THE NOTE: 'He's the One'

Dec. 10, 2007 -- It's hard out there for a frontrunner.

Ask Mitt Romney (not quite closing his biggest sale).

Ask Hillary Rodham Clinton (three generations of Rodhams plus a former president do not an Oprah make).

Ask Rudy Giuliani (the new master of the deflecting laugh has sure learned to smile on Sunday mornings -- but did he create a fresh immigration issue for himself Sunday evening?).

Or, for that matter, ask Mike Huckabee (sorry, governor, but 1992 was not 1982).

Perhaps fittingly for this campaign that's burning through this holiday season, voters seem to be shopping without buying. Huckabee's recent stumbles aside, at this chaotic moment in the race for 2008, candidates who are selling hope (and Hope, Ark.) are looking stronger going into the final stretch before Iowa.

That's what made Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., one of Oprah's favorite things. By the Obama campaign's count, more than 66,500 people attended Oprah-Obama rallies over the weekend; two-thirds of those who showed up in South Carolina on Sunday "had never communicated with the campaign before, per the campaign.

In the Palmetto State -- where the battle for black voters is most intense -- the Double-O team drew 29,000 people to a rally on Sunday. New York Post cover: "OMENTUM."

Why put herself on the line like this? Obama "speaks to the potential inside every one of us," Oprah said, per The New York Times' Katharine Q. Seelye. "Dr. King dreamed the dream. But we don't have to just dream the dream anymore. We get to vote that dream into reality."

Sunday night, in New Hampshire: "I can feel that you are ready for a change," Oprah said. "Aren't you tired of the old way?" "Is he the one? I believe he is the one."

And in Iowa: "I am not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to ask you to think," Oprah said.

You can choose to believe or disbelieve whether it was a coincidence that the same weekend was chosen to debut Hillary Clinton's entire family. (Bill Clinton hits Iowa solo on Monday, and Chelsea dropped word that she'll be back in the Hawkeye State -- with her boyfriend -- before New Year's. What better venue to drop some big news?)

"Nothing is an accident in Hillaryland, and it worked," Kate Snow said of Camp Clinton's mom-and-daughter counter-programming on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday. "We're not just talking about Oprah this morning, are we?"

On the Republican side, the new Newsweek poll in Iowa lands Huckabee on the magazine's cover, with a 39-17 Iowa margin over Romney, R-Mass., that may be inflated, but surely shows something real.

"In Iowa, Huckabee's carefully cultivated persona as a kind, thoughtful man of unshakable faith is winning many converts," Newsweek's Holly Bailey and Michael Isikoff write. "Huckabee has gotten noticed in part by politely exploiting the voters' dissatisfaction with his rivals. . . . The way Huckabee sees it, all the attention—the good and the bad -- is a sign that he is where God wants him to be."

New York Times columnist Frank Rich sees Obama and Huckabee -- the two youngest candidates, and the two riding the biggest hot streak at this moment -- benefiting from similar dynamics. "Though their views on issues are often antithetical, Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama may be united in catching the wave of an emerging zeitgeist that is larger than either party's ideology," Rich writes. "An exhausted and disillusioned public may be ready for a replay of the New Frontier pitch of 1960."

It's all deeply frustrating to the candidates who have spent the past year to establish front-running credentials at this moment. The Speech is in the rear-view mirror now, but Romney's view looking forward isn't that pretty now that he has more than Giuliani to contend with.

"He is neither the candidate poised to spring a surprise in Iowa or New Hampshire, nor the candidate judged by his fellow Republicans nationally as the top choice for the nomination -- or even the second or third," Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post. "He has become burdened by a front-runner's expectations without many of the traditional assets. . . . Having bet on doing well in the early states, he will now live or die by the results."

Clinton, D-N.Y., has plenty of fight left in her (but with Chelsea Clinton, Dorothy Rodham, and Bill Clinton all on the trail for her over the weekend, she may not have many tricks left in her bag).

Bloomberg's Al Hunt sits in on a Democratic focus group to paint the broad picture. "This isn't an anti-Hillary crowd. She gets high marks for her experience, intelligence and toughness; these qualities, they suspect, are what voters demand," Hunt writes. "Their hopes and dreams, though, are with Obama, 46. If he can dispel misgivings about his electability or experience, the formidable Clinton forces may be powerless."

The Post's Dan Balz: "Her liabilities always were there lurking, but through much of the year, her opponents watched with envy and admiration as Clinton cruised to an overwhelming lead in national opinion polls, turning perceived weaknesses into apparent strengths. . . . But she could not erase all doubts about her, and now they have resurfaced: Is she too polarizing to unite the country? Is she too evasive to win voters' trust? Is she too calculating at a time when authenticity is prized in presidential campaigns? Is she too cold?"

Here's another Clinton story that's getting some buzz: The Los Angeles Times' Tom Hamburger and Dan Morain travel to Syracuse to tell the story of Clinton's embrace of "old-fashioned pork-barrel politics, first to build power in the state, then to extend it nationwide as she becomes a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. And to fuel her rise, Clinton has relied on the controversial funding device known as 'earmarking.' The earmarks enabled her to win favor with important constituents, many of whom provided financial support for her campaigns."

Key paragraph: "Since taking office in 2001, Clinton has delivered $500 million worth of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations," Hamburger and Morain write. "About 64% of those corporations provided funds to her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board members or lobbyists, a review by the Los Angeles Times shows."