SMALLNESS

Posted at 7:14 a.m. ET

One of the things we start to notice about Barack Obama is his smallness.  Yes, there are many admirable things about him - his struggle, his respect for education, his fine family.  But there is about him a smallness, underlined by his refusal even to consider seriously Hillary Clinton for the second spot on his ticket.

Now we see him debating, in public appearances, Sarah Palin.  Isn't that Biden's job?  When have you ever seen a presidential candidate taking on the opposition's number two?

And whatever happened to Biden?  Is he working?  On vacation?  Does he go outside?

I watched Obama on the O'Reilly Factor.  You can't help but be impressed by his style, his presence.  But I didn't feel I was watching a presidential candidate.  I felt I was watching someone who might run someday.  Same with his interview on ABC on Sunday.  There is the smallness factor again. 

Jack Kennedy had a bit of that problem.  He was a junior senator when he ran.  He looked younger than his 43 years.  His daughter Caroline, now an Obama booster, was younger than are the Obama daughters.  Eleanor Roosevelt publicly questioned his ability to be president.  There was a smallness, especially compared with five-star-General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man in the White House.  But Kennedy overcame the smallness by putting a larger man than he, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, on his ticket.  He overcame it by writing books on history, not on himself.  He had fought in a war, and been wounded.  You felt there was potential, although many voters were hard to convince, and his ultimate victory on election day was razor-thin.

Obama clearly was not prepared for the blowout success of the Republican convention.  No one on in his corner was prepared for Governor Sarah.  The McCain team seems large - a war hero with the wisdom of age at its top, a political phenomenon filling out the ticket.  Obama now seems to exist in the shadow of the other side, and the guy he picked for vice president has all but disappeared.

Now we see, in today's New York Times, that he's having money troubles for the first time in his run for the presidency. 

In the 1980 campaign we saw the increasingly shrinking Jimmy Carter, and the growing Ronald Reagan.  We are seeing it again.  Unless Barack Obama can overcome the image of smallness that has now infected his campaign, he will be worse than toast.  He will be the slice you discard because it got burned.  Obama is in the process of getting burned by a man old enough to be his father, and by a firestorm named Sarah.

September 9, 2008.