Given Given Hillary Clinton's consistent lead in Pennsylvania, I think that Barack Obama rolling up his blue collar sleeves and throwing some strikes and gutters with a few Average Joes in Altoona—as adeptly reported by The Baltimore Sun's Paul West—is going to be too little, too late. Obama’s multi-stop, six-day bus tour may limit the damage and limit Clinton’s delegate takeaway some.
As I read this piece, it occurred to me that this traditional, retail-style of politics is not how Obama has chosen to campaign so far. Indeed, what's especially interesting and refreshing about Obama is that he has generally shunned the dress-up-in-local-garb, pander-heavy approach so familiar to American politics. There are important rites of passage in politics, and all politicians have to make diplomatic gestures, on stages foreign and domestic, to show respect to audiences. The picture of him in Somali garb is a rare counter-example of the style of politics he seems to shun—though also I see he called today for a national holiday to commemorate Cesar Chavez' birthday. (By which I mean no disrespect to Chavez, who is certainly worthy of such a distinction.)
Maybe I'm missing something by not being on the trail since South Carolina, but I don't notice Clinton doing much of this retail-style pandering either, and that makes me wonder if this is a natural consequence of being a woman and the unfair, greater risks of mockery that come with women dressing up in absurd local outfits and such. Here's hoping that, as the share of women in elected office rises (though in state legislatures it seems to have leveled off the past 10 years), there will be fewer of these absurd rituals and more substantial appeals to voters’ better motives. Frankly, I've always suspected that voters are more, not less offended when a politician thinks that the shortcut to their hearts (and ultimately their votes and/or campaign contributions) is to play dress up, participate in the local customs, and otherwise allow oneself to be reduced to the rites and passage for retail pandering.
--Tom Schaller
