Justin Webb's America

Poetry and prose

• Justin Webb
• 9 Jan 08, 07:11 AM GMT

If the Clinton people knew they could do it but didn’t let on - if, in other words, this was a trick, they deserve their already golden political medals to be further burnished. I suspect, in fact, that they are as surprised as everyone else but surprise will turn to action now to take Barack Obama to the cleaners. In particular, the Obama camp is vulnerable to the charge of naivety after allowing expectations of his win to build, with even the candidate talking of “something happening”. Further proof of Barack’s unreadiness for prime time?

The Clinton camp intends to focus now on the “issue” of the free ride given by the US press to Obama and the Obamaniacs.

Interesting admission this from NBC reporters about the difficulties some have had staying disinterested when covering Obamania in New Hampshire.

We nearly started a TV piece with his voice - preacher-like - over pictures of the pretty New Hampshire snow. It would have looked compelling but, well, a touch hagiographic. Not the words but the images. We thought again - but we could equally have made the case for doing it. The NBC man was simply acknowledging something any educated person knows to be the truth - that political campaigns touch people when they really work and journalists are people. Me, I feel it when I see McCain and his veterans; the chap might well be a cussed old devil (he told me he “loves the BBC” and I certainly do not buy that) but what a life he and his generation have led.

Terry McAuliffe - the chair of Clinton campaign - looks as tired as the candidate, which is saying something given the high energy of this man. But he is still animated as usual and with our camera on he mounts a typically robust vision of the long term. Unlike Hillary Clinton in her ABC interview though (she talked of running “through the nominating process”), he suggests that Super Tuesday is the end: that the race can be won then by the Clinton camp. I reckon her vaguer end date might be more realistic.

There is much being made of this Hillary Clinton line: “You campaign in poetry but you govern in prose.” She was intending to make the point that poetry wasn’t enough, but she seemed to forget that although it isn’t enough, it is still necessary. You cannot, in American politics this year, cut straight to the prose. New Hampshire was a prose win - fancy college graduates and independents and the like tended to vote for Obama - but those constituencies will not win a general election. She still needs to find the poetry somehow, somewhere.

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