During the 1992 presidential race, Bill Clinton aggressively pushed to have one of the televised debates use a town hall-style format, and George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot agreed. The format fit Clinton nicely: When he was unshackled from a podium, his body language, tone and emotions all seemed unshackled, too, as he sought to make a personal connection with voters.
Indeed, when an audience member asked the three candidates to stop "trashing their opponents' character," you could sense Clinton bristling, and his answer confirmed it.
"I've been disturbed by the tone and the tenor of this campaign - thank goodness the networks have a fact check, so I don't have to just go blue in the face anymore," Clinton said. When Bush tried to interrupt him, Clinton snapped, "Wait a minute," and rolled over the president to finish making his point.
But Barack Obama is a very different kind of candidate, judging by his performance at his own town-hall-style debate on Tuesday night and on the campaign trail. There are no volcanic explosions with Obama, rarely any finger-waving or lip-biting, and far less of the undisciplined campaigning that Clinton perfected.
Obama goes to the gym like clockwork most mornings, works out for 45 minutes, and then is on his way, as he was in Nashville on Wednesday after the debate the night before. He did not skip the gym because he was too busy reading the coverage of the debate, or because he was too tired from staying up late replaying the debate in his head, advisors say. On Wednesday evening, he got home early to spend time with his two young daughters and take one of them to a bookstore in their neighborhood.
John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and their Republican allies are increasingly trying to tag Obama with the word "radical," arguing that he prefers radical friends (Bill Ayers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and has a radical tax plan and health care plan (even if both are fundamentally Democratic).
Obama's response has been to keep firm control of his public image: that of a very cool customer, someone who is deliberative and not easily distracted, who is willing to risk appearing a bit remote if it means that at the same time he appears unruffled by pressure and crisis.
Obama advisers say that, just as Clinton's temperament worked for him against the patrician Bush and the cranky Perot, Obama's steadiness is proving effective in this race against McCain. These advisers note, too, that Clinton only won a plurality of the general election vote in the three-way contest; a majority of the nation never voted for him. The advisers say they believe that Obama's temperament is morebroadly appealing than Clinton's was, and that it will help him win over larger swaths of the electorate.
And yet: At a time of real financial turmoil for so many Americans, is there really not much desire for a feel-your-pain politician? At the town hall debate Tuesday night, Obama largely stuck to facts, figures and programmatic detail as he talked about the economy and domestic issues. He didn't take advantage of the town hall format to show a bit of leg, humanity-wise. It was enough to make anxious voters feel a little lonely, whereas Clinton would have offered a psychic hug.
"Obama did not vary his tone of voice at all - it's one of his main problems in connecting," said Ruth Sherman, a political communications consultant. "It is a beautiful voice, with lots of highs and lows of pitch, but the general tone is always the same. There is much, much more he could do, just with his voice, to increase his impact."
"Most of the time, too, Obama pivoted to his stump speech, missing opportunity after opportunity to connect with the audience and beyond," she added. "I can't get over this. Why isn't he making more of an effort? Perhaps he's doing well and just biding his time, figuring that he just has to do OK? These are leadership skills, and they cannot be dismissed."
The reviews for McCain's performance were not stellar, either, yet it was Obama supporters who were hoping that their man would go on the offensive and create some theater by trouncing McCain.
"I think Obama didn't put McCain away, as I am sure I and others hoped and expected," said Alan Patricof, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser in New York who formerly supported Hillary Clinton for president. "He let McCain make more unsubstantiated points, in spite of the fact that Obama had the issues on his side. I don't think Obama did badly, he just didn't put it away."
One woman at the debate who asked a question about health care said afterward, in an interview, that she was a breast cancer survivor who lost health insurance at one point - a personal story just waiting to be tapped by one of the candidates. Yet according to the Commission on Presidential Debates, both of the candidates had agreed that they would not be allowed to engage in conversation with the audience. So, to some extent, Obama's ability to evince a personal connection with people in the room was hamstrung by his own rules.
In the end, Obama does not need to be Clinton in order to win, of course. He leads in most national polls and appears to be running competitively in some Republican-leaning states that Clinton would have loved to carry in 1992, like Florida and Virginia. But Obama's more taciturn nature and his distaste for theatrics, as seen at Tuesday's debate, are another reminder that he would not, for better or worse, be a Clintonesque "feeler in chief" in a time of economic distress.