Obama vs. McCain Clash of the Generations
It is a moment Barack Obama has longed for, one he has evoked hundreds of times -- in his campaign speeches, in the many interviews and in 20 television debates. For the past 15 months, his days have started at 5 a.m. and ended at midnight, days that have sometimes included five appearances and sometimes as much as 20. He has spent the past 15 months gearing up for this very moment.
At times it seemed almost within reach. After Iowa, for example, at the very beginning of the campaign. And at times the moment seemed hopelessly out of reach. But now that moment has finally arrived, and the place is St. Paul, Minnesota.
Was it worth it? Will it be a moment of pleasure for Barack Obama? Or is the end of one campaign merely the beginning of another?
When Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama steps onto the stage at the somewhat undignified and overly commercial sounding Xcel Energy Center, he spends the first few minutes saying nothing but "thank you." Nodding energetically to his fans in the crowd, he calls out his "thank yous" into a mounting sea of applause. He says it so many times that the television commentators, on their podiums, start counting Obama's thank yous. With no analyses today, they seem at a loss for words.
The United States has voted 43 presidents into office. Americans have a history marked by slavery and civil war, racial unrest, murder and the civil rights movement, and now they have their first black presidential candidate. He is standing there, in the spotlight on a stage in St. Paul, wearing a dark suit, turning to all sides, and saying "thank you" -- 39 times.
His fans have been waiting for him for more than five hours, 20,000 people crowded into an ice hockey arena. They have kept track of the results of the last two primaries on their iPhones and Blackberrys. They have heard Republican candidate John McCain refer to Obama's idea of change as the "wrong change" and his version as the "right change." They have heard from Obama's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who had withdrawn to the basement of a college in Manhattan with no mobile phone reception to come up with an exit strategy -- only to end up insisting that she was, in fact, still the better candidate. As recently as Tuesday of last week, it seemed that Hillary Clinton was incapable of understanding that the race was over.
The 44th president of the United States will be male, once again. Now that the two major parties have their de facto candidates, it is clear that the next president will be either Barack Obama or John McCain.
Number 44 will have a lot of cleaning up, repairing and renovating to do. Number 44 will have to prescribe a new direction for the country and for the rest of the world. The new man in the Oval Office will follow on the heels of George W. Bush, Number 43, the man that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan described as an "affable bumbler."
Cleaning Up a Disaster
There is no doubt about it. The legacy George W. Bush will leave behind is devastating. The United States, the greatest superpower of all time, has lost influence and authority on every continent, even on its own. It's a reality the next president will have to live with, and it will be his job to regain political and moral authority. Number 44 will have to pay off debt, create a social safety net and then stabilize it. The new president will have to bring home the troops and yet continue to protect the country, acknowledge climate change and yet secure the country's energy supply, strengthen friendships and, most of all, reinvigorate America's confidence in its ability to solve its own problems. He will have to restore Americans' faith in their country as a special place.
This is the standard by which Number 44 will be measured -- and voted into the White House. And now, on this Tuesday in St. Paul, it is Barack Obama, the winner of the Democratic semifinal, who suddenly seems infinitely greater than his opponent of the recent past. At this moment, his moment, he also seems greater than his opponent of the near future.
There are several reasons to explain Obama's victory, as well as a number of truths behind Clinton's defeat. Never before has America experienced a grassroots campaign quite like Obama's. Every e-mail address was stored, not a single call was lost and at Obama headquarters in Chicago, people -- not machines -- paid attention to the cares and concerns of citizens. Even at 3 a.m. Instead of depending on major donors, Obama pinned his hopes on the millions of his often-young supporters, who would donate $25 today -- online -- and perhaps another $30 eight weeks later. "This is your campaign," he kept repeating, and the fact that he managed to turn it into a movement is mostly his own achievement.
An Honest and Sincere Candidate
It didn't hurt that Obama came across as honest and sincere. He was upfront with voters when he explained his misgivings about the radical pastor of his church, Jeremiah Wright. At the same time, he told them why he found it so difficult to drop a friend after so many years. The country could have called Obama weak, but instead it believed him.
Another plus for Obama was that no one was as savvy about US election laws as his campaign manager, David Axelrod. In Iowa, Axelrod already knew how many delegates were to be had in which district by the time Hillary's troops had showed up to rent office space.
Finally, Team Obama stuck together. There were no firings, no indiscretions, and not even his campaign slogan, "Change We Can Believe In," had to be fine-tuned. It was the perfect campaign.
