Thursday, March 13, 2008

Obama "floats like a butterfly"

Here's David Davenport's Townhall commentary email:

I recently realized that Barack Obama is the Muhammad Ali of presidential politics.

You remember when traditional fighters stood in the middle of the ring and tried to hit Ali, they rarely could because, as he put it, he floated like a butterfly. Ali said he was too pretty to be hit, that your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

That captures Barack Obama who, so far, has floated like Ali above the fray of traditional politics. We don't know where he stands, which has been part of his appeal. Amazingly, Obama himself wrote that he serves "as a blank screen on which people of vastly different stripes project their own views."

With Hillary Clinton's and Obama's views so similar, the Democratic primary has not forced him to stand and fight on policies and positions. Perhaps when he meets a Republican contender in the fall, he will have to come down to earth and actually tell us what he stands for.

I'm wary of saying that his magic is simply going to dissipate overnight if he gets nominated. He'll definitely have to change tactics, but the campaign will have gained incredible prestige and momentum at that point, having defeated Clinton. He does sound less confident to me when the teleprompter is off, and I'm hoping that his vacuous rhetoric is more widely recognized as such. But I'm not betting the bank on it. I had no idea he'd be ahead at this point -- maybe I misoverestimated Hillary's powers.

By the way, Muhammad Ali is a Muslim. As far as I know.

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