Barack Obama has long been searching for a way to end his campaign appearances with a final burst of inspiration — a magic incantation that will prompt voters to exit humming the title tune or, here in Iowa, to fill out caucus cards pledging their eternal troth. As a candidate who has elevated cool understatement to an art form, Obama is questing after something more enduring than heady cheers or a brief outpouring of partisan passions.
“He is allergic to cheap applause,” said media consultant David Axelrod, Obama’s closest advisor, during a Wednesday breakfast interview. “He thinks it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. You can fill up on applause lines, but 30 minutes later you’re hungry again. With Barack, after he delivers a speech, you think about it.”
But how do you win votes with the rhetoric of reflection as the Democratic race moves into post-Labor Day overdrive? Obama has proved to be the hottest political attraction in politics, aside from the Clintons reprising their two-for-the-price-of-one routine. Yet, after following Obama for two days in rural northern Iowa this week, I wonder whether the magnetic first-term Illinois senator and his unorthodox campaign can prevail in this tradition-minded state with its old-fashioned, you-must-show-up-to-participate caucus system.
In visual terms, the Obama rally Wednesday on the shore of sun-dappled Storm Lake was a political advance team’s fantasy. (Axelrod had filmed an equally scenic campaign appearance Tuesday, against the backdrop of cornfields as high as an elephant’s eye in Guthrie Center.) Speaking to a midday crowd of roughly 600 (Storm Lake’s population: 10,000), Obama, dressed in tan slacks and a gray dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, managed to distill his different-drummer appeal to its essence.
“A lot of people ask me,” he declared in a concluding riff, “why you instead of Hillary? Why you instead of John Edwards or other candidates?” He then briefly returned to the central image of his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention: a fragmented America of warring red states and blue states. “We can’t govern because the country is divided,” he said. “Nobody can govern.”
Well, under this reckoning, maybe one 2008 candidate can govern — a certain 46-year-old Illinois senator. Answering the why-me question, Obama declared, “What I have the track record of doing — the experience that I bring to the table — is putting people together: Republicans, independents and Democrats, to make sure we’re actually delivering for the American people.”
Putting people together — is that really the Obama difference? Is this how Obama takes on Hillary Clinton, by suggesting that she’s a divider and he’s a uniter? The phrase itself, accidentally reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s ill-kept 1968 pledge to “Bring Us Together,” may not last long in the Obama arsenal. But the underlying argument, which is as much about political style as policy goals, has been central to the Obama campaign since its impromptu beginnings early this year.
Under normal political calculus, the leading challenger (Obama) would be the aggressor, while the unruffled favorite (Clinton) would depend on organization and inevitability to propel her to victory. But unlike Edwards — who is directly challenging Clinton for being too politically timid to achieve bold dreams — Obama is trying to rewrite the laws of political combat. Edwards, who is far more strident a populist than he was in the 2004 campaign, may ultimately prove to be a flawed messenger, but his campaign strategy of running at Hillary from the left fits into a traditional framework.
At the end of the Obama rally in Storm Lake, I stood by the roped-off exits, trying to estimate how many Democrats were filling out a “Join Obama for Iowa” card with the all-important box to check: “I will attend my precinct caucus for Barack Obama.” My unscientific guess was that about 20 percent filled out the cards or claimed that they had already done so, even though this was the candidate’s first appearance in Storm Lake. A 20 percent commitment rate is not high by traditional Iowa standards, but Obama rallies attract far more curious Iowans who are not on the standard rolls of Democrats who invariably attend the caucuses.
Still, Obama has what might be called a not-yet problem. That was the phrase that I heard again and again as the always polite Iowans waved off eager volunteers handing out caucus cards. It is still far too early in the process to make even the haziest guesses about who will ultimately prevail when Iowa Democrats caucus. Polls tell you little, since the allegiance of Iowans is notoriously fickle and it is nearly impossible to predict who will actually turn out on a dark night in January.
Even the mildest criticisms by Obama of his Democratic rivals can be treated as news. Wednesday morning at a backyard house party in Sac City, Obama was bluntly asked whether he yet had the experience to be president. “Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had the two best résumés in Washington … and they steered us into the worst foreign policy disaster in a generation,” Obama replied, using a line that was lifted from his new stump speech. “So I think the question that people have to ask themselves is: Who has the right experience and who has the judgment to lead this country?”
That was a flick at both Clinton and Edwards (not to mention Chris Dodd and Joe Biden), who all voted to authorize the Iraq war in 2002. In stressing his own 2002 antiwar views as a Senate candidate, Obama said, “Part of the reason that I was able to do that was because I didn’t have the experience in Washington of being afraid to do the right thing because of politics.” Obama also pointed out — and this was the line that was featured in the Des Moines Register — “I’ve been in elected office longer than John Edwards or Hillary Clinton. I’ve passed more bills I’m sure than either of them — certainly in the state legislative level.”
With that answer, harking back to his eight years in the otherwise obscure Illinois state Senate, Obama won the backing of the sandy-haired man who asked the original question, Jim Bullock, a local veterinarian. “I’ve been on his Web site,” Bullock said, “but I wanted to hear how he responded to questions. And I was sold.”
