Obama in Columbus: ?'One voice can change a nation'
UPDATE: 2:20 PM, Friday, October 26, 2007
By PAUL E. KOSTYU
GATEHOUSE COLUMBUS BUREAU CHIEF
COLUMBUS
Behind in the polls and fundraising, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama told several thousand people at the Columbus Convention Center that "one voice can change a nation."
Telling a story from the campaign trial, the candidate said Friday, "One voice can change a room, ... a city, ... a state and if it can change a state it can change a nation."
It was difficult to hear what the candidate had to say as sound echoed around the partially filled, cavernous hall. The crowd cheered anyway, and often, during Obama's 40-minute speech.
Introduced by Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, who announced his backing of the first-term senator this week despite entreaties by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Obama told the crowd he needed them to be involved and engaged.
"You have been left on the sideline. That's how (the Bush administration) has controlled you. You have the power to change that."
Coleman, who was a Democratic candidate for Ohio governor in 2006 before dropping out, is running for re-election. He became Columbus' first black mayor in 1999.
If elected, Obama would be the nation's first black president.
Obama also has the endorsement of mayors Richard M. Daley of Chicago and Adian M. Fenty of Washington, D.C.
Coleman endorsed retired Gen. Wesley Clark in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Clark dropped out about two moths later.
BUSH AND THE WAR
Leading the crowd in an OH-IO cheer as he took to the stage, Obama didn't mention who he would favor in an upcoming football game between the University of Illinois and Ohio State University.
"Everywhere I go I see huge crowds," he said. "People are tired of the way the country is being run."
He made one passing reference to poll leading opponent Hillary Clinton, but saved much of his 40-minute speech for attacks on the Bush administration.
"People are tired of an administration that favors the wealthy ... fat cats and lobbyists ... while millions are (in poverty)." he said. "It's wrong. It's not who we are."
He said he would invest in schools and early childhood education. "I want all of you to be able to finance your college education. I want to harness the power of this new generation."
Obama got his biggest applause when he said, "I will bring an end to this (Iraq) war" and he said he would close the prison housing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
"We have to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies," he said. "I'm not afraid of losing the propaganda (battle) to some small-town dictator. We need to tell them what we stand for."
Obama said the Bush administration has shown arrogance to the world. "We need to change to mobilize the world to help. I want to go to the U.N. General Assembly and say America is back."
He said he wants to help solve problems in education, AIDS and Darfur. "I want to lead by example." He said he would stop wiretapping American citizens without a warrant.
"I will always say what I believe. You can't solve global warming by saying (it doesn't exist). I'm not just asking you to trust in me, but to trust in yourself."
Obama wasn't the only candidate in Columbus this week. Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani was in the city for a private fundraiser on Thursday.
From his speech [2004 convention], we can see it's always been Obama's intention to transcend the political divide. For me, though, that wasn't his appeal. In today's media environment, one's opponent in a political campaign isn't the other candidates up on the debate floor -- it's the media itself. And Obama had an appeal in the eyes of journalists that is rarely found in a politician. Entertainers, sports figures -- those are the usual media darlings in this country. But Obama had that something.
And he certainly needed it. Because he would need his strength as a mediated personality to buffer him from his main structural disadvantage in the 2008 race: Bill Clinton.
See, the thing is, Hillary Clinton has got a built-in advantage over everyone -- any candidate who gets the Democratic nomination in 2008 is going to need the support of our country's most popular Democratic figure. That's her hubby, Bill. So to the extent that primary campaigns are about drawing distinctions, Hillary's opponents can only go so far. Piss off Bill, and good luck getting him to campaign for you in 2008.
Maybe not fair, but that's the Clinton Advantage.
So Barack Obama needed every bit of his media profile to take on Clinton in this campaign. But, the strangest thing happened. Turns out, Hillary's actually not like her caricature. She's often used humor -- her latest joke about getting attention from all the other men running for office is a great example -- to turn around her image. And, it turns out, the media seem to love her. Sure, we've had to deal with the "cackle" weekend, but that's come and gone, and hasn't seemed to change the dynamics of the race.
The other strange thing is, Obama, it turns out, isn't all that much of a media darling. Maybe the sound-bite, show-of-hands "debate" format doesn't suit him. Maybe he's not saying anything new, or exciting. Maybe he's turned out to be too risk-averse, pulling punches instead of letting it all hang out. Maybe it's just that Hillary is too busy capturing the attention of political journalists, and Obama's been relegated to the second tier.
As I said, the opponent here is the news media, and it seems to have, at least in part, contributed to his undoing.
