as a father-figure to Obama, who grew up basically fatherless, making a confrontation earlier very difficult. Americans love personal apologies – just ask the former apologist-in-chief Bill Clinton, or the nation’s most unrepentant celebrity, Pete Rose. Moreover, the one false note Obama made in his North Carolina press conference came in claiming that Wright had never been his spiritual mentor.

But the second and more important move Obama must make, is to resurrect the magic from his great national political debut, his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Obama has to explain why he chose to reject Wright’s path. He should acknowledge how tempting it is to succumb to African-American anger or Ivy League cynicism, as so many people he knows have done. What makes Obama exceptional is that he chose a different path – and articulated it so beautifully in 2004. Obama’s Philadelphia speech was more intellectual and more guarded. If Obama lets loose emotionally and rhetorically, soaring past his controversial minister to again conjure up a compelling vision of a united America, we might be able to stop the cries for Obama to right Wright’s wrongs, and return to the heady days, just weeks ago, of “Yes we can.”

During Senator Barack Obama’s bad week last week, when he lost Pennsylvania, Jimmy Carter’s rogue diplomatic mission to the Middle East did not help. I know of no surveys tracking the impact of Carter’s Hamas hug on Obama’s popularity. Still, Democrats who want a muscular, effective American response to Islamism noticed. Having this presidential has-been embracing terrorists haunted Obama, with Carter as the ghost of Christmas past preying on fears that Obama himself will be the ghost of Christmas future, perpetually globetrotting, blinded by moral relativism, imprisoned by lovely rhetoric and high ideals, absolving dictators and terrorists of their anti-American sins and crimes against humanity.

In fact, Obama forcefully condemned Carter’s meeting with the Hamas leadership. Nevertheless, acting more shrewdly than fairly, Senator John McCain pounced. McCain understood that Carter’s trip made the time right to exploit one Hamas leader’s recent pronouncement that “We like Mr. Obama.” McCain responded: “I never expect for the leader of Hamas… to say that he wants me as president of the United States.” The Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s inflammatory reappearance on Monday, praising Carter, denouncing Zionism, further eased McCain’s Obama-Carter-Hamas bankshot.

Had Jimmy Carter succeeded as president, Barack Obama would be emphasizing their parallels. Like Carter in 1976, Obama has rocketed to presidential-level prominence with a simple, compelling message. Like Carter, Obama has little formal foreign policy experience. And like Carter, Obama seems most comfortable with the Democratic Party’s post-Vietnam, anti-war wing.

Unfortunately, Carter’s high ideals often produced great disasters. Although he successfully facilitated the Camp David Accords and Panama Canal return, Jimmy Carter inherited a demoralized nation — and left it deeply depressed. In abandoning the Shah of Iran, Carter eased the Islamist takeover there, a critical turning point in Islamism’s rise worldwide. When the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary goons kidnapped American diplomats, Carter’s impotence saddled America with the image of a musclebound giant in ways still haunting the country.

Like a substitute teacher losing control, Carter ricocheted between being contemptibly weak, and unduly harsh. Carter’s mix of high ideals and rank amateurism in dealing with the Soviet Union made him take everything too personally, and miss the mark tactically. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan he felt insulted, after all his lovely overtures. In 1980, Ronald Reagan did not win a mandate for conservative revolution but triumphed in an ABC election – voters wanted Anybody But Carter.

As an ex-President, despite his laudable commitment to fighting disease and building houses for the homeless, Carter’s diplomatic efforts are often laughable. Carter has frittered away his credibility by kowtowing to dictators and outlaws, from China to North Korea, from Zimbabwe to Nepal. His perceptions of Israel have been particularly skewed and harsh. His book accusing Israel of the South African crime of Apartheid, was sloppy and intellectually lazy – slapping on an inflammatory title while only perfunctorily discussing the charge in the text.

On this recent Middle East trip, Carter demonstrated his bias and self-delusion. By laying a wreath at Yasir Arafat’s grave, Carrer dishonored the memory of two American diplomats Arafat ordered killed in Khartoum in 1973, George Curtis Moore and Cleo Noel, in addition to thousands of other terrorist victims. After undermining American policy by meeting with Hamas’s leaders, Carter proclaimed that Hamas was clearly committed to a cease fire – until his hosts clarified that their offer was more ambiguous. And in his post-trip New York Times op-ed, Carter again showed that his delusional diplomacy rests on his distorting of history. Carter said “Hamas had been declared a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel,” without mentioning the terrorism that prompted the designation. Carter said “Eventually, Hamas gained control of Gaza,” without mentioning the violence Hamas used against fellow Palestinians to gain that control.

