John Heilemann has an Obama assessment in this week's New York that rather exactly tracks the arguments I made in The LA Times last month. Indeed, that's as you'd expect, because the argument is fairly obvious and the only wonder is that more people aren't making it. I want, however, to particularly emphasize one element:
God knows the last thing I'd argue is that Obama ought to pad his CV by loitering for years in the Senate, an institution that prepares one for little besides the exercise of pomposity. But, substantively speaking, Obama hasn't even made the most of his brief time there. The legislation he has offered has been uniformly mundane, marginal, and provincial—securing additional funding for veterans, to cite but one example.
Obama's response to such criticism is to point out that he's been constrained by his status and circumstances: a freshman senator in the minority party. “I've got a lot of clout,” he jokes. “I went from 99th to 98th in seniority this year.”
A clever line, sure, but patently bogus—for, given the extent of Obama's celebrity, he's hardly an ordinary backbencher. Yet how many times has he used his megaphone to advance a bold initiative or champion a controversial cause? Zero. Instead, Obama has tempered his once-fiery stances on such issues as Iraq and health care; his proposals on alternative energy and global warming are weak beer compared with those of, say, Al Gore. He seems a man laboring to stay something of a cipher—a strategy no less calculated than Hillary's conspicuous lunges to the center or McCain's lurches to the right.
I call this the Two Obamas Dodge. Talk to his staffers about Obama's superstardom, his presidential prospects, or talent, and they'll gush with praise and enthusiasm. Ask them why he hasn't used that silver tongue to consecrate some treasured, important progressive policy initiatives and they'll explain that he's only, like, 10-years-old, and can't be expected to step on any Senate toes. By which logic we can expect he'll cede the primary to Dodd, Biden, Kerry, and Clinton, and in that order. Wouldn't want to step on any toes, after all.
Obama can be the dutiful backbencher preparing for life as a legislator. Or he can be the rocketing talent seeking support for a presidential campaign. But he can't be both. No candidate seeking the presidency can avoid specificity on grounds that he wouldn't want to usurp his place in the Senate. It's absurd. And Obama will, slowly, shed the generalities and create a platform specific to him. What that will look like, however, is anyone's guess. Is he willing to lose the affection of David Brooks and George Will? To go from stratospheric approval ratings to merely sub-orbital? Or will he be trapped by his own popularity, his own hope of being a unifying force, and create a platform of bland incrementalism gussied up in his soaring eloquence?
