
Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
Four years can be a long time. For Barack Obama it must seem a lifetime. Then he was the fresh new face of the Democratic Party. Now he is fighting for his political future. The question is, can he recover?
The answer to that question is still in doubt, for it depends on whether he decides to follow the money or recover the words and principles that brought him his first touch of fame. To understand how Obama finds himself in this position, you first need to look at his donors.
The Donors
Obama has run a surprisingly strong second to Hillary Clinton in the fundraising race, distancing himself from the rest of the field that is struggling to overcome the Clinton Cash Machine. A profile of Obama in the new December Atlantic reveals that when he first entered the Senate, Obama sought out none other than Hillary Clinton. Clinton soon became a mentor to the young senator, advising him on everything from decorum to how to deal with being a high-profile figure sitting on the back bench.
Apparently, Obama learned his lessons well, because his fundraising list closely resembles Clinton’s. In fact, it seems clear that several prominent donors from Sumner Redstone to Goldman Sachs have deliberately split their donations between the two. Where there are differences in donors, they mostly involve similar firms. For example, America’s largest law firm DLA Piper heads Clinton’s list, while Obama has enlisted Sidley Austin, which is almost as big.

One reason for Obama’s total is that early in his campaign several high-visibility Clinton donors broke with Clinton and endorsed Obama. This defection lies at the heart of the palpable bad blood between the two candidates.
Two Questionable Donors
However, two donors stand out on Obama’s list that are not Clinton’s and they do little to assuage the uneasiness created by the Obama version of the Clinton Cash Machine. One is the Citadel Investment Group, one of America’s largest hedge funds. Headed by billionaire trader Kenneth C. Griffin, Citadel has earned less negative publicity than Chris Dodd’s sugar daddy Steven Cohen, but as a hedge fund in today’s deregulated financial world, it still has drawn scrutiny. Citadel earned the dubious honor of being duped by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who talked the fund into putting up cash for a shady offshore gambling scheme that existed only in the lobbyist’s fertile imagination.
The second firm really should send shudders down the spines of Democrats, for it is the Chicago-based utility firm Exelon. According to its web site:
Exelon Corporation is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with more than $15 billion in annual revenues. It distributes electricity to approximately 5.2 million customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and gas to 480,000 customers in the Philadelphia area. In addition, for energy delivery Exelon’s operations include energy generation and power marketing.
It has one of the industry’s largest portfolios of electricity generation capacity, with a nationwide reach and strong positions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Exelon operates the largest nuclear fleet in the United States, the third largest commercial nuclear fleet in the world, and is generating nuclear energy more efficiently than ever.
What Exelon’s web site does not reveal, is that Obama’s home state of Illinois receives 40% of its power from nuclear cources. The coincidence between Exelon’s nuclear ambitions and Obama’s answers to questions about the Yucca Mountain disposal site that surfaced during the Las Vegas debate are too close for comfort. Among the major Democratic Party candidates, only Obama and Hillary Clinton have embraced nuclear as a solution to the energy crisis. His answer to all the objections that have piled up over the years since Three-Mile Island is the one he gave at the debate: we have the expertise to solve this problem. That people have devoted considerable brain power to this problem over four decades seems to have been forgotten.
He’s No Howard Dean–But He Could Be
The only aspect of their finances that appears to differentiate Obama and Clinton is their relative reliance on big donors. Obama has made much of the fact that his campaign base consists of those who have contributed less than $1,000, as if he were trying to assume the mantle of Howard Dean, but as a Chicago Tribune article pointed out this is misleading:
Even as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promoted a large following of small-dollar contributors representing ordinary Americans, his campaign has built an old-school political fundraising machine that relies heavily on the wealthy and the powerful, including a Chicago-based hedge fund manager who earned $1.4 billion last year.
The Obama fundraising operation provides a contrast to an image that the campaign has ceaselessly cultivated as a movement powered by everyday Americans.
While The Tribune has never been a friend to Democrats, it does have its numbers right went on to point out that sixty percent of Obama’s money comes from large donors.
What the Tribune does not do is the math–which, of course, reveals that 40% of Obama’s funding comes from small donors. The small donor percentages of some past presidential candidates include 37% for John Kerry and 20% for Al Gore. Howard Dean, in contrast, raised 61% percent of his funding from small donors in 2004. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has been fairly secretive about her percentages of small donors. A USA Today article estimated it as a miniscule 9%.
Clearly, it is Obama’s percentage of small donors that has enabled him to stay relatively even with Clinton in the fundraising race. We will examine the totals for Edwards, Richardson, and Kucinich in the next post.
He’s No John Kennedy Either–At Least Not Yet
Barack Obama entered the 2008 campaign labeled as a wunderkind not unlike John Kennedy, an articulate young spokesman for a “new generation” who would bring a new vision to a nation that badly needed innovative ideas. What has clearly emerged is that Obama is no John Kennedy. The articulate speaker has seemed at time tongue-tied, where Kennedy always seemed to have the right words.