There is nothing wrong with Carter being pro-Palestinian. He errs by failing to use his credibility with Palestinians to wean destructive Palestinian forces like Hamas from their addiction to terrorism. Sanitizing Hamas feeds delusions that enable more violence.

Unfortunately, Carter is a hero to those in the Democratic Party who, doubly traumatized by the Vietnam and Iraq wars, pooh-pooh any threats to America because America does not always handle the threats effectively. Some prominent liberals such as Paul Berman and Peter Beinart have argued that it is particularly absurd for liberals, academics, intellectuals, students, feminists, and gays to ignore the dangers of Islamism.

As a prominent opponent of the Iraq War, Barack Obama has deep roots in this “Peace Camp” that too often overlooks grave threats to peace. Moreover, Obama’s stated willingness to meet with America’s enemies, including the anti-American, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also reeks of this appeasement-oriented Carterism.

Obama’s challenge – and opportunity – is to move beyond American foreign policy’s simplistic hawk-versus-dove, deluded-peacenik-versus-paranoid-warrior polarities. Obama must bury Carterism and Bushism along with the assumption that the only choice is the false choice between them. He must show he recognizes that there is a time for peace and a time for war, a time to boycott and a time to negotiate, a time to defy and a time to concede.

The world is too complicated, for someone to become president stuck singing in only one key. America’s next leader must synthesize Jimmy Carter’s idealism with George W. Bush’s anger, George H.W. Bush’s coalition-building patience with Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling resolve, Bill Clinton’s ability to charm the world with Richard Nixon’s ability to understand it.

Those skills are difficult to demonstrate while campaigning. But Obama was right to distance himself from Carter’s amoral grandstanding and Wright’s wrongheaded rants. Obama should worry about how to reassure American voters who see the evil in the world, without alienating his base among those who are far quicker to see faults in America than in America’s enemies.

With her substantial Pennsylvania primary victory, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has again proven to be the Timex candidate. Like the occasionally unfashionable but always durable watch, she “takes a licking but keeps on ticking.” As the Democratic nomination standoff starts resembling World War I’s relentless trench warfare, worried Democrats wonder when it will end. Paradoxically, despite running a campaign as anachronistic and as twentieth-century as the Timex slogan, Hillary Clinton is hinging her campaign on a postmodern argument that the stronger candidate may not be the one with the most popular votes – or delegates won.

Hillary Clinton has proved Thomas Edison correct. In politics as in technology perspiration frequently trumps inspiration. No one can deny that she has been impressively indefatigable, unyielding and buoyant. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are indomitable political thoroughbreds. Just as they persisted despite repeated humiliations during Bill’s 1992 campaign, just as both she and her husband soldiered on throughout the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998-1999, Hillary Clinton has come back and won, whenever she needed to, whenever pundits eulogized her.

Barack Obama has successfully flummoxed the Clintons. These once cutting-edge, fresh-faced baby boomers have run a surprisingly flat, frequently outdated campaign, more television-based than internet-savvy, more rooted in yesterday’s techniques and agendas than today’s technologies and trends. In one nostalgia-drenched campaign ad in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton reminisced about playing pinochle. Young voters are as likely to have played pinochle as they are to have pinned their first loves – or, to be more accurate, their first casual hook-ups. Earlier, while Barack Obama’s supporters led by the hip-hop-star will.i.am transformed a lyrical Obama speech into the addictive, infectious music video “Yes We Can,” a Silicon Valley hotshot supporting Hillary Clinton produced a cheesy, kitschy, Disneyfied ditty pronouncing “Hillary for you and me – bring back our de-mo-cra-cy.” Predictably, in Pennsylvania Clinton voters again skewed older and more traditional while Senator Barack Obama’s voters were younger and hipper.

Yet by refusing to quit, Hillary Clinton has made a case that she might be the stronger candidate against John McCain. Just as her husband turned a simple case of obstructing justice to hide adultery into a postmodern, multi-dimensional nationwide morality seminar that depended on what the meaning of the word “is” was, many of Hillary Clinton’s arguments would make my most Derrida-dazzled, postmodern colleagues proud. McCain, like most nominees before him, won the nomination by winning the most votes and thus the most delegates. Today, we find ourselves balancing out Hillary Clinton’s eight big state wins versus Barack Obama’s small state wins, assessing her strength among swing voters versus his deep ties to the base. One Web site, www.realclearpolitics.com offers five different estimates for the popular vote totals, with Obama leading by half a million in the first, to Clinton leading by 122,000 votes, counting Florida and Michigan.

