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John Nichols: An Obama, Clinton unity 'op'

John Nichols  —  6/29/2008 7:10 am

No one who followed the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination seriously -- a subgroup that, unfortunately, excludes virtually the entire broadcast and cable press corps -- will be surprised that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have begun appearing jointly and comfortably with one another.

People forget that, back in November 2006, MSNBC political commentator Tom Curry headlined an assessment of the candidates: "Clinton versus Obama: Is there any difference?"

As Curry noted then, there was "a remarkable concurrence" between the contenders.

Obama and Clinton come from the same rigidly pragmatic and consistently cautious wing of the Democratic Party. For the most part, they got along well with one another during the long campaign for a nomination that each coveted for his or her own reasons -- as opposed to a desire to deny it to the other, or to advance an agenda. They spoke regularly by cell phone, complimented one another in debates and dialed down disputes with carefully chosen statements that were constructed to press the "pause" button on media-generated "controversies." They distanced themselves from troubling surrogates and denied the hotter heads on their respective campaign teams permission to "go nuclear."

While Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe blew up now and again, and while some of Obama's backers may have gone overboard at times, the candidates themselves never allowed tensions on the trail to get anywhere near as intense as what developed between George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey in 1972, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in 1988, George W. Bush and John McCain in 2000, or John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008.

This year's Democratic race may have looked edgy. But that was because the talking heads needed something to talk about in front of the cameras. The truth is that the Obama-Clinton contest was a throwback to the cozy, insider competitions of old between pols like Earl Warren and Tom Dewey for the 1948 Republican nod or John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Democratic primaries.

In other words, the notion that Obama and Clinton were in a battle to the death was always a theatrical rather than a realistic one. It helped to keep the troops energized during what was, for all practical purposes, a non-ideological exercise in political positioning. The drama was in the fact that a nominee would make history -- either as the first person of color or the first woman to lead a national party ticket.

It was always the case that one candidate would win and the other would lose. And it was always the case that, when this happened, the two of them would follow the traditional pattern of merging their big-donor lists, plotting a joint convention and fall strategy, and appearing together at stage-managed events like Friday's photo opportunity in the aptly named New Hampshire community of Unity.

Of course, the photos renew talk of a "dream ticket." That's unlikely because everyone recognizes that it would be difficult to find a place for the increasingly difficult Bill Clinton in an Obama White House. But if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did resolve to form a ticket, the personal dynamics between them would be fine. They are, after all, what they have always been: relatively conventional politicians who share that "remarkable concurrence."

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times, Wisconsin's progressive daily news source, where his column appears regularly.

John Nichols  —  6/29/2008 7:10 am