October 28, 2007
Obama Promises a Forceful Stand Against Clinton
New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 27 ?- Senator Barack Obama said he would start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring Friday that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.
Mr. Obama's vow to go on the offensive comes just over two months before the first votes are cast for the Democratic nomination, and after a long period in which his aides, donors and other supporters have battled ?- and in some cases shared ?- the perception that he has not exhibited the aggressiveness demanded by presidential politics.
In an interview that appeared timed by his campaign to signal the change of course, Mr. Obama said "now is the time" for him to distinguish himself from Mrs. Clinton. While he said that he was not out to "kneecap the front-runner, because I don't think that's what the country is looking for," he said she was deliberately obscuring her positions for political gain and was less likely than he was to win back the White House for Democrats.
Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, "No."
"I don't think people know what her agenda exactly is," Mr. Obama continued, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been fully forthcoming.
"Now it's been very deft politically," he said. "But one of the things that I firmly believe is that we've got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we're going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election."
For months, Democrats, including some within his campaign, have questioned whether his promise to pursue a brand of politics that transcended partisanship had so handcuffed him that he could not compete in the most partisan of arenas.
Alan D. Solomont, a former contributor to both Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton who is now raising money for Mr. Obama in Boston, said there was a growing consensus that Mr. Obama had to ratchet up his intensity and draw sharper distinctions with Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and other rivals.
"The only way that he's going to be able to be clear with the American people," Mr. Solomont said in an interview, "is to draw a distinction between his candidacy and his ideas about change and those of other candidates. It's fair to say that he is beginning to do that, but he hasn't done enough yet."
In the interview, Mr. Obama acknowledged that he had held back until now, though he asserted it was a calculated decision to introduce himself in early voting states before engaging opponents. At times, he said, he has taken lines out of speeches prepared by his campaign that he felt were "stretching the truth."
But Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said the plan had always been for him to begin taking on Mrs. Clinton more directly in the fall. And he glared and said no when asked if he lacked the stomach for confrontational politics. "It is absolutely true that we have to make these distinctions clearer," he said. "And I will not shy away from doing that."
A test of just how far Mr. Obama is willing to go should come on Tuesday night, when Democrats meet for a nationally televised debate in Philadelphia.
The interview came amid growing signs that Mr. Obama was looking for a fresh start for his campaign after nine months in which his aides said they were startled by the effectiveness of Mrs. Clinton's campaign, and worried that her support was not as brittle as they had once believed.
Mr. Obama has built up his campaign war room, occasionally traveling with a speechwriter ?- reflecting concern of his aides that his public speeches tend to be long-winded ?- and begun spending more money on television advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire.
His senior aides said they were now spending much of their day fielding calls from concerned donors and other supporters asking why Mr. Obama was not challenging Mrs. Clinton more forcefully and warning that he could cede the role of the main anti-Clinton candidate to former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who is running an aggressive campaign in Iowa. Typically, one aide said, the supporter asks some version of the same question: "What happened to the Obama we saw at the 2004 Democratic convention?"
At the same time, aides said there was disagreement in the campaign about whether he should now begin investing all his time in Iowa, where polls show him to be running neck-and-neck with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, hoping that a victory there would give him a lift in New Hampshire, where polls show him trailing.
Morale at his Chicago headquarters, aides said, has been dragged down by the perception that Mrs. Clinton is lapping Mr. Obama. And aides said that they had been struggling for weeks for a balance between offering a contrast with Mrs. Clinton and avoiding the anger that they said had marked Mr. Edwards's candidacy.
In a 53-minute interview as he ate breakfast aboard a chartered jet that brought him here from Chicago, Mr. Obama said Mrs. Clinton had been untruthful or misleading in describing her positions on problems facing the nation. He accused her of "straddling between the Giuliani, Romney side of the foreign policy equation and the Barack Obama side of the equation." He said that she was trying to "sound or vote" like a Republican on national security issues and that that was "bad for the country and ultimately bad for Democrats."
Mr. Obama suggested that she was too divisive to win a general election and that if she won, she would be unable to bring together competing factions in Washington to accomplish anything.
"There is a legacy that is both an enormous advantage to her in a Democratic primary, but also a disadvantage to her in a general election," he said. "I don't think anybody would claim that Senator Clinton is going to inspire a horde of new voters," he said. "I don't think it's realistic that she is going to get a whole bunch of Republicans to think differently about her."
Asked about Mr. Obama's remarks, Mrs. Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said: "Senator Obama once promised Americans a politics of hope. But now that his campaign has stalled he is abandoning that strategy and is engaging in the same old-style personal attacks that he once rejected. We are confident that voters will reject this strategy, especially from a candidate who told us he would do better."
