DES MOINES - In their last-minute efforts to reach out to voters, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have reversed their appeals.
Clinton, who spent most of the campaign communicating her confidence and readiness to lead, is now emphasizing her life story and her sensitivity to voters' concerns.
Obama, who spent most of the campaign communicating his life story and sensitivity to voters' concerns, is now emphasizing his confidence and readiness to lead.
With the two running close in most polls, analysts say, each is trying to address perceived deficiencies, with Clinton projecting more humility and Obama a greater sense of command.
"They face different strategic challenges," said Daron Shaw, a University of Texas political scientist. "She is trying to soften her image and raise her favorability. He is trying to find a substantive basis that will reinforce the charisma and the newness of his candidacy."
For Obama, who leads in most recent Iowa polls, the challenge is especially delicate, Shaw said: "When you're the young guy, the new candidate, the flavor of the month, you have to identify substantively what the [new] agenda is. That's very, very difficult. What he's trying to do instead, I think, is strike a tone that shows the seriousness of the challenges and that he has the leadership to address them."
As recently as last month, Obama's stump speech included long stretches of biography. He talked about spending part of his childhood in a Muslim country (Indonesia) and about having a grandmother still living in an African village. In a reference to his mixed-race background, he spoke of how the morning he is inaugurated as president, "America will look at itself differently, and the world will look at America differently."
But on Monday night, in frigid Le Mars, Iowa, in the northwestern corner of the state, Obama skipped those biographical points. He also smiled less and spoke with a more insistent tone.
The word hope, which he frequently used to define himself earlier in the campaign - "I'm a hopemonger," he would quip - was mentioned only incidentally.
When he talked about himself, it was as an adult politician, drawing sharp lines on issues.
"I have fought my entire career for reducing money in politics," he said, and then told how he once chewed out a fellow senator. The unnamed senator, Obama explained, had privately questioned the Obama-backed ban on lobbyists paying for senators' meals, saying, "Do you want me to eat at McDonalds?"
"And I said: 'A lot of your constituents eat at McDonalds. But you earn more than $160,000 per year. You can eat at Applebee's. Go upscale.' "
With a more aggressive, impatient tone, Obama last night added a hint of bravado to lines that were variations of earlier stump-speech material, such as: "We don't need someone who knows how to play the game. We need someone to put an end to the game playing."
Later, he explained why he wasn't waiting any longer to run for president, despite his relative youth and short tenure in the Senate. "I believe there's such a thing as being too late," he said, adding that he didn't want to "wake up" and find problems like global warming, healthcare, and wars in the Middle East out of control.
Obama's harder edge seemed designed to counter the Clinton campaign's depiction of him as naïve. The Illinois senator, who called his latest book "The Audacity of Hope," wanted to make his candidacy seem less audacious.
Toughness and a willingness to take on Republicans was once the main fodder of Clinton's stump speech, but no more. In a shift that is more visible than Obama's, she and her campaign are stressing her lifelong work for others.
At recent events, her campaign has brought in other people to offer testimonials to her friendship and good deeds, the small things that voters may not associate with someone who's been in the limelight for 16 years.
These range from childhood friends choking up with affection for her; parents of ill children thanking her for efforts on their behalf; and, at an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees event Monday in Des Moines, a union leader describing how she personally intervened to get a fellow union leader's injured son out of Iraq.
On the stage, the soldier's father - a gruff-voiced, heavyset man in his 50s - broke down in sobs and Clinton put her hand on his shoulder.
Before starting her speech, she explained that she had asked her staff to provide box lunches for everyone. "I felt so bad that people could only come during lunch hour," she explained. "So we're going to give you a lunch."
In the remarks that followed she retold her life story. She said her decision to work on behalf of children was based on her mother having been left on her own at age 13 by her divorced parents. Then, speaking softly, she talked of walking into apartments and seeing children unable to go to school because no one would take them.
She described her efforts to "reform" education in Arkansas, and spoke with evident regret of her failed attempt to transform healthcare in Washington. After that, she said, she could have just sat back and enjoyed living in the White House ("You know, living in the White House is not bad . . .") but chose instead to keep fighting on health issues, including the children's health insurance plan that she helped design.
In an obvious response to those who find her too polarizing, she told how she "reached out" to a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to improve healthcare for people in the National Guard.
Her manner was intimate, inclusive, and, at times, uplifting: "We are on an adventure together," she said at one point. "This is about changing our country."
As the better-known figure, Clinton will find it easier to get people to notice her change of tone. In 1988, George H.W. Bush lost the Iowa caucuses in part because he was perceived to be out of touch with average people after eight years as vice president. But he managed to reverse his image in New Hampshire by putting on a parka, throwing snowballs, driving a forklift, and telling gatherings of voters how much he wanted to serve. He won the GOP primary and went on to win the nomination and the presidency.
Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, said that this time, voters want both Clinton and Obama to show some qualities more often associated with the other.
"What we see in New Hampshire polling is that voters have a pretty good read on the strong points and weak points of these two candidates," Scala said, with voters respecting both Clinton's experience and Obama's fresh appeal. "Now, it's a race to fill in the gaps and how they at least cross a threshold on their weak points. For Obama, it's about leadership, and for Clinton, it's likeability."
