On Policy, Obama Breaks Little New Ground

Obama, like many congressional Democrats, has pushed for more education funding, a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and immigration legislation that would create a path to citizenship for people who are now in the United States illegally.

In part, Obama's approach reflects the broad consensus that has developed during the Democratic primaries. Unlike Republicans -- many of whom disagree with McCain on issues such as global warming and immigration -- Democratic presidential candidates, the party's leaders in Congress and Democratic voters largely agree on an agenda. There is little of the left-center divide of the Bill Clinton era. Self-identified independent voters broadly favored the Democrats' approach over that of the GOP on Iraq, health care, the economy and dealing with the federal budget deficit, according to a recent Washington Post poll.

Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist at the Economic Policy Institute, praised him for offering a more progressive agenda than the past two Democratic presidential nominees, former vice president Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry, neither of whom proposed a universal health-care plan, as Obama has. "There's a recognition that small-bore approaches to solving the big challenges is not sufficient," Bernstein said.

Obama's policy ideas reflect the group of mainstream Democratic advisers he has surrounded himself with, many of them younger colleagues of experts who had held top-level positions in the Clinton administration and ended up working for the former first lady's campaign.

Jeffrey B. Liebman, a Harvard economist who advises Obama on budget issues, had been a top aide to Gene Sperling, President Clinton's top economics adviser, who now works for Sen. Clinton's campaign; Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who advises Obama on Wall Street issues, was a top aide to former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, another Clinton backer.

Obama also brought in people who were not in the Clinton orbit, but most of them are not new to Washington. The advisers say that what drew them to Obama was not his embrace of their policy views but rather his potential appeal for getting things done.

"His message of uniting people and trying to do something new was apparent from the beginning, and so he sort of had me at hello," said University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee, Obama's top economic adviser.

The campaign, however, has distanced itself from more controversial views, such as Goolsbee's description of Obama's opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement as political rhetoric. Goolsbee denied the account of what he said at a meeting at the Canadian consulate in Chicago, and Obama has kept his anti-NAFTA rhetoric.

Looking forward, Galston said that while Obama and McCain would each seek to emphasize independence from their parties on "second-tier" issues such as teacher pay or global warming, on the big issues, such as the Iraq war and the economy, they would hew to party orthodoxy while at the same time arguing that the other is even more tied to his own party.

"The Obama campaign will argue on those issues McCain is, if anything, more conservative than Bush," Galston said. "The McCain campaign will argue although Senator Obama has campaigned on a promise to bring us back together, that in fact he is not a moderate, despite his tone, but is a liberal."

Bruce Reed, who also was a policy adviser to President Clinton and now supports Sen. Clinton, said it is important for the eventual Democratic nominee to show some break from the party, to burnish centrist credentials. "Our candidate will need as many proof points as possible that we're not the weak-on-defense, big-spending liberal the Republicans always say they are," he said.

Obama aides, however, say their approach will work because most voters are looking not for a new vision for expanding health care but rather for a reformed political system such as the one Obama calls for, one that would solve problems rather than resort to bickering.

Galston said Obama's approach could succeed in a general-election campaign as long as the candidate made sure voters were more familiar with his plans, but he was more skeptical about the approach working if Obama is elected president. "There are many scholars . . . who believe that polarization in the country between the parties is pretty thorough and that a change in tone may not be sufficient," he said.

Staff writer Shailagh Murray and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.