Make no mistake, Obama is not a political pacifist, nor is he the 2008 version of Bill Bradley, who out of an inner Zen-like calm, refused to fight back when Al Gore pummeled him in the 2000 primary debates. Early this summer, when Clinton pounced on an Obama debate answer over his willingness as president to negotiate with Iran and Cuba, the Illinois senator kept the back-and-forth going for nearly two weeks.
And Obama is not above stunts for the camera, raising his voice in anger during a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center last month when he got to the sound-bite line about his willingness to send troops to go after terrorists operating unmolested in the tribal areas of Pakistan: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
But at his core, Obama aspires to be a transformational candidate who changes the rules of politics. He is, as he says in a self-description he uses in every speech, “a hope-monger.” And Axelrod insists that the rules of engagement will not change when the campaign enters the rough-and-tumble phase. “We may change the nuances [of the stump speech], but the fundamentals won’t change,” the Obama strategist said. “The case he is making is comfortable for him.”
Obama’s comfort level with himself remains one of his greatest strengths as a candidate. Bill Clinton aside, the Democrats have not nominated a presidential candidate who radiated authenticity since Jimmy Carter or perhaps Walter Mondale. And maybe Obama will ultimately be proved correct in believing that red-meat rhetoric and attack-dog politics are becoming as outmoded as the network nightly news.
Paul Tewes, Obama’s Iowa coordinator, marveled, “It is something I’ve never seen before in politics. After people hear him speak, they say that they feel at peace.” That phrase — “feel at peace” — has also never been used before by a veteran campaign staffer since I covered my first Iowa caucus in 1980.
Maybe Obama has figured out the new political zeitgeist before the traditional politicians and — yes — the skeptics in the press corps. Or maybe Obama, the most naturally charismatic politician of this decade, is setting himself up to be the latest political insurgent who fails to dethrone the anointed favorite.
“Game Change” is a movie about how longtime Republican Party communications hack Nicolle Wallace and longtime Republican Party campaign hack Steve Schmidt actually have souls, and brains, and hence feel quite bad for accidentally being responsible for the creation of Sarah Palin, national monster. (Neither felt any qualms about working to get the most irresponsible warmonger currently serving in the Senate elected president, but Sarah Palin was nuts!)
So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:
“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.
And then she said this:
Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.
“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”
If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.
More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?
Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.
HBO’s “Game Change,” airing this Saturday, is not actually an adaption of the book “Game Change,” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. It is “Sarah Palin Goes Rogue,” the movie, with a couple of anecdotes borrowed from the notoriously gossipy account of the 2008 election as a whole. (Or, arguably, it’s an adaptation of Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe’s “Sarah From Alaska.”)
That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.
Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.
Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.
But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.
Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”
There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.
The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)
The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.
In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.
[UPDATED BELOW] Joseph Curl, former White House correspondent for the Washington Times, is bringing me back to the good old days of 2006 in his latest opinion column for the conservative paper. It’s a breathless report that Condoleezza Rice will seek the vice presidency, and it’s a classic of the genre.
Any amateur can speculate that Chris Christie will enter the presidential race, or posit a Mike Bloomberg third-party run, or imagine Hillary Clinton launching a primary challenge against Barack Obama. After all, those three have actually won elections and expressed political ambitions. It takes a real pro to decide to build buzz around someone who not only hasn’t ever run for anything, but who’s never expressed a desire to run for anything.
Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!
America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.
After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.
Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.
There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)
Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.
Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.
The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.
Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.
In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:
In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)
Oh, the Washington Times.
Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”
As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.
Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.
Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.
But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.
*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.
Andrew Breitbart’s loud, dumb BigGovernment site has a loud, dumb story about how Barack Obama “appeared and marched with the New Black Panther Party in 2007.” The occasion was the 42nd anniversary of the march from Selma, Alabama, and in addition to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton were also there, along with dozens of civil rights era luminaries and thousands of other people because it was a massive annual celebration and not actually an Obama campaign event.
The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.
So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.
(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)
Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:
This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.
If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)
Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.
A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!
Here, according to the National Enquirer, are the shocking revelations in Joe McGinniss’ new book about Sarah Palin, “The Rogue”:
- She has done drugs.
- She had sex with a basketball player before she married Todd.
- She is mean and petty.
- She is a bad mother.
- She had an affair after she married Todd.
There is also, obviously, some stuff about Trig’s birth, but I have not yet read the book, so I couldn’t tell you how far down the rabbit hole that goes.
Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.
Sarah Palin might not be smart.
The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.
Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?
How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.
I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.
Nicolle Wallace (Credit: ABC) 
Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in HBO's "Game Change" (Credit: HBO Films) 
Condoleezza Rice (Credit: Reuters) 
Members of the New Black Panther Party, including, Divine Allah, left, arrive for funeral services for 13-year-old shooting victim, Tamrah Leonard, at the Friendship Baptist Church in Trenton, N.J., Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Credit: AP/Mike Derer) 
Sarah Palin 
