The Obama Contradiction

I'm supporting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but I also think highly of Barack Obama and believe that he would make a fine president as well. With that in mind, I'd like to discuss Obama's major strength is also a major weakness.

Much of Obama's appeal is his ability to project a vision of a "new politics" that would be more high-minded, more idealistic, and less negative than current political styles. However, that means that he can't go for Hillary Clinton's jugular during debates. Arianna Huffington argues that there were several occasions where Obama could have caught Hillary in contradictions concerning her position on Iraq. For example, Hillary argues that she voted for the bill to authorize war because she wanted to give the Bush administration a stronger hand in forcing Saddam Hussein to accept inspectors. However, she also voted against a Sen. Carl Levin resolution requiring "Bush to exhaust all diplomatic approaches before invading Iraq."

Likewise, Obama didn't challenge Hillary's claim that "we're more secure" in relation to the Iraq invasion when he certainly could have.

Huffington claims that Obama could have challenged Hillary more sharply without undermining his claim to be engaged in "a new kind of politics." That formulation doesn't quite hit it. In fact, Obama needs to be able to go for the jugular. Nobody who wants to be a successful president can get away without being able to strike at his opponent's weak arguments and peal away the opposition's marginal followers. Though Obama is impressive in many ways, I'm not sure he fully understands this.