http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/opinion/18brooks.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
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By DAVID BROOKS
Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new — an
unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace
novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary
Clinton out in New Hamp****re and entered general-election mode
early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that.
But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has
changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and
apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional
politician and a more orthodox liberal.
He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts
of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of
conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting
wasn’t on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had
never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla
air****t, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously
condemned the practice of lifting other candidates’ words out of
context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John
McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment.
Obama also made a pair of grand and cynical promises that are the
sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than
governing.
He made a sweeping read-my-lips pledge never to raise taxes on
anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That will
make it impossible to address entitlement reform any time in an
Obama presidency. It will also make it much harder to afford the
vast array of middle-class tax breaks, health care reforms and
energy policy Manhattan Projects that he promises to deliver.
Then he made an iron vow to get American troops out of Iraq within
16 months. Neither Obama nor anyone else has any clue what the
conditions will be like when the next president takes office. He
could have responsibly said that he aims to bring the troops home
but will make a judgment at the time. Instead, he rigidly locked
himself into a policy that will not be fully implemented for
another three years.
If Obama is elected, he will either go back on this pledge — in
which case he would destroy his credibility — or he will risk
genocide in the region and a viciously polarizing political war at
home.
Then there are the cultural issues. Charles Gibson and George
Stephanopoulos of ABC News are taking a lot of heat for spending so
much time asking about Jeremiah Wright and the “bitter” comments.
But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares
their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at
symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry’s windsurfing or
John Edwards’s haircut as clues about shared values.
When Obama began this ride, he seemed like a transcendent figure
who could understand a wide variety of life experiences. But over
the past months, things have happened that make him seem more like
my old neighbors in Hyde Park in Chicago.
Some of us love Hyde Park for its diversity and quirkiness, as
there are those who love Cambridge and Berkeley. But it is among
the more academic and liberal places around. When Obama goes to a
church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology, when he
makes ill-informed comments about working-class voters, when he
bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he’s
one of them. Obama has to address those doubts, and he has done so
poorly up to now.
It was inevitable that the period of “Yes We Can!” deification
would come to an end. It was not inevitable that Obama would now
look so vulnerable. He’ll win the nomination, but in a matchup
against John McCain, he is behind in Florida, Missouri and Ohio,
and merely tied in must-win states like Michigan, Minnesota, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania. A generic Democrat now beats a generic
Republican by 13 points, but Obama is trailing his own party. One
in five Democrats say they would vote for McCain over Obama.
General election voters are different from primary voters. Among
them, Obama is lagging among seniors and men. Instead of winning
over white high school-educated voters who are tired of Bush and
conventional politics, he does worse than previous nominees. John
Judis and Ruy Teixeira have estimated a Democrat has to win 45
percent of such voters to take the White House. I’ve asked several
of the most skillful Democratic politicians over the past few
weeks, and they all think that’s going to be hard.
A few months ago, Obama was riding his talents. Clinton has ground
him down, and we are now facing an interesting phenomenon.
Republicans have long assumed they would lose because of the
economy and the sad state of their party. Now, Democrats are deeply
worried their nominee will lose in November.
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