If hypocrisy, as one writer claims, is an unavoidable — even integral — part of democratic politics, then the two remaining Democratic nominees for president are locked in a dead heat. Both stridently oppose a war that they once supported as members of Congress, and both employ a high-minded liberal rhetoric littered with non-partisan clichés and references to the abstract ideals — liberty, unity, fairness — that stand over American politics like a colossus. Senator Barack Obama, speaking to his supporters in Des Moines after clinching the Iowa caucus on January 3, declared that ‘we are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come’. Clinton, in response, riffed on a similar theme: ‘Together we have presented the case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning’.

Amongst this swarm of rhetoric, one could be forgiven for mistaking Democrats for Republicans, flip-flopping liberals for hawkish conservatives. But in the coming months (if not on Super Tuesday) a big decision has to be made, of whether it will be Obama or Clinton who runs in the ‘unloseable’ ’08 election. And now that my old favourite John Edwards has dropped out of the race, I’m firmly for Obama. Here’s why.

Everything about Hillary Clinton — more so than Obama, more so than Edwards — is sculpted and premeditated. She is like the bonsai of politicians, trimmed back to her colourless essence, all trunk and no roots. Her posturing, her rhetoric — even her iPod playlist — are all carefully poll-tested by a gaggle of sycophants, bootlicks and machine-men before being loosed on the voting public. Jacob Weisberg of Slate Magazine discusses Clinton’s musical taste, as unveiled to the media in May 2006:

On the world-is-divided-into-two-kinds-of-people question ‘the Beatles or the Stones’, she, like her husband, finds a middle path: both. She names no Stones songs and chooses a consensus, universally liked, neither-early-nor-late Beatles tune, ‘Hey Jude’. Hillary also manages a shout-out to racial diversity and feminism via Aretha Franklin, and she strikes a younger, socially conscious chord with U2. ‘Take It to the Limit’, on the other hand, is such a lame, black-hole-of-the-1970s choice that it can’t be taken for anything other than an expression of actual taste.

But for all her theoretical ‘appeal’, it’s ironic that Clinton manages to elicit such strong reactions from Americans. Assuming she could be elected, Hillary’s presidency would be like the love-child of Bush and (Bill) Clinton’s. It would prevaricate and dither in its foreign policy, erecting a watery front of liberal institutionalism to cover for its lack of leadership qualities (just like Bill); and, like Bush, it would exacerbate and profit (perhaps unwittingly) from the deep polarisation of the post-9/11 era, swelling the ranks of the GOP with bitter conservatives and clap-happy Christians. It would be better than Bush — but what wouldn’t?

Put simply, Barack Obama is more electable than Clinton. Amidst discussions as to whether being black or female is more of a liability in American politics, Democrats run the risk of overlooking the fact that the 2008 election still remains to be won. All the talk of it being ‘unloseable’ after the train-wreck of the Bush era obscures the deep disillusionment that many Republicans also feel for the current administration, and their determination to elect a more ‘authentic’ conservative to the presidency. Obama’s advantage is that he is extremely popular among the thousands of young Americans who have come of voting age since 2004, a demographic shift that could single-handedly sweep him into the White House. A Clinton nomination, on the other hand, would mean a McCain inauguration next January.

Obama supporters rally in Austin, Texas, February 2007.

He also has the edge in foreign policy. In the Middle East, for instance, where memories last longer than the American electoral cycle, the resentment at the US presence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia is likely to fester for generations. The next president needs to convince the Muslim world that Bush was an aberration, and back it up with concrete action. It will require proactive engagement, something more than the hands-off, semi-interventionist stance of the last Clinton administration. By shattering the inter-dynastic stranglehold that the Bushes and Clintons have had on the White House for the past two decades, Obama will also have more room for innovation in foreign affairs. (On top of all this, I must also confess a less lofty motive: Obama used to be a neighbour of my uncle Paul in Chicago. They played squash together. But I digress).

Excepting Hillary and Republican Mitt Romney, Obama is playing a game as two-faced as any of the would-be presidential candidates. On any fair assessment, he uses the same transparent rhetoric and is saddled with the same all-too-human inconsistency as his competitors. But as David Runciman points out:

Elections shouldn’t be about sifting out the hypocrites in an elusive search for the candidates of integrity. They should be about deciding which sort of hypocrite we prefer.

Me? I’m for the Chicagoan.