Obama's complex campaign answers the call

PHILADELPHIA

THE OVATIONS of 4,000 people at Muhlenberg College in Allentown clearly inspired Barack Obama into theatrics. In bringing up Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m." television ad that attacks Obama's readiness to be commander in chief, Obama raised his hand to his head, thumb by the ear, pinky by his mouth. To more roars and laughter, he said, "John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they had a chance to make a good decision on the most important foreign policy issue of a generation and they got it wrong. There's only one candidate left who got it right and that's who you should want answering that phone call at 3 o'clock in the morning."

Two days later, I asked Obama in an interview whether that moment reflected a refreshed level of confidence. He did admit that the ad "had some immediate media value." But he added that "the more people think about it, the more they think we want someone with good judgment answering those phone calls."

It appears that an increasingly positive judgment is being rendered on Obama in Pennsylvania. With less than three weeks to go before its primary, polls show him slashing Clinton's lead, once more than 20 points in many polls, down to an average of 6.6 percentage points calculated by Real Clear Politics.

"The demographics of ethnic working-class whites still work against him," said Muhlenberg College pollster Chris Borick. "I'm not sure he'll be able to close the gap all the way, but if she [Clinton] needs a 20-point blowout/slam-dunk that many observers say she needs, then he may be accomplishing what he needs to do."

Asked if he thought his rally was helped by his generally praised speech on race in response to controversial clips from his former pastor, Obama said all he knew was that his speech was "heartfelt."

"I think that people always appreciate those moments where a politician's not talking in sound bites but trying to speak honestly about a question," he said. "So I don't know what the political effect of it may be, but I know that as I've been traveling around Pennsylvania, what people really are much more focused on is high gas prices and jobs leaving and the home foreclosure crisis."

Obama was asked what the difference was between his appeal in earlier states where he won the white vote outright and states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama, who has run more of a 50-state campaign than Clinton, said the major difference was familiarity and Clinton started with more of it in Pennsylvania and Ohio because of the popularity of former president Bill Clinton. He said the speculation of his being able to connect with working-class white voters was ironic since his grandparents were of "pretty modest means" who "always had to scrimp to save to just make ends meet."

Asked whether there was a silent double standard that forced him to address the issue of race before any of the other candidates, Obama said, "I'm not sure it's a double standard. My former pastor said some very offensive things for a broad cross-section of the American people and I think any candidate for president would have had to deal with that at some level. I do think that talking about race is something that people try to avoid, although there's this fascination with it, which is part of the reason why we saw so much attention paid to these comments.

"But I think that what people want is common sense. They don't appreciate whether it's coming from my former pastor or from talk radio hosts sensationalizing the issue, overstating the issue, using it for political purposes. . . . There are obviously some wounds that have to be healed and there's some very concrete issues that have to be dealt with in terms of disparities in healthcare, or income or joblessness, legacies of the past. So we don't want to paper those issues over. . . . My speech tried to avoid some of the simplicities that somehow widen division instead of bringing people together."

For the moment, the complex campaign of Obama appears to have avoided being sunk by the simplicities.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.