The Mystery Man

The latest conservative assault on Barack Obama--that we don't really know who he is--is gaining some traction.

This, it seems to me, is the downside of the avalanche of coverage that at times seems to bury the freshman senator. The media justification is that people are more curious about Obama, which the right has now flipped in arguing that we don't know enough about Obama.

That was the gist of the David Brooks column I cited here yesterday--that Barack has glided through life, through Columbia and Harvard and Springfield and Washington, but has never seemed part of those cultures and therefore is difficult to place.

The media can make anyone sound mysterious and unknowable. Imagine the scary-voiced announcer of so many political ads: John McCain was a Navy hell-raiser who got shot down over North Vietnam. What so we know about what really went on in that prison camp? And why did he divorce his first wife? How do we square the campaign finance reformer of today with the man who peddled influence as one of the Keating Five? And what do those stories about his temper tell us about his fitness to be commander-in-chief?

See? You can make anyone sound like a walking bundle of contradictions keeping a dark side under wraps.

Clearly, there is something about Obama's cool demeanor that is keeping him from connecting with certain kinds of voters--primarily the ones that Hillary Clinton kept winning. The more profiles that are written, the more magazine covers he's on, the more that sense of distance should fade, but so far it is not. It would be disingenuous to say race is not a factor, but I don't know if it's a major factor. Most Americans never heard of Barack Obama four years ago. That was always going to be a challenge for him when crunch time came.

My question: How much coverage will it take for voters to reach a comfort level with Obama, whether they decide to support him or not?

Salon Editor Joan Walsh pronounces the Brooks column "silly" in its argument that previous presidents had fully formed identities:

"Reagan's Dixon roots ran through Hollywood and a career as an actor, as well as a union leader turned union foe, a liberal turned conservative; a divorced ladies man turned right-wing family values guy. Part of his appeal, in fact, was his synthetic identity, which he had in common with most Americans. John F. Kennedy was elected in spite of his 'clan' affiliation, not because of it; he barely defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. Journalists played along, for a while, with the re-creation of Jimmy Carter, landed politician, as Jimmy Carter, humble peanut farmer, and then turned on him.

"Likewise, Bill Clinton was an amalgam of social and cultural influences: an authentic son of working-class Arkansas who saw himself (like Obama, in Brooks' formula) as a baby-boom product of the American meritocracy. But the Beltway didn't really play along with that Clinton self-invention: He was always white trash; his Georgetown degree didn't make him part of Georgetown (and Clinton had a self-destructive streak that let him collude in his exclusion). Finally, George W. Bush is a complete political confection: a rich-kid Connecticut Yankee dressed up like a cowboy, who pretended to be an oilman and failed at every job he ever had (except maybe baseball boss), including this latest . . .

"In short, Obama has a lot in common with every president Brooks mentions, and then some. (It's interesting to note that, like Obama, Clinton, Reagan and Richard Nixon had absent or unreliable alcoholic fathers.)"

Still, says Walsh, "I think he's put his finger on something, something I'd rather not take in. This McCain stuff? The nasty jokes and ads about him being 'The One' or Paris Hilton or Chris Matthews' boy toy? The playing of the 'playing the race card' card? I think it's working. It's too early to fret about polling, and yet the trends in recent polls seem ominous . . .