Testing Obama
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Senator Obama is a first-term legislator in his second full year in office and considering a run for the highest office in the land. His new book, the purported reason for his flurry of publicity during the last two weeks, is titled “The Audacity of Hope” (Crown). Given the brevity of his national political career, his emergence into the national spotlight ought to be called “The Audacity of Obama.”
There is, without a doubt, a hunger among Democrats for a different voice, a new hope, a fresh face, a candidate who can advocate passionately without offending large swaths of the electorate. Interested Democratic voters have been watching Senator Clinton for almost a decade and a half, Al Gore for two decades, and Senator Kerry for the last four years. Mr. Obama strikes at chords that appeal to Democrats — even their inner desire to be bipartisan and conciliatory. In talking about Republicans at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston on Friday, for instance, he announced, “I come from the land of Lincoln.” With his lanky frame, he is, perhaps, trying to evoke Lincoln.
Politicians in America tend to speak in one of three distinct tongues: policy gobbledygook (jargon about programs and legislation), partisan parley (“no new taxes,” “take back America,””great right-wing conspiracy”), and poetic prattle (the politics of hope). Mr. Obama specializes in this third, increasingly important kind of talk. Asked about how Democrats can avoid getting caught up in sticky wedge issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, Mr. Obama said, “it’s important for Democrats or progressives of any stripe to engage in a conversation … to be in the space where a lot of these issues percolate, and one of those places is the church or the synagogue or the mosque.” It’s hard to fault Mr. Obama’s sentiment. But in his rhetoric, he enters Michael Lerner’s “Politics of Meaning” zone, a region where ideas and phrases are happily and loftily vague, where whole phrases can be copied and pasted to and from the back of a Starbucks coffee cup under the rubric “The Way I See It.” (For example, Scot Williams, an endodonist and Starbucks customer from Yakima, Wash. #156: “We need passionate partisanship thoroughly seasoned with civility, respect and responsibility.”)
Mr. Obama’s demeanor, speaking ability, and even his biography — much like those of Deval Patrick, a candidate for governor of Massachusetts — are such that they validate the image many Democratic voters have of themselves, particularly Baby Boomers, Generation X wannabes, and their progeny.
Democrats long to be enlisted in an optimistic and meaningful group-thinking exercise. Mr. Obama emotes, “What’s audacious, what requires risk, is to be hopeful, to believe … There’s this other thing that’s possible, what could be.” The amazing thing about Mr. Obama’s words is that they are not those of some self-help guru, but of a member of the Senate.
The credible talk about Mr. Obama becoming a presidential candidate at this early stage in his career is a testament to the emotional impact he has on listeners and potential voters. It is not a testament to his record. That impact emanates from touchy-feely important-sounding sentences like the above.
This national celebrity provides Mr. Obama advantages that neophytes frequently lack. Being well-known, he explains, allows him to raise more money more easily than most candidates. “My fundraising capacity is higher just because I get a lot of attention. It’s not entirely fair that I don’t have to go and just work the phones now the way I did when I was an unknown candidate.”
Celebrity appearances, book signings, and polite discussions are one thing. Politics in America is something else. If he intends to go ahead with a presidential run, Mr. Obama will likely have to clash swords with the likes of Mr. Kerry, who’s vowing to fight for the 2008 nomination, and Mrs. Clinton, who has incorporated political battling into her way of life. Any major party nominee must ready himself for the war ahead. This is what Mr. Kerry learned in August 2004, when he saw his presidential chances bleed away in the face of repeated attacks on his biography, now referred to as “Swift Boating.”
When asked how best to handle tough attacks, such as those that helped bring down Mr. Kerry in 2004, Mr. Obama responds, “the truth. You respond swiftly and forcefully with the truth … The nice thing about the truth is that it’s subject to confirmation … And keep on hammering away.”
That is another attractive sentiment. Campaigns are grueling, emotionally draining, and often unbearably difficult. A presidential contest will provide a rigorous test not just of Mr. Obama, but also of his seductive soliloquies.
Mr. Gitell (www.gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.