Informed Speculation

Mike Allen details plans to knock Obama down to size:

The charismatic Illinois senator has enjoyed a lifetime of hagiography, starting with an 800-word story in The New York Times the day after his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Now, Obama’s about to endure a going-over that would make a proctologist blush. Why has he sometimes said his first name is Arabic, and other times Swahili? Why did he make up names in his first book, as the introduction acknowledges? Why did he say two years ago that he would “absolutely” serve out his Senate term, which ends in 2011, and that the idea of him running for president this cycle was “silly” and hype “that’s been a little overblown”?

In interviews, strategists in both parties pointed to four big vulnerabilities: Obama’s inexperience, the thinness of his policy record, his frank liberalism in a time when the party needs centrist voters and the wealth of targets that are provided by the personal recollections in his first book, from past drug use to conversations that cannot be documented.

Beginning with his announcement for president on Saturday, the long knives will be out for Obama from three directions: Reporters, perpetuating the boom and bust cycle of a ravenous media culture, will try to make up for fawning coverage of the past. Democratic rivals want to get him out of the way. And some top Republicans think the party would have a better chance with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., as the nominee, since she is a known quantity while Obama can try to define himself as anything he wants.

Officials at the top of both parties calculate that Obama has risen too fast to sustain his popularity in the cauldron of a presidential campaign. Democrats talk of “vapid platitudes” that could produce a “soufflé effect” – an implosion as journalists and activists begin probing for substance behind Obama’s appealing promise of “a different kind of politics” and “a new kind of politics.”

“With a couple of pinpricks here and there, the whole thing could fall apart,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the plans of Obama’s rival campaigns.

Says another top Democrat: “Once the shooting war starts, he’s not going to be able to get away with these grand pronouncements.”

Allen goes on to tease out the four-pronged approach in some detail, so I recommend the whole article to you.

Let me just state up front that I don’t think this sort of thing is going to work with this candidate. Smear a guy who’s too popular, and the smear often boomerangs. Furthermore, I think Obama has taken a lot of sting out of the smears, by admitting his less-then-perfect younger days. Finally, use of the anti-Muslim tactic is definitely going to be seen as out-of-bounds, and rightly so, not to mention that it is factually incorrect by all accounts.

Nope, not this candidate…so am I saying criticism of Obama is off-limits?

Of course not…but the criticisms had better be legitimate. For example, the tactics Allen describes relating to inexperience and the tendency to spout platitudes instead of policy are perfectly legitimate lines of attack. And of course, I have nothing but my own gut instinct to tell me that Obama will be immune to the more unsavory types of smears.

Nevertheless, that’s what my gut is telling me. Obama is an extremely likeable candidate with considerable crossover appeal, and his 2008 run has obvious historical resonance. If Obama goes down, it will be due to (a) a failure to deliver on policy, (b) residual fears that he’s too inexperienced, or (c) a simply stronger organization from Hillary. I would be willing to bet that it won’t be because of (d) irrelevant shots at what he did or didn’t do decades ago…ask the anti-Bush folks how well that worked out for them…