In fairness, this is more than a Clinton con. Just as state electors chosen by popular vote select America’s president, party nominations rely on delegates to the national convention chosen by popular vote – except for the 795 Democratic leaders and officeholders designated as super-delegates. To confuse further, state Democratic parties have generated a thicket of obscure exceptions and rules, the national Democratic Party undemocratically and punitively invalidated the votes of Michigan and Florida for holding primaries too early, and our computer age invites wacky multivariate analysis that look compelling with full-color visual aids.

Democrats are justifiably worried that this continuing battle may threaten their chances of winning the presidency. Then again, the Clintons teach the opposite. Perhaps, whoever can survive this Clinton-Obama knockdown will have precisely what it takes to win in November – then lead America effectively.

AFTERTHOUGHT on Barack Obama’s thoughts while wolfing down proletarian food in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Reporters asked about Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas leaders, Obama replied: “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Perhaps this incident was misreported. Maybe the candidate said: Why can’t I just continue to waffle?

If Otto von Bismarck’s longstanding bon mot still holds that law-making is as messy as sausage-making, a carnivore’s codicil suggests that tough campaigns frequently make mincemeat out of candidates’ reputations. The great risk to Democrats as the Pennsylvania primary looms is that the process will diminish both their talented front-runners. Recently, both Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama unintentionally highlighted fundamental paradoxes defining their respective campaigns — and political identities. Hillary Clinton continued twisting and turning her First Lady legacy every which way, so it could either appear like all things to all people – or like one distorted mishmash alienating everybody. At the same time, Barack Obama committed a classic gaffe, wherein he said what he really believed, which of course required him to backtrack from it repeatedly and apologize profusely.

Hillary Clinton’s have-her-cake-and-eat-it-too approach to the 1990s plays out on two dimensions. She simultaneously exaggerates her influence within the Clinton administration and the greatness of the Clinton record. But what happens when a Clinton policy which she opposed sours? On Friday April 11, the New York Times ran a front page article about this Clinton conundrum regarding Bill Clinton’s 1996 controversial welfare reform.

Back in ‘96, to shore up his re-election effort, President Clinton signed a bill that fulfilled his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it.” The President had already vetoed welfare legislation the Republican-dominated Congress passed twice. Clinton’s pragmatic political guru Dick Morris insisted he sign this third bill, which forced welfare recipients to work and limited individuals’ benefits. This legislation deeply divided the already fractious Clinton White House. First Lady Hillary Clinton and her liberal allies fought the legislation intensely. Ultimately, Bill Clinton overcame his doubts to avoid giving the Republicans a club they could use to bash him.

During the next, relatively prosperous, ten years, the welfare reform appeared to be one of Bill Clinton’s great successes. Now, the Times reported, with the economy souring, criticism of the legislation is mounting. But what’s a former First Lady to do? If she repudiated her husband’s record by telling the truth about how much she hated the policy she risked reminding everyone about how politically impotent she had been. Instead, Hillary pulled the Clinton twist, claiming she supported the legislation for pragmatic reasons, tried to fix it as a Senator but the evil George W. Bush thwarted her efforts, and, besides, the legislation was pretty darned good anyway. Voters have every right to wonder if the policy was so good why it needed fixing, and how one of Hillary Clinton’s great internal defeats became one of Billary’s shared triumphs.

Voters should be equally vexed with Barack Obama who, in a private fundraiser on April 6, revealed the Ivy League elitism lurking behind his “Yes We Can” populism. Showing an unhealthy ability to alienate the “Reagan Democrats” and swing voters Democrats desperately need to recapture the White House, Obama speculated that rural voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” due to their bitterness over their economic situation. In one pithy comment, Obama insulted gun owners, church-goers, opponents of illegal immigration, and, for good measure, suggested that economic frustrations clouded the little people’s good judgment.

The comment was a pretty apt summary of Thomas Frank’s popular analysis of Republican success, “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.” In that 2004 book, Frank captured the frustrations of a generation of Democrats who could not understand how so many people could be so stupid as to abandon the noble Democrats for the benighted Republicans. The only possible explanation, Frank suggested, was what Marx would have called “false consciousness,” that millions of voters in the heartland, distracted by the “culture wars” voted against their best economic interests. This analysis resonated among the Democratic activists, and Ivy League thinkers who form the backbone of the Democratic party – and represent Obama’s core constituency.

