21
03
2008
Shortbuffalo by gray
Off-hand thought of the day:
The sort of populist, inspirational, hope-centric, paradigm-shifting, outsider/anti-establishment campaign Obama is running this year is stunningly similar to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. That the tables have so drastically turned is among the strongest reasons to support Obama over Hillary Clinton.
Bonus weirdness: a google search for “Barak Obama” generates 1.6 million more hits than a google search for “Barack Obama” (though most of the former’s hits seem to be the same as the latter’s hits).
It definitely shares much with Clinton the First’s first campaign, but their personal styles are dramatically different. Obama isn’t playing up the McDonald’s-eating, saxophone-on-Arsenio Everyman schtick that slick Willie did. Barack’s not afraid of taking the “humble beginnings” approach — damn near a mandatory approach in American politics at this point — but he’s not self-consciously trying to come off as quite so blue-collar.
That said… the similarities do on occasion make me worry about what the harsh spotlight of presidential politics will do to Barack. Clinton, after all, didn’t exactly usher in a new era of progressive Democratic policies. He was hamstrung in large part, to be sure, but the 1994 “Contract with America” GOP takeover of Congress, but still, there’s a lot of disappointment to be had with how the terms of the debate shifted while he was at the helm.
Will Barack similarly stray? I would love to find out.