Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint

Sen. Barack Obama is flanked by reporters and security personnel as he leaves the Capitol briefly after one of many votes, including one on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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"If he doesn't make that new path clear during the campaign, he'll have to sort out the party's ideological direction after the election, even if he wins," said one think-tank official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's challenges. "He's far better off defining it on his terms now than working it out in a caucus meeting down the road. This is his point of maximum leverage."

William A. Galston, a Clinton White House domestic policy adviser, calls Obama's candidacy "the first act of what's likely to be a multi-act drama" that needs a larger narrative thread. "Successful campaigns tell stories that provide the framework of meaning and significance for particular policy proposals," said Galston, who is now at the Brookings Institution. "That's what the Obama campaign, specifically the candidate, needs to do in the next few months."

The general-election campaign affords Obama the opportunity do that, as others have done before him, whether it be Ronald Reagan in 1980 with his pledges to tame big government and restore U.S. prestige abroad, Clinton in 1992 with his challenge to party orthodoxy as a different kind of Democrat, or George W. Bush in 2000 with priorities that he talked about continually during his campaign.

Although Clinton and Bush challenged some party orthodoxy in their first presidential campaigns, Obama has been far more reluctant to do so. And at this point, no signature policy proposal is universally regarded as distinctive in defining his politics or philosophy. What then constitutes Obama-ism? As one Democratic strategist put it: "It's pretty clear what it isn't, but it isn't yet clear what it is."

Galston cited three strands that he regards as helping to define Obama-ism. First is an "all of us together" approach that rejects "diversionary interests and short-term gains." Second is an effort to bring people together across partisan lines. Third is his effort to broaden participation in politics and his use of modern technology to do so. This appears to be a marriage of Obama's roots in community organizing and his willingness to tap the power of technology to open the processes of government to more than the traditional cadre of experts.

"What Obama is talking about is a bottom-up view of how the world works," said Andrei Cherny, editor of the journal Democracy. "When he talks about American politics and how to reform it, how America can reach out to people around the world, he is not talking in the same way Democrats talked about it 30 years ago from the top down."

"His tone is very much post-partisan and post-ideological," said one Clinton White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a frank assessment of Obama's candidacy. "The challenge will be coming up with the ideas to go with it. If you drop the same agenda into the same Washington petri dish, you'll get the same results."

Heather Higginbottom, Obama's domestic policy director, said the candidate's agenda and priorities are shaped in large measure by a reaction to what she called "the disastrous eight years" of Bush's presidency. "The priorities for the country are very clear," she said. "What we've lacked is ability to get things done. . . . He has this attitude that we can't solve these problems doing them the way we've been doing them."

Higginbottom said Obama's policy priorities begin with Iraq and the Middle East. Obama said last week that he remains committed to the idea of removing all combat troops in about 16 months, should he assume the presidency. Domestically, Obama has proposed policies for stimulating the economy and helping struggling families, for dealing with global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil and for achieving near-universal health-care coverage. But he has yet to make clear what his major domestic policy initiative would be for his first year in office.

Austan Goolsbee, one of Obama's top economic advisers, points to the big middle-class tax cut Obama has proposed as one example of a policy that is distinctive in defining Obama's thinking. He also said that, thematically, developing policy "from the perspective of people who use it rather than the perspective of the policy makers" sets Obama apart from Democrats who have preceded him.