From the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last night, it’s now clear that the contest between the candidates has effectively come down to two key characteristics which, in 2008 will matter the most to voters. These are experience and change. The third, electability, is an equally important issue likely to be on the minds of New Hampshire’s Democrats, but one which is typically discussed only behind closed doors. Faced with questions on an array of topics ranging from healthcare to nuclear proliferation, candidates’ replies consistently returned to firstly why they felt they had the experience to handle it, and secondly, why they were best placed to offer a significant break with the past on that particular issue.

Hillary Clinton, above anyone else, has worked to make experience the central theme of the campaign. Asked about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal last night, she jumped to draw parallels with a similar incident which occurred under her husband’s administration. When queried about her ability to work with congress, she pointed to her ‘35 years of experience’ in national politics, as well as identifying rival candidates from both parties as good friends and colleagues. The way the she speaks, you’d think that Bill Clinton had spent 8 years in the White House as a yes-man.

This is all part of her chief advisor’s ‘incumbent strategy’, the plan being from the beginning to form the Hillary campaign to look as much like a government in exile, ready from day one to take the reins, as possible. Few now doubt that the current administration is one of the least competent ever to hold office, whilst even fewer doubt that when it comes to competence and experience of how Washington works, Hilary is difficult to beat. The flip side of the ‘incumbent’ strategy, is that is was also designed to make mincemeat of younger, unforeseen opponents standing in her way, Obama particularly by exposing their lack of experience. Over the past few days, we’ve seen her attacks get increasingly nasty, as she tries to convince Democrats that not to give her the White House would be, quite simply, irresponsible

Employing the same politics of fear and cynicism which have characterised the White House for the past 8 years, Bill Clinton has repeatedly wondered out loud if America can afford to ‘take a roll of the dice’ on a candidate such as Obama with only three years in the Senate. Hilary, on the other hand, has openly questioned whether anyone but her is fit to go into battle with the infamous Republican attack machine, seasoned warrior that she is. Last night, she even tried to compare Obama to George Bush, helpfully reminding us of what happened last time America voted for a guy ‘they’d like to have a beer with’, throwing caution into the wind and relying on intuition over intellect. After Iowa revealed that competence wasn’t enough, and that the ability to affect change was something that actually mattered to voters, Hilary last night was at pains to incorporate it into her own message, arguing that, as the most experienced candidate, she is the one best placed to affect change and to go into battle with Republicans to achieve it, reeling off a list of legislation she had fought for over the years.

But change is more than a legislative program, it’s also more than a change in the party to hold the White House. The victory for Obama (and, yes, Huckabee) shows that Americans are looking for something more fundamental than that. Even if viewed as incidental, the Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton pattern that would result from a Hilary victory is symptomatic of a much more fundamental malaise in American politics.

People are waking up to the realisation that lasting change doesn’t come about from switching from one party to the other every eight years on a razor-thin percentage of the vote, just so the new administration can reverse the programme of its predecessor and institute its own. When Clinton talks about her experience in politics, that’s the game she’s referring to. When she talks about competence, all she’s saying is that she can hit the Republicans harder, knocking them out of the White House for perhaps twelve years, rather than the customary eight. That’s not change, that’s business as usual, and a game of merry-go-round politics which Americans know they can no longer afford.

Hilary’s second mistake is to underestimate Obama as a pretty face who gives a good speech. She’s repeatedly underplayed this, referring to him as the man who ‘talks about change’ implying that she, the gritty realist, is the only one who can deliver. The fact is though, despite being the best orator in the contest, Obama’s charisma and personality aren’t the only things which Clinton lacks.

The role of the President of the United States is not just that of Commander-in-Chief, nor confined to that of Chief Executive. The inhabitant of the White House also happens to be the Head of State, too. Despite what Hilary would like you to believe, Presidents are rarely judged on their legislative programme alone, and their office constitutes far more than a prize to be won on behalf of their party. Indeed, in a Federal government, which, in comparison to European countries, still has a relatively indirect role in the lives of its citizens, the President’s ability to bring change directly through legislation is quite limited. Few, for example, would look back half as fondly on the years of FDR, Kennedy and Reagan if judging them on their legislative record alone.

