For more than a hundred years, nomination struggles in presidential campaigns have followed a familiar pattern. Bitter rivals engage in ferocious competition, generally slamming and sliming their opponents wherever possible, then come together for the sake of “party unity,” praising the ultimate victor as a choice for leadership who was obvious and inevitable all along. In 2004, for instance, Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich eagerly rallied around John Kerry; John Edwards even joined the ticket as his running mate. This year, Republicans provide another typical example of party divisions healing more quickly than many skeptics expected: Rudy, Fred, Mitt and lesser candidates have all gotten on board the “Straight Talk Express” and Huckabee will follow their example within a few weeks or even days. After a frontrunner captures the nomination, his opponents and some grassroots activists may nurse lingering resentments but those wounds rarely handicap a campaign in November.
The current battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may, however, prove one of those exceptions in which a donnybrook in primary season does permanent damage to a candidate’s chances. This happened in the recent past for Democrats, when ideological divisions became so intense and so obvious that pretenses of party unity looked hollow and phony: in 1968, much of the left refused to rally to Hubert Humphrey, and in 1972 the party’s center never fully embraced George McGovern. Among Republicans, Pat Buchanan’s primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush fell far short of winning the nomination for the insurgent, but badly dented the incumbent’s stature and aura of competence, setting him up for defeat in November.
The Hillary-Barack spat (reaching ferocious intensity just a week away from decisive primaries in Ohio and Texas) may well resemble the Bush-Buchanan tiff more than the ideological struggles of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. As both candidates have noted, they harbor few substantive differences on issues, and the real fight between them involves personality and interest group politics rather than contrasting world views.
Nevertheless, Hillary’s angry assaults on her rival (expected to reach a climax in their televised Ohio debate on Tuesday night) may harm Obama seriously for November even thought their rivalry involves a classic “personality primary” rather than the more serious “issues primary.”
Barack Obama’s charismatic appeal depends on the image of a fresh face who’s above “politics as usual.” His messianic image suggests a healer and uniter who’s almost too good for the grubby realities of daily politics. His supporters, led by his wife Michelle, suggest that the Illinois Senator will not only reform our government, but repair the “hole in our souls.”
In that context, the snarling back-and-forth with Hillary could damage the atmosphere of saintliness and uplift and pie-in-the-sky redemption on which Obamamania depends. The candidate is eminently defeatable in the fall if voters see him as a tarnished, manipulative, posing, Chicago political operator, impatiently ambitious and seizing his big chance with a minimum of preparation or programmatic commitment.
If, on the other hand, his promoters continue to sell Barack as a cause rather than a candidate, a representative of idealism rather than ambition, he presents a tougher target for Republicans.
For this reason, the GOP maintains a strong interest in seeing Hillary Clinton prevail in both the Ohio and Texas primaries, with the campaign rivalry continuing with its current heat. Every charge she’s making against St. Barack makes it easier to Republicans to level similar assaults in September and October. The next week will play an important part in this process, and further weeks of competition will help even more. With Hillary sounding increasingly exasperated (“Shame on you, Barack Obama!” declared the angry school marm) it will prove more difficult to blame Republicans for bursting the feel- good, flimsy, can’t-we-all-get-together-and-sing-Kum-Ba-Ya hot-air balloon of Obama-as-savior when the campaign gets serious in the fall.
It looks all but certain that the Illinois Senator will nail down the Democratic nomination at some point, but conservatives have a real stake in encouraging Hillary to keep the battle going for a few weeks more.