Dems gaining steam - We just might vote for someone willing to tell us a difficult truth

Dems gaining steam - We just might vote for someone willing to tell us a difficult truth
BY CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
May 9, 2007

Barack Obama was talking about the Chicago Bulls the other day. Not the dazzling-championship-winning-Michael-Jordan Bulls of old, but these new Chicago Bulls who are playing Detroit in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals and who look, at the moment, like they're digging a hole, not climbing a mountain.

"They're a young team," Obama was quoted as saying. "They haven't been there before. You know, sometimes they're going to make a few mistakes but I think they've got great promise."

Obama wasn't really talking about the Bulls.

While he was in Detroit, Hillary Clinton was in Chicago, looking relaxed and somewhat renewed after the Democratic presidential debate two weeks ago. Tuesday's USA Today/Gallup poll might explain why. Clinton, the newspaper reported, "has rebounded to a 15-percentage-point lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama."

Of the eight Democratic and 10 Republican presidential contenders, the poll has Clinton as the only candidate whose numbers showed movement beyond the poll's margin of error.

Error, or the perception of error, stalks these two Democratic frontrunners every day.

Whether it's Clinton's heavily accented, off-key recitation of an old Negro spiritual in Selma or Obama's failure to mention Israel when invoking the suffering of the Palestinians during the debate, there is a constant calculus about what to say and how to say it without making mistakes.

The danger in being too careful is that they both could end up looking like John Kerry before it's over, cautiously negotiating every word before diving into any sentence.

When it comes to elegant language and evocative themes, it's advantage Obama. His speech to the National Conference of Mayors was a masterful example of that as he talked about the Los Angeles riots of 15 years ago and the "quiet riot" that spawned them.

"Those riots didn't erupt overnight," he said. "There had been a quiet riot building up . . . across this country for years . . . young men and women without hope, without prospects, and without a sense of destiny . . . ."

But pressure is building, in Obama's case, for less poetry and more policy. And in Detroit this week, that's exactly what he offered. He walked into the land of American automakers and told them the uncomfortable truth, that they were dooming America with their gas-guzzling autos and dooming their industry by such shortsightedness. He came armed with specific proposals. It was like John McCain's old, derailed Straight Talk Express chugging down the tracks with a new engineer on board. And he got some applause. Evidence, maybe, that Americans have gotten sick of being pandered to.

Clinton's advantage, post-debate, is in being decisive and less defensive. That she could quickly answer "Retaliate" when asked what to do if the United States was attacked by al-Qaida, while Obama replied that he'd have to "review" how to operate, has given her campaign some steam.

Standing in Obama's hometown, flanked by a group of black ministers to show her own African-American support, Clinton said she was not ceding Illinois just because Obama lives here now and she no longer does.

Though she trails Obama in campaign cash collected in Illinois (Illinois ranks 12th in states giving money to Clinton, but second for Obama behind California), Clinton is turning her lack of charisma, in a clear shot across Obama's bow, into a virtue. "Look," she said on Monday, "I am maybe not the most charismatic person in this race. I may not, you know, be the person that somebody immediately knows and understands is on their side. But I think my track record and my lifetime of work and experience demonstrates that conclusively."

It's another way of saying, look, you may not agree with me on some things, but I won't lie to you.

We are at a point in this country where we are so hungry for someone not to lie to us, that we might, just might, vote for someone willing to tell us a difficult truth.

While this has so far been a lousy week for the Bulls, that team "that's got great promise," it has been a pretty good week for Clinton and Obama. Even if it's just the beginning of the semifinals.