'08 NUTSHELL:

America's next top Democrat: With the Iowa vote nearing, Clinton, Obama and Edwards reveal sharp tonal differences, betting the farm not on policy but on political panache (Walter Shapiro, 12/18/07, Salon)

Their stump speeches -- often glossed over by reporters as the elevator music of politics -- highlight the sharp tonal differences separating Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Between now and the caucuses, each of these tightly bunched candidates will probably speak to more than 30,000 Iowa Democrats in high school gyms (the favored venue this year) and other public settings around the state. Over the weekend, I sampled the campaign-rally rhetoric of the front-running Democratic troika as they crisscrossed each other's paths, with Edwards and Obama even speaking at the same time in Mason City (different locales) on Saturday night.

These speeches offer Iowans their best glimpse into the minds of the candidates, since they allow for a sustained argument (unlike campaign ads) and rise above the ephemera of the daily press flaps. So in traditional "Brazil: Land of Contrasts" school-report fashion, here are impressionistic accounts of what the three leading Democrats were emphasizing over the weekend. [...]

The former first lady began by repeating a refrain that had been crafted for last Thursday's final Iowa debate: "Some people believe that you make change by demanding it. [John Edwards, please pick up the red courtesy telephone.] Some people believe that you make change by hoping for it. [Barack Obama, this Bud's for you.] I believe that you make change by working hard for it."

But then she went further, explaining the virtues of experience in terms eerily reminiscent of Kenny Rogers singing "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." In the new Clinton version, the lyrics are: "Hard work demands that you know when to stand your ground and when to find common ground. If you're too unyielding you won't get anything done ... You have to work with other people. But if you don't stand up and refuse to compromise about what's important, you could lose out the opportunity to make change. You have to know how to balance it."

The campaign slogan "Hillary: The Candidate With Balance" may not appeal to her team of image makers, but it comes close to capturing the essence of her argument. Edwards is too hot, Obama is too cool, and the New York senator is just right. Clinton -- who seemingly aced every exam at Wellesley and Yale Law School -- also increasingly stresses her sadder-but-wiser outlook after the implosion of healthcare reform in 1994. As she put it in another passage grafted onto the stump speech, "I think you can learn more about a person when you see what they do after they don't succeed." [...]

Obama no longer includes in every speech a mocking reference to himself as a "hope monger," but he is -- without question -- the only Democrat who continually offers the vision of "bringing the country together." This idea (which may be arrogant, naive or inspirational, depending on one's perspective) of getting beyond the polarization of a red-state, blue-state America is the central theme of his candidacy. It is also a reminder that in early 1992, as Hillary Clinton was caught up in the campaign furors over Gennifer Flowers and her husband's Vietnam draft records, Obama was a freshly minted graduate of Harvard Law School. If the former first lady's calling card is that she faced down the "vast right-wing conspiracy," Obama is the Democrat who hails from a political generation too young to be mobilized in the debilitating wars of the early 1990s.

Equally integral to Obama's stump speech is the argument that he is the candidate of conviction while Clinton offers Democrats timidity and what was once called "triangulation." Obama's vision of himself transcends policy positions, which is convenient, since it glosses over the awkward reality that both Clinton and Edwards have offered bolder and more comprehensive plans for healthcare, which remains the key domestic issue for Democrats. [...]

Like Obama -- and, to a lesser extent, Clinton -- Edwards contends that the best way to pick a presidential candidate is not to weigh the nuances of their white papers on tax policy or global warming. "We have great candidates running for the Democratic nomination," the former North Carolina senator said, preparing to damn them with exuberant praise. "I like them. I respect them. They have great ideas. They're good people."

"But," Edwards went on, "we have some fundamental differences about what it's going to take to really change this [system] ... Some candidates say ... that you know the system's bad, but you have to be able to maneuver your way through it. You have to accept it. [Sounds as though Edwards got an advance peek at Clinton's revamped stump speech.] Other candidates would say, you got to sit at the table with these people -- drug companies, insurance companies, oil companies, power companies, big banks. You sit at the table with them and you negotiate, and somehow they'll voluntarily give their power away." This line was clearly aimed at Obama, though the volley seemed a bit off target. Still, Edwards got a hardy laugh from the audience with the notion that companies like Pfizer, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton would unilaterally disarm when faced with a smiling, earnest Democratic president.

For Edwards, who is the only top-tier Democrat without an Ivy League pedigree, it all comes down to a simple political equation: "You know how they'll give their power away?" he asked, speaking of the corporations. "They'll give their power away when we take their power away. We have an epic fight in front of us, and anybody who thinks that's not true is living in a fantasy world."

So, given that health care is the only policy matter Ms Clinton has ever tackled, we learn that she's a loser.

From Mr. Obama we learn...well, nothing...because he doesn't actually have any ideas. The mathematics of his candidacy seem to be: it is wrong not to vote for someone because of their race, but vote for me because of my race.

And John Edwards seems to think he's in a Russian coffee house of the late 19th Century, raging against oligarchs and plutocrats on behalf of the proletariat which just needs a vanguard of elite white men to show them the way....

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 18, 2007 11:03 AM