The problem is that, for some crazy reason, American voters, even the lower class ones, don’t like being told they are stupid. This dismissive approach is particularly problematic coming from a well-educated newcomer promising to heal America’s wounds – and gearing up to face the former war hero John McCain in November.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are no less elitist than Barack Obama, but years in Arkansas taught them to hide it better. Barack Obama is no less inconsistent than Hillary Clinton on welfare reform, but his experience as a community organizer in Chicago allows him to obscure it better. With less than two weeks to go before the Pennsylvania showdown, both candidates are going to campaign aggressively. Yet, both in promoting themselves and in knocking down their opponent, they have to be thinking about winning in early November as well as in late April. To do that, it seems, Hillary Clinton may need to tell a bit more of the truth – and Barack Obama may need to tell a bit less of it.

With the resignation of Hillary Clinton’s top – and highly overpaid – strategist, Mark Penn, the Clinton campaign once again appears to be a Keystone Cops operation. (Penn’s private public relations firm was lobbying for Colombia and Free Trade agreements precisely when Hillary Clinton was opposing expanding such agreements, or forging new ones). In 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton did Better Than Expected, wowing observers with smart, disciplined, nimble campaigns. In 2008, Hillary Clinton has done far Worse Than Expected, depressing even many devotees with her cloddish, clunky, top-heavy, poorly managed and often clumsy campaign.

True, campaign reputations are often circular. In the all-or-nothing world of politics, winning campaigns become brilliant; losing campaigns become mismanaged. Sometimes, however, candidates have run great campaigns and lost – such as Ronald Reagan in 1976 against Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, and Gerald Ford in 1976 against Jimmy Carter for the Presidency. Reagan left Republicans so keyed up, his nomination in 1980 was virtually assured; Ford forded a 30 point gap in the public opinion polls, falling just short of winning.

Win or lose – and the contest is still not over – Hillary Clinton’s campaign will be remembered as a series of miscalculations and missed opportunities. The arrogance of her operation, dismissing Barack Obama’s challenge as insignificant and failing to develop a strategy after Super Tuesday, is inexcusable. The sloppiness of her operation, failing to find the Reverend Jeremiah Wright videotapes in December and January when they could have killed Obama’s campaign, or holding on to failing leaders for far too long is unjustifiable.

In the continuing American psychodrama that is the Clintons’ public life, the contrast between Bill Clinton’s professionalism and Hillary Clinton’s amateurishness is striking. It highlights the fact that Bill Clinton is both a natural and a well-practiced politician, trained in the art of wooing Americans for over thirty years. Despite all her self-puffery as a leader for three decades, Hillary Clinton is a relative newcomer to the art of selling yourself to the American people. She lacks her husband’s natural grace and his years of experience – and it shows.

But watching the debacle unfold, it is hard not to wonder if, once again, we have all been given front row seats to the latest round of the operatic Clinton marriage. Does Bill Clinton’s fall in the campaign from revered ex-president as rock star to overbearing political hack reveal some kind of unconscious death wish he has for her candidacy? Does Hillary Clinton’s inability to manage her people more effectively and her odd choice to resume her identity as Bill’s partner after eight independent years in the Senate spotlight reflect a deep neediness disguised as aggressiveness or loyalty?

Such speculation emerges because the story is so full of pathologies – and of anomalies. Hillary Clinton’s operation should have been as formidable as her husband’s, even if she lacks his experience. Could the first serious woman candidate for the American presidency be undermining herself somehow? Perhaps Clinton fatigue has not only set in among so many Democrats – but among the Clintons as well.

Let’s face it. While the three leading presidential candidates are all talented, they all lack an essential qualification for the presidency – executive experience. Barack Obama may be a silver-tongued orator, but his background as an academic, a community organizer, and a lawyer did not hone much managerial expertise. Hillary Clinton may be a passionate activist, but – despite her famous 3 A.M. commercial — her background as an academic, a First Lady, and a lawyer did not give her many tough decisions to make, under pressure, with different factions in her office advancing opposing ideas. And Senator John McCain may have spent years in the United States Military, one of the world’s best training grounds for management, but he started as a flyboy and when he returned was at the Naval War College then at the Senate as military liaison. In fact, all three would have to say that their Senate offices were the most complex bureaucracies they even ran – which is not saying much. Clearly, being governor is better training for the presidency which is, after all in the executive branch.

This shared shortcoming is important. As an academic I know what of I speak. Having been minimally managed and having done minimal managing, I am well aware of the skill set I lack. I don’t know about creating a vision for an organization, about seeing how it is implemented in levels below me, about how to reconcile my vision and views with those of others, or with my institution’s organizational culture. I happily avoid all the interpersonal baggage that comes from all these interpersonal dynamics, but I recognize that this is not my realm.

