Commentary - Chris Stirewalt: Obama has JFK’s charisma but lacks his knockout punch

Obama should be putting the finishing touches on the most remarkable knockout in modern political history in which a young, black, one-term senator lays out the undisputed champs of the Democratic Party, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Instead, Obama is counterpunching his way through a title defense, trying to win on points.

Obama has gone from sting-like-a-bee Cassius Clay to rope-a-dope Muhammad Ali.

Before and after the Pennsylvania primary, many pundits discovered that Obama is a flawed candidate.

If Obama is flawed, then we need a new adjective to describe a woman the majority of Americans distrust and a frequently dyspeptic 71-year-old Republican whose party seems as relevant as a Commodore computer.

But having joined the ranks of the imperfect, Obama might do well to consider what has allowed Hillary Clinton to still be standing and why John McCain is scoring as well as he is in prospective November matchups with both of the Democratic pugilists.

Traditional politics may not be as cool as Obama’s new brand, but right now traditional politics is giving him all he can handle.

There are few states on the electoral map more traditional than North Carolina and Indiana. And a poor performance Tuesday would continue to force Obama off his game for the sake of securing a nomination that should already be his.

Obama’s main appeal has been as a blank screen on which his supporters could project their own hopes and dreams.

Jack Kennedy also sought broad support on the basis of personal charm, youth and a national desire for change.

JFK was pushing the demographic envelope and turned youth and inexperience into an asset.

That seems like a pretty good fit, just as it must have to Obama as he was standing with Ted Kennedy, a larger-than-life reminder of 1960.

Magnetism and great political instincts, though, wouldn’t have gotten it done for Kennedy. He needed bare knuckles, and sometimes brass ones, to get through his party’s primary and to win the general.

Kennedy rolled to victory over Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia primary in a cloud of $50 bills and whisky pints.

And in Chicago on the night of the general election, Mayor Richard Daley’s turnout efforts motivated some voters to rise from their graves to help secure for Kennedy a national popular vote victory of less than 113,000.

That’s not to say that Obama needs to get dirty to finally dispatch Clinton, but he must bow to the political realities of the day. JFK understood that hard liquor and cold cash had been part of every West Virginia election since the Civil War and that Chicago had been crooked since before Al Capone first bribed Big Bill Thompson.

The political reality for Obama is that it takes a loyal, committed base rather than broad, shallow support to win elections.

Despite an oft-inept effort by the Clintons, their campaign has, with massive research efforts, kept a coalition together.

Since surviving Texas and Ohio, team Clinton has built a semiplausible path to victory with white voters in and around Appalachia.

And as we see from the spectacle of Hillary purring for Bill O’Reilly last night, she is willing to do anything to reach out to her new base.

In the next two primaries, the only counterweight to the denizens of the Hillbilly Firewall are black voters.

College students and well-educated liberals simply aren’t numerous or dependable enough to carry closed primaries in large, industrial states.

Indiana may already be off the table for Obama, but North Carolina is about 21 percent black, and until lately he led in the polls there by huge margins.

And as Obama should have learned in Pennsylvania, if black voters don’t have a disproportionate effect on the race, he fares poorly.

While looking to be shed of the hateful blather of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s belated outrage may discourage the kind of massive black turnout he needs to keep North Carolina safe.

Despite a career defined by impeccable timing, Obama may have disowned Wright too late to keep middle-class whites from turning their backs on him and too early to keep black voters turning out in the record-breaking numbers he needs.