The Week Obama Started Campaigning

The big meta story of the week in the Democratic Presidential race, until Al Gore came along and swamped everything (so much for the Nobel putting the focus on global warming. Sorry, Al.), was about the sharper edges to Barack Obama's attacks on the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. The problem is that he has to spell out "I will be more aggressive," playing pundit instead of candidate, which makes the whole thing feel calculated and plays into Hillary's narrative that she's inevitable and any attacks on her are the work of a desperate and flagging campaign. It's smug and obnoxious, but we have a front-running society, and particularly in 2008, people have a congenital need to pick the nominee in the primaries.

And in many ways, Obama did this to himself.

The most remarkable political triumph of this campaign was the Clinton campaign effectively defining Barack Obama's "new politics" as "not attacking Hillary Clinton by name." Obama, of course, could have defined the new politics however he wanted, from a focus on transformative policy to a willingness to call out the DC establishment. Instead, he let the Clinton camp define his message in a way advantageous to them. And given that his campaign has not been particularly bold on policy, he's been left with neither the rhetorical room nor the substantive beliefs with which to tackle the frontrunner. It was real incompetence on the part of Obama's handlers, and it's called into question his skills and, yes, ruthlessness, as a campaigner.

It's not entirely fair to Obama, but he did kind of sail through the early primary season, trying to stay above the fray, and the history of the Democratic nomination shows that you can't do that. You have to engage, especially when going against something as accomplished and savvy as the Clinton machine. Obama's getting to that, but it may be too late. He's right to take a look at the Iran vote.

ON THE FIFTH anniversary of the Senate's vote to authorize an open-ended war in Iraq, we should resolve to never repeat the terrible mistake of launching a misguided war. But unfortunately, the Senate risked doing exactly that when it recently opened the door to an extension and escalation of the ongoing war in Iraq to include military action against Iran.

The amendment, offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, directly links the ongoing war in Iraq -- including our troop presence -- to checking the threat from Iran. The amendment opens with 17 findings that highlight Iranian influence within Iraq. It then states that we have to "transition(s) and structure" our "military presence in Iraq" to counter the threat from Iran, and states that it is "a critical national interest of the United States" to prevent the Iranian government from exerting influence inside Iraq.

Why is this so dangerous? The Bush administration could use language like this to justify a continued troop presence in Iraq as long as it perceives a threat from Iran. Even worse, the Bush administration could use the language in Lieberman-Kyl to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.

That's exactly right. And Clinton did vote for it. Obama is hampered by the fact that he didn't vote at all on the resolution, and it's hard to show leadership and duck the vote at the same time. The two camps had duelling memos. Clinton rightly discusses Obama missing the vote and wrongly claims that it's a desperate political move; Obama rightly asserts his right to draw contrast and that not one vote has been cast, so this is not a coronation, but wrongly dismisses criticism of the missed vote.

So, the moral of the story is that candidates are allowed to criticize one another and there's nothing dishonest about it; and candidates make a big mistake allowing others to define their candidacy. That was a classic rookie mistake by Obama. But at the end, these are elites talking to elites about elites. Which is why I support Sen. Edwards, who actually talks about things other than process.