Life of Kings

Maybe running for president and being president are the same thing

Clinton used to hammer Obama with the line that running for president and being president were not the same thing, in order to point out to undecideds that just because Obama can look presidential up on stage doesn’t mean he’d make a great president

In yesterday’s Washington Post though Peter Beinart refutes this idea, pointing out that, “presidents tend to govern the way they campaigned.”

He goes on:

Of the three candidates still in the 2008 race, Obama has run the best campaign by far. McCain’s was a top-heavy, slow-moving, money-hemorrhaging Hindenburg that eventually exploded, leaving the Arizona senator to resurrect his bankrupt candidacy through sheer force of will. Clinton’s campaign has been marked by vicious infighting and organizational weakness, as manifested by her terrible performance in caucus states.

Obama’s, by contrast, has been an organizational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer. From the beginning, the Obama campaign has run circles around its foes on the Internet, using MySpace, Facebook and other Web tools to develop a virtual army of more than 1 million donors. The result has been fundraising numbers that have left opponents slack-jawed (last month Obama raised $40 million, compared with Clinton’s $20 million).

There is a lot of truth it seems to me. As pundits and oppo research pour over the childhoods and Senate careers of the candidates to figure out how they’ll act when they are in the Oval Office, the best play is to look is how they are every day out on the hustings.

This is because nothing can quite prepare someone for being president quite like campaigning. Campaigns are incredibly drain, require super-human feats of energy, and involve rallying people around new ideas. Candidates have to think on the feet, respond to crisis, and yet somehow exude inspire and exude charm and compassion.

In the early days of this race, when Clinton seemed all but inevitable, the best argument she had going for her was that she was running a near flawless campaign. I remember thinking in those days before Iowa, that if Clinton is a president anywhere near like she is a campaigner, then she would make a fabulous president. Her campaign up to that point exuded competence, beat back every refutation, and made shockingly few slip-ups.

But then the campaign sunk under its own weight, and tripped up Clinton in all the ways her backers feared—she seemed to shift personas constantly, her upper level staff was riven by infighting, and things of course descended from there.

Obama meanwhile has kept his campaign on message, tamped down any internal divisions, and dealt with mistakes (see Powers, Samantha) quickly, before any squalls could turn into storms. If he governs like he campaigns …