A friend sent me this interesting Los Angeles Times article on Barack Obama’s ability to bridge right and left when he ascended to the editorship of the Harvard Law Review.
But then I went to Obama’s pre-campaign site and then looked at Hillary’s pre-campaign site. These are technically “exploratory committee” websites.
Hillary’s is stunning in its complexity and seamlessness. She clearly has hired top talent to dominate much of the web-based political game.
Obama has a choice it seems to me. He could play the “anti-slick” card and try to do what McCain did in 2000 with a bus and a straight-talk-express-style, low frills campaign, or he needs to out-slick Hillary.
Obama, even when he’s sincere and connecting with folks, has a slickness in his DNA that is going to make a grunge-style campaign look out of place.
He’s probably got to take the slick route — and that means he better start spending money now to colonize a lot of the web space, political donors and activists, and just get with it.
Just a couple of clicks through his website leaves me concerned.
— Steve Clemons
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