I just discovered PubDef today, Antonio French’s St. Louis political blog. It’s a great read, especially if one were, as I was, looking for the latest presidential polling information summarized. It looks as if my man Obama is, as he says sometimes, doing pretty good.

Last Saturday my beloved and I braved the cold and lateness, important things to a geezer like me, and made a trip downtown to see him at 9:00 pm at the Edward Jones Dome, where the line to get in was wrapped around three sides of the stadium as we arrived. We got inside fairly fast, though. And we had the good fortune to pass the time standing in line with a young couple who had driven up from Oklahoma for the event with their two small daughters.

The crowd was large, 22,500 by some estimates, more than the Rams draw these days, a diverse mixture of ethnic, social, and age groups. Before the speeches we got to watch the Harris-Stowe University drumline perform. It was especially gratifying to me to see as many young and very young folks among the spectators as I did–and then on the way home on the train to see even more.

Obama didn’t make his best speech that evening; he was tired and talked too long, I thought. But it was fascinating to hear the talk about the speech amongst the younger folks around us on the train afterwards. They all thought the speech was fine and loved the rhetorical flourishes. The talk reminded me how he was interrupted from time to time during the speech spontaneously, not in a call and response sequence. Once another elderly gent near me hollered, “God bless you, Barack!” from the back of the crowd.

We thought it remarkable that Obama was able to draw such a large crowd with what seemed to us to have been very little advance publicity, and almost no advance coverage in the mainstream media. Apropos of that, Laura McKenna at IID put me on to this video, with which I’ll end this post. It’s long, but you don’t have to watch it all to get the sense. She has it from Crooked Timber, where Eszter’s comments are as interesting as the video itself. Take a look here, if you’re interested. And here’s the video, if you’d like to watch all, or part, of it.

Today’s Washington Post editorial, “Race in the Race: Stop the distortions and the innuendo” contains some distortions and innuendo of its own. I’m amazed. Here’s just one paragraph:

Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have taken remarks of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former president Bill Clinton out of context and then unfairly criticized them for what they did not say. Mr. Clinton was accused of belittling Mr. Obama’s career or campaign as a “fairy tale.” But the “fairy tale” Mr. Clinton was referring to had to do with the much narrower issue of Mr. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war; the former president was bemoaning what he saw as a lack of attention to Mr. Obama’s — again, in Mr. Clinton’s view — inconsistent stances on the war.

To suggest that Mr. Clinton didn’t know that his “fairy tale” remark would be taken to refer to Mr. Obama’s career as a whole is naive. The Clinton campaign has embarked on three negative strategies, it seems to me. These are:

1) To belittle Obama’s career and accomplishments, a pervasive Clinton campaign theme and a corollary of Clinton’s claim that she alone is qualified to be president. Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” characterization has been fairly taken as an expression of this theme, though it was couched so as to give Mr. Clinton plausible deniability.

2) To undermine the credibility of Obama’s criticism of the Iraq war. This is the text of Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” characterization — belittling Obama’s career is the subtext.

3) To belittle Obama’s skill as an orator. Here, apparently the Post agrees with the Clintons, suggesting that “Mr. Obama [likens] his oratory and vision to that of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but (following the Clinton theme) that “presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as King, all had to do much more than orate to accomplish their goals.”

Of course, Obama has never likened his oratory and vision to Dr. King’s or President Kennedy’s. He has cited Dr. King and President Kennedy, something quite different. For a political opponent to blur that difference is one thing; for the editorial writers at the Post to do so is another. Now, a Clinton surrogate has said of Obama that he is no Martin Luther King — and the Post editorial quotes without irony or criticism, what Clinton said on “Meet the Press” two days ago:

Dr. King didn’t just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed. He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power, and he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving.

Not to belabor the issue, Obama is doing just what Clinton credits Dr. King with doing. He is running for president, acting, moving the political process. Of course Obama has had the temerity to run against Clinton, and he has done so in a way that threatens to define the campaign. If they are to defeat him, the Clintons have to prevent him from setting the campaign agenda in his own way. Hence, as Eugene Robinson puts it: “It could be that the idea is to engage Obama in so much tit-for-tat combat that his image as a new, post-partisan kind of politician is tarnished.” To be fair, the Post editorial probably suffers only from an attempt to provide a “balanced” view. If Clinton is to be criticized, then Obama must be equally so. But in this case I think balance is merely putative — more tit for tat combat.

