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theological sense, more Christian - than that of rivals whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate. The fresh-faced politics of joy may be trumping the five-o'clock-shadow of Nixonian gloom and paranoia favored by the entire G.O.P. field with the sometime exception of John McCain.
On the same day of Mr. Romney's speech, two new polls found Mr. Huckabee with a substantial lead over him and Mr. Giuliani in South Carolina, a stunning reversal from a month ago. Don't be surprised if a desperate Mitt, who has "accidentally" referred to Mr. Obama as "Osama," does desperate things. South Carolina's 2000 Republican primary was a jamboree of race-baiting that included a whispering campaign branding Senator McCain as the father of an illegitimate black child. The local political operative who worked for George W. Bush in that race and engineered the infamous Bush visit to Bob Jones University is now in Mr. Romney's employ.
Mr. Huckabee may well be doomed in the long term. He has little money or organization. He's so ignorant of foreign affairs that he hadn't heard of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran a day after its release. His sometimes wacky economic populism riles his party's most important constituency, Wall Street. And who knows how many other Arkansas scandals will be disinterred along with the paroled serial rapist who popped out last week? That Mr. Huckabee has gotten as far as he has shows just how in sync his benign style is with the cultural moment.
To understand why he can't be completely dismissed, consider last month's Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. Peter Hart, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team that conducts the survey, told me in an interview last week that an overwhelming majority of voters of both parties not only want change but also regard "reducing the partisan fighting in government" as high on their agenda. To his surprise, Mr. Hart found that there's even a majority (59 percent) seeking a president who would help America in "regaining respect around the world."
This climate, of course, favors the Democrats, especially if the Republicans choose a candidate who brands them as the party of rage and fear - and even more especially if their Tancredo-ism drives a large Hispanic turnout for the national Democratic ticket in Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. But a Democratic victory is not guaranteed. The huge spread in the Journal-NBC poll between an unnamed Democrat and Republican in the presidential race - 50 to 35 percent - shrank to a 1 percent lead when Mrs. Clinton was pitted against Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Obama's campaign, though hardly the long shot of Mr. Huckabee's, could also fall short. But the Clinton camp's panic over his rise in the Iowa polls shows that he's on the right tactical track. The more polarizing and negative a candidate turns in style, the more that candidate risks playing Nixon to Mr. Obama's Kennedy. That Mrs. Clinton's minions would attack Mr. Obama for unseemly ambition because he wrote a kindergarten report called "I Want to Become President" - and then snidely belittle the press for falling for "a joke" once this gambit backfired - is Rudy-Romneyesque in its vituperative folly.
Experience, like nastiness, may also prove a dead end in the year ahead. In 1960, the experience card was played by all comers against the young upstart senator from Massachusetts. In Iowa, L.B.J. went so far as to tell voters that they should vote for "a man with a little gray in his hair." But experience, Kennedy would memorably counter, "is like taillights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going."
The most experienced candidate in 2008 is not Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney in any case. It's Mr. McCain, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson who have the longest résumés. Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama, meanwhile, are both betting that this is another crossroads, like 1960, when Americans are hungry for a leader who will refocus the nation on the path ahead.
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