Clinton and Obama

I saw them both speak today, Clinton in Nashua, Obama in Salem. Each was impressive. Hillary drew a large crowd to the same high school gym where Obama had drawn a horde the day before (I'll leave it to others to argue over whose crowd was bigger and whose had more actual New Hampshire residents). She spoke well, was pointed at times but never nasty, and displayed the kind of humor and warmth she's often accused of lacking. "We've got to nominate a doer, not a talker!" was a decent line. And her riff ("That's not change!") about a certain unnamed candidate's supposed inconsistencies on the Patriot Act, Iraq War funding and lobbying reform was not, I thought, overly harsh or negative. She took a lot of questions and answered them smartly and substantively.

But while Clinton was good -- smart and appealing and exuding competence -- she did not inspire, at least not compared with Obama. Speaking a few hours later in a Salem high school gym, Obama was far less substantive, rarely delving into anything like policy specifics. The whole speech was basically about hope, as it often is. But he had some new material -- in particular Clinton's remark in last night's debate warning about candidates who raise "false hopes". Obama took that head on, and was very effective. "False hopes...about what we can do?" he asked. "What does that mean? What kind of message does that send?" Then he went on a riff about how hope is what you need to do great things -- like demolish segregation, or send a man to the moon. ("Did JFK say, 'That moon thing, it's too far?'") "We don't need leaders who tell us what we can't do." Hope, he said, is "imagining and fighting for what doesn't seem possible."

Naive? Maybe. But powerful stuff.