Sure Sounds Nice But Where's the Beef?

Ok, another issue people have with Obama is they think he makes good speeches, but they ask where are his actual policies - what will he actually do? Howard Kurtz's article from today's Washington Post discusses this (I will quote):

One media narrative that seems to be taking root is of Obama as the candidate of lofty rhetoric and Clinton as the maven of pedestrian policy talk. At a rally at Furman University here Tuesday, Obama brought the audience to several peaks, raising his voice over the applause while describing how his days as a community organizer "taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things" and how "the dream that so many generations fought for feels like it is slipping away."

But the address was saturated with proposals. Obama called for tax rebates; a one-time boost in Social Security checks; extending unemployment insurance; mortgage aid for those facing foreclosure; raising the minimum wage; protecting pensions; and college tuition credits. And that was before he got to his support for solar and wind power and biodiesel fuel. (There was no discussion of how he would pay for all this, other than to say his health-care plan would be partly financed by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.)

How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.

Substantively, Obama's positions and policy proposals are not really very different then Clinton's. Of course for either candidate the policies they propose and what eventually would get passed through congress during their prospective presidencies will likely bare little resemblance to one another.

(brought to my attention by friend of the blog/Obama-spiration Justin Neely of Think Obama)