Race and Obama’s Success

I have watched the stories about Geraldine Ferraro with some interest. She was one of the pioneers, suffering a loss in 1984, but nonetheless being part of a historic candidacy. Though I have at times thought the Clinton campaign wants to introduce race into the campaign, they have at a minimum done so subtly. Ferraro seems to have gotten caught in a fairly innocent set of observations. I think she has a right to discuss the issue of becoming a candidate because of her pioneering effort. Nonetheless I think she is wrong that Barack Obama’s success is due to his race. In part, I suspect this is because she is thinking more of 1984 than 2008.

I recall the Howard Dean campaign and its early successes in 2004. There was a great deal of excitement over this liberal governor from Vermont. Many young voters were involved, and new voters were being brought to the table. Here was a man who was talking their language and they went out to support him.

I don’t have solid studies on this point, but I think a major downfall of Howard Dean’s campaign was that he didn’t have sufficient discipline. Off the cuff remarks got out of hand, and he began to appear to be a loose canon.

Enter Barack Obama this year. Many of the same people support him. His first victory is in Iowa, where the African-American vote is negligible. But Obama and his campaign stay disciplined, remain on message, and with occasional exceptions fail to provide the kind of fodder for the press that Howard Dean did. One of the reasons for press friendliness is simply that the Obama campaign has been more disciplined.

Also ignored in all the arguments over the size of states that each candidate has won, and whether they are red or blue, is the Obama campaign’s success in getting out the vote and in getting people to caucuses. That again is simply good campaign practice and discipline. Out of the remaining three candidates, Obama has demonstrated the best handling of campaign management, I believe.

So there’s a great deal other than race here, and there’s a great deal more than rhetoric. I would like to add that there are worse traits in a candidate than the ability to communicate and motivate. Bringing the country around to one’s ideas is important. There’s a good argument to be made that the Bush administration failed to communicate the need for the Iraq war to the public, and thus failed to keep them on board. In a democracy, continued public support is an essential to the success of a war, just as much as military personnel and equipment. That failure to communicate may have been critical. I tend to think that the reason such communication failed is that the war is such a bad idea, but in reality, good PR can make up for some very bad ideas.

Does race play a role, however, in Obama’s success? I would guess that there is a role. I know that I believe it would be a good thing for us to have a president who is not a white male. Nonetheless, that is the very last in my list of considerations. I would only give consideration to race if I was dealing with two candidates who were otherwise evenly balanced in my mind. Then I’d tend to weight my choice in favor of diversity.