Stop me if you've read this column before.
In 1999, I wrote a dreamy tribute to then presidential candidate Bill Bradley and commented: "I don't believe that I will ever live in a country that elects Bill Bradley president. I'd like to live in that country, though."
In 2002, 27 months before Howard Dean's presidential campaign imploded, I wrote: "Howard Dean is the story we tell ourselves every four years; the Paul Tsongas story, the Bruce Babbitt story, the John Anderson story. It is a very diverting fable, this notion of the brilliant, worthy, and committed outsider who has a decent chance of becoming our next president."
No stranger to self-plagiarism, I added: "I wouldn't mind living in a country where Howard Dean was president, but somehow I don't think that I will."
Meet Barack Obama, the BradleyDeanBabbittTsongas of the 2008 election cycle.
I can't recapitulate in just a few words the outpourings of numerous magazine covers, network television features , and acres of cuddly op-ed commentary. In their current revue, Chicago's Second City comedy troupe lampoons Obama-mania: "Barack is accessible," one actor explains to a fictional Hillary Clinton. "You want to talk to him, you want to hang out with him. You want him to lie on top of you and sing you a lullaby."
Let me repeat: I wouldn't mind living in a country where Barack Obama is president. Brains; candor; charisma; ambition hitched to a work ethic; I admire those qualities. But frankly, the people who've ponied up $4,600 for Obama in this election cycle might as well have piled the money on the kitchen table and set fire to it. Or donated it to the Audubon Society, which has a lot better chance of being in business a year from now than Obama's presidential campaign.
If you listen closely, the silent dog whistle is already blowing for the Obama candidacy, and the tune it is playing is taps.
Earlier this year, The New Yorker asked the three leading Democratic presidential candidates how they might manage the Iraq war . As opposed to Hillary Clinton, who, according to the magazine, "speaks with confidence and directness" on the subject, Barack "has not yet articulated an overarching national security world view." That's OK; he's only a first-term senator, not far removed from local Illinois politics. But in extended interviews, Obama comes off as more of a Darfur guy than an Iraq guy, meaning that he is better informed about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan than he is about the briar patch of a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers.
A more recent New Yorker article depicted Obama as an emotionally centered, mellow cat. Inevitably, the political pros are asking themselves: Does he have the fire in the belly? Does he have What It Takes?
Last week, The New York Times profiled Obama's spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Wright is an inspirational minister responsible for Obama's embrace of Christian values and mission. The Times politely calls Wright's politics "Afrocentric," but Obama's political rivals will call them black separatist when it behooves them to do so. So, in a high-stakes, nationally televised debate, Obama might be called upon to defend his pastor and church, or abjure his faith.
I write this with my head, not my heart. I've discussed this column with friends, who point to Obama's astonishing fund-raising ability, or Hillary Clinton's purported unelectability as counter-arguments. I reply: Money isn't everything, and I have stopped believing in Clinton's unelectability. She's walked through fire too many times. The setbacks and unspeakable humiliations thrown in her face didn't kill her, they made her stronger.
This time, I fear it is Barack Obama who is going to get burned.
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