Opinion: Cornering the TM vote
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The swarm of candidates descending on Iowa the past few days generated reams of copy, most of it chronicling the Bill and Hillary Clinton show as it swept through the state. But our favorite, by far, appeared today on Politico.Com, spotlighting Barack Obama’s stop in Fairfield, home of the Maharishi University of Management.
The school is named for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the 90-year-old founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement whose devotees a few decades back famously included members of The Beatles and The Beach Boys. In 1971, Maharishi founded his college in little ol’ Fairfield (pop: 10,000) and over time it’s become the town’s main calling card.
We checked the website for a company based there that sells an array of incense and related products (Fairfield Market) and it claims that fully 3,000 of the community’s residents practice TM. And in describing the town, nestled in Iowa’s southeastern corner, the website says it ‘sometimes feels like American Gothic meets Aliens From Another Planet.’
Obama was a big hit with the crowd that gathered to hear him Tuesday night in the town’s ‘traditional green square,’ according to the Politico story by Ben Smith (who gives Fairfield a nod as ‘site of the best organic pizza in Eastern Iowa’).
The Democratic presidential candidate connected with his audience, Martin reports, in large part because he stressed his call for a national renewal of hope and commitment, rather than focus on berating President Bush and other Republicans.
Obama doesn’t always strike this tone.
Just today, in a speech to the National Education Association in Philadelphia, he blasted Bush on the subject of public schools. He derided the administration’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy as “one of the emptiest slogans in the history of politics.”
But in general, Obama eschews the confrontational approach. And, as Smith observes, that represents a key ‘gamble’ by his campaign. In a time of intense partisanship, he often tries to sound a different note.
We’re also reminded of a column a few months ago by our colleague Ron Brownstein that aptly summarized the dynamic of the race between Obama and Hillary Clinton --- a dynamic that, despite ebbs and flows in the fortunes of the two leaders in the Democratic contest, seems unchanged.
Brownstein wrote that Obama’s support ‘is following a pattern familiar from the campaigns of other brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform, from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Gary Hart in 1984 to Bill Bradley in 2000. Like those predecessors, Obama is running strong with well-educated voters but demonstrating much less support among those without college degrees.’
We’re betting that most of those who heard Obama in Fairfield this week were of the well-educated variety. But we’re also betting that nice as it is to get a warm welcome there, the Obama camp will feel better about his prospects when he gets the same reception from a union hall in Cleveland.
-- Don Frederick