At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.
To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.”
But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?
Also, and more immediately, if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination, how will his promise of a new and less polarized type of politics fare against the Republican attacks that since the 1980s have portrayed Democrats as far out of step with the country’s values?
Banking on a thirst for change
To many political strategists, the furor over the racial views of Mr. Obama’s former pastor is only the first of many such tests the senator will face if he is the nominee.
Mr. Obama, in an interview that was conducted on March 15, in the midst of that controversy, said he was confident that Americans were eager for a new kind of politics and were convinced that “a lot of these old labels don’t apply anymore.”
He said he was a progressive and a pragmatist, eager to tackle the big issues like health care and convinced that the Democrats could — and should — rally independents and disaffected Republicans to their agenda. Only then, he said, could the party achieve what it has so rarely won in modern presidential elections: a mandate to do big things.
“Senator Clinton’s argument in this campaign,” he said, “has really been that you can’t change the electoral map, that it’s a static map and we are inalterably divided, so we’ve got to eke out a victory and then try to govern more competently than George Bush has. My argument is that if that’s what we’re settling for, after seven or eight years of disastrous policies on the part of the Bush administration, then we’re not going to deliver on the big changes that are needed.”
Neither known as a bridge-builder
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has worked hard in the Senate to moderate her liberal image and forge working relationships with Republicans. But with her husband’s tumultuous presidency still fresh in some voters’ minds, she is often cast as a hyperpartisan Democrat who would try to achieve her ends by beating the Republicans at the same brutal (and often futile) competition that has dominated Washington for years.
Mr. Obama’s rise has been built in part on the idea that he represents a break from the established identities that have defined many of the nation’s divisions. To many, he embodies a promise to bridge black and white, old and young, rich and poor — and Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Even so, Mr. Obama does not come to the campaign with a reputation as one of the most accommodating bridge-builders in the Senate. And while he promises a very different politics from Mrs. Clinton, their voting records in the Senate last year were not strikingly different.
A recent analysis of key votes by The National Journal concluded that Mr. Obama had the Senate’s most liberal voting record in 2007; Mrs. Clinton ranked 16th. But of the 267 measures on which both senators voted, the National Journal analysis found that they differed on only 10. One of their major differences came on an amendment that called for the designation of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran as a terrorist organization; while Mrs. Clinton supported it, Mr. Obama missed the vote, but said he opposed it.
Voting the party line
Congressional Quarterly said Mr. Obama voted with his party 97 percent of the time on party-line votes last year; Mrs. Clinton did so 98 percent of the time.
But it is Mr. Obama who is running on a promise of a new approach to politics. Given that, he says he understands the criticism of his voting record, but argues that the Senate is so ideologically polarized it is hard not to end up on one side or the other.
“The only votes that come up are votes that are purposely designed to divide people,” he said. “It’s true that if I’m presented with a series of votes like that, I’m more likely to fall left of center than right of center. But as president, I would be setting the terms of debate.”
Mr. Obama seems to be promising less a split-the-difference centrism than an ability to harness the support of all those voters who yearn for something new, beyond the ideological stalemate. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote, “They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”
In many ways, the Obama campaign is challenging the fundamental political premise that has prevailed in Washington for more than a generation: that any majority coalition must be carefully centrist, if not center-right. Bill Clinton ran in 1992 as a candidate willing to break with liberal orthodoxy on many issues, including crime and welfare, and eager to move the party — which had lost five of the six previous presidential elections — to the middle. Mr. Clinton’s New Democrats assumed a certain level of conservatism among voters.
Is the pendulum swinging?
Mr. Obama and his allies are basing his campaign on a different bet: that the right-leaning political landscape Mr. Clinton confronted has changed. Several major Democratic strategists, and outside analysts as well, argue that the country has shifted to the left because of the Iraq war, the economy and seven-plus years of President Bush, and that it has become open to a new progressive majority.
Mr. Obama said: “What I’m certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological Republican Party that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy. So there’s no doubt the pendulum is swinging.”
Still, he added: “The Democrats have to seize this opportunity by showing people in very practical terms how a different set of policies can deliver solutions that will actually make a difference in their lives. I think the jury is still out right now.”
Mark Penn, the chief strategist for Mrs. Clinton, said Mr. Obama’s Senate career did not back up his promise of being able to forge a new governing coalition across party lines.
“It’s a great promise,” Mr. Penn said. “But are the actions consistent with the words? I don’t see it.”
Promise of pragmatism
Still, many of Mr. Obama’s supporters say he has recognized this new political climate in a way that Mrs. Clinton has not. They say he is ready for a new, self-assured era in which progressives (few have returned to using the word “liberal”) make no apologies about their goals — universal health care, withdrawing troops from Iraq, ending tax breaks for more affluent Americans — and assume that a broad swath of the public shares them.
Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, often displays the wariness of Democrats who came of political age in the Reagan era, when the party was constantly on the defensive. As The New Republic recently put it, “Clintonism is a political strategy that assumes a skeptical public; Obamaism is a way of actualizing a latent ideological majority.”
Mr. Obama significantly outperformed Mrs. Clinton among independents in the coast-to-coast nominating contests on Feb. 5, and in several other key contests. But can that transpartisan appeal be sustained? He has only begun to take some hard political hits — from the Clinton campaign, from conservative commentators and radio hosts, and from the campaign of Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.
So far, Republicans give every indication of planning to portray Mr. Obama as just another big-government liberal.
“When you’re rated by National Journal as to the left of Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders, that’s going to be difficult to explain,” said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Mr. Obama insists that while his core values are progressive, he himself is not ideological. His policy differences with Mrs. Clinton are limited, and his proposals are solidly in the mainstream of Democratic thought.
In the interview, for example, he argued that his proposals on health care and the economy, which call for a stronger government role and more regulation, were really about what works.
“I’m interested in solving problems as opposed to imposing doctrine,” he said. “I see a lot of convergence of interests among people who in traditional terms are considered to be divided politically.”
This article, Obama’s test: Can a liberal be a unifier?, originally appeared in The New York Times.