Obama Draws Fire

Barack Obama is getting a lesson in what it's like to be the frontrunner these days. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are pillorying him for remarks he made about working class disillusionment at an April 6 fundraiser in San Francisco. The flap will show a number of things, such as to what extent "gotcha" politics is still effective, whether Obama can take a tough punch, whether he can deliver one back and whether the press and the American people are grownup enough to hear the truth.

Obama said, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Clinton's take: "Well, that's not my experience." "Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them." McCain's take: "It shows an elitism and a condecension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

Obama's opponents have decided to spin his meaning as showing contempt for everyday Americans. Judging from the furor this has raised it so far appears to be a deft political move. Obama has countered by asking, "They say I'm out of touch? It takes John McCain three times to realize there's something wrong with the economy and then his solution is to do nothing, and I'm the one who's out of touch?"

The personalities interpretation will concentrate on the tit for tat and whether Obama's counterpunch scores points in the daily battle of words. The horserace interpretation will focus on which way the polls move over the next few days. Lost in the shuffle will be whether Obama's remarks reflect reality. The plain fact is, they do.

When 81% of the people say the country is on the wrong track, when 72% say they are worse off now than they were eight years ago, when 70% say they want their sons and daughters out of Iraq and yet they are kept there, when 68% say the most important thing they want in government is change, when 31% approve of the job the president is doing and 23% approve of the job congress is doing, it's clear there is indeed a great deal of bitterness in the country.

Historically, every time the nation's economy has taken a serious downturn there has been an upsurge in nativist and protectionist sentiments, and every time social conservatives have become more vehement in advancing what they see as threats to their traditionalist concerns as the primary reasons for the difficulties. Not sometimes, not most of the time, but every time. As an educated man and as a knowledgable observer of the American scene who has been crisscrossing every corner of the country for a year and a half, Obama understands that this time is no exception. It may not be the reality candidates want to face, but it is the one that exists.

The Obama candidacy is in many ways a test of the nation's maturity. He frequently says his campaign is based on telling people how things are and what it is really going to take to fix them rather than offering the painless palliatives it is conventionally presumed they want to hear. That's what he is doing on Iraq, what he did in his "More Perfect Union" speech and what he was doing this time in explaining many people's tendencies to vote against their own plain economic interest. His opponents and the press are treating the remarks as a "gotcha" moment, jumping on him for "dissing" the common people of America. The fact that he is right never seems to enter the conversation.

So, we come down to whether the American people are grownups or not. Their cynicism of government's willingness and ability to effect the change they desire is the very thing impeding such change, Obama argues. His basic appeal has been and remains to recognize this cynicism, formed over thirty years of unfulfilled promises, and overcome it with the vision of what could be possible in its absence. Many have formed the habit of retreating into the small circle of familiar things they feel they perhaps can control for the reasons Obama's remarks outline. He asks them instead to believe again. Are Americans able to take this step or will they find it more comfortable to nourish old illusions? At the human level that is what this campaign will primarily reveal.