In Rocky's State, a Legislator Can Still Outpunch an Orator

The razor-thin margin separating the contenders for the Democratic nomination grew even thinner at the weekend. Why is this battle so close? A simple reason is that, despite the occasional invective, Americans genuinely admire both the charismatic Barack Obama and the fiercely resilient Hillary Clinton. When John McCain is thrown into the mix, we have the greatest reality show ever, an epic clash of survivalists. It is a shame Sergio Leone is not here to direct the final scene. But the general election is not until November. For now, it comes down to the Democratic nomination, and that prize will be won, like many wars, in the trenches.

Pennsylvania is a fitting battleground for today's primary. It was here that George Washington's frozen troops outlasted the redcoats at Valley Forge, and where Rocky Balboa seemed to defeat Apollo Creed, even while losing to him. In other words, glamour doesn't travel well in the Keystone State, and Obama's astonishing eloquence has done little to offset Hillary Clinton's natural advantage with an 85% white population, many of whom are precisely the small-town gunowners and Christians who felt themselves to be at the bottom of a lengthy condescension from Obama.

There is no doubt that Clinton will win the state; but the margin of victory has become essential. The US media, generally anti-Clinton, is trying to say that a Clinton victory by 5% will be meaningless; that seems to me highly subjective. But in any case a larger win, in the range of 10%-15%, will send a clear signal that this campaign must continue until all the American people have a chance to weigh in. It will also put real pressure on Howard Dean and the Democratic national committee to allow the huge populations of Florida and Michigan to stand up and be counted. The Bush administration began in an undercounted Florida; the Democrats must begin to undo Bush's errors by undoing the failure of democracy.

Clinton has shrewdly made progress in the past week by outlining what she would do in the first 100 days of her administration, particularly in foreign policy. In a few paragraphs tucked into her speech to the Newspaper Association of America, she boldly sketched a vision that was indeed presidential. By acting as if it would happen, she made it more likely to. She promised to convene a summit to negotiate a new climate change treaty to replace Kyoto; to close Guantánamo; to end what she called "the war on science"; to provide women with "the full range of reproductive healthcare around the world"; and to begin to withdraw from Iraq within 60 days. Obama has also promised to withdraw, but Clinton's fuller vision of a Democratic administration struck me as worthy of more than the sketchy attention it got from media obsessed by hairdos, handshakes and cleavage.

Obama and Clinton have outlined their foreign policy before, but voters, distracted by economic woes, have not always followed the subject with interest. With only nine months before the next administration, it is worth parsing these views to see the new world struggling to be born. There are similarities -- if either Obama or Clinton wins, the US will leave Iraq quickly (although in a way not fully clear), we will squeeze Sudan much harder on Darfur, we will offer huge amounts of money to the developing world, and (counterintuitively) we will increase the size of the US military.

But there are subtle and important differences. Clinton will develop a modern GI bill of rights for the strained US military; focus on Aids and malaria (which she has in effect promised to eradicate); strongly advocate the rights of women and children (which evidence shows is the most effective way to make inroads against poverty); and strictly track the way foreign aid is spent and accounted for. In other words, a Clinton administration will develop foreign policies not unlike its domestic ones, recognising the value of health, education, and economic self-sufficiency to relations between democratic societies. It will draw heavily on a legislator's sense of what works and what doesn't, and long experience with the imperfection of sweeping promises.

Obama, by contrast, will offer an orator's vision of the world. At times that has been precisely what the world needed, whether it was FDR identifying the Four Freedoms, or Kennedy at the Berlin Wall. But it can be a shaky pedestal to build an administration on before that administration has come into existence. For example, Obama's goal of a world without nuclear arms is inspiring, but one that seems unlikely be achieved soon. And his plan to create a consultative group of Congressional leaders to review foreign policy priorities seems too deferential in world that demands assertive leadership.

Many of his policies promise to be excellent, particularly in relation to Africa (he has promised more attention to the Congo, generally ignored by Americans), and tensions over energy issues. Compared with Clinton or Obama, McCain's foreign policy statements have been erratic and surprisingly ill-informed, especially on the Middle East, and certain of his promises (a League of Democracies?) seem like something out of a 1930s comic book.

In the speech in which she outlined her first 100 days, Clinton again cited the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline from 1948 that showed how the media have a long history of getting elections wrong. What she did not say was that the paper in question was the Chicago Tribune, from the city that was once her hometown and is now her rival's. The question of which candidate is more Chicagoan, and more deserving of that headline, remains too close to call.