I continue to watch in fascination as Sen. Barack Obama slowly morphs, before our very eyes, from The Messiah™ (as dubbed by Speaker Madigan) into Just Another Politician™.
Another incremental step is taken with this Daily Kos/MyDD meme yesterday:
The ad (view the ad here) slowly moved in on a Time Magazine cover featuring bin Laden, zooming in on a close-up of Osama’s eyes, while saying that Howard Dean was an unqualified Democratic candidate because of his lack of military or foreign experience.
Tricia Enright, who was the spokeswoman for Howard Dean at the time, summed the ad up best, saying: “Whoever is behind this should crawl out from underneath their rock and have the courage to say who they are.” But Robert Gibbs, who was the spokesman for the group, embraced the slime ad against Dean, and refused to say who had funded the ad. Now sure, you can say that Gibbs was just doing his job. But Gibbs wasn’t just aligned with the group, he was in the leadership. The group took seed money from crooked former Senator Robert Torricelli to get off the ground, and then went out and raised over a million to run the ad. Gibbs was one of three people that made that ad happen.
And:
Robert Gibbs is now Obama’s spokesperson....
Obama clearly dipped into the slimiest corners of DC to pluck out Gibbs.
Politics is dirty business, indeed. And there’s no doubt that Obama’s rapid response has been stellar.
But one can’t help but get a little cynical hearing Obama talk about “changing the tone” and all that ********, while hiring a well-known smear-meister best known for his work trashing other Democrats.
When Obama was first considering running, there was a bit of conventional wisdom floating around: "Wait until Hillary's people start hitting him."
Obama's supporters responded with, "They know how to attack. Remember Blair Hull?"
Obama's problem, though, is that by hitting back, he's becoming everything that he's campaigning against - it will be very difficult to simultaneously campaign against the "smallness of our politics" while having people like Gibbs and David Axelrod and David Geffen skewering Hillary Clinton.
The other complicating factor is that Hillary is running 10-20 points ahead of Barack in most national polling of Democrats (Yes, some of that his higher name recognition.) If that continues, Obama won't be able to close that gap without attacking her - but the very act of attacking her is going to reduce him to the level of Just Another Politician™.
And once Obama is no longer The Messiah™, and completes his metamorphosis into Just Another Politician™, then what will be voters' compelling reason for supporting him?
Obama is no mere politician.