Obama officially launched his ’08 campaign this morning down in Springfield, referring to it as an “improbable quest.”  You can say that again.  There were broad-brush outlines of the kinds of policies he claims to want to pursue.  Most of it was the same-old, same-old: “Jobs for everybody!  Health care for everybody!  Audacity for everybody!” 

What was apparently a rather sizeable crowd (the campaign claims 15-17,000) ate up everything he said (of course, the only people who would assemble in below-zero temperatures in Springfield to hear a speech they could watch on television would have to be fanatics of a sort).  They loved it, even though he didn’t say very much worth remembering.  But, as usual, he said it with his usual accomplished rhetorical flourish that makes Bill Clinton seem hesitant and bumbling in delivery.  He is undoubtedly very polished–the only time he stuttered was when he kept getting interrupted by the crowd’s cheers–but can he offer anything other than mouthing pious phrases about change and repeating bromides about creating a more perfect Union?  We have yet to see it.  There was one glaring mistake in his language.  Like so many journalists and other assorted illiterates today, he does not seem to know the appropriate time when he should say “number” instead of “amount.”  For example: 

“Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq,” Obama said, “but no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else’s civil war.”

This is not just a one-time flub, either, since he repeated this phrase word for word in his announcement speech today.  Perhaps some will consider this a pedantic objection, but if Obama’s greatest strength is his ability to communicate any inability to speak English properly will create a problem for him.  Fortunately for him, many of the people listening and reporting on the speech don’t know the proper use of “amount” and “number,” either.

The dreary Lincoln references and comparisons–as inevitable as they were sickening–and the disingenuous claim that it was Lincoln’s “will and words” that changed America (rather than, say, an army of hundreds of thousands destroying and pillaging the land of those Lincoln regarded as fellow Americans) could put any thinking conservative off his lunch, but the general electorate will eat it up. 

There were a few concrete items that he mentioned, such as his co-sponsorship of Lugar’s legislation on securing Russian nukes (something to which he has attached himself long after Lugar started his work on this) and his proposed legislation that would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by March 2008.  It was surprising, in fact, that the foreign policy section of his speech sounded at once the most credible (relatively speaking) while also remaining antiwar with respect to Iraq.  By credible, I mean that he didn’t say anything that induced fits of laughter.  That’s a big step forward for the man who said his international relations major was part of what gave him more “diverse” foreign policy experience than such competitors as Joe Biden and Bill Richardson.   

It was all the more surprising because he has essentially no foreign policy credentials and has in the last two years not demonstrated an iota of insightful or original foreign policy thinking.  In this, he is exactly like Mr. Bush was in early and mid-1999, but so far he has no high-profile foreign policy advisors who would give the impression that he recognises his own lack of experience (then again, Bush’s advisor was Condi, and look at all the good that did us!).  The problem is that he may think he doesn’t need help.  He may seriously think, “I’m an international relations major!  I can do this on my own!”  If so, he is in worse shape than even I believe him to be. 

As Gary Younge reminds us in The Guardian, Mr. Audacity even endorsed Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate race (something that only purple and red-state Democrats such as Salazar and Ford felt compelled to do), which still has to make every progressive rub his eyes in disbelief.  (Obama claims it was out of personal loyalty to Joementum, who had been friendly to him when he came to the Senate–gosh, that’s nice.)  This is the neophyte who thought sabre-rattling in Iran and Pakistan’s direction was a useful way to show that he was a “serious” foreign policy figure.  Given his 2005 comments, I would have to assume he still favours some form of military action against Iran, and he has said nothing that would persuade me that he no longer supports this.  Naturally, he had nothing to say about Iran or any other specific foreign policy problems.  Somewhat surprisingly, he had no Brownbackian urge to talk about Darfur or AIDS in Africa or any of those odd causes celebres that white Christians on the right now feel compelled to talk about. 

More interestingly, he made no effort, except for a few anecdotal items at the beginning, to push his “I’m a Christian, too” appeal.  I assume he recognises that this appeal is useful for appeasing people at Call to Renewal and persuading middle-of-the-road Catholics that he isn’t some sort of radical, but that it can only get in the way of winning the enthusiastic loyalty of Marcotte-like progressives around the country.  

When he said that there would be universal health care by the end of the next president’s first term, I had to laugh.  It’s fairly simple: you can be the candidate who wants to change the way politics is practiced in Washington (and therefore make yourself an embattled crusader who will meet entrenched resistance for four years) or you can be the candidate who wants to launch ambitious policy legislation that will also meet heavy resistance, but no one has enough political capital, time or energy to do both.  Many of his other domestic proposals are regular left-liberal fare, all of which will cost no small amount of money, but all of this proposed spending runs right up against his supposed concern about the national debt.  Tellingly, tax policy had no place in his speech.  That won’t satisfy anyone on any side.

Dissatisfaction with Obama’s lack of substance will become greater and greater on the left, and it will eventually also begin to annoy the center-left political writers in the major newspapers and magazines who have so far given Obama a free ride.  He will have to descend from the mountains of high-flown vacuous rhetoric into the valleys of policy wonk expertise, and while he may be capable of mastering policy details (we have no idea–he has never given a major policy speech since he came onto the national stage) there is no guarantee that he can demonstrate a detailed understanding of any policy question with the same smoothness and flair that have made his absurd candidacy even remotely possible.  Improbable quest?  It’s more like hopeless audacity.