These attacks are supposed

to show that Obama can’t be pushed around

But, of course, what it really suggests is

that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt

You can’t really win with the new style of politics

Sooner or later, you have to play

by the conventional rules

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Petulant Obama

When Barack Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, spoke to reporters on a conference call Wednesday, you could hear a siren in the background.

It was just the usual city sounds outside of his Chicago office, but it matched the emergency tone of the call.

In the wake of Obama's three losses in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island, Axelrod was opening up a new, aggressive front against Hillary Clinton.

He spooled out a string of accusations about her undisclosed tax returns and White House records as if he'd been holding his breath for the last 12 months. In fact, he has.

This was a public attack unlike any the campaign has issued before. "She is a habitual nondiscloser," said Axelrod, even as he criticized the Clinton campaign for running a "scorched earth" series of attacks on Obama recently.

The Obama campaign recognizes that taking the high road isn't an effective rebuttal—hence the Axelrod call Wednesday and Obama's raising of questions about Clinton's tax returns on the campaign trail.

The Clinton team is setting the same trap for Obama my 4-year-old sets for her older brother. She hits him, knowing that he'll get in trouble for hitting back.

Right on cue, Clinton's senior aide Ann Lewis set it up. "I didn't realize their version of new politics was to recycle old Republican tactics," she said.

If voters put both campaigns in the corner for a timeout, it may hurt Obama more, because his claim to be a new kind of above-the-fray candidate means he's held to a higher standard.

If Obama pays no penalty for the fracas, the Clinton folks still take him for a roll in the dirt where he can't offer his appealing message of hope, change, inspiration, and hope. Clinton, by contrast, reinforces her fighter image.

This is not a new dilemma for Obama. We've been talking about it for a year. What's new is that he is under more pressure than ever to punch back. It's not just that he can't let Clinton's attacks hang in the air.

He has to show Democrats that he's a fighter, too. The questions the Clinton campaign has been raising about him lately have all been in bounds, despite what Obama aides say.

Obama's abilities as commander in chief, his ties to indicted longtime political ally Tony Rezko, and his position on NAFTA are all worthy subjects for debate.

If he's going to be the nominee, he's going to face a lot worse from Republicans—and the barrage will be constant if he's president.

Obama's Arrogance Punctured

Because he’s loose on the stump, self-deprecating yet cocky, Obama gets away with appropriating the language of his own deification. He mocks it, but at the same time reinforces it. It’s hard to be humble when your overflow room is overflowing.

There were other moments of self-puffery. At one point, he introduced a volunteer as the chair of “Obamans for—” He caught himself. “Nashuans for Obama.”

However innocently, Obama had just bestowed himself with fame’s highest honor: his very own adjectival form.

Obama’s speaking style, with its preacherly repetitions and rhythms, is nothing new. But the content of his speech—if you stop and actually listen to it—is aggressively vapid.

“This change thing is catching on,” he told people. He’s running, as he always says, because of “what Dr. King called the 'fierce urgency of now'.”

Here’s the closest he came to defining “hope”: It’s “imagining, then working for, then righting for what didn’t seem possible before.”

In other ways, Obama doesn’t act messianic—just cocky. He laughs at his own jokes, a staccato “heh” that sounds naked when spoken into a mic in a large auditorium.

I met one of his staffers in a bar after the South Carolina victory. After several Scotches "Lawrence" started to open up.

"Like all of us, Barack has two sides to him. His public persona is laid-back, cool - I suppose you'd call it - but beneath that affable exterior he's very different.

"When he's tired he's very ratty - that's no surprise. But the side I really can't stand is his petulant, spoiled-brat one. He really seems to believe he's "chosen", which means we - his "hired help" - have no right to question his judgment.

"If he's so full of himself now, imagine what he'll be like if he gets to be president. He really is one arrogant son-of-a-bitch."

Hillary Brings Out Barack's Nastiness

Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the past 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington.

Obama has built his entire campaign on this theory. He’s run against negativity and cheap-shot campaigning. He’s claimed that there’s an “awakening” in this country — people “hungry for a different kind of politics.”

This message has made him the front-runner. It has brought millions of new voters into politics. It has given him grounds to fend off attacks.

In debate after debate, he has accused Hillary Clinton and others of practicing the old kind of politics. When he was under assault in South Carolina, he rose above the barrage and made the Clintons look sleazy.

Yet at different times during this election, he’s been told to get off the white horse and start fighting. In the current issue of Time magazine, Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs report on a meeting that took place in Chicago last Labor Day.

All of Obama’s experienced advisers told him: “You gotta get down, get dirty, get tough.”

Obama refused. He argued that if he did that, the entire basis for his campaign would evaporate. “If I gotta kneecap her,” he said, “I’m not gonna go there.”

Now, the Obama campaign is facing another test. There are a few ways to interpret the losses in Texas and Ohio.

One is demographic. He didn’t carry the groups he often has trouble with — white women, Latinos, the less educated. The other is tactical. Clinton attacked him, and the attacks worked.

The consultants, needless to say, gravitate toward the tactical interpretation. And once again the cry has gone up for Obama to get tough. This advice gets wrapped in metaphors. Obama has to start “throwing punches” or “taking the gloves off.”

Beneath the euphemisms, what the advice really means is that Obama has to start accusing Clinton of things.

This time, Obama, whose competitive juices are flowing, has apparently accepted the advice.

The Obama campaign is now making a big issue of Hillary Clinton’s tax returns and dropping hints about donations to President Clinton’s library and her secret White House papers.

It’s willing to launch an ethics assault. “If Senator Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate,” the Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters the other day.

These attacks are supposed to show that Obama can’t be pushed around. But, of course, what it really suggests is that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt. You can’t really win with the new style of politics. Sooner or later, you have to play by the conventional rules.

The Obama people seem to have persuaded themselves they can go on the attack, but in the right way. They can be tough and keep their virginity, too. But there are more than five long months between now and the convention.

Unless they consciously reject conventional politics, the accusations will build on each other.

The BlackBerries will buzz. The passions will rise. The Obama forces will see hints of Clinton corruption all around, and they’ll accuse and accuse again.

The war will begin to take control, and once you’re halfway through you can’t suddenly surrender because it’s become too rough.

And the Clinton people will draw them every step of the way. Clinton can’t compete on personality, but a knife fight is her only real hope of victory. She has nothing to lose because she never promised to purify America.

Her campaign doesn’t depend on the enthusiasm of upper-middle-class goo-goos. On Thursday, a Clinton aide likened Obama to Ken Starr just to badger them on.

As the trench warfare stretches on through the spring, the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage. People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself.

And even if he goes on to win the nomination, he won’t represent anything new. He’ll just be a one-term senator running for president.

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal.

Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Besides, the real softness of the campaign is not that Obama is a wimp. It’s that he has never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona.

If he can’t explain that, he’s going to lose at some point anyway.