So. It seems that every time there’s a new bar the Barack Obama campaign has to clear to count Hillary Clinton out, the result of the voter’s Fosbury Flop is a sort of graze that shivers the bar. Different observers have different opinions about whether the bar actually fell. This is because sports metaphors, although exciting, do not accurately model politics.
I think that this time, though, despite Senator Obama failing to win Indiana, observers are pointing up at the bar still resting on the standards and saying “he did it”. More to the point, every time a state (or territory) awards its delegates, the bar for Senator Clinton’s campaign gets higher and higher, and it’s now just barely visible up there. The sequence of events that leads to almost all the remaining superdelegates casting votes for Sen. Clinton (or many delegates, super or standard, who are expected to vote for Sen. Obama voting for Sen. Clinton instead) is not very plausible. What’s in it for them? Surely Barack Obama is as capable of showing gratitude as Hillary Clinton, and although I grant that it is very very important for a Democrat to be in the White House over the next four years, even if I thought that Hillary Clinton was a slightly better candidate in the fall all things being equal, I don’t think that a nomination at that kind of convention would make her a better candidate. And at this point, a superdelegate would be putting his career on the line by colluding to swing the nomination to her, and wouldn’t be putting his career on the line by voting for Sen. Obama. Seems like an easy choice.
Anyway, the point is that the competitive part is over. Sen. Clinton can (and should, in my opinion) contest the remaining primaries, but she won’t get the nomination. So I’ve been looking back, or around, at the whole thing. You know, Gentle Reader, that there is a kind of conventional wisdom that says that we elect people who are good at winning elections rather than at doing the job of President, and they are very different jobs. But is that true?
What are the character traits that enable somebody to win a nomination fight? First of all, tremendous stamina; it's a physically grueling trip, and mentally grueling because you have to keep going when you are worn out. The ability to avoid gaffes, even when you are tired, hungry and sick. The ability to delegate responsibility, and to find good people to delegate to, and to know when to get rid of people who aren’t doing the job, and to help your people when they need it. A candidate has to be persuasive, of course. More than that, a candidate has to be able to persuade a variety of different people, on a variety of different topics. A candidate has to be able to draw the support of key people, and use that support. A candidate has to be able to keep the support of both X and Y, even when X and Y dislike and distrust each other. A candidate should be able to find the levers that move supporters, and get them to give time and energy and money, not just votes. And it helps if a candidate can figure out how to weaken the support of his opponents, either by getting them to change camps, or by making them less willing to support their choice with time, money and energy. Also, a candidate should be able to think both tactically and strategically, to know when a plan isn’t working, and be able to adapt it to changing circumstances. And do it all for a really long time, even when things are going badly, and just keep getting up in the morning and doing it, again and again, until it’s over.
All of those are useful skills and traits for a President. Politically, in dealing with the Legislature and the country, those skills will be used. For all the silliness of the three-ay-em- phone call, it’s a job where burning the midnight oil could do a lot of good. Barack Obama has, in my opinion, shown a tremendous ability to do the political job of being President. Frankly, so has Hillary Clinton, but that’s not important now.
There are two problems with all that crap I was just saying, though. One is that all of this has nothing to do with policy, and that the President does set a lot of policy, so all of this character stuff, although important, doesn’t make for a government that governs well. But there’s a second problem, which is that it’s all utterly false.
Has John McCain shown those character traits that I was talking about a minute ago? Did Our Only President show them in the 2000 primary? Did Al Gore show them in the primary? What about Walter Mondale? Bob Dole?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I recall that there were numerous citings suggesting that Americans would prefer to “have a beer” with W than with Gore back in 2000. I didn’t think this made any sense, since the job of POTUS had nothing to do with sitting in a bar and drinking a brew. In fact, given W’s history with alcohol, it seemed like a cruel impulse to act on. Given what little I knew of his personal history at the time, I though W was the candidate that people would more likely end up in a bar fight with.