What makes presidents go down in history as great, within the United States, and overseas, is far less tangible- quite simply, the ability to inspire. The United State’s recovery from economic disaster and restoration of self-confidence almost overnight owed just as much to Franklin Roosevelt’s positive attitude, amiable character and fireside chats as it did The New Deal or anything it achieved. Similarly, in his short time in office, Kennedy achieved relatively little. Nonetheless like a breath of fresh air, the youngest president in history succeeded in embodying the self-belief and faith in progress of his age, just as Reagan, (whatever your view of him), restored faith in the Presidency in the wake of Watergate. As for George Bush, as it turns out, he’ll be remembered less for Iraq or the Patriot Act than the fear and loss of self-belief he exploited and grew in the wake of 9/11. However much Clinton would like to deny it, personality matters, a lot. A president’s ability to inspire people to change can bring far wider consequences than a decision to sign a bill into law.

If it ended there, you still might have a good reason to vote for Hilary. After all, given the mixed results of men like Reagan and JFK, it is questionable whether Americans can afford to chase a potentially ‘great’ president at the expense of playing it safe and putting into the White House a merely ‘good’ one for 8 years. But Obama’s personality, and Clinton’s lack of it, will not just be an asset on the campaign trail, but, once in office, a political one too. The same charisma and eloquence that inspired young people to turn out in droves in Iowa can capture the imaginations of young people across the World. From the streets of Gaza to skeptical Europeans such as myself, the story of how the ’skinny boy with a funny name’, became the most powerful person on the planet has the ability to capture imaginations and re-ignite their belief in a nation built not by kings and aristocrats, but the dreams of the dispossessed and the underfoot.

At home too, Obama’s character can stand for far more than Clinton’s ruthless ambition and technocratic competence. She may be the expert warrior, steeled in the bitter partisan battles of the 1990s, but it is precisely her husband’s inability to win the country wholeheartedly that made those battles a necessity. Ever since the hapless Kerry lost by the single state of Ohio in 2004, ‘Ohio plus one’ has been the mantra of the Democrat establishment, of which Hilary is central. To people for whom the White House is simply a prize, the nation divided into irreconcilable ‘red states’ and ‘blue states’, only a few states matter. As long as enough votes are won to tip the balance and deliver their man (or woman) the presidency, that’s just fine. Small wonder, then, when those same marginal states deliver to congress individuals of the opposite party, that they demand the president be ready to battle. A Democrat President fighting, as Bill Clinton did, tooth-and-nail against a Republican congress may, if he’s lucky, achieve change in a trickle, but nothing that a few hanging chads in Florida can’t reverse overnight.

Achieving the kind of lasting, genuine change that Americans of all political stripes desire will mean more than just ‘winning’ a few marginal states, which, with her vast negative ratings, is the best Hilary can expect. At the very least, it will require a sympathetic Congress with more than a razor-thin majority. But it should also go further than that. It’ll mean a fundamental shift of the nation’s political landscape and rely on the ability of a Democrat president to reach out beyond the traditional base. They’ll have to be willing to venture into states such as Mississippi and Alabama, states which, as the poorest in the nation, have much to gain from the Democrat message, and who have been written off as irrevocably ‘red’ for too long. It’ll require framing our arguments in language that evokes not Hillary’s battles of the past, but which builds, as FDR, JFK and LBJ did, a consensus amongst wildly diverse groups of the need to overcome the special interests blocking the corridors of Capitol Hill.

Once in the White House it will also- and Hilary won’t like this- mean relying on more than the winning candidate’s own experience, and beyond a clique of advisors belonging the last party grandee to hold the job. Far more important than such narrow ‘experience’ , will be the humility to listen, as the current administration so often failed to do, to outside experts on foreign and economic matters, to govern in the interests of more than just 51% of the electorate, and the frankness to restore faith and trust once again in the United States and its President. Barack Obama can, and is doing, all of these things. I know who the underqualified candidate is, and it certainly isn’t him.

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