This problem is intensified because the modern presidency has grown too big for one person. In each election, Americans are actually choosing between two opposing teams. In an age of weakened parties, the teams have a Republican or Democratic flavor, but are most affected by the leader at the top. Like a privately held corporation, the modern presidency ostensibly reflects the boss’s desires, but the hundreds of key appointees in the executive branch, managing thousands of government workers, enjoy wide discretion. Franklin D. Roosevelt had less than a hundred White House staffers, only 71 presidential appointees in 1933, and 50 different agencies reporting directly to him; half a century later, Ronald Reagan had over 350 White House staffers, 600 presidential appointees, 1700 employees in the Executive Office of the President, and approximately two million governmental employees overall.

Of course, in this game of presidential campaigning, biography is not destiny. Former senator John F. Kennedy figured out how to lead, and former governor George W. Bush would get a “needs improvement” on his management report card if presidents underwent the same kind of supervisory process many corporate managers endure. Moreover, it is hard for any of the three leading candidates to claim more substantive executive experience than the other. Still, given the complexity of the presidency, the federal bureaucracy, and the challenges America currently faces, the combined managerial inexperience of Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama is unnerving.

As the long, arduous, battle for the Democratic nomination inspires comparisons with the trench warfare of World War I, both candidates are struggling to stay positive and “on message.” Despite his well-received speech on race, Barack Obama is still trying to explain how he could sit through so many vituperative Reverend Wright sermons and apparently never object. (Particularly problematic is the post September 11 sermon. Whether or not Obama was in the pews Sunday September 16, he was already a State Senator from Illinois. Obama should have been outraged that his pastor chose to blame America for being attacked just days after America was attacked). And despite enjoying her opponent’s controversy-filled March, Hillary Clinton is now trying to explain how she could remember a warm, First-Lady-like welcome in Bosnia as a difficult landing under a hail of gunfire.

The controversies must make both candidates pine for the good-old days of early 20th-century campaigning, when candidates went around the country saying the same thing again and again. Crowds did not expect new twists, new content, new explanations – but actually wanted to hear a William Jennings Bryan, a Woodrow Wilson, do his well-practiced thing. As the advent of radio in the 1920s started emphasizing the new, the fresh, the unrehearsed, Herbert Hoover, the Republican candidate in 1928, missed what he called those “happier speaking times.” Once upon a time, Hoover sighed, candidates “could repeat the same speech with small variations…. Then paragraphs could be polished up, epigrams used again and again, and eloquence invented by repeated tryouts.”

But the candidates are not just stumbling because, as Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed “the millions of words” they are forced to launch into the ether week after week. The two latest controversies strike at the heart of the respective candidate’s identities, zeroing in on particular vulnerabilities. I call this the “O-Ring Factor,” named after the rubber seals whose failures contributed to the first shuttle disaster. As the late scientist Richard Feynman brilliantly demonstrated at the time, the O-Rings failed during the Challenger’s launch only because of the particular combination of the Florida winter frost and the improper seals. In other circumstances, the launch would have been flawless, the O-Rings would have withstood the pressure.

In that spirit, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy is hurting Obama not, as the Senator suggests, because of race, but because Obama is so unknown – and so defined by his words not his actions. Obama’s passivity amid Wright’s invective, and the disconnect between Obama’s words and his preacher’s teachings, emphasize just how little is known about Obama, how he is far more defined by his rhetoric than his record. With Americans trying to figure out just who he is, individuals who have mentored him, leaders who endorse him, take on added significance.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she is, perhaps, too well known – or defined. Her unduly heroic description of her Bosnia adventure raises questions about how serious her record was as First Lady. But, even worse, it resurrects all those worries about both Bill Clinton’s and Hillary Clinton’s elusive relationship with the truth. Hillary Clinton’s camp responded that Obama called himself a constitutional law professor when he was merely a lecturer, and took credit for passing legislation that never left committee. But Obama is not the one with the credibility gap, Hillary is. John McCain could stumble on some details during his Middle East trip without appearing to be an ignoramus; he would be much more vulnerable if he slipped up when talking about the economy.

Similarly, the Obama camp’s delight in producing a photograph of Bill Clinton greeting Jeremiah Wright was meaningless. The Clintons are in no way defined by Obama’s pastor – and if the campaign wants Americans to believe that Obama was being reasonable in keeping relations with Wright, trying to make Bill Clinton’s meeting with Wright appear controversial or more meaningful than it was is not helpful to Obama’s case.

All candidates have their strengths and their weaknesses. Inevitably, they will misspeak, controversies will erupt, mistakes, as they like to say, will be made. Ultimately, successful campaigns, in addition to minimizing the errors, will learn to respond quickly, and, with any luck, make sure that the gaffes don’t exacerbate existing problems, that amid the ever-mounting pressure of a campaign, the candidate’s particular O-Rings will hold, at least until the finish.