Obama's Natural Enemy

Sixteen years ago, this state and America itself were wowed by a new candidate who seemed less politician than force of nature. He packed halls and school gymnasiums till they were bursting, promising that a new day was coming. Aged just 46, his arrival seemed to presage a generational shift. He drew comparisons with John F Kennedy, the rock-star welcome he received in town after town felt like Beatlemania. He spoke of change and of hope, buttressing his message with his own compelling life story: a father he didn't know, a devoted mother who had defied the odds to bring up her beloved son. Black audiences were especially fervent for him.

That man was Bill Clinton.

Now, four elections later, that remarkable odyssey is being repeated. In 2008, as it was in 1992, the race for the Democratic nomination has been electrified by a newcomer to national politics. This time it is Barack Obama, also aged 46, who has thrilled a new generation, his rallies staffed and fired up by teenagers and students, just as Clinton's were 16 years ago. Now it is Obama who has made hope - once the watchword of the self-styled "Man from Hope" - his own. It is Obama who, in a state where African-Americans make up half the Democratic electorate that will vote in Saturday's pivotal primary, has black audiences on their feet.

Except the Obama of 2008 faces an obstacle the Clinton of 1992 never had to endure. He is up against a wholly novel phenomenon in US politics: the double-headed presidential candidate. All week in South Carolina he has done battle with not just his main opponent, but that opponent's spouse, the pair commanding as much media attention as if both their names were on the ballot. What's more - and this is a problem Bill Clinton never faced - one of those two adversaries is the most effective campaigner in modern political history: one William Jefferson Clinton.

It is making Obama's presidential bid look like an uphill task, even here in South Carolina where eve-of-poll surveys show him comfortably ahead. And yet, one can't help but conclude that, in any other year, against any other opponent(s), Obama would be cruising towards the Democratic nomination, powered by a charisma unseen since that first season of Clinton 16 years back.

There are differences, of course. Obama's rhetorical style is grander and more soaring, quoting JFK and Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now". Bill Clinton's addresses were always more conversational and intimate. Similarly, while Obama can rivet a packed auditorium, he does less well in close encounters with voters - which suggests he might not share the extraordinary, almost telepathic, gift for empathy that was so central to the ex-president's success.

The contrast was amply illustrated on Thursday. In the morning, Obama delivered his stump speech in the high school at Kingstree, a small town in the southeast corner of the state so poor that most of the shops on the main street were either rundown or boarded up. When he took questions, one came from a Vietnam veteran who, with his voice cracking, complained of the indignity of fighting for benefits that were rightfully his. "For us," he said, "excuse my French, it's been hell". Obama listened, briskly told the man he appreciated his service and went onto detail his own record on the Veterans Affairs committee of the US Senate. What was lacking was a human response to the man's distress.

Now, Clinton-watchers know what the former president would have done: he'd have asked the man to say more about his condition; he might even have gone over to him and given him a hug (an image which, usefully, would have popped up on the evening news).

As it happened, you didn't have to guess. For Bill Clinton, his schedule as packed as if he were running all over again, had a similar encounter at a campaign stop in Barnwell later that day, from another Vietnam veteran. And the ex-president did exactly what Obama had not, asking the man what ailed him - and visibly winning his vote in the process.

In its own way, this goes to the heart of Obama's problem. Against a normal opponent, it wouldn't matter if he lacked the hyper-empathy of a Bill Clinton. He has so many gifts of his own, including a presence so powerful that he can keep thousands of people waiting in a hall for an hour and a half, as he did in North Charleston on Thursday night - and as candidate Clinton did 16 years ago - and still have them crying out for more. But Obama is not up against a normal opponent.

For one thing, Hillary is no slouch herself. She suffers by comparison with both her husband and Obama. As New York Times columnist Maureen Down has written of Hillary: "All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural." But judged by any other measure - say the standard of almost all British politicians - she's very good. To watch her at historically black Benedict College in Columbia yesterday morning, was to see a fluent, persuasive performer on the top of her game. She does not inspire - she got more applause at the end of her speech than at the beginning - but she has lost some of the wonkishness of the past, now translating policy into colloquial English, lambasting, for example, the "predatory" student loans that mean "too many young people are having the door slammed in their face". Still, it's not her campaign style that sees her in such a strong position for the Democratic nomination, even if she loses tonight in South Carolina. She has the legendary Clinton machine to thank for that. At each campaign stop, local bigwigs and power-brokers are there in the front row: evidence of a vast network, built over 16 years, of people who are keen to see the Clintons back in the White House and have the local, on-the-ground, organizational muscle to make it happen. Favors given and favors returned: that has been the Clinton way and it is mighty effective.

But there's more to the Clinton machine than that. There's also a team of operatives with great tactical nous. In South Carolina, they repeatedly have succeeded in putting Obama on the defensive - whether over his comments praising Ronald Reagan or past legal work for a slum landlord - even in areas where Hillary herself should be vulnerable.

Above all, Hillary's greatest asset has been her husband. Few doubt that he is steering campaign strategy and there is no one better. In South Carolina, he has been happy to play attack dog for his wife, leaving her to make high-minded speeches that ignore her Democratic opponent and focus, loftily, on the case against George Bush. They are "double-teaming" against Obama, leaving his head spinning so badly that, as he admitted the other day: "Sometimes I don't know who I'm running against."

So fate has played a cruel trick against Barack Obama. It has made him the most exciting newcomer in US politics for a very long time - then pitted him against the man who held that title first.