Mr. Obama said he was not concerned by a repeated spate of national polls showing lopsided support for Mrs. Clinton. "The national press for the last three months has written glowingly about her and not so much about me, so it's not surprising," he said. He described himself as an "underdog" running against a campaign that has "a 20-year head start when it comes to managing the spin of the national politics."
Many people are only beginning to focus on the race now, and early front-runners can easily stumble when the voting starts. But the Obama campaign has faced a political narrative in recent weeks that even Mr. Obama's aides have described, in no small part because of a succession of polls, as establishing Mrs. Clinton as the front-runner. In one small example, a member of Mr. Obama's national finance committee, Robert Farmer, told the campaign last week that he was formally switching allegiances to the Clinton campaign. Mr. Farmer has contributed money to five Democratic presidential candidates this year, including the maximum amount allowed to Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards.
Though Mr. Obama's criticisms of Mrs. Clinton were sharper than he has voiced during this campaign, they were, nonetheless, still somewhat restrained, certainly when compared with the criticisms that have been voiced of Mrs. Clinton by Mr. Edwards and much of the Republican field.
Mr. Obama rejected the suggestion that he had been constrained in taking on Mrs. Clinton more forcefully because of his promise, at the start of the campaign, to avoid the bitter partisanship of past campaigns. Mr. Obama, who aides suggested might be spending too much time reading blogs and newspaper clippings about the campaign, dismissively noted how the Clinton campaign regularly raised that line against him.
"I've been amused by seeing some of the commentary out of the Clinton camp, where every time we point out a difference between me and her, they say, ?'What happened to the politics of hope?' which is just silly," he said, laughing.
Asked why it was silly, he responded: "The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no disagreements and that we're all holding hands and singing ?'Kumbaya' is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have, hasn't been paying attention."
That said, Mr. Obama and his campaign have until now frequently avoided potential confrontations. Mr. Obama's aides said, for example, that they had declined an invitation from some networks to appear on Sunday morning talk shows after Mrs. Clinton the day she appeared on five in one day to talk about her health care plan.
I did it!
soz(delusionsofgrandeur)obe
(lookit that timing though, huh? ;-))
Hey, we can't prove your exhortation wasn't the tipping thing, can we?
As his chartered plane landed in Columbus and taxied across the tarmac, he leaned forward in his leather captain's chair and finished the interview with an inquiry of his own.
"So," he said, "give me some gossip about the Republicans."
In the interview, Mr. Obama acknowledged that he had held back until now, though he asserted it was a calculated decision to introduce himself in early voting states before engaging opponents.
COLUMBIA, S.C. ?- At Barack Obama's gospel concert here last night, more than 2,000 black evangelicals were singing, waving their hands and cramming the aisles ?- most enthusiastically when Donnie McClurkin, the superstar black gospel singer, decried the criticism he has generated because of his views that homosexuality is a choice.
He said his past statements about homosexuality had been twisted and he had been unfairly maligned. He segued into a hymn about standing up for one's self and thrust a defiant fist toward the ceiling. This led to a short pitch for Mr. Obama, who, he said, stands for change. "But the greatest change a person can have is not in politics," he said. "There is only one king."
Mr. McClurkin is the preacher who had said he was gay but was "cured" through prayer and tonight he was the star act in a parade of star acts, which included the Mighty Clouds.
Oct 29 2007 4:25 PM EDT
Barack Obama Fields Tough Questions At MTV/MySpace Forum
By Gil Kaufman
On the day a new poll showed him in a statistical dead heat with rival Senator Hillary Clinton among Democratic caucus voters in Iowa, Illinois Senator Barack Obama brought his message to the young voters at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Monday, where MTV/MySpace's second presidential dialogue took place.
Among the points in that message: He's in it to win it, and one of his first priorities when elected president will be to undo many of the policies of the Bush administration.
"If I didn't think I was the best president for the job, I wouldn't be running," said Obama, wearing his traditional dark suit and white shirt with no tie, continuing the casual dress code begun by Democratic candidate John Edwards in last month's forum. Facing a range of questions on issues large ?- gay marriage, tensions with Iran, immigration, religion ?- and a bit more obscure ?- the exportation of computer waste to foreign countries and Net neutrality ?- Obama answered the questions in a measured tone, while displaying a bit more of the aggressiveness he's promised to bring to the race. He even gamely answered a question about who might play him in a movie adaptation of his life story.
