Margaritaville

Margaritaville

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Desperately Seeking Street Cred

Maureen Dowd
Op-Ed Columnist
The New York Times
April 27, 2008

Maybe I’ve been reading too many stories about the fad of teenage vampire chick lit, worlds filled with parasitic aliens and demi-human creatures, but there’s something eerie going on in this race.

Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan.

Is she draining him of his precious bodily fluids? Leeching his magic? Siphoning off his aura?

It used to be that he was incandescent and she was merely inveterate. Now she’s bristling with life force, and he looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke.

Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn’t, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She’s still a long shot and she’s 14 years older than her rival.

Yet she’s the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he’s the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.

A man at a sports bar in Latrobe, Pa., advised Obama, “Get some sleep, Barack, you look like you’re tired, man.”

When the candidate noted he’s been running for president for 15 months, the guy offered another tip: “You need a drink.”

Obama disdains convention and touts his new politics, but on Friday, he had a news conference in an uninspired setting — a gas station emptied out by his Secret Service detail.

He doesn’t emulate Bobby Kennedy, who defied political tropes and underscored his concern about the poor by taking reporters on treks to rural Appalachia or odysseys to roiling inner cities for speeches on street corners.

With Indiana polls showing the Democratic combatants in a dead heat, and 21 percent of Democrats undecided, this is a perilous time for Obama to lose his fizz. He tried to recapture the magic — and erase the bowling debacle — by shooting hoops with kids in Kokomo on Friday night.

As a basketball player, he should know he’s in overtime in his race with Hillary — and overtime is not the period to indulge in whining. ... ( more )


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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