MITT'S GREATEST WEAKNESS IS OBAMA'S SOLE STRENGTH:

Obama Is 'Intangible, Elastic, Hollow' (Der Spiegel, 1/08/08)

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: [...]

"Barack Obama ... would be a greater risk for the Democrats in the actual presidential election campaign -- against a Republican warhorse like John McCain, for example. Anyone who reads Obama's speeches, analyzes his political resumé, who studies his public appearances from the first minute to the last will acknowledge that he has great political talent."

"But the candidate is nevertheless unsettling because he remains strangely intangible, elastic and hollow. When Obama suffered a slump in popularity in the autumn, there was a reason: You can't grab hold of the man. But now he is enchanting the public with a canned speech that offers everything apart from the most important thing: political substance. That may be tactically clever, but one would prefer to hand one of the most important jobs in the democratic world to someone who does more than just spread feelgood sentiment, who has a few more scars, whose career was built on measurable decisions and who doesn't primarily tap into an outlook on life."

Here's an idea to consider: it may be that the Democrats' failure to reconcile themselves to Clintonism--the Third Way--requires them to nominate a hollow man. They don't like the ones who truly are New Democrats and know they can't afford to nominate true believers in the Second Way. So the best option is someone thoroughly insubstantial.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 8, 2008 8:13 AM