Two trails

The rivalry between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is riveting less for the most-often-cited reasons — they would both break historic barriers — than for their differences in style.

Ben Goddard, our message guru, noted many weeks ago how different their videos were announcing their campaigns. Obama sat, dressed casually without tie, against a neutral gray background and entered the race in a thoroughly informal manner in a clip where production values were not at a premium. Clinton, appearing in a video that seemed far more scripted, sat in a cozily but professionally lit drawing room in which nothing seemed left to chance.

Obama, short on résumé but long on looks and charisma, has played up his freshness and spontaneity. Clinton, a money-raising machine but no one’s idea of easy-going, has played up her more impressive track record, her seriousness and competence.

One startling result of this contrast was the production of an unauthorized Obama campaign video over the weekend, in which Clinton was depicted as a threatening Big Sister, her face looming down from a big screen like George Orwell’s Big Brother.

Here’s another contrast. Every Democratic presidential hopeful except Obama tried to woo the No. 1 team of Democratic fundraisers in New Jersey — the one that helped win the state for Bill Clinton in 1996, for Al Gore in 2000 and for John Kerry in 2004 — and the candidate who secured their services was Clinton.

The names of John Graham, co-chairman of Sen. Kerry’s (D-Mass.) state campaign in 2004, plus Alfred DeCotis, the Rev. Reginald Jackson, Zenon Christodoulous, Meryl Frank, Bill Harla and Brian Hughes mean something to most state Democrats.

But not, apparently, to Obama. The New Jersey fundraiser-operatives apparently tried to forge links with the Obama campaign for five weeks but never heard back. Eventually, they fell in with Clinton. The Clinton machine efficiently found places for them while the Obama campaign was not returning their calls.

That’s an unconventional way of winning an election. Obama has more “friends” than Clinton on Internet social-networking sites, but such ephemeral stuff may be less than it appears. After all, the Internet made Howard Dean seem like he was running away with the Democratic nomination during the summer and fall of 2003. Kerry was nowhere until it came down to actual votes, and then it was Dean who was nowhere.

For a while, a campaign can run on enthusiasm, charisma and other intangibles. But for a sustained drive to the White House, it needs to be a well-built, well-oiled machine, and it needs to remember that the “Big Mo” means money, not just momentum.