During the dialogue, Obama pointedly mentioned twice that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, drawing a sharp distinction between himself and Clinton ?- and he let loose on President Bush, decrying the failure of the No Child Left Behind education-reform program and promising as president to take a hard look at civil-liberties questions.
Answering a question about what kind of Supreme Court justices he might nominate, Obama ?- who noted that he taught constitutional law for 10 years at the University of Chicago ?- said, "Your next president will believe in the Constitution, which you can't say about your current president." He said he doesn't believe in allowing the Supreme Court to give a "blank check" to the president to engage in whatever "power grab" he or she wishes, and that one of his first priorities as president would be to review every executive order issued by Bush on issues such as warrantless wiretapping and overturn them if they are found to be unconstitutional.
For Obama, the timing for the forum (held in front of more than 250 students) couldn't have been better, as the results of a University of Iowa poll of likely caucus-goers were released on Monday, placing Obama in a statistical dead heat with leading Democratic presidential candidate Clinton. According to the results, Clinton received 28.9 percent of the vote to Obama's 26.6 percent, a lead wiped out by the 5.5 percent margin of error. The tie pulls Obama up from his third-place showing in a similar poll in August in the crucial state, which traditionally holds the first nominating contest, this cycle on January 3.
Moderated by Gideon Yago and Sway Calloway, with poll results and questions also being sent Obama's way by WashingtonPost.com political reporter Chris Cillizza, Obama did some quick math and figured out that if all the students on the campus of the tiny college (1,200 students) voted in the upcoming caucus, they could make a huge impact.
If Obama did not have as many concrete policy proposals as Edwards presented in his forum, it may have been because, at times, the tenor of the questions was a bit more personal than that of the first MTV/MySpace forum. Beginning with the first query on how Obama's religious beliefs would impact his administration, the candidate set a tone that his presidency would be in marked contrast to that of Bush's.
"My faith informs my values," Obama said. "Part of the reason I believe it's important to help those in need is because of my faith. But I am a strong believer that the founding fathers put separation of church and state in place for a reason. ... Not only to prevent the state from being taken over by one church and forcing people to worship in a particular way, but also to protect the church ?- or synagogue or mosque or temple ?- from undue influence by the government. And I think there have been times during this administration when maybe those lines have gotten blurred and made people with different faiths or no faith at all uncomfortable."
The unscripted forum, with questions from the students in the room, MySpace users via Instant Messenger and MTV.com readers through e-mail, also featured live, instant polling from the Flektor tool, which gave Obama immediate feedback on how the online audience was feeling about the senator's answers. The second forum also featured a partnership with 10questions.com, a site in which voters can prioritize which questions they want the candidates to answer by submitting them in video form, which chipped in with the #1 question on its users' mind: what about Net neutrality?
Obama said he was a strong supporter of Net neutrality (which he explained to those in the audience as a system to forbid certain companies from controlling the speed and quality of the Internet experience), mainly because it enhances something that makes the Internet great: equality. "Facebook, MySpace, Google might not have been started if you didn't have a level playing field for who has the best idea," he said.
Obama also reiterated his support for civil unions for same-sex couples, giving props to the younger generation for being more open to change, and saying that as one of the younger candidates in the race, he wants to be a part of that process. "Part of my job as president I think is to deliver a message that everybody is part of the American family," he said. "Not just some people. And obviously as somebody who is African-American ?- my mother is from Kansas, my father was from Kenya, I grew up in Indonesia, I have a sister who looks Spanish, I've got a brother in law who is Chinese-Canadian ?- I'm very sensitive to making sure that everybody feels a part of America. And that's one of the things I think I can bring to this presidency. The day I'm inaugurated the country will look at itself differently and I think be more tolerant."
Obama slammed the Bush administration for not properly funding No Child Left Behind, saying he'd rethink the system to include art and music and more creative pursuits that foster student's imaginations, as well as emphasizing early childhood education. When the student who asked the question seemed unimpressed, Obama replied, "What more do you need, Mike?," before assuring him that students for whom English is a second language would not be penalized under his revised system.
In one of the more emotional moments, a student whose illegal-immigrant father had been deported three years ago asked Obama about his thoughts on immigration. First asking the woman to talk about the personal situation a bit more, Obama empathized with her struggle, then reiterated his support for comprehensive immigration reform, saying he would like to provide a pathway for the legalization of the 12 million illegals already here while increasing border security.
