obama’s ambition and the learning curve
by Jeremy P. Jacobs
Published: February 5, 2008
Ambition is a funny thing in contemporary American politics. Too much of it can turn voters off, making them feel like they are a worthless part of a candidate’s path to success - simply a means to an end.
But too little of it and a candidate can be labeled as “not wanting it enough.” And, indeed, any presidential candidate is certainly one part megalomaniac.
This tension is playing out in the Democratic primary race. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ambition is unquestioned and heavily scrutinized. Authors have written of “deals” that promised her the White House in 2008 and others have said her marriage is a power-sharing sham (I, for the record, don’t buy any of this).
Senator Barack Obama’s ambition hasn’t received the attention (or bashing) Clinton’s has. It isn’t without merit to suggest that he launched his 2008 presidential campaign with his moving speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and he has certainly risen through the Democratic ranks faster than anyone in modern history.
But a key passage in Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” and the mistakes of his campaign so far suggest that Obama has not been planning this year’s candidacy since, well, kindergarten.
In the last scene of the third chapter, Obama recalls that, upon arriving to the Senate, all of his Democratic colleagues advised him to meet with West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the octogenarian patriarch of Senate Democrats. After a couple months into the session, Obama met with Byrd in the West Virginians first floor Capitol hideaway.
Byrd imparted a few pieces of advice. “Learn the rules,” he said, “Not just the rules, but the precedents as well… Not many people bother to learn them these days. Everything is so rushed.”
“I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush,” Obama wrote Byrd told him, “so many senators today became fixated on the White House, not understanding that in the constitutional design it was the Senate that was supreme, the heart and soul of the Republic.”
What is striking about this passage, besides that Obama was able to precisely quote what Byrd told him (was he tape recording?!), is that Obama’s candidacy flies in the face of the elder statesman’s counsel. Moreover, Obama chose to close the third chapter of his book with this anecdote. All of this would seem to indicate that Obama did not think he would be running for president in 2008 when he wrote the book in 2005.
Obama’s campaign has shown the signs of a campaign hastily put together. The Obama camp seems to be learning on the fly, making (as I have said in prior columns) several tactical mistakes so far. And Obama the candidate is maturing over the course of the campaign - from his halting demeanor in early debates, to his delivery of his (and any candidates’) most eloquent speech after losing in New Hampshire, to being knocked off message by Senator Clinton in the South Carolina debate and resorting to personal attacks, to his learning what it means to be a Kennedy - and we are getting to watch it all unfold.
However, to say that Obama is a political saint is also unfounded. As a New York Times article on Sunday indicated, Obama rewrote a bill that would have required nuclear plants to immediately report any leaks to local authorities. The new bill, the article reads, included concessions to Senate Republicans and the Exelon Corporation, an Illinois nuclear company that did not disclose several small leaks. Exelon has also been a major contributor to Obama’s campaigns.
Moreover, Obama’s decision not to speak out against the Iraq War once he got to the Senate in 2004 is hard to reconcile with anything besides political motivation.
The conventional wisdom, though, is that the longer the nomination process takes, the better Obama’s chances (unless it comes to down to Superdelegates at the convention, but that’s another column). The conventional wisdom is right. Obama’s recent momentum is the result of more and more voters recognizing his steep learning curve and coming to ask themselves one question again and again: If this is the candidate Obama is now, can you imagine the candidate he’ll be next November?
—
(email this article or post to social network)
—