Even more telling is that Kennedy justly earned fame–and won the 1964 election–for his refreshing, self-deprecating wit. Kennedy’s sense of humor especially helped defray the idea that he was an overly-ambitious young man who had the gall to not “wait his turn” by deferring to older, more experienced candidates who had waited through two Stevenson campaigns.
Hillary Clinton has capitalized on this by making sure the press has heard that she, too, had thought about running early in her Senate career, but had decided against it even though the polls showed she could win. She says she felt that she just did not have the experience to assume the nation’s highest office.
Playing the experience card has allowed Hillary Clinton to be the master of the answer that seems full of wisdom, yet when you actually think about what she said you find yourself trying to grasp the equivalent of a whiff of smoke. While Hillary blows perfect smoke rings, captivating her audience, Obama seems to choke on them.
Instead of deflecting the notion that he is not ready, Obama has seemed overly-defensive even aggressive about it. He seems to feel that in answering every question he has to show he knows more than Clinton, as if being able to spout off more numbers and facts shows he can handle any crisis. There are times his replies sound painfully like John Kerry’s failed 2004 debate strategy against George Bush, a strategy that had Kerry trying to cram as many facts into as little time as possible with the idea of demonstrating Bush’s stupidity. Bush stumbled at first until he learned to play the values card.
In trying to imitate Kerry, Obama has fallen into the trap set by Hillary Clinton, reminding me of the famous scene in Shane where a cold-blooded, black-gloved gunman played by Jack Palance goads an inexperienced homesteader played by Elisha Cook into drawing on him. If Obama keeps letting Clinton goad him into being defensive about his experience, he will be as outgunned as Cook.
Yet it surprises me that neither Obama nor any other candidate has sought to exploit the inherent contradiction in Clinton’s experience line. Someone should just ask her what is her experience? In answering she is caught in a trap of her own making (which believe me the Republicans will exploit) which is that if she says too much about her years as First Lady, it will open all kinds of wounds.
Elisha Cook ended up face down in the mud against Jack Palance because he made the mistake of choosing the wrong weapon. A shotgun or Winchester might have evened the odds. Obama needs to remember that lesson. In addition to studying Kennedy’s responses to Nixon’s playing the experience card, Obama might also replay Ronald Reagan’s debates with Jimmy Carter.
The Hamlet Candidate
If Dennis Kucinich has become the Candidate Who Won’t Go Away (more on that in the next part), Barack Obama has become the Hamlet Candidate, a would-be president whose donor list reflects a self-contradictory enigma. On the one hand, he seems to want to project an image of a Howard Dean-like people’s candidate, while on the other hand his donor list mirrors Hillary Clinton’s.
The donor lists asks if Obama is a Clinton knock-off or a genuine alternative to triangulation and the Clinton Cash Machine. That this far into the campaign we still do not have an answer explains why Obama can raise almost as much money as Clinton and yet trail her by a large margin in the polls.
Obama seems a personification of the speech in Hamlet, the one generations of school children used to have to memorize, “To be or not to be, that is the question?”
His performance in the debates also nurtures this impression. His answers often seem wonkish, rambling and sometimes downright uncertain. Even when he does give an articulate reply he often finds that the morning papers and the evening news give more attention to one of Hillary Clinton’s soundbites than his own answer.
Can He Still Win?
People I talk with in Iowa say that in person Obama can be articulate, personable and even humorous. Part of the difference in his national standing and his standing is Iowa may be that Iowans have listened to him in person rather than merely seen him in the debates. Some of those who have heard him even profess to have been moved by a kind of charisma that turns them into instant Obama supporters.
In a previous essay, I predicted that Obama could win Iowa, but he could also become the Howard Dean of 2008. If he continues to let Hillary Clinton draw him into the experience trap, he could find himself well back in the field.
Iowa voters are notoriously volatile. They have had a long habit of initially propelling some new face into contention only to change their minds. They respond one way to pollsters who call on the phone and then when it comes caucus time when they have to face their neighbors and declare which candidate they support, they suddenly go with the more mainstream choice.
Obama’s finances and his performance in the debates make him seem both a Hillary clone as well as less experienced. It is clear that Iowa and the nomination will come down to a race between Hillary Clinton and the candidate who can best capture the anti-Hillary vote. If the choice for the anti-Hillary camp is but another Hillary with less experience Barack Obama could well end up a footnote to history.
I have written also of what I term Principles Voters, using the term to differentiate them from the so-called Republican “values voters” who were the media heroes of 2004. Principles Voters long for someone who will return to the fundamental principles of the Democratic Party, principles that guided Democrats from William Jennings Bryan to Harry Truman and John Kennedy.
So far only Dennis Kucinich seems to have given Principles Voters much attention, but if mobilized they could not only help someone pull off an upset in Iowa, but provide the balance of power the rest of the way. The press seems to feel that after four years of Bush Administration incompetence that all Americans want is someone who can get through a speech without some embarrassing gaffe and get the government to run efficiently once again.
