“IT BEGINS”, concludes the video launching Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, “with us.” That is, it begins with ordinary, hard-working, upstanding citizens getting together to speak out for what they believe in. And what is that, exactly? A woman in Arizona (Gladys, a caption helpfully informs us) talks vaguely about finding a job, owning a house and putting kids through college. Aside from these unobjectionable goals, however, there is no hint as to what Mr Obama stands for or how he intends to achieve it.
In one sense, that should come as no surprise: one of the strengths (and weaknesses) of Mr Obama’s first presidential campaign was a series of uplifting but fuzzy slogans such as “Change you can believe in”, which allowed him to be all things to all people. But for good or for ill, it is harder to peddle “that hope-y, change-y stuff”, as Sarah Palin memorably put it, now that voters have more of the measure of Mr Obama as a leader. Moreover, you would think the media, having been excoriated in right-wing circles for fawning on Mr Obama the first time around, would be determined not to let such waffle pass unchallenged.
Yet the only aspect of Mr Obama’s new campaign that seems to interest the pundits is whether it will be the first to cost $1 billion, exceeding his record-breaking outlay of $750m last time around. The announcement of his candidacy, after all, seems timed to come as close as possible to the beginning of the second quarter, a new fund-raising period under federal election law, without falling on April Fools Day. And the main purpose of Mr Obama’s campaign website seems to be soliciting donations. (For information about Mr Obama’s policies and accomplishments, the website advises, visit www.whitehouse.gov.)
All this makes for an ironic contrast with the Republican presidential field. Most of the coverage of the many potential and few declared Republican candidates focuses on their beliefs, or professed ones, or the discrepancies between the two. How do they play with the tea-party movement? What are they saying about the deficit, or Libya, or global warming? How have their stances evolved as their presidential ambitions have grown? What is their path to the nomination, in the sense of appealing to certain constituencies with targeted rhetoric or policies? There is some talk of money and staffing, to be sure, but ideological positioning seems to count for more than organisational rigour in the media’s reckoning.
Mr Obama, of course, is better known to the electorate, and also seems unlikely to face a primary challenge, with all the ideological pandering that entails. But it still would be nice to hear a little bit more about what his priorities are in the light of the economic and political headwinds he has encountered over the past few years. By the same token, it would be interesting to know whether any of the mooted Republican candidates is capable of mounting, or paying for, a campaign of the same sophistication and scale as Mr Obama’s. At the moment, at any rate, it’s not clear whether he knows why he is running or whether they know how to beat him.
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