The reason it was so perfect was that Obama refused to abandon his conviction that he is precisely what America needs: a fresh face that promises change, absolution for the sins and recovery from the consequences of the Bush era. Obama talked a lot in those 15 months, and yet there were only two words he truly needed to win: "hope" and "change."
According to the conventional wisdom of American election campaigns, Obama should never have won the Democratic primary, because he is black and inexperienced to boot. But he used both features to his advantage. "America, this is our moment," he calls out to his fans in St. Paul, offering himself up, once again, as proof positive that America is more luminous than its ruling class.
What is most attractive about Obama is that he is new and different. Even though it prompted some to question his patriotism, he decided that it was no longer necessary to wear an American flag lapel pin, and so far he has managed to downplay the resulting polemics as nonsense. He creates the impression of caring less about pollsters than others do. When his strategists told him that his old nickname, Barry, would be better received than the name Barack -- foreign-sounding to many and downright terroristic in Texas -- he smiled and stuck with Barack.
Sometimes his skin color even protects him against attacks. It draws attention to him and arouses curiosity. And to underscore the historic significance of his candidacy, he has made a point of peppering his speeches with the names of some of America's monumental presidents -- Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy. "Welcome to Obama One," a flight attendant said, in February 2007, as he boarded his first flight to his first campaign appearance, at John F. Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
A Known Entity vs. the Sensation of the Season
Last Monday, Obama could be seen standing standing in a high school once again, but this time his attention was focused squarely on his Republican opponent. He spoke in a high-school gymnasium in Troy, Michigan, a place that sees itself as a "city of tomorrow," despite its location in the heart of American car-building country, where so many jobs have been lost in recent years. Troy is an enclave of affluence in the midst of America's demise. It is also a place where worlds collide, worlds that Obama plans to unite.
The Promise of a New America
A student led the audience in cheers for Obama, and the audience responded, telling their candidate that they were "fired up, ready to go." Then they called out, "Yes, we can," that rallying cry of the season, one that half the world has since taken up . It was a long campaign, said Obama, one of the longest and toughest in history. "Fifteen months," he said. "The babies who were born at the beginning of the campaign can now walk and talk." But, he added, it was time well spent, because it made him a better candidate.
He was also open to questions at the appearance, and first a boy, then a girl and then a boy again walked up to the microphone. Finally, a shy female student with long black hair, her voice shaking, asked the candidate: "Mr. Obama, how will you bring the change to help us?" "Which change?" Obama asked in response. "A specific change or all the different kinds of change I've been talking about?" Indeed, Obama is promising nothing less than a completely different America -- an America that is tolerant, environmentally responsible and, finally, benevolent once again.
Obama and McCain are facing off as two men who promise to bring the country redemption after eight years of Bush. The attractiveness of both candidates lies in their own biographies more than in their platforms. On the left is Obama who, as the country's first African-American president, could finally bring this former society of slaveholders to surpass its own expectations once again. And on the right is McCain, who spent five years imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam, an experience that turned him into a symbol of honor in a time when it was in short supply. Who, if not John McCain, can defend something on the order of America's pride in the Iraq war today? And who, if not Barack Obama, brings a similar measure of moral authority to the table as McCain?
McCain is the epitome of the white patriot in a country dominated by them. The McCains are part of America's military aristocracy. John McCain's grandfather, an admiral in World War II, commanded an aircraft carrier group in the Pacific.
As a student, John McCain was a rebel, a ne'er-do-well and a poor scholar at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He preferred to spend his time chasing girls and reading good literature instead of studying for his classes. In a book about McCain and other Naval Academy graduates, "The Nightingale's Song," Robert Timberg describes the young McCain as the "tough guy type, a tenacious, mean little asshole."
As a soldier, McCain was captured and held as a P.O.W. by the Vietnamese, with broken limbs and no medical care. As a candidate, McCain is unable to comb his own hair or lift his arms in a victory pose. The scars on his face are the result of a skin cancer operation. As a candidate, he is a hero, the kind America loves because he put his life on the line for his country when the country demanded his service. But he is also a branded hero.
With his purism and his tendency to go it alone, McCain still retains something of the rebel of his youth, of the reckless navy pilot. Thad Cochran, a fellow senator and Republican, says: "The thought of McCain being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." In fact, McCain is notorious for his temper, which raises the question of whether he is even fit for the job he is seeking. He will be 72 this fall. If he wins the election, McCain will be the oldest newly elected president in American history.
Barack Obama is 25 years his junior, a gangly, boyish man with sex appeal who plays basketball for relaxation, and is a decent player to boot. He has two daughters and a glamorous, quick-witted wife -- the model African-American family. Obama grew up in a multicultural environment. His mother was a white American and his father a black Kenyan. In his books, Obama writes about his search for his own identity and about how that search brought him back to the African-American community, even though he realized early on that black Americans would have trouble accepting a Harvard graduate as one of their own.