Yet the one question that stuck out in the Las Vegas debate was asked by a student who wondered if after so many years of what I term the Era of Bad Feelings, someone could again bring us together. What he seemed to be asking for was someone with principles.
If He Remembers The Speech
There have only been three candidates in American history who have risen to consideration for the Presidency based on a single speech: Ronald Reagan, William Jennings Bryan and Barack Obama. The words of both Bryan and Reagan not only remade their political parties but they remade America. In both cases they were able to do this because not only did they repeat those words over and over, but they became the guiding principles for their political careers.
Reagan’s address is still known today as simply The Speech. Obama’s address also has taken on the same name. Supporters of both Reagan and Bryan could recite whole sections of their speeches–and many Americans remember them even today. Yet four years’ after Obama’s speech, few Americans remember what was in it.
That is too bad, because Obama’s words deserve to be remembered. In a previous series on the Democratic Legacy, I highlighted the key speeches that served to define the core principle of not only Democrats but American democracy. I termed that principle a belief in the level playing field, but I could have just as easily said equity or justice. That principle echoes again and again in the speeches of Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. In the famous Kiel Auditorium speech of the 1948 campaign Harry Truman said, “The welfare of the whole people should come first.” Franklin Roosevelt’s “Forgotten Man” speech said solutions must come “from bottom to top not from top to bottom.”
People resonated with Obama’s speech because it articulated the principle of the level playing field and promised to make it relevant for this new millennium. His words are worth recalling not just for us but for him and his campaign staff. If he were to return to a campaign based on principle he could become a pivotal figure like Bryan and Reagan.
He begins his speech by telling his own story and that of his family, deftly turning it into a fable of the American dream in which every American can see something of their own stories and families. From this he draws these themes:
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.
They imagined — They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
From this he moves on to a section that frankly is an impressive rhetorical achievement, for he dares to evoke America’s very foundation, the Declaration of Independence and then give himself the daunting task of making these familiar words take on new meaning. It is a tactic that many politicians and public speakers have tried and fallen flat on their faces. In fact, as Garry Wills has pointed out only one man has really succeeded and to do so he had to give the greatest speech in American history, The Gettysburg Address.
Resting on the foundation that Obama has built with his personal story, he may not ascend to Lincoln’s level, but he is able to make the words of the Declaration relevant for our times:
That is the true genius of America, a faith — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted — at least most of the time.
This is the level playing field, the belief in equity and justice that runs through America’s democratic tradition and which seems to have been lost during the Bush years and arguably during the Clinton years (more on that in a future essay). Obama makes sure we do not lose sight of this idea coming back to it again and again in his speech:
People don’t expect — People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
It is that fundamental belief — It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
Somehow Obama even manages to tie these principles to John Kerry. Hearing the speech again after all these years, it makes you wish John Kerry had listened to his own keynoter instead of the triangulators.
Obama ends the speech with the phrase that became attached to him and one that he would do well to revive again. Why he and his campaign have forgotten it remains one of the great questions of this election:
In the end — In the end — In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
It is these words that helped to make Obama’s first book a best seller and one that still has people talking. Obama supporters cling to it as if it were a Bible and bring him copies to autograph. Yet somewhere along the way this Obama was lost, as if his soul had been captured by another being.
I believe that John Lewis sensed this and that was one reason for his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. That Lewis and the Clintons have a long relationship is part of it, but the Lion King withheld his endorsement longer than many thought he would. It makes me wonder if he wasn’t waiting to see if Obama recovered his voice.
Instead we have Hamlet. The end of the “To be or not to be” speech is something Obama should ponder:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Tagged with:
abduct •
Abraham_Lincoln •
Abramoff •
Barack_Obama •
Bill_Clinton •
Bush_tax_cuts •
campaign_contributions •
campaign_contributors •
Dean •
Declaration_of_Independence •
Democratic_Party •
Democratic_presidential_campaign •
Democratic_Presidential_candidates •
Democratic_presidential_candidate_rankings •
democratic_principles •
equity •
era_of_bad_feelings •
FDR •
forgotten_man •
Franklin_Roosevelt •
future_of_the_Democratic_Party •
Garry_Wills •
Hamlet •
Harry_Truman •
hedge_funds •
Hillary_Clinton •
Hillary_Rodham_Clinton •
Howard_Dean •
Iowa •
Iowa_caucuses •
Iowa_voters •
John_Kennedy •
John_Lewis •
justice •
Latino_voters •
level_playing_field •
No_Child_Left_Behind_Act •
nuclear_power •
principles •
principles_voter •
Ronald_Reagan •
Saddam_Hussein •
Shakespeare •
Sumner_Redstone •
United_States_Supreme_Court •
William_Jennings_Bryan •
wiretapping •
Woodrow_Wilson