Obama's low-tempo finale in North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina
Barack Obama’s final event here in North Carolina was surprisingly low-key. The event was an invitation only town-hall meeting at CREE, a green energy firm in the Research Triangle. The audience was demographically suited to Obama—affluent, educated, relatively young and fairly mixed racially—and gave him a warm reception. But the event lacked the tempo you would have expected the day before the primary. Indeed, before the QandA Obama even invited the boss of CREE to give an infomercial for his products.
Obama opened by saying ‘I want your vote—I want it bad.’ But his introductory remarks were fairly low-energy, especially in contrast to Hillary who has been barnstorming across both states hitting every populist note she can. The question is whether Obama’s reasoned approach trumps Hillary’s passion.
Obama is embracing the fight over the gas tax, deriding Hillary’s proposed gas tax holiday as classic, ineffectual politics as usual. Whether this is smart is debatable. To the extent that it allows Obama to rail against Washington and the status quo it is. But on the other hand, with gas prices so high being opposed to lifting the tax seems politically dangerous.
The conversation was fairly wonkish, with the opening few questions all being about energy—Obama even stressed that he would be happy to talk about other issues. I expect that the section of the QandA which makes the evening news, the real point of it considering that it was invitation only, will be when Obama was asked about foreign policy and electability.
On foreign policy, Obama majored on the idea that America was less powerful compared to the rest of the world than when Bush became president. He hit his usual anti-Iraq notes saying America couldn’t afford it in terms of either blood or treasure and that it was distracting America from the fight that must be won against al Qaeda in Afghanistan—this good war, bad war dichotomy makes little sense as the consequences of defeat in either theatre would be dire but it does seem to resonate with voters. Obama went on to ding McCain for his 100 years comment saying that, “To have permanent bases in the most volatile part of the world is just inviting trouble.” But Obama left unexplained how he would project US power in the region without them and whether this meant he favoured a wholesale withdrawal from the Middle East.
Conveniently for Obama the final question came from an undecided voter who wanted him to persuade her to vote for him. Obama’s answer on this is still surprisingly unfocused; he really does lack a closing argument. Obama took a few shots at Clinton saying that the country “can’t afford to spend the next eight years bickering or tinkering”—an allusion to the 1990s—and that “more people find me trustworthy than the other candidate” before pointing out that even though he has been rocked by negative stories in the past few weeks, Hillary has far more skeletons in her closet and that when it comes to this stuff “folks are happy to recycle.” He also drew contrasts with McCain before saying that his candidacy is “our possibility to make a clean break with the past.”
Obama received a warm and prolonged standing ovation at the end. But I wonder whether this event provided Obama with the boost he needed going into a primary that many people think will be surprisingly close. His team have limited the number of rallies in the belief that he needs to show that he is not just a rock star politician. Yet, today strikes me as a day when packed, energetic rally was just the pick me up his campaign needs.