Obama, Awaiting a New Title, Carefully Hones His Partisan Image

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — In his telling, his opponent is wrong on the Iraq war and wrong on the ailing economy, a would-be George W. Bush running for what amounts to a third term.

“This is a guy who said I have no knowledge of foreign affairs,” Senator Barack Obama says, his voice hitting a high C on the incredulity scale, before he adds: “Well, John McCain was arguing for a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. He was wrong, and he was wrong on the most important subject that confronted our nation.”

The crowd rises, clapping and cheering at this pleasing whiff of partisan buckshot.

As Mr. Obama stands poised to claim the crown of presumptive Democratic nominee, he is, gingerly, fitting himself with the cloth of a partisan Democrat despite having long proclaimed himself above such politics. That his shift in tone was inevitable and necessary, particularly as Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, slashes at Mr. Obama as weak on Iran and terrorism, does not entirely diminish the cognitive dissonance.

For 17 months, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has changed remarkably little about his stump style. He projects the image of a post-partisan candidate with the confidence of a man convinced he holds a copyright.

“He is an intensely serious guy whose identity and behavior and tone is pretty rigid, and that’s fine,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who once worked for former President Bill Clinton and is now unaffiliated with either Democratic candidate. “The first rule of politics is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

This might account for the careful manner in which Mr. Obama frames his attacks on Mr. McCain.

Mr. Obama sets up his political jabs with a to-be-sure-my-opponent-is-not-a-knave disclaimer. He reminds his audiences that Mr. McCain, of Arizona, is a war hero, and he honors his service. (That Mr. Obama’s tone sometimes suggests that Mr. McCain, 71, might have been a Civil War veteran is surely coincidental.)

When a question is raised about Mr. McCain’s recent, incorrect assertion that the number of American troops in Iraq is at “pre-surge levels,” Mr. Obama waves his hand magnanimously. Everyone, he tells listeners, makes a slip of the tongue.

At this point Mr. Obama slips the rhetorical shiv into his rival.

“The problem is that John McCain can’t admit he made a slip, and we’ve seen this movie before,” Mr. Obama told an audience in Great Falls, Mont. “Just like George Bush, John McCain refuses to admit a mistake.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers argue, gamely if implausibly, that he has not dipped his cup into a partisan well. “I don’t look at it as partisanship,” said Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s communications director. “I look at it as a difference of philosophy.”

Mr. Obama remains a stirring speaker, and he has three or four stories that he tells consistently and well. But for all his oratory — and he can move audiences to tears and shouted professions of love — Mr. Obama is no emotional bleeding heart.

Some months back in Ohio, he sat at a round table of six late-middle-aged women who were struggling with the indignities of poor heath and ailing finances. Afterward, Mr. Obama confided that one woman, with her humor and hopeful manner, reminded him of his mother, who died of cancer at age 53. As she spoke, he said he despaired that he could not help her immediately.

But while his manner was attentive at that round table, Mr. Obama gave little hint of his fierce emotional undercurrents. His rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, tends to excel in this province of the private. He does not.

“He is a public speaker; Hillary is a private speaker,” said Mr. Sheinkopf. “Do not expect great moments of emotional connection; expect great moments of emotional direction.”

Mr. Gibbs, the communications director, agreed, to a point. “There is a performance art aspect to this that I don’t think came naturally to him at first,” he said.

But Mr. Obama is an agile student of politics. At a town-hall-style meeting last week in Rapid City, S.D., he wandered into the crowd to talk with a middle school student who had inquired about Mr. Obama’s views on immigration.

“You seem like a pretty sharp guy,” Mr. Obama told him.

“Thank you,” the boy replied.

“You want to go into politics?”

The boy shook his head. “I want to do film.”

Mr. Obama broke into a broad smile. “Film? Excuuuse me!”

Soon they were bantering about the comparative merits of “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.”

In style of dress, Mr. Obama ends as he started: a studiously formal fellow. When he bowled in Pennsylvania, he did so in a white shirt and tie. (This added to the derision over his low bowling score.) When he visited Mount Rushmore last Saturday evening, no reporter was much surprised to see him strolling through the inky darkness in his suit jacket with his tie knotted just so.

There is, however, good reason for a candidate to be a careful custodian of his image. As Mr. Obama, 46, is a young man by the standards of presidential politics, the formal lends gravitas.

And the list of presidential candidates who have tried midcampaign image makeovers is a long and unfortunate one, filled with formal politicians who try flannel shirts and wonkish governors who push Army helmets down over their hair.

The more successful candidates, from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt through Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, tend to comfortably inhabit a single, consistent personality.

When it comes to Mr. Obama, a certain comic aspect attends to these fashion deconstructions. He is like a minimalist musician hitting a new note; the slightest change in his look excites speculation. Are you sure he undid his tie?! What depths of emotion must roil beneath that cotton dress shirt!

Mr. Gibbs recalled a fashion columnist who analyzed Mr. Obama’s penchant for not unbuttoning his second button when he rolled up his sleeves.

It was this familiar Mr. Obama who could be found on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Mitchell, S.D., standing on a riser by the Corn Palace, which with soaring onion domes and corn-stalk walls suggested a hallucinatory Kremlin rendered in maize. He had those shirt sleeves rolled up, and told a few well-received old chestnuts.

All standard operating procedure, and as the applause washed over, Mr. Obama mentioned a fellow senator who was a war hero. Except, well, it turned out this hero supported suspending the federal gasoline tax for three months, and that is just pandering.

“That’s a gimmick, O.K.?” Mr. Obama said. “It’s to get a politician through the next election.” And so it goes as Mr. Obama gallops off into the general election.