As Pennsylvania Democrats go to the polls today to weigh in on the nomination fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the atmosphere has distinctly turned negative.
It represents no change in Clinton?s posture as she scrambles to cut into Obama?s narrow lead. But as his campaign has taken some hits, his strategists apparently have decided he?d better climb down off his pedestal as Mr. Clean above the fray.
Obama has fallen into the old simplification of casting the nation?s capital as the den of all iniquity, and he characterizes Clinton as a player in “the say-anything, do-anything, special-interest-driven game in Washington.” It?s the latest case of a presidential candidate giving voters a low impression of the place he wants to live in. Obama in fact has been working here for a couple of years and just wants to move to a better address.
One incentive for Obama?s joining the anti-Washington crowd is the fact that Clinton is undeniably a fixture here. She hung her hat at the White House for eight years and for the last seven has been in the Senate, representing New York while occupying fancy digs in Georgetown.
Washington has been a bipartisan whipping boy for years, especially for outsiders. In 1976, Georgian Jimmy Carter ran against and won residency here but never was accepted as a good neighbor. He didn?t hide his coolness toward the city?s institutions, especially Congress, and his departure four years later was generally greeted by the locals with a sigh of relief.
When Californian Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter as the White House occupant in 1981, he did so by pledging to “drain the swamp.” By the time he left eight years later, the swamp had more federal employees spending more taxpayer money than they did when he rode in on his white horse.
The current Oval Office occupant, seven years into his own imprisonment, still derisively refers to the nation?s capital as “Washington, D.C.,” and he doesn?t say it that way just to differentiate from that state out on the West Coast. The full name somehow conjures up rampant insensitivity and evil in the ears of countless outlanders. It?s no wonder President Bush flees to Crawford, Texas, every chance he gets.
Rather than scrubbing up the city and tightening its belt, Bush will leave Washington next January awash in record deficits, an epidemic of corporate corruption and a fiasco of a war. All of this has made him so unpopular here that he was booed when he threw out the first ball at the opening of the Washington Nationals? spanking new stadium.
What is it that has made the nation?s capital, the architectural jewel of America?s urban landscape, such an easy and continuing target of attack by politicians so eager to get here? Could it be something in the water?
Obama doesn?t think so. He says its occupants have a destructive mindset that sees doing the country?s work through excessively partisan eyes, and he has the formula to correct that faulty and divisive vision. He has been preaching with impressive success what is called post-partisanship ? putting aside the red vs. blue bickering and getting everybody to work together.
It?s a commendable notion, but it ran into public resistance several weeks back when Obama was forced off his positive message and thrown on the defensive. First he had to explain his relationship with a vitriolic pastor and then his remarks that sounded condescending toward small-town folk.
Ever since in Pennsylvania, he?s been blaming the detour on “the same old politics” as practiced “in Washington, D.C.” It was in his hometown of Chicago, however, where the pastor years ago uttered his offensive remarks. And it was in San Francisco recently where Obama himself, as he has put it, “mangled up” this sermon on how religion and guns have become the refuges of the bitter.
So the challenge for him in the remaining primaries is to get off the defensive and back onto his earlier, optimistic message of post-partisanship in the politics of all Americans. That?s what has gotten him this far and is his best bet to go all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years. His latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, “Very Strange Bedfellows,” has just been published by Public Affairs Press. You can respond to this column at [email protected].
