Hillary Clinton “is now free to move about the country”

Roy Spence, the quixotic Austin ad guru who created that phrase for Southwest Airlines, will be taking a bigger role in Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

If this is a further step in reinventing herself, or at least her campaign persona, in the face of the Obama “change” meme, I’ll give her some credit on style points.

That said, let’s talk about the real theme of the Democratic campaign. With Richardson and Dodd out, and Kucinich just waiting word from the UFO mother ship, the difference between Clinton and Obama (and a slipping John Edwards) can be summed up by the word “micrometerization.” Basically, you need one of those instruments to measure the difference between the three on a number of policy issues.

Iraq? None of the three plan a full withdrawal; none say exactly how many troops they’ll leave as a “reaction force,” let alone what the “trip-wire” will be.

Israel? Three kowtowers alike, on the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.

Peak Oil? Not a word from any.

Health care? Yes, Obama is less than universal, but, I’m not sure the policy difference is as great as Clinton or Edwards would make it out to be.

Environmentalism? Obama’s weaker here, but all three will pander to Big Ethanol. REAL conservation efforts probably won’t get any more mention beyond this year’s energy bill’s push to phase out incandescent light bulbs.

So, per the Roy Spences of this world, it’s about “branding” as much as anything.