    
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6562
Registered: 07-2006
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Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 - 06:51 am: | 
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Kennedy's kiss of death for Barack Obama
By Janet Daley
Forgive me if I glaze over at the mention of British domestic politics. Given the stupendous drama of events across the pond, Westminster life seems to be played out on - how can I put this? - rather a small stage.
But this sense of being trapped in a Lilliputian landscape seems not to be confined to those of us who are American-born, to judge by the swathe of British commentators who have taken off to the US to pronounce on Super Tuesday, which they view, almost unfailingly, through the prism of their home-grown assumptions. In all the excitement of the coverage here, I fear there are some recurrent misconceptions.
Teddy Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama is akin to a prospective Labour leader being endorsed by Tony Benn
Misunderstanding number one: Teddy Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama was an unambiguous coup which moves him several light years closer to the White House.
To the British media (especially the Left-liberal contingent), Teddy is the last remaining link to the great lost leaders, John and Bobby Kennedy, as indeed he is to what is left of the American baby boomer generation which did not swing to the Right during the 1980s.
He certainly represents an important part of the Democratic establishment whose abandonment of the Clintons is significant. But what Teddy represents to the vast majority of American voters is ultra-liberalism. (More scope for confusion here: Americans use the word "liberal" to mean fairly hardcore Left-wing, not, as we do, to suggest tolerance or middle-of-the-roadness.)
For Obama to be endorsed by Teddy Kennedy is a bit like a prospective Labour leader being endorsed by Tony Benn.
It will almost certainly help him in the Democratic primaries where there is a large liberal vote, such as California, but it will be a liability when it comes to the presidential election where many voters will see it as alarming confirmation of his record as the Senator with the highest number of liberal (Left-wing) votes over the past year.
To add to the effect, Obama has now been endorsed by "moveon.org" an extremely liberal outfit that has branded General David Petraeus, the leader of the successful surge in Iraq (and Time magazine's Person of the Year) as "General Betray Us".
It is said that because Kennedy sponsored an unsuccessful Senate Bill that would have permitted citizenship to illegal immigrants, he is regarded as a saint by the Hispanic community and thus will deliver their support to Obama.
This would be true only if the votes of an entire ethnic community (much of which tends not to vote) could be "delivered" like a FedEx parcel. And if Latino voters are so enamoured of Kennedy because of that Bill, they may well think highly of its co-sponsor in the Senate: one John McCain.
Which brings us to the second misconception: McCain has so alienated Republican conservatives (with, among other things, his support for what they call an "amnesty" on illegal immigrants, see above) that he cannot get the support of his party's core vote.
Being endorsed by Rudy Guiliani (a social liberal) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (an environmental campaigner) will damage him further because they are disliked by conservatives, too.
In fact, these endorsements have precisely the opposite effect of Obama's: they make the primary contests more high-risk but they will help McCain in the presidential race.
This is a bad year to be a Republican, particularly a conservative one. The only way McCain can win the White House is to appeal to "independents" (what we call "swing voters") by reinforcing his distance from the Bush administration and the Republican establishment.
McCain, with his effective critique of the Bush conduct of the Iraq war but his hardline stand on foreign policy and national security, seems to have persuaded enough conservative voters in the Florida Republican primary that he is sound enough to support.
He even managed to win out over Mr Successful Business Leader, Mitt Romney, among voters who thought the economy was the most important issue. What strikes even my conservative Republican friends is his charisma: one described him, with reluctant admiration, as having "an electrifying presence".
And that brings me to a more general misconception: that both Obama and McCain have a serious problem in that they are "outsiders" - mavericks who have rebelled against the expectations of their party machines and faithful foot soldiers.
In Britain to be a maverick or a chronic rebel is seen as a sign of immaturity at best, and instability at worst. To be unclubbable, to fail to play the game, is fatal to high ambition: at best, the perennial outsider who will not compromise his personal principles can survive on the margins, as a sideshow to the main event which is in the hands of grown-ups who know when the line must be toed.
But in the US, such bloody-minded individualism is seen as having the right stuff: this is, after all, a nation of rebellious colonials and intrepid migrants. When the outsider status is applied to Washington, it is particularly potent.
Obama lays claim to this status because he has been in the Senate for only two years (neatly making a virtue of his inexperience). Romney claims it on the grounds that he has been a state governor and therefore not part of the Washington inner circle. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have to compensate for failing to be outsiders by saying that at least they know how things work inside the Beltway and so could govern effectively from day one.
But there is danger in being thought to be infected by Washington-insider disease not just because it is corrupting to individual character, but because of the great historical distrust of federal government in the US: the tension between states' rights and federal power is built into the constitution and it pervades political life to this day.
So where does all this leave my wildly hubristic early prediction that the presidential race would be between Obama and McCain, and that McCain would win?
So far I see no reason not to stand by it. For all Obama's appeal and momentum, I believe that America will decide not to entrust its future in such dangerous times to a man who has been in politics for two years.
Besides, Obama is young enough to have another go when he is more seasoned. Whereas, they will see in John McCain a man of truly heroic stature who, having survived torture, is unlikely to flinch in the face of any national enemy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/04/do0402.xml |
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