I can almost go along with the Post editorial’s last paragraph, particularly with the last sentiment expressed:

A hallmark of Mr. Obama’s campaign is its transcendent, universal appeal. He refreshingly portrays himself as a candidate for the presidency who happens to be black, not the black candidate for president. As long as racial divisions remain in America, race is a legitimate, important subject for political debate. But the current finger-pointing is unproductive and even dangerous because it threatens to revive those divisions rather than bridge them. The candidates should use tonight’s debate to acknowledge that each of them has a demonstrated commitment to civil rights and move the discussion to a higher plane.

It’s hard to argue with that, except that it lets the Clintons off scot free. As a reader of several generations of student essays, I know that attacking someone’s language is equivalent to attacking that person’s identity. It seems to me that Obama’s replies to this attack have been particularly generous considering the nature of the attack, including Clinton’s attack via Dr. King. Whether the Clintons have intentionally injected race into the presidential campaign I can’t judge, but they have attacked Obama’s language in a particularly insidious way, by accusing him of being prolix, or full of words. It’s an ancient and dishonorable rhetorical ploy, an ad hominem designed to deprive one’s opponent of dignity. To yoke this attack to an evocation of Dr. King as equally a man of words, was unfortunate, as Obama has said — and in saying no more than that, Obama has put the kindest construction on it.

I’ve realized something important today.

In Democratic Eloquence, Kenneth Cmiel points out how central the speech of experts has become in present day public discourse. Throughout her campaign Hillary Clinton has not only relied on a rhetoric of expertise but has also represented herself as entitled to nomination and election because of her expert status. Daniel Drezner makes such a case on the basis of two now familiar pieces of video. The first is from the New Hampshire Democratic debate.

And the second is the much cited “tearing up” sequence from the New Hampshire campaign.

I agree with Drezner that both these sequences display a powerful sense of entitlement, which Drezner characterizes as follows:

1) Hillary Clinton genuinely thinks the country needs change, and that she has the capacity, as president, to make the country a better place;

2) Hillary Clinton genuinely thinks that no one else but her possesses that capacity, and that it is insulting to suggest otherwise [italics original].

And I would add that both video sequences reflect the claim of expert status that has characterized the Clinton campaign from the beginning. As she says through her tears:

. . . Some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we will do on day one and some of us really haven’t thought that through enough; and so as tired as I am, and I am, . . . I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation, so I’m going to do everything I can to make my case and then the voters get to decide.

Clinton has softened her claim of expert entitlement; and, as in her question and answer sessions and the staging and tone of her victory speech, she has endeavored to stand with rather than above those of whom she asks support. But the claim is still there: and I fully expect it to remain the centerpiece of her campaign, however she may repackage it in days to come. If Clinton receives the nomination of my party I will support her candidacy with enthusiasm, energy, and money, but in the real time of the present I am supporting Obama.

I was initially attracted to Obama because he is more liberal than Clinton; moreover, his liberalism is of the pragmatic sort, harder edged than the romantic populism of Edwards. I like Richardson a good deal as well, but the New Mexico governor seems not to be a real contender for the nomination, like Biden, Dodd, and Kucinich. Today I have realized that what I like most about Obama is that he speaks the language of my political heart, which is not the language of experts — it is rather the language of authentic new deal liberalism refitted for the twenty-first century. Obama’s language is the language of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, and Jesse Jackson. Plain speech (another large theme of Cmiel’s book) albeit in Senecan periods, Obama’s rhetoric draws on a deep vein of significance in American public life that conservatives, so-called, have successfully ridiculed at least since the Reagan era (though the great communicator drew on it, himself).

Obama reminds me how it felt to make one with my sisters and brothers and students and colleagues in the marches of the sixties, how it felt to sing “We Shall Overcome” in those days when we lost a lot of fights, but won some too. Obama reminds me what it was like to win (even when we lost), what “Glory, Hallelujah!” meant to us then and how it almost became the national anthem. He reminds me what it was like to love my country when I loved my country with a passion that’s perhaps only possible when one is young. We’ve lost a lot of fights recently, but Obama gives me hope that we might still win a big one or two before what for me will be the end. He reminds me how Bobby Kennedy liked to quote Tennyson’s Ulysses:

                                  Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Drezner says he isn’t supporting Obama, but Michael Gerson almost sounds as if he is. Gerson fairly rhapsodizes in today’s Washington Post, saying that Obama’s campaign is about “the return of idealism,” an idealism that has everything to do with Obama’s authenticity as an inheritor of the rhetoric of King and Jackson.

Obama spent the last days before the New Hampshire primary defending “hope” against Clinton’s contention that the Illinois senator was raising “false hopes.” In the final debate, Obama also defended the use of inspiring words and rhetoric against Clinton’s charge that words matter little in comparison to experience . . . .

