Text 8221, 118 rader
Skriven 2008-11-10 05:34:00 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
Ärende: OBAMA bomb!
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Saturday, November 08, 2008


Triumph of Temperament, Not Policy


by Michael Barone


The Democrats' victory -- and Barack Obama's -- was overdetermined and
underdelivered.


Overdetermined: Huge majorities believe the country is on the wrong
track and disapprove of George W. Bush; voters prefer generic Democrats over
Republicans by 10 percent or more. But Obama beat John McCain by (at
this writing) just 52 to 46 percent, running 2 points ahead of Bush in 2004
and 1 point behind George H.W. Bush in 1988. Democrats fell short of the 60
votes they need to stop filibusters in the Senate and made more modest
gains in the House than the leading prognosticators expected.


To be sure, Obama ran a skillful campaign. Just as he capitalized on
Hillary Clinton's weakness in party caucuses (she won more votes and
delegates than he did in primaries), so in the general election he used
his unprecedented ability to raise money by breaking his promise to take
federal funds and by disabling the address verification system that
would have screened out many illegal credit card contributions.


Such actions by a Republican, as Washington Post media critic Howard
Kurtz has argued, would have gotten scathing coverage from mainstream media.


Not so for Obama. His campaign outspent McCain's vastly on ads and
organization in target states. That probably switched 1 percent or 2
percent of the vote in five key states -- Florida, North Carolina,
Virginia, Ohio and Indiana -- which meant that Obama won a solid 364
electoral votes rather than a Bush-like thin majority of 278. All of
which shows a certain ruthlessness. But ruthlessness is a useful quality for a
president (see Roosevelt, Franklin; Reagan, Ronald).


Do Obama and the Democrats have a mandate? Obama got a larger percentage
than any other Democrat since 1964, and Democrats have congressional
majorities comparable to those in Bill Clinton's first two years. But
their policies of protectionism and greater taxes on high earners seem
ill-suited to a country facing a recession (see Hoover, Herbert). The
public fisc does not appear to be overflowing enough to finance
refundable tax credits, government health insurance or universal pre-
kindergarten.


The half of the electorate that doesn't remember the 1970s may be more
open to big government than those of us who do. But "open to" does not
equal "demand." The decisive shift of public opinion came when the
financial crisis hit. McCain approached it like a fighter pilot,
denouncing Wall Street, suspending his campaign, threatening to skip the
first debate. Obama approached it like a law professor, cool and
detached.


Voters preferred law professor to fighter pilot. This was a triumph of
temperament, not policy.


Are we seeing a political realignment? Certainly some of the ingredients
are there. As presidents, Reagan and Clinton attracted young voters to
their parties; G.W. Bush signally failed to do so. Obama, before he has
started governing, has inspired fervent, even quasi-religious devotion
from the young and has brought millions of them into the electorate.


Judging from the polls and from my first look at the election returns, I
believe he has attracted to his party many affluent, highly educated
voters in metro areas running south from Philadelphia to Charlotte,
N.C., and Tampa, Fla., and west to Denver and the Pacific. Democrats directed
much rhetoric toward the white working class, but failed to win most of
its votes. Instead, they assembled what you might call a top-and-bottom
coalition: affluent suburbs plus blacks in central cities.


The Democrats have always been a party of unlikely coalitions, capable
of expansion when their leaders perform well, susceptible to disarray when
they falter. The roughhewn John Murtha helps bring the designer-dressed
Nancy Pelosi to power; the African-American quasi-academic Obama
inspires millions in the highest- and lowest-income ZIP codes. And, as McCain
handsomely acknowledged, there is something genuinely thrilling in the
spectacle of Americans electing a black president.


But presidents can build majority coalitions only through performance
(see Bush, G.W.). As president, Obama faces daunting problems. How to fix a
financial system no one seems to fully understand. How to defeat
terrorist enemies sheltered in the territory of our putative ally Pakistan.

How to live up to the high expectations so visible in the cheering and tearful
faces in those crowds in Berlin, Invesco Field and Grant Park -- after a
victory that was thrilling, but not quite what the Democrats hoped for.


About The Author


Michael Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the
principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National
Journal every two years. He is also author of Our Country: The Shaping of
America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can
Work Again, the just-released Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs.
Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future.





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