Tough, Resilient and Sophisticated Candidates
Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic contenders underestimated Obama. They thought he lacked the necessary toughness. But now the country has two candidates, McCain and Obama, who are both tough, resilient and sophisticated.
McCain, with his quiet voice, has the charisma of a determined American. Obama is more of the preacher type, only more effective. His sermon-like speeches are unpretentious and highly rhythmic and poetic, at times almost songlike.
McCain is uncomfortable with large crowds. He reads his speeches stiffly from the teleprompter, and yet he knows his way around world politics. Obama has had few encounters with world politics, and yet he spent his childhood in worldly places: Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
McCain is the known entity, while Obama is the sensation of the season.
It promises to be an exciting duel, a contest between two men from two different generations, with biographies as dissimilar as they might be if they were from two different planets. Obama says that character is more important than experience, especially when it comes to experience gained within the Washington establishment. McCain insists that the White House is no place for beginners.
In a sense, their characters and positions give both men the aura of über-politicians with an aura of invulnerability. Criticism of Obama can always be interpreted as racism. And in McCain's case, few of those who write or talk about him can claim to have anything approaching the same resume. Indeed, no one has the moral authority to face McCain eye-to-eye and debate over issues like courage and duty and service to one's country.
If one thing is clear, it is that in campaigns like this one, voters can only gain a limited sense of how well suited the candidates may be for the office. A strength in the campaign can turn into a devastating weakness in the presidency. Candidates Bill Clinton and George W. Bush won their elections because voters let themselves be captivated by their charm and roguish natures. But it was precisely these traits that, after their initial victories, eventually plunged Presidents Clinton and Bush into the various abysses of their respective terms.
But the character traits that were tested in the duel between Obama and Clinton were perseverance, resilience, quick-wittedness and strategic thinking. There is no longer any serious doubt that Obama has the necessary stature to be president. In fact, he now sees himself as "battle-hardened."
And McCain? His adversaries were less formidable, and he emerged from the Republican primaries oddly untested. When he secured the party's nomination on March 4, McCain had only 90 people on his campaign's payroll. Month after month, Obama takes in more than twice as much in campaign contributions as McCain.
Will Voters Reject Obama for Being too Young or McCain for Being too Old?
Of course, McCain tried to use the weeks of Democratic self-destruction to his benefit -- and to repeatedly highlight a life story so strongly influenced by his years as a P.O.W. In the first week of April, he went on a campaign tour to places that were important in his own life: to Mississippi, the home of his grandfather, an admiral, to the famed Naval Academy in Annapolis and to Florida, where he was stationed before he was sent to Vietnam. "He talks too much about himself and not enough about the voters," says a senior Republican Party official.
McCain has yet to decide on a clear strategy, which could still prove to be a serious problem for him. He is forced to make allowances for the 28 percent of Americans who are still behind Bush, which explains why he supports Bush's tax cuts for the rich today, even though he was opposed to them in the past. "Embracing Bush, even as gingerly as McCain did ... is like hugging an anchor," writes the National Journal, an influential Washington magazine. Sixty-nine percent of Americans are dissatisfied with Bush's performance, which is why McCain also tries to point out the differences between himself and his fellow Republican, the president.
Despite all this, will McCain move further to the right and try to win over the still-skeptical conservative base? Or will he try his luck in the political center, because those voters are already favorably disposed toward McCain today? And can the center be enough to win the election?
It looks that way, at least at the moment. Obama and McCain are almost neck-and-neck in the polls, and Obama was already on shaky ground in the so-called swing states, places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, during the primaries.
Or will McCain's bid for the White House quickly fall apart because he lacks a message? Obama has "change" and "hope," while McCain has himself, a "man of honor," and his 71 years to Obama's 46. This could very well end up being the true focus of the election.
It is hard to say whether voters will ultimately reject Obama for being too young or McCain for being too old. But election campaigns are always at least partly about roles and clichés, which is why the battle of the sexes could soon turn into the battle of the generations. The race between Obama and McCain is reminiscent of the dynamics in a family business, one in which the patriarch refuses to give up his territory, while the young heir to the business is convinced that he has already surpassed his father. "Move over, Daddy," says the young man, but the father isn't about to give up without a fight. "Slow down, son," he says to the young man, "because experience is what counts here." Youth wins out in the end, in most cases, but the question is when?
