If he keeps this up, Barack Obama may affect the way politicians run for President. After bursting on the scene last year, he has gone into relatively low-profile mode.
With the news that he raised almost as much money as Hillary Clinton from twice as many people in the first quarter of the year, Obama has been doing what candidates rarely do, listening to people instead of bombarding them with promises and programs.
While John Edwards is touting his health plan, Obama doesn’t have one. Instead, he is in Iowa talking about the problem at small meetings.
“Every four years,” Obama says, “candidates trot out their plans, then nothing happens. How do we build a movement for change so that when a president is elected, there is actually a constituency and a consensus” to “move the agenda through Congress?”
His opponents may try to brand such openness as indecision but at this point it would be hard to make that stick. Obama is paying voters the compliment of thinking through problems with them instead of selling off-the-shelf solutions.
As one doctor said at a health-care meeting with him, “There are no simple answers.” Obama, at least, is looking for the complicated one, which in itself separates him from most of the current pack of Presidential hopefuls.
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