Obama Needs Gut-Level Connection

Barack Obama has lost his “gut connection” with the American people, and he’ll need a change we can believe in if he wants to get it back, Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times. “If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details.” But Obama, who's gone from "cool to cold," isn’t “making the sale.”

Obama made it this far by running as “the agent of change”—the need for which Americans recognized in their guts. But John McCain has managed to move in on that turf, despite “running with the exact same policies as the party that has been in power.” And so, Friedman writes, "Obama will need to find another way to connect his ideas—clearly, crisply, and passionately." (More John McCain stories.)