Issues Recede in '08 Contest As Voters Focus on Character

[DeepModem Mom]

WSJ: Issues Recede in '08 Contest As Voters Focus on Character
Candidates Pitch Style, Avoid Big Ideas;
'Folks Are Tired of Partisan Paralysis'
February 5, 2008; Page A1

....As voting unfolds today on this Super Tuesday, the two hottest candidates at the moment -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama -- are most striking for their ability to appeal to independent voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum, and for their willingness to compromise to get there....

On the Democratic side, "there is no correlation in the exit polls so far between the issues people think are important and the candidates they vote for," says Andrew Kohut, who conducts polling for the Pew Research Center. "It's about the qualities of the person." In the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26, exit polls indicated that Democratic voters who said the economy was the most important issue voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Obama in nearly the same proportions as did those who said the war in Iraq or health care were the most important issues. And in the New Hampshire primary, Democrats who said they favored withdrawing all American troops from Iraq as soon as possible -- voters who might have been expected to go toward Sen. Obama, the most staunchly antiwar candidate -- instead broke for Sen. Clinton, 41% to 34%....

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To some extent, voters seem to be looking for candidates who can transcend the paralyzing policy debates of the past decade, a feature of a national government closely divided between Democrats and Republicans. To many voters, precisely what gets done seems less important than the prospect that something actually will get done. The growing numbers of voters registered as independents, and the tendency of young voters to respond to Sen. Obama's portrayal of himself as a "post-partisan" politician, show the direction public sentiment is moving....

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To be sure, the leading presidential candidates have squadrons of policy advisers churning out reams of position papers on all manner of subjects. But those policy positions aren't dominating the debate. They tend to represent modest variations on existing mainstream positions, not bold new statements about what it means to be a liberal or a conservative....

On the Democratic side, there isn't any great ideological difference between Sens. Obama and Clinton. Their policy arguments have largely turned on important but narrow questions such as whose health plan would bring "universal" health coverage and whose would only come close. Much of the struggle between them has been over such intangibles as ability to inspire, skill at orchestrating compromises in Washington, and experience in bringing about change. Sen. Obama's campaign is largely built upon the promise of "hope" for uniting a fractious Washington....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120217335171342871.html