And on Obama’s authenticity as an African American:

. . . Obama’s race matters greatly, because most of the American story — from our flawed founding to the civil rights movement — has been a struggle between the purity of our ideals and the corruption of our laws and souls. The day an African American stands on the steps of the U.S. Capitol — built with the labor of slaves — and takes the oath of office will be a moment of blinding, hopeful brightness.

Clinton has staked her campaign on her ability to sell herself; whereas Obama has framed his campaign as an attempt to sell a certain vision of America. Here’s another video clip:

So I’m joining up with Obama, and we’ll see; it’s a good fight to be in . . .

I like Barak Obama’s eloquence. I think it’s wonderful that his oratory works well in the notoriously cool medium of television. And this gives me a chance to recommend the late Kenneth Cmiel’s fine book Democratic Eloquence. In his last chapter, Cmiel observes that “It is a deep theme of literary modernism that language is exhausted.” One might expand the remark to include modernism generally. And maybe Obama excites me not just because he seems postpartisan, but because his language seems capable of reinvigorating public discourse as well. I realize that may be too much to expect, but it’s exciting to think about it.

Obama’s oratorical persona appropriates the romantic eloquence of Martin Luther King, with an edge that King lacked. I’m also very impressed with Obama’s skill as a debater, perhaps moreso than Kathleen Hall Jamieson on last Friday’s Bill Moyers Journal. In the New Hampshire Democrats’ debate on Saturday, I thought Obama answered questions definitely and sharply as they were put and at one point fended off an accusation of disingenuousness from Clinton really well by pointing out that Clinton had taken him to task over something about which they disagreed, explaining precisely and succinctly what the disagreement was, and pointing out that disagreement isn’t dishonesty. If I’m right Obama may be something like post ad hominem.

Elsewhere, James Fallows notes what he calls the essential exchange in the New Hampshire debate as follows.

Clinton, after pointing out that Obama voted for an energy bill that was full of the special-interest tax breaks he now criticizes in speeches:

So you know, words are not actions.

And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action. You know, what we’ve got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that, of taking on the very interests that you have just rightly excoriated because of the overdue influence that they have in our government. And you know, probably nobody up here has been the subject of more incoming fire from the Republicans and the special interests, so I think I know exactly what I’m walking into and I am prepared to take them on.

Then, after an appeal by John Edwards to the Teddy Roosevelt tradition of head-on trust-busting, this response from Obama:

Look, I think it’s easier to be cynical and just say, “You know what, it can’t be done because Washington’s designed to resist change.” But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we’re in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes — not incremental changes, not small changes….

[T]he truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don’t discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can’t be done, then it doesn’t. I’m running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that’s why I think they’re responding in such large numbers.

I’m indebted to Laura Mckenna at 11D for the Fallows reference. After quoting Obama’s remarks noted above, McKenna observes that “Obama just won the election.” I don’t think I’m quite that sanguine (though I’d like to be). My own thoughts are more in line with Fallows’ analysis of the Clinton/Obama exchange:

Of course each of them was right. Each expressed part of the job of a president, or any leader. Words and deeds. Talk and action. Poetry and prose. Presidents obviously do best when they can do both.

But only Obama captured what is unique about a president’s role. A President’s actions matter — Lyndon Johnson with his legislation, Richard Nixon with his opening to China — but lots of other people can help shape policies. A President’s words often matter more, and only he — or she — can express them.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson had said pretty much the same thing on Bill Moyers Journal.

We forget sometimes that speech making is a very important role in the presidency. There are times in the nation in which the president is the only one who can speak to us and for us. And whether it’s the president we wanted elected or not, that person has to be able to play that role for all of us.

Apropos of saying the same thing somebody else has said, Dana Milbank has a piece in today’s Washington Post that makes a good deal of fun out of the candidates’ linguistic borrowing from one another (more nearly drawing on the same stock of clichés, I think, though I too have thought that the other candidates were echoing Obama). Milbank wryly points out at the end:

Of course, it isn’t all an echo of Obama. Clinton spoke of Mario Cuomo, the “wonderful former governor of New York [who] used to say that in politics, you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.”

Obama never used that line. Bill Clinton did — in 1993.

There’s a good deal for Democrats to be happy about right now, not the least item of which is a field of presidential candidates all of whom are good. Then there’s the fact that all the candidates, Democrats and Republicans too, seem to be trying to ride Obama’s coattails. And finally, there’s this:

Right on! as we used to say.