Barack Obama is saying nothing, but doing so eloquently, he is "humble in all the right places," and he is just exotic enough at a time when people are sick and tired of all the same old faces. So says columnist Froma Harrop, who compares the senator to a couple of Hoosiers:
In 1996, Richard Lugar ran for president as a brainy, issue-oriented moderate and all around decent guy. He said back then that the voters had tired of the mud-throwing and cheap sound bites in Washington. "If they really want shouters and screamers," the dark-suited Lugar said, "then they'll vote for someone else."
Lugar lost the Republican nomination to Bob Dole, who then lost the election to Bill Clinton.
Indiana's junior senator, Democrat Evan Bayh, recently visited New Hampshire to weigh his prospects for a 2008 presidential run. He was flattened by crowds running to see Obama, and dropped out.
What was Obama saying that other centrists would not have? Absolutely nothing.
Obama talked about ending the nastiness in Washington and taking personal responsibility, and that government can't solve all problems -- platitudes emptied of all controversy. If anything, his colleagues from Indiana would surely have offered more exciting commentary.
Obama's appeal comes not from the things he says, but from who is saying them. He scores as an exotic who talks of barbershops and church socials in the flat tones you'd expect from any son of the prairie.
Had Bayh been half-Kenyan and raised in Hawaii by white grandparents from Kansas, he too would have become a political star, at least for the month of December. But he is a conventional white man. When Bayh speaks in the quiet Midwestern way, he gets tarred as lackluster.
Yeah, Bayh is lackluster, and it could have been mentioned that Lugar comes across as boring. I wouldn't call any of the bunch "centrists," except for the content of their speeches. Bayh and Obama pretty much vote the Democratic line, and Lugar is a loyal Republican voter. I'm also not sure about "Obama's appeal comes not from the things he says, but from who is saying them." It's also how he says them -- we do value political eloquence in this country. But it will take Obama only so far.
