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State of the Anti-Establishment Groundswell
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Posted by Pete on Jan 08, 2008 - 12:15 AM | Courant.com
The Start Of An Anti-Establishment Groundswell?
Bill Curry
January 6, 2008
News seldom means what you think. New Hampshire may upend expectations this week just as Iowa did last week. Come November, I may be pretending to know how Fred Thompson stormed from behind to catch Bill Richardson at the finish. But I doubt it.
The caucuses left the country giddy, and with good reason. Who recalls the last time young people made a difference in politics? The big news out of Iowa is that despite corruption and gridlock in government, we still believe in democracy and may even have managed to pass it on to the next generation.
Like every TV talking head, I'm convinced it all signals some sort of revolution, though I probably don't know any better than they do exactly what sort. Like most uprisings, this one's clearest about what it's against — namely everything our politics has become.
Democrats helped foster the insurrection, notably by taking over Congress and then failing to move the ball past midfield on issues that matter. People recall the excesses of the Clinton years and watched in 2006 as lobbyists in Congress transferred their affections to a new regime.
One result was Democrats finishing in roughly reverse order of experience. The longest-serving — Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Richardson and Dennis Kucinich — divvied up just 3 percent of the pie. Among front-runners, Hillary Clinton, the most experienced, finished last, John Edwards, next most experienced, second. Obama, the newest kid on the block, was first by a mile.
Dodd and Biden were gone from the race by bedtime. Their mistake may have been spending their lives preparing for the job. In a different year, Dodd's golden tongue and silver mane might have stood him in better stead. But this wasn't the year to look and sound so much like a senator.
Barack Obama probably leaves Iowa with enough momentum to sweep New Hampshire. If he does, Clinton will be mortally wounded. Her two arguments — experience and electability — got blown to smithereens Thursday night. She has five days to do a complete political makeover. It will be like trying to comb her hair in a wind tunnel.
In her gracious concession, Clinton stood flanked by her husband, whom she seemed not to notice, his secretary of state, Madeline Albright, and former child fundraising prodigy Terry McAuliffe, so waxen and still they looked like a tableaux from Madame Tussaud's.
Her speech was strong till the end, when she seemed to search for a finish, perhaps knowing she's in need of a new closing argument.
Obama's speech was the very opposite. Victory speeches are, as you might guess, a lot easier to give. But Obama's people had done something smart.
Perhaps heeding the lesson of Howard Dean, and perhaps knowing Obama's still better at personifying his message than delivering it, they scripted and choreographed every syllable and gesture as if for a convention. The effect was powerful. I can't recall another Iowa winner leaving the state looking quite so presidential, and this from the rookie.
Things were just as interesting on the Republican side. Mike Huckabee is a first-rate candidate who started further back than Obama and wound up winning just as big. The good news for the republic is he got outspent 15-1 and won anyway, which confirms once again that in presidential politics at least, the importance of money is overstated.
Huckabee departs Iowa with far less certain prospects. Obama showed he can appeal outside his base, proving in the bargain that a nearly all-white state can see past race, which ranks with the best news the country has had about itself in a while.
Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has yet to prove he can reach beyond his solid base of evangelicals. Part of his appeal to them was that he seemed to be of purer motives than the Ralph Reeds, Pat Robertsons and other faith-based hustlers who have manipulated them for so long.
An ordained minister who peddles creationism and thinks the current administration isn't religious enough may prove a little too pure for everyone else. If so, with Mitt Romney nearly as wounded as Clinton, John McCain may have won almost as much in Iowa as Obama.
Obama vs. McCain? And I thought I'd never again look forward to a debate.
Bill Curry, former counselor to President Clinton, was the Democratic nominee for governor twice. His column appears Sundays on the Other Opinion page. He can be reached at billcurryct@gmail.com.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
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