Asked via an IM question if he'd be willing to run on a ticket with Clinton and if he'd bring Republicans into his cabinet, Obama answered the second part first, saying, yes, he would absolutely consider having some Republicans in his Cabinet, noting that "Democrats don't have a monopoly on wisdom." As for the Clinton question, Obama said forcefully that it's too early to say who he might pick as his vice president, but stressed that "I am not running for vice president." What if the position was offered, Cillizza queried? "No," said Obama. "Because, as I said, I'm not running for vice president, I'm running for president of the United States." Coming more than 20 minutes into the forum, the latter received the first sustained applause of the afternoon.
Obama also reiterated that he would be willing to talk to such rogue nations as Iran and use diplomacy ?- not unilateral military action ?- to try to repair the image of the United States on the world stage. He promised to close the controversial terror detainee jail at Guantánamo Bay, restore the right of habeas corpus to detainees and to bring back all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his arrival in the Oval Office. He told an ROTC cadet that he thinks it's unfair that members of the military are serving long, multiple tours overseas and not getting the appropriate veteran's benefits and that he would ensure the U.S. remains the strongest military power in the world while being more open to diplomacy.
As the forum drew to a close, with his overall ratings among Flektor voters bumping up a few points to show that nearly 87 percent agreed with his positions, Obama faced perhaps the least expected question of the day from one of the reporters from the school's newspaper: Who would play him and his wife in a movie about his life? When Sway demurred after it was suggested he might have to cut his hair to play the role, Obama said Denzel Washington was out of the picture, so perhaps it would fall to Will Smith, if only because "his ears match mine," Obama joked. As for who would play his wife, Michelle, Obama wisely answered, "Nobody's that good looking. She'd have to play herself."
Questioned by Cillizza about criticism that he's not improving his poll numbers fast enough and that he needs to be more aggressive, Obama said he firmly believes in the politics of hope, though not necessarily a group-hug version. "The politics of hope ... is not based on us all holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya,' " Obama said. "It is based on the idea that instead of people operating on the basis of fear, instead of people operating on the basis of division, I want people to come together and focus on the problems that we face: health care, education, global warming. We are not going to be able to solve those problems if we don't talk about them honestly. And we've got to have a serious debate. Senator Clinton and I have differences. If I didn't think I was the best president for the job, I wouldn't be running.
"As long as I understand that this is not about either me or her, but this is about the American people and whether they're getting the kind of leadership they deserve, I think we'll be just fine. I think democracy is served by a vigorous debate."
In a meeting hall at the fairground in rural Tipton, Obama was pointedly invited to criticize Clinton recently when a 65-year-old woman asked, "Why should I vote for you instead of Hillary Clinton?"
Instead, he gave a somewhat rambling answer that began by complimenting Clinton as "very capable," "smart" and "tough." He also said she would be a "vast improvement over George Bush." Then he mildly knocked her for what he called her "conventional" views on foreign policy. Five minutes later, he concluded: "If you're still unpersuaded, talk to me afterwards, 'cause I got more stuff for you, but I don't want to use up all my time."
This is good, but I have my doubts that trying to be "clear with the American people" on these particular subjects is going to do the trick. [..] We've already seen Obama try to get some mileage out of the rather narrow differences he has with Hillary over Social Security, Iraq and Iran, and there's just no there there. There are differences, but they're too small to build a campaign on.
What Obama needs is a brand new issue. If you've been following British politics for the past couple of months, you have an idea of what I'm talking about here. [..]
Continuing to hammer on the same issues he's been talking about for the past six months, even if he does it more aggressively, isn't likely to gain him more than a few points in the polls, and there's just not enough time left for that to do him any good. Instead, he needs something that comes out of left field and blindsides Hillary. Something small, perhaps (Cameron's inheritance tax proposal wasn't really that big a deal), but with a lot of broad, symbolic appeal. Any ideas?
I read the NY Times piece on how Obama was going to go on attack, and I saw Obama in action this morning in Iowa. If what I saw is attack mode, we're doomed.
Obama spoke for probably 40 minutes and then took 3 questions (2 from people wearing T-shirts about their issues, and 1 from someone who seemed to be a staffer). It was all very controlled.
Obama mentioned Hillary by name twice. The first time was to reference the dispute about whether you could talk to dictators in your first year in office. The second was to discuss Hillarycare. Obama gave Hillary props for trying, but then critiqued her closed-door approach. He said he'd talk to the people and take out his own TV ads if necessary. That's all.
There was a fair amount of rhetoric about how he'd tell the truth, and how voters should choose a politician they trust, but that's pretty much indistinguishable from other candidates' Iowan stump speeches.
Maybe he's planning on rolling out his sharpened elbows outside of Iowa???
Posted by: Blue in IA on October 27, 2007 at 5:53 PM
