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Obama rolls with the punches - and talks like Peter Sellers?

  • Justin Webb
  • 26 Feb 08, 04:53 PM GMT

I asked the Senator this morning about the piece in the New York Times which suggested that the kitchen sink might be thrown at Obama by the Clinton campaign.

His answer was a study in cool dullness: he will not get into a fight. Even on the subject of the African Photo he was pretty low-key.

So is that the approach for the debate as well? Might he just roll with the punches? Might he talk about "campaigns we can be proud of when we look back on them" as he did at his press conference this morning?

Meanwhile, this piece is interesting, I think. I have some sympathy with Gideon's inability to be moved by the Obama rhetoric, though I think you have to be there to get it. Great speaking is not about content alone after all, it is about timing, and tone, and the ability to catch moments of audience appreciation and build them into something.

He can do all those things - that's why he's a great speaker. The content, as Gideon says, is little different to that parodied by Peter Sellers all those years ago...

UPDATE: By the way, anyone with a serious interest in what's happening in Ohio and Texas or who thinks they know what WILL happen, might enjoy these thoughts.

Boys (and Girls) on the Bus

  • Justin Webb
  • 26 Feb 08, 09:28 AM GMT

The Obama plane is quite cosy - used to be a Gulfstream but is now a 737 - and has developed the semi-hysterical atmosphere the travelling press give any presidential campaign once they have all been doing it too long. Scout, from New York City, a stills photographer with Polaris, has been taking shots of Barack Obama for FOURTEEN MONTHS. Her website is as cool as she is.

On take-off for our short flight from Dayton to Cleveland, the journalists try to roll an orange up the aisle into the first class section - the BBC effort is hopelessly inadequate, making only a couple of yards, but Bonney from Fox has mastered it and scores what appears to be a bull’s-eye. Does a long, languid, expensively shirted arm in first class gather it up?

Minutes before he had been down at the back for a visit and exchanged pleasantries with us all (no politics on the plane) with the same easy, comfortable style you see on stage in front of thousands of people. Does he look presidential? Well, yes, is the honest answer. But then he should do - he is winning, after all. The psychology of the candidate's plane is as true today as it was in 1972, as described in the wonderful book The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse. Winning candidates are relaxed and happy, ergo, so are their staff, ergo so are the journalists who get better treated and better access etc.

Meanwhile, hours to go to the big showdown - dare she attack him as seen over the weekend here and described in terms of on-going strategy
here and can it work?

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