Has Barack Obama got it in him?

Howard Fineman • E-mail

MANCHESTER, N.H. - We’re waiting for an Obama moment – if he’s got another one in him. If he does, he has a chance to pull what would be a sensational upset by attracting the swarm of independent voters here who make this state’s primary unique.

In this most political of primary states, the urgent question in the Democratic presidential race on the eve of an MSNBC debate is: when will Sen. Barack Obama go after – really go after – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton? For if he doesn’t do it soon, and effectively, the contest for the 2008 nomination may well be over before it officially starts.

Does Obama think that Hillary is dangerously “more of the same” in international affairs – a Bush in Democratic clothing? Does he think she is the blind and corrupted product of a hopelessly tarnished system of money and access in the nation’s capital? Does he think that it’s time for the upper, “Howdy Doody” end of the Baby Boom, now approaching retirement age in the Peanut Gallery, to stand aside for Gen X and even Gen Y leadership? These are the subtext – the rationale – of his campaign. But if he believes it, and I think he does, the text had better go from sub to surface, fast.

Since they are Chicagoans, sort of, and since this is football season, let me use a gridiron analogy. Unless Obama absorbs the spirit of the riled up ’85 Bears, who blitzed on every down, Hillary will continue to dink and dunk her way down the field to victory.

At first and second glance, she is a juggernaut. She proved it last weekend, executing a maneuver they call in the TV talk-show business “The Full Ginsburg.” Named after Monica Lewinsky’s craven, publicity-mad lawyer, the move consists of getting yourself booked on ALL FIVE Sunday morning talk shows on the same day. No presidential candidate in recent memory has managed to do that – until Clinton did last Sunday. It was a tacit admission by Big Media that she is in control, big time.

The polls everywhere – and now, for the first time, in Iowa – reflect that dominance.

The interesting question is: Why?  Well, as everyone knows, she has run a cautious but mostly error-free campaign so far, absorbing and digesting the methods and messages of her rivals like a giant political amoeba. There really isn’t much substantive ideological distance among the Democratic presidential contestants, but what little of it there is Hillary has finessed and papered over with relative ease.

She has used her and her husband’s fame shrewdly, taming and tailoring coverage based on which media are, or are not, willing to play ball. Her masterful and rhino-hided spin doctors, Howard Wolfson and Mandy Grunwald, know that they don’t need to generate coverage; the Clintons always will have more than they need. Their attitude is similar to that of candidate George Bush in 1999. He already had 100 percent name recognition (though a lot of people thought he was his dad), and Karl Rove and Karen Hughes decided early on that press coverage was all downside risk.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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