The Obama Mystery

“Why is the press going so easy on Barack Obama?” asks a prominent Democratic Party strategist, echoing a criticism frequently made by the Clinton campaign. It’s a fair question, and now that Obama appears to be the front-runner in terms of his delegate count, he deserves a closer look, especially from people like me who have written positively about him.

The reason to look closely now, quite simply, is to avoid buyer’s remorse later.

To understand why Obama needs tougher scrutiny now, we need only recall his political avatar, President John F. Kennedy. Like Obama, JFK had served a relatively short time in the Senate without compiling a significant legislative record. He was young and charismatic, but uncertain in his foreign and domestic policies, and during his first 18 months JFK was often rebuffed at home and abroad. The CIA suckered him into a half-baked invasion of Cuba. And Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev concluded after an initial meeting that Kennedy was so weak and uncertain that he could be pushed around — a judgment that led to the Cuban missile crisis.

Obama’s inexperience is not a fatal flaw, but it’s a real issue. He should use the rest of this campaign to give voters a clearer picture of how he would govern — not in style but in substance.