THE MUSTANG AND THE MOVEMENT.

Joe Klein gets this exactly right:

And yet there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism — "We are the ones we've been waiting for" — of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you." That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.That is not unprecedented. It has echoes of Howard Dean's 2004 primary effort, although in Dean's case the propellant was substance, not rhetoric — the candidate's early courageous voice against the war. But Dean soon found that wasn't enough. In June 2003 he told me he needed to broaden his movement, reach out past the young and the academic and find a greater array of issues that could inspire working people. He never quite found that second act, and his campaign became about process, not substance: the hundreds of thousands of supporters signing up on the Internet, the millions of dollars raised. He lost track of the rest of the world; his campaign was about ... his campaign.

Back on the Dean campaign, Joe Trippi had an interesting analogy for the sort of race he wanted to run. Imagine, he would say, if rather than getting a bunch of engineers and designers into a room to create the next Mustang, Ford went to a message board of Mustang enthusiasts and asked them what they wanted? And imagine if Ford really brought them into the process, gave them a role, and genuinely listened? Imagine how invested they would be in that product, how much they would care for it, how hard they would work to ensure its success.I found that analogy both very smart, and very dangerous. Mustang enthusiasts might want a 700 horsepower engine, and lots of racing stripes, and a weak muffler so they can hear the roar of their car. Build them that car, and they might, as Trippi suggests, truly love it. But the median Mustang consumer might also want cup holders, and trunk space, and a quiet ride. The car built by, and for, enthusiasts might not appeal to broader segments of the market. That's very much what happened to the Dean campaign, which got caught seeking feedback from mainly the hardcore. And while that's been less of a problem for Obama, he's still far too invested in talking to, and about, his movement, doubling down on his inspirational qualities, speaking in a way that sends college students to the moon but doesn't do much for uncertain voters. I remember flipping through the channels on Super Tuesday and watching Clinton's speech -- which was a sort of themeless list of good things she'd do and problems she solved -- and then watching Obama's, and thinking that the difference between the two was that if you watched Obama's from the beginning, you'd love it. But if you landed on his channel in the middle, you'd be confused. Clinton's, by contrast, was a speech built for the channel surfer, the unconcerned consumer. No matter what part you heard, or how little you stayed for, you got a couple good things she would do.