Obama fine-tunes Hillary distinctions
Posted: Sunday, November 04, 2007 12:12 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini AnburajanOBAMA WEEKEND NOTEBOOK Obama made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live. Here's the skit of Obama showing up at
Clinton 's house for a Halloween Party.
SPARTANBURG, SC, Nov. 3 -- Under the banner of “Change We Can Believe In,” Obama fine-tuned his argument on why he should be president of the United States over Senator Clinton. He stressed his respect for Clinton and commonalities, but he also also directly questioned the way she practices politics.
“She’s also a skilled politician,” Obama said, “and she’s run what Washington would call a ‘textbook’ campaign. But the problem is the textbook itself. It’s a textbook that’s all about winning elections, but says nothing about how to bring the country together to solve problems. As we saw in the debate last week, it encourages vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America. It teaches you that you can promise progress for everyday people while striking a bargain with the very special interests who crowd them out.”
Obama’s message was largely the same as it has been over these past two months, stressing the need to change politics in Washington. The difference with this speech was that he spent far less time stressing why his opponents thought he was inexperienced and more time on sketching out a vision on what he would like to see in his own administration.
Obama’s campaign did not say whether the stronger language regarding Clinton would become part of his regular stump speech, calling Saturday’s speech a “situational stump speech” given a year before the 2008 general election. The goal of the speech, according to the campaign, was to lay out Obama’s vision for his presidency.
The crowd at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., where Obama spoke, responded enthusiastically to his message and gave him several standing ovations. But the question of experience still dogged Obama after it was over.
“I admire his goals, but he didn’t give enough specifics on how he would get it done,” said Ralph Jones of Spartanburg, S.C. “How can you accomplish universal health care so easily?”
Jones and his daughter said they would be voting for Clinton largely because they feel she has more experience and would be more likely to win in a general election match up.
Obama tackles race question MANNING, SC -- On the steps of the Clarendon County Courthouse, in a speech that was supposed to be about reforming the American education system, Obama instead gave an impassioned plea on why a black man could be president of the United States of America.
History was present as Obama spoke. He stood on the steps of the courthouse that heard one of the pivotal cases that became part of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Ernest Finney, South Carolina’s first black Supreme Court Justice, introduced Obama.
Finney, who endorsed the senator earlier in the day, spoke of his own past, growing up in the segregated South. "My heart was dreaming of the day when a black man in America could not only run for president,” Finney said, “but could be on the edge of winning."
Obama couched his run for the presidency with that history, as an epic moment that could occur if he could only overcome the cynicism of those who believed it couldn’t be done.
“Now, I’ve heard some folks say, ‘Yeah, he talks good. I like his wife. He’s got some pretty children, but you know we’re just not sure that America is ready for an African-American president,’” Obama told the crowd of about 800. “You’re hearing the same voices you heard 50 years ago. ‘Maybe it’s not time yet, maybe it’s better to wait.’ So I just want ya’all to be clear; I would not be running if I were not confident I was going to win.”
“I’m not running for vice president. I’m not running to be secretary of something or the other. I’m already a United States Senator. Everybody already knows me. I’ve already sold a lot of books. I don’t need to run for president to get on television or the radio. I’ve been on Oprah. I’m running to be president of the United States of America,” he said to the roaring crowd.
In making his pitch, Obama broke from his prepared remarks. A campaign aide said he had re-written parts of the speech in the morning and re-worked it again in the car. But as he stood before the largely African-American crowd in the third poorest county in South Carolina and spoke with a passion he has rarely shown on the stump in recent weeks.
Obama has addressed the question about why he could win the presidency as a black man before, though he generally only does so with this much candor or zeal in front of primarily black audiences. But it can also be argued that he tackles the question in nearly every stump speech by stressing his role as a man who can bring communities together. However, his speech today reflected a doubt within the African-American community itself that a black man could be president.
Artur Davis, a congressman from the fifth district of Alabama, who was an early endorser of Obama, said in a recent interview that that sense of disbelief played a strong role in Obama not receiving the endorsement of black politicians in his own state.
Obama tackled that doubt by touting how his campaign was doing in an all-white state like Iowa.
“We’re tied up in Iowa right now,” Obama said. “And let me tell you, there aren’t a lot of folks in Iowa who look like me. Because they understand that what we stand for is change. And change isn’t a black or white thing.”
He went on to scold the audience, evoking the civil rights struggle that led the crowd to assemble before this courthouse, to tell them that believing this couldn’t happen was damaging to the community’s morale and the next generation.
“So to the brothers and sisters out there telling folks I can’t win, don’t defeat ourselves,” Obama said. “Get it out of your mind that you can’t do something. I don’t believe in we can’t do something. Yes we can do something. What kind of message are we sending to our children, you can’t do something?”
Obama’s message appeared to resonate with the crowd, who live in an area of the state that reflects the unfulfilled economic promise of the civil rights movement. Clarendon County is the third poorest county in the state, part of an area along I-95 known as the “Corridor of Shame” for its crumbling schools and high drop-out rate.
“I think he told them what they needed to hear,” said Josephine King of Manning, S.C.
Gussey Cochrane said that she had also been considering Clinton, but Obama’s message had helped bridge her sense of disbelief in the possibility of his success. “It’s time for a change. It’s time for a change,” she said before racing forward to grab the senator’s hand.
--ASWINI ANBURAJAN
