Obama style and substance

The hype surrounding Barak Obama's run for Democrat presidential nomination has worried me a bit. It is highly youth-driven and youth-oriented in a way that reminds of the Howard Dean campaign wherein, when the voting crunch came, those droves of youthful enthusiasts had dissolved into the woodwork and did not seem to be reflected in the ballot numbers.
But Barak is young. He is new. He is fresh and vivid. He is sensationally bright. He is unsullied by the shadows of a long political history and, what's more, he is an open book with a fierce sense of ethics. Hence, he is what one might dare to pun "a Barak-away" candidate.
He told us: "I'm not just interested in winning an election. I'm interested in transforming the country".
He said he sought "a commonsense, practical, non-ideological agenda for change."
He cites his background as a community organiser as a unique qualification for the rallying of people.
"What I have is a really good talent for bringing people together to solve problems," he declared.

I had heard that he was less interested in listening to the sound of his own voice than in that of others - and it proved to be so in Nashua. His preamble speech was relatively brief. After commenting on the public loss of confidence in the political process, he explained his belief in the way "we are connected as a people".
"If a child in Nashua cannot read, we must care, even if it is not our child. If there is someone foraging in a dumpster, it diminishes us as a nation."
While hearing such sentiments of social justice from a politician pleases me no end, it was not what the Nashua people wanted to know.
They revved up when he noted that an economy that was good for Wall Street still left the real people living from paycheck to paycheck.
But when he said that the country was involved in "a war that should never have been authorised", they erupted into a storm of applause.
The Iraq War has become profoundly unpopular among these people.
I have noted that where, only a year ago, cars en masse were smothered with "Support the War", "Support Our Troops" stickers, they are now few and far between.

Obama, of course, has been an opponent of the Iraq War from the outset. One of the few to have dared to speak out when the country had been methodically post 9/11 brainwashed. He has articulated a precise policy for bringing the combat troops home by March 31, 2008 - which, he says, gives Iraq plenty of time to get internally re-adjusted.
Since Obama's style is to listen to and interact with the people, he gave over most of the meeting time to questions wherein people could articulate their concerns.
Naturally, Iraq came up again, a woman saying: "I've just learned that my nephew is being sent to Iraq and I can't breathe. When can I breathe again?"
Obama expressed his sorrow for her and said that everywhere he went he was encountering agonised people who had offspring either going to, in, home wounded or dead from the War in Iraq. He had already expressed fury at President Bush's intention to veto the Bill calling for troop withdrawal. Bush was "obstinate", he said, lamenting the senators who would not allow Congress to override the veto. Two NH senators are among those who stand in the way.

Of course there were questions about health insurance, one man saying that, diagnosed with prostate cancer, his uninsured brother-in-law faced only two options - "bankrupt the family or die". Obama expounded on his principles for universal health care, the two trillion dollars spent in the USA on health "more than any other country in the world" which, absurdly yielded such inequity and suggested that the USA needed to "adopt a system similar to other countries".
An Obama administration would have the government negotiate for the best prices for prescription drugs, too, and not allow the pharmaceutical companies to keep making 17 per cent profit margins, he promised.
Questions from veterans opened the can of worms of the tragedy of Iraq, of the mass of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in the returned troops, many of whom ended up homeless and on the streets. There was a question about redundancies to which he said that new bankruptcy laws were needed to prevent companies from going under to save paying out staff pension obligations and then reforming as another company. There were questions about pensions and, extraordinarily, one about gun control.
This is the question the politicians are avoiding post the Virginia Tech massacre.
Obama trod lightly.
He wondered if there was anything that may have guaranteed that violence would not be seen that day at Virginia Tech, or could have lessened it. The issues he saw were that "they are still selling handguns to crazy people".
"There is supposed to be a system to screen backgrounds. The system failed,'' he said.
Citing the use of a semi-automatic weapon with a clip allowing 19 shots, he said:
"I don't hunt. I respect hunters and sportsmen. No one is infringing on their rights. But I don't know any self-respecting hunter who needs 19 rounds. No one shoots 19 rounds at a deer." Ignoring or not hearing interjections that no one hunts deer with handguns, he concluded that there was a need for "sensible laws in place".
That is as good as one is going to get on the election trail. No one, except perhaps fearless minority leftist Dennis Kucinich, would stick out their necks as targets of the gun lobby.

Obama returned to safer ground with other questions, responding on issues such as disease prevention, closing tax breaks for companies who moved their operations offshore to elude tax and more on the Iraq war.
"We have dug ourselves such a deep hole. Ending Iraq is 100 billion dollars saved but we haven't paid for it. We borrowed it," he exclaimed.

When he reached time for the last question, there were hands waving all over the hall. Oddly, Obama chose to give the question to the one and only child present - "a chance for the next generation".
"I don't know much," said the little boy. "I just want to know what do you have that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards don't have?"
The crowd dissolved into laughter. Obama with it. "Are you sure he's not a midget?" he asked. "Is he a plant?"
When mirth abated, he tackled the question.
"I try not to compare the other candidates," he said. "We are on the same team. Hillary Clinton gets things done and does great work. John Edwards has great ideas. I like them both and I think they'd make great presidents...but we are on the same team. We're all trying out for quarterback."

Barak Obama comes to town

The Barak Obama machine is moving smoothly through New Hampshire. Organisationally, it is way ahead of Hillary's. Already I have had several phone calls from its young volunteers in the Manchester office who say the opening of a Nashua campaign office is imminent. Hillary's team say they are still waiting for phones in their new Manchester office and have no idea when they will get Nashua up and running. It is unsurprising, therefore, that they have failed to respond to my offer to work for them. Obama's team, on the other hand, is courting - hence the invitation to attend his Nashua meeting.

