Last week, I completed my analysis of the top three Democratic candidates with a review of Barack Obama (and see my earlier reviews of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards). Today, I would like to take an opportunity to make some comparative points on them. These points do not admit of a unifying hypothesis to connect them. They are, rather, a few unrelated insights. As per usual, they are speculative in nature - and not to be taken as demonstrated empirical inferences. These are my suspicions and my intuitions.

Because these thoughts together sum to a very large number of words, I am going to spread them over two days.

1. I think it is evident that the political environment strongly favors the Democrats going into the next election. I have read many who are arguing from recent polling data that independents are now no longer independents - they are now Democrats. I think this hypothesis is underdetermined - for the same reasons that I reject the idea that we can argue today that 2006 was a realignment. Nevertheless, it is clear that - at least for now - independents favor the Democrats over the Republicans. I am not sure how long this will last, but for now it is a major advantage to the party.

However, I think that the two major Democratic candidates - Clinton and Obama - have weaknesses that could undermine the party's strength. On the one hand, the country wants change. This is what I think favors the Democrats so much. There is not necessarily some grand ideological shift going on in middle America. Minimally, middle America is sick and tired of the current administration - and they want to change it. This always favors the party not in the White House. Unfortunately for the Democrats, I am not sure that Hillary Clinton, their front-running candidate, will really satisfy the public's appetite for change. She is not a change to the new. She is, rather, a change to the old. Will this satisfy the public? I honestly do not know. On the one hand, voters really liked Bill Clinton and were generally satisfied with his administration when he left office. On the other hand, this might not be what they mean when they say they want "change." My intuition is that this may give the Republican Party an opening to argue that it the party of change.

Obviously, no single candidate implies change the way that Barack Obama does. However, I think Obama - unlike Clinton - will be vulnerable on the issue of terrorism. Voters wants change, but they also want to feel safe from terrorist attacks. Will Obama make them feel safe? I am not sure. I am sure that, if he wins the nomination, we can expect him to select a foreign policy heavyweight as his running mate. Obama's major challenge, should he win the Democratic nomination, will be to convince the nation that he will continue to protect it.

2. There are a set of qualities that most candidates possess that the public really does not like, or at least does not like to be made aware of. I am thinking of ambition, self-conceit, desire for public acclaim, and so on. These qualities always turn the public off - I think one reason is that many elective offices carry with them private benefits even though they are designed for public purposes. And I believe that candidates for office who evince those qualities appear to be seeking the office not to fulfill those public purposes, but to acquire the private benefits.

Like I said, most candidates possess at least a measure of these qualities - and they possess them in degrees usually greater than individuals of equal socioeconomic status who are not involved in politics. Political office carries with it a cache that simply attracts a certain type of person. There is nothing wrong with this - political office does not pay very well in terms of cash. The payment is made in part through the power officials may exercise. It is also made through the estimation that they receive. Members of the House could be making seven figures in private life. Many of them stay in the lower chamber because everybody calls them "the Honorable..." What, then, are ambitious politicians to do? They possess these qualities - that are, effectively speaking, prerequisites for the job - that the public does not wish to see. One response is to develop an effective political style. The way that one presents oneself to the public can mask many of these qualities.

I mention this to observe the following irony. Among the Democratic frontrunners, the person who seems to me to possess the largest quotient of these qualities is also the person who appears to most everybody else to possess the smallest. I am talking, of course, about Barack Obama.

I think that this man - whom, as I said, I happen to like - possesses a very great self-conceit. We may talk of the fact that men less qualified than he have held the office - and indeed this is true. But it has not been true since Franklin Roosevelt transformed the presidency into the modern, powerful institution that it now is. Barack Obama began his campaign for this office with roughly two years of experience in high governmental office. If he were to win the nomination, I am pretty sure he would hold the record (in at least the modern era) for a nominee with the least experience. This implies to me a very healthy self-conceit. Any serious candidate for the presidency runs, at least in part, because he thinks that nobody in the nation can govern the country any better than he. I am sure that Obama thinks this as well - and so, he must have an extremely high opinion of himself. After all, he could not think that he is the best for the position because of what he has done. He must think that he is the best for it because of who he is.

And yet, he seems to be the least conceited of the three top tier candidates. Why? I think that it is because Obama has the best political style of the three. Ironically, I would argue that Hillary Clinton, who is seen to be the most conceited, is actually the least conceited of the group (which is not to say that she does not have a very high regard for herself!). It is striking to me that a woman of her stature - she was, after all the First Lady - is not so full of herself as to believe that she need not campaign. She recognizes that she is not entitled to the office she seeks, that she must slog through country fair after country fair in the Hawkeye state. This is a sign that, as politicians go, she may not be as conceited as many take her to be.

So how is it that questions about Obama's ambition and self-conceit are not under consideration, but questions about Clinton's are? I think one answer is that the former's political style is effective, and the latter's is not. Obama has a natural grace and ease that Clinton lacks. This, I think, renders moot the question that we would ask of Obama if he were not a natural: why do you presume to run for this office? His style is so effective that it seems as though he should be nowhere else. Thus, questions of conceit and presumption and ambition are put aside. Clinton, on the other hand, does not have an effective style. And so, those questions are at the forefront of our minds when we watch her perform.

I'll have more on this theme tomorrow.