The Obama-Huckabee Scrutiny

How hard will the media scrutinize Obama and Huckabee in the coming days? That's going to determine the outcome of the presidential race as much as anything. Part of it will depend on rival campaigns. (My spouse works for Clinton, FYI.) Since McCain and Giuliani and even Thompson have an interest in seeing Romney knocked off they don't really have cause to go after Huckabee. But Romney may start to come at him with new attacks although since Huckabee is polling poorly in secular, flinty New Hampshire he'll probably train his fire on McCain.

Obama's the real question. Will there be more scrutiny of his evolving war record? We all know about Clinton's flip-flopping on the Iraq war and her odd reluctance to call her initial vote authorizing the war a mistake. (If she goes down, that's going to be seen as one of the things that did her in.) But Obama's record has evolved, too. He may have been against the war as a state senator in 2002 but when he came to the Senate he was not a timetable-for-withdrawal advocate. He was all for voting for funding. Then he shifted. He has not had the pure consistency of a Joe Lieberman or a Dennis Kucinich. That may be wise. It may not be. But it is a kind of flip flopping and while Clinton's rightfully been called on her's, Obama's not been.

Clinton's woe at the moment is that her experience argument isn't carrying any weight. And without it, what's her rationale for running? She needs some way of raising doubts about Obama the way that Walter Mondale did with Gary Hart following Hart's shocking win of the New Hampshire primary in 1984 when he soared ahead of front-runner Mondale in the polls. Mondale famously brought Hart back to earth with a quip in a debate that echoed a Wendy's ad campaign, "Where's the beef?" For anyone under 30, the ad campaign depicted an ornery old lady who visits various fast food establishments where tiny burgers are presented on comically large buns. At each, she demands to know: "Where's the beef?" Mondale used the ad campaign to make Hart's claim of "new ideas" seem shallow.

Clinton has a tougher burden. Obama's popularity seems deeper than Hart's. It's hard to imagine a quip that could stop the juggernaut. But could she somehow make him the issue and raise doubts about him? At the moment, it's hard to see just what that would be now that the experience argument has worn thin and the media isn't going to pummel him.

At the moment, Huckabee seems stopable. Obama much less so.