This was an invitation-only meeting. The Obama buzz is such that he is drawing crowds like a rock star.
Nonetheless, when we rocked up for the "Town Hall" meeting at the handsome, modern seniors complex, it seemed all rather low-key. There was just one volunteer outside - selling wild and zany Obama buttons at three for $10.

He was doing a brisk trade and the rows of buttons on his board were diminishing fast. They ranged from sedate "Obama for President" to "Hot chicks love Obama". I indulged in "Carpe Diem - Barak Obama", "Superbama" and "The Three Stooges - Jr. Dick Rummy". Inside, beside the sign-in desk, were all the free coat and bumper stickers as well as glossy policy brochures complete with NH campaign head office address, phone number and email. As I said, they are well-organised.


Of course, the Americans for Health Care team was there with the same ebullient Tammy Clark ominpresent giving out brochures, entreating everyone to wear their stickers and offering free "I'm a Heath Care Voter" t-shirts to anyone who would put them on.

When Obama appeared, he was sporting one of her stickers.

There was a good phalanx of media but not, as with Hillary, a sense of media entourage, let alone obvious security. A couple of solidly-built men, one black and one white and both wearing dark suits, looked as if they may have been the official heavies.

An all-smiles girl wearing an apron and carrying a basket worked her way around the room handing out cookies...Pentagon Cookies adorned by a vivid pie chart showing that the Pentagon's expenditure of more than half of the US's discretional budget. Its PrioritiesNH label on the back suggested that $60 billion wasted each year on obsolete weapons should be turned to programs that built strong families and communities. The icing melted on my cookie on the way home. It looks rather messy now. Like the Iraq War?

Of course there was something of a wait before the Senator appeared. Quasi reggae music played discreetly and the people bubbled about expectantly. I found a place by the wall where I could stand up and take photos and we ate our sandwiches, enjoying the hubub. I eavesdropped on the chair of NH Women for Obama enthusing about the stress and pleasure of introducing Obama's wife at an earlier function and how desperate she was to get him to autograph her copy of her book. I've been reading his first book, Dreams from My Father, and am very impressed with his literary eloquence.

He was less lyrical on the hustings, however. After the exuberant standing ovation and the requisite effusive introduction, he spoke with chatty informality, explaining how his name was Kenyan but his accent was from Kansas and how the most important thing he had to before deciding to run for president was to ask his wife.

Hillary raises hillfire

The American presidential process is a contact sport. Candidates vying to run for President must run the gauntlet, not of the party backroom numbers but of the people of the country. To that end, theirs is an exhausting schedule of meeting everyone everywhere - but first and foremost in New Hampshire.

Hence, the Democrat frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton has just made her fifth visit to the Granite State to "Let the Conversation Begin" by throwing herself at the mercy of about 1000 people packed into a Manchester highschool gym. An interesting crowd since it was of broad demographic - young and old, rich and poor, multiracial. Its common bond was the urge to get a close look at this woman, to see if she scrubbed up to their expectations, to put her on the spot with difficult questions...This is their right and their role and they take it earnestly.

She kept the crowd waiting but, oddly, no one seemed to mind. Wallpaper rock music played and a rather merry, party spirit was established - among all except the very clearly labelled Hillary Press followers who sat about intensely tapping on their laptops and talking on their cellphones.


Secret Services officers were all over the place. There is nothing secret about them. They stand out as stern besuited bruisers with vast bulges beneath their jackets. Huge weapons. Machine guns! I felt their piercing gaze assessing my handbag, my camera, my attitude. Those eagle eyes constantly scoping.

Of course Hillary is not your average candidate - not only a Senator but former First Lady of the country. One assumes she is long accustomed to co-existing with that load of protective paranoia.

Hillary breezed into the hall accompanied by the school's Vice Principal and the local Senator, both of whom required their moment in the sun before she was invited to say her piece, expertly microphoned and free to walk around the little stage to address the 360 deg of eager audience.


She went straight for the grass roots with lighthearted anecdotes about her own childhood, gently self-deprecatory and humourous. Ah, what a pro. The audience was immediately with her. And they were to become more so as she launched into the hot issue of health care. The health care lobby is omnipresent at these political events, tribes of people in strident t-shirts handing out "I'm for Healthcare" stickers. Their local organiser, one Tammy Clark, told me that some of the candidates would not wear the stickers but Hillary would. Sure enough, Hillary did. And she spoke passionately about the ways in which the inequality and expense of this country's health system could be improved - starting with electronic medical records. She has fought for this before and, she laughed, she "carries the wounds" of those battles. But she is far from giving up. When she becomes President...

Then there was energy. "It's no use paying regimes that are not friendly to us for energy," she said, explainng that the urgent need to develop alternative sources could be funded by removing tax subsidies to oil companies.

Then education - access to preschools, making college affordable again.
She did not mention President George Bush by name. Instead, she targeted his "administration" and the eight years of dire decisions which have undermined America's standing in the world.

She cited the massive international outpouring of sympathy for the USA following 9/11 "even Iran, for example", lamenting that "we squandered that". And she promised "a concerted effort to tell not just the leaders of the world but the people that, while the US will always defend its borders, it wants to get back to working with people again... to send messages again about how the US cares because that used to be the US message". She wanted village people to turn in bomb-makers because they wanted to be "on the right side".



"I have visions of walking into the Oval Office and seeing this gigantic hole we have dug ourselves into over the last 8 years," she declared.