Of course, the younger man is also vulnerable. McCain's biggest opportunity could be to question Obama's credibility as an American, and to portray him as the beneficiary of an elite society, as a snob who prefers Swiss cheese over American cheddar, as a gourmet who drinks expensive wine -- French, no less -- instead of beer, and as an aristocrat who is out of touch with America's white middle class, a man who barely knows how to bowl. In the United States, a society that values hard work and the self-made man, the word "elitist" is a toxic label.
It would be a classic strategy. Boring? Of course. It would be the same old campaign filled with negative campaign ads and character assassination. Transparent? Extremely. But in early June, four years ago, 150 days before the November election, no one would have thought that John Kerry could lose against George W. Bush.
The sparring is already underway, at least when it comes to foreign policy positions. Obama recently said that he would even talk to enemies like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or dictators, which, in itself, isn't terribly unusual. Even the Bush administration talks to its enemies -- at least quietly. But Obama's problem is that he said it publicly.
Is he betraying America's interests? Can a politician who favors soft diplomacy hold his own against the powers of evil? The crux of the issue is whether someone like this can be entrusted with the security of the United States. To dispel any such doubts, Obama made it clear last week that he too would resort to the military option if diplomacy failed.
On the evening of the last primary, the hosts of political talk shows were asking a telling question: "Is he one of us?" It is this malicious question that will keep Obama on his toes throughout the entire presidential election campaign because, at its core, it addresses fundamental American values. Indirectly, it even serves the purposes of those who have reservations about voting for an African-American but would rather not express them out loud.
Of course, the fact that the polls currently show the candidates in a dead heat could be deceptive, something on the order of McCain's last hurrah before defeat. Hillary Clinton's supporters, especially women, still smarting after her defeat, have yet to throw their support behind Obama. And yet the turnout in the Democratic primaries was so large, and America seems to be so passionate about wanting change, that it could very well be a matter of weeks before the two camps within the Democratic Party have reconciled. If the blue-collar voters and white women who backed Clinton join forces with the blacks, young people and urban Americans in Obama's camp, they could form a Democratic majority that would continue to grow between now and Election Day on November 4.
Clinton lost to Obama because of her amazingly poorly organized campaign. For a long time -- far too long -- she pinned her hopes on her chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, who had helped her husband gain reelection in 1996. Penn emphasized toughness, telling Hillary that "the human element is overrated" and advising her not to be too emotional, but instead to come across as a fighter.
Plan B wasn't put into place until the race had already been decided. Plan B was to portray Hillary as the country's first female president, a woman who would run the country in a completely different way -- softer, smarter and with more empathy -- than all the cynics in Washington.
But it was an image that ended up favoring the male candidate, and Obama eventually captured the majority of delegates. In the final week, it took Hillary a few days to acknowledge the primary results and yield to pressure from within her own party. On Tuesday, she was still talking like a candidate. By Thursday, she was talking about supporting Obama in uniting the party. But what she was really saying was: Yes, I've lost.
The long primary season has split Democratic voters into camps separated by deep divides. White women support Hillary because they need the health insurance she talked about day after day, because what they lack is not Obama's inspiration but better healthcare for husbands returning from the war, and because they want the jobs that Hillary promised. Most of all, they wanted Hillary to show the country that a woman can indeed win in the end with tenacity and hard work.
The failure of this idea has embittered Clinton's female supporters. This explains why Theresa Ciccone was standing at the entrance to Clinton's election party in New York last Tuesday evening, shouting: "I will never, ever vote for him. Never." She is talking about Obama. Did Hillary lose because she is a woman? "Hillary didn't lose because she's a woman, but because she is a smart and hard-working woman," says Ciccone.
It could be the last twist in this grotesquely drawn-out primary season -- that, in the end, Hillary Clinton could very well decide how far Barack Obama will go. The question is not whether she will support him. Of course she will. The question is how seriously and passionately she will be able to support him.
Last week Clinton's aides launched a massive effort to promote Hillary as Obama's running mate. In the United States, a joint Obama-Clinton candidacy is viewed as a "dream ticket." But Obama's advisors have made it clear that this arrangement is probably the last thing their boss wants to see happen.
What he really wants is to finally be rid of Hillary, to shake her off, because he has had enough of her, of her scathing criticism and her constantly nagging husband. Nevertheless, he met with Clinton in Washington on Thursday evening.
The primaries had ended but the frenzy had remained. Perhaps the best advice came from old, gray Walter Mondale, the vice-president under former President Jimmy Carter.
Mondale said: "I think it's best he just be left alone." After all, Obama now faces the most important decision of his campaign.
KLAUS BRINKBÄUMER, MARC HUJER, CORDULA MEYER, GERHARD SPÖRL
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
