Clout: If Obama's the new JFK, he has a Jackie, too

A SUPER TUESDAY photo

of Michelle Obama prompted us to wonder: What's with the 1960s hair style?

We asked our fashion consultant, Jenice Armstrong. She gave us a knowing look.

"Jackie Kennedy," Armstrong said.

Of course!

The hair, the pearls, the Coco Chanel-ish looking suits, the aristocratic carriage.

Glamour magazine's Cindy Feldman and Politico.com's Helena Andrews already have made the connection.

Andrews asked Shelly Branch - co-author of the style guide "What Would Jackie Do?" - if she saw any similarity as Michelle stood beside her presidential-candidate husband, Barack Obama, during his South Carolina victory speech a couple of weeks ago.

"It's the first thing I thought," Branch said.

Mikki Taylor, Essence magazine's beauty editor, told Andrews that Michelle's fashion choices were not by chance.

"There are many ways of communicating, and I think that with Michelle, she's aware of all of it," Taylor said.

Mark Alderman, our Philly connection inside the Obama campaign, thinks the Jackie Kennedy comparisons became inevitable after Teddy and Caroline endorsed Obama.

"I met her before Barack became JFK and she impressed me as an enormously genuine person and very stylish woman," Alderman told us. "I think what you're seeing is her innate style. There's nothing contrived or tactical about it. It's a style that suits her and her personality and energy."

Clinton: PA matters

While Michelle Obama channels Jackie Kennedy, Hillary Clinton is channeling another first lady: Hillary Clinton!

She was already thinking several moves ahead as she watched Super Tuesday results in Manhattan with campaign manager Terry McAuliffe and national co-chair, Philly lawyer Mark Aronchick.

"You know Pennsylvania is going to matter, Mark," Clinton said. "How are we doing there, Mark?"

Aronchick responded: "Senator,

we're Hillary country, don't worry about us. If it comes down to us,

we're going to rock 'em. We're totally ready."

Arlen and 'The Great Debaters'

It's not playing in many theaters, but "The Great Debaters," starring (and directed by) Denzel Washington, is a good little movie.

It's about the debate team from Wiley College, a small African-American school in the swampy piney woods of East Texas. In the Jim Crow era of 1935, the team (which included a teenaged James Farmer Jr.) rode a string of victories to a shot at the national champions (Harvard in the movie, USC in real life).

The best debater we know is U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, whose judiciary-committee interrogation skills have roots in his 1947 high-school state championship debate team from Russell, Kan.

(The debate subject that year was national health care. Some things never change.)

In college, his Penn team won the Boston University National Debate Tournament in 1951.

The movie portrays debate as "a blood sport."

Is it?

"Yes, sir," Specter said.

On the Russell High School team "everybody debated twice a day." His coach "would criticize us. You had to be smooth, no stumbles. She ranked us each day. If you stumbled, you were sure to be fourth [out of four on the team] unless somebody else stumbled twice."

Specter called his debate training "the best educational experience of my life."

"We learned how to research, which you saw in the movie, we learned analysis and we learned extemporaneous speaking," he said.

He also learned how to lose.

"The losses were just tremendous impacts," Specter said. "It was a great experience for learning how to take things in stride. I know it helped me with my electoral losses later."

In fall 1949 at Penn, when Specter and his debate partner, Marvin Katz, who became a federal judge, were 19, they debated the Oxford University team, both in their mid-20s.

The issue? Resolved that the British Empire is decadent, with Specter-Katz arguing the affirmative.

They won.

Afterward, Specter said, chuckling, "My father walked up to me and said, 'Those boys came a long way and you embarrassed them by proving their empire is decadent.'

"I told him I was sure they'd get over it."

It was hell for Scranton

We got an e-mail this week titled "Maharishi Ascends into Heaven."

It was about the death of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced the Beatles to transcendental meditation.

Few may remember that he also, indirectly, got the late Bob Casey Sr. elected governor of Pennsylvania.

The Maharishi starred in the famed "guru ad" credited with winning the tick-tight 1986 race for Casey against then-Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton (who lost by a mere 79,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast).

The Casey camp, led by then-unknown political strategist James Carville, ran the last-minute TV spot with a photo of Maharishi and background sitar music while noting Scranton's practice of TM. Scranton went down. Carville went up. There was no yogic flying involved.

Treasurer: No Knox

Last week, we reported that former mayoral candidate Tom Knox was circulating petitions to run for state treasurer.

This week we report that he will not be filing those petitions.

That's probably a smart move, considering that four other eastern Pa. candidates - Bucks County Dem chairman John Cordisco, Montco venture capitalist Rob McCord, Allentown state Rep. Jennifer Mann and Philadelphian Dennis Wesley Morrison - are already in the Democratic primary for the job.

Knox can now keep his eye on the bigger prize: governor in 2010. *

Staff writers Gar Joseph, Dave Davies and John M. Baer contributed to this report.