Obama Emerges

One of the questions we've been thinking about in advance of the New Hampshire primary is whether a case can be made for Senator Obama. We understand that, in respect of these columns, the notion sounds improbable. He is running on a war plank — withdrawal — that is almost the polar opposite of ours and on an economic approach that is Keynesian. But he is such an attractive individual, speaks in such an inspiring way, and uses language in a way that evinces such intelligence that it would be short-sighted to fail to look for the upside of Mr. Obama and the aspects of his candidacy on which one might make common cause.

He is, after all, echoing, in his theme of "one nation, one people," a phrase that Rudolph Giuliani used in the "one city, one standard" campaign that gave him the mayoralty. Mr. Giuliani used it to press the conservative logic. Mr. Obama is using it to signal, among other things, that he is not going to run a campaign of racial divisiveness, in contradistinction to campaigns of minority candidates in the past. We don't mind saying that one of the virtues of an Obama presidency would be to put paid the notion that our country is not ready to elect a black person as president. We, for one, have no doubt that our country is ready.

It is not, however, only race that has divided our nation. It is class warfare of the kind that has been nursed by what might be called the pre-Obama Democrats. Vice President Gore made this blunder in his campaign of 2000; Senator Edwards is making this blunder in his campaign of 2008. The man from Illinois has been able to avoid the railing at the corporations and the rich that has largely brought failure to Democratic campaigns. If Mr. Obama can lead his party in from that wilderness, stressing economic open-ness and incentives to growth and a broad sense of equity, it would be a great achievement.

Surprising openings beckon, as we noted November 5 in an editorial about the chairman of Ways and Means, Charles Rangel, and his "Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007." It would reduce the corporate income tax to 30.5% from the current 35% and give the largest tax cuts — an average of $3,582 for each filer, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute — to households earning between $200,000 and $500,000 a year. Those are, we noted, taxpayers whom the Democratic presidential candidates to date have been labeling as "the rich" and on whom they've been threatening to raise taxes.

We mention this not because Mr. Obama is there yet but to mark the fact that the openings are available if there's a candidate to seize them (Senator Clinton has so far declined). Mr. Obama is not the first to have run as a uniter not a divider. Governor Bush did the same in 2000, and he took a united country into the great struggle in which our GIs are now appearing. Even after the Democrats fell away, these columns observed what we called in an editorial on November 19 "The Clinton-Obama-Bush Doctrine." It tumbled out of one of the Democratic debates, when Mr. Obama declared: "The more we see repression, the more there are no outlets for how people can express themselves and their aspirations, the worse off we're going to be, and the more anti-American sentiment there's going to be in the Middle East."

That was pure Bush doctrine, endorsed by Mrs. Clinton in the same debate (quoth she: "There's absolutely a connection between a democratic regime and heightened security for the United States."). Let some deride Mr. Bush as a Wilsonian. But the Democrats have been trapped on the wrong side of the foreign policy debate ever since McGovern. Even if Mr. Obama runs on an anti-war platform, events have a way of changing presidents, and if he will pick up the internationalist principles, he could — on the evidence of his eloquence and Kennedyesque spirit — yet become a war leader.

Certainly his aptitude for leadership is evident. While Mayor Bloomberg has moped around the salons of Manhattan grousing about how a short, Jewish billionaire who's against guns and for gay marriage couldn't get elected president, Mr. Obama has reached for the stars. They said his campaign was, on the basis of such a short career in the Senate, premature, that a black man could never win in white states, that it would be unwise to go up against the Clintons. He put it all in more uplifting terms and reached for the stars anyhow. He is a long way yet from the nomination, but at least he is reaching, and without apology.