THE AGITATIONS OF HOPE
and the anxious parents of
obama.
After last Friday’s pair of Notes
about Barack Obama, a regular TWM reader and former DeSantis campaign cohort --
we’ll call him Schultz -- emailed to ask why I’m so critical of the
junior senator from Illinois. The most obvious answer, of course, is that there
is much about which to be critical; anyone who reads this blog even in passing
knows that I always, and often to a fault, call ‘em as I see ‘em.
Obama will get no special treatment here. Not even once he's done something to
deserve it.
The less obvious but still critical (in both senses of the word) answer is that, well, someone has to be. As I’ve chronicled many times before, all the way back to the days of the great Obamedia Watch, Barry the Wonder Boy has been the beneficiary of a tremendous amount of fawning and propping and outright puffery from both the blogosphere and the mainstream media, almost all of it grossly disproportionate to the senator’s adequate resume, inadequate experience, and often pedestrian performance. He excites editors and reporters and, it seems, most of his supporters not because of who he is or of what he has done, but because of who he could be and what he might do — which is great if you’re drafting a quarterback in the second round that you're hoping to groom for a couple of years, not so great when you’re drafting a president you need, as soon as politically possible, to chlorinate the current administration’s global cesspool.
I’ve made this argument before: that Obama is a blank slate brimming with a potential, a name and a story that, with just a little more success and substance in his rearview mirror, is compelling to Democrats now in the same way that George W. Bush was compelling to Republicans then. And we know how well that — aided by a blogosphere largely unformed for, and a mainstream media largely uninterested in, considering him critically — turned out. I, for one, would rather we not repeat the mistake. And so I do what little I can — which is, from my perspective, little more than speak the truth, just as I do for every other candidate — to call him as I see him. If that adds a little bit of tarnish to the Golden Boy, and if that upsets the delicate sensibilities of a few of his less-than-critical supporters, so be it.
And all the more because, when you get right down to it, the remarks I’ve made and the criticisms I’ve levied here have been as much about Obama’s supporters and enablers as they’ve been about him. Perhaps even more so. I’ve always known and understood this, of course — I’m the kind of guy who likes to be exactingly critical of a film like Pulp Fiction, not because I think it’s a bad film (it’s not), but because, a few weeks after its release, I was already weary of all the people who wanted to declare it the best movie EVER (it wasn’t even the best film of it’s year; The Shawshank Redemption was) -- but those sentiments and sensibilities were roundly reinforced this weekend, when I read Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column about Senator Obama, his suspect urgency, and his certified reboot as the press corps’ media darling.
I’ve been critical, too, of Ms. Dowd, who was an early Obama enabler herself, but lately she’s come around to a more objective -- some people, summoning neither sense nor perspective, might call it negative -- view of the senator. And it seems to me that in the third paragraph of Sunday’s column, she hit the electoral nail on the ephemeral head:
He seems more like a child prodigy. Those enraptured with his gifts urge him on, like anxious parents, trying to pull that sustained, dazzling performance out of him that they believe he’s capable of; they are willing to put up with the prodigy’s occasional listlessness and crabbiness, his flights of self-regard and self-righteousness. Despite his uneven efforts and distaste for the claws of competition, they can see he is a golden child, one who moves, speaks, smiles and thinks with amazing grace.
That's it. Dead-on. Right down to the tips of the senator's rhetorically dancing toes.
I've heard people say that Barack Obama and the frenzy surrounding him are reminiscent of Jack Kennedy's run to the White House in 1960, and I imagine -- that was, after all, nine years before I was born -- there's plenty of truth to that. But Obama's supporters right now remind me of Ross Perot's supporters in 1992, a group of people greatly disaffected with the current administration, justifiably skeptical of the front-running challengers, and so naturally, if a bit naively, drawn to a candidate who looks and sounds like nothing they've seen or heard before, even though a great part of that difference stems from lack of experience and qualification. Obama is, of course, much better qualified and far less crazy than Perot was, but his fan base, which disregards his flaws and inflates his strengths as if he were Troy Polamalu in the eyes of Steeler Nation, seems to me almost as idealistic. Which is to say, only marginally more realistic.
These people aren't running on faith -- they can't possibly have seen or heard enough yet to form a true belief system -- so much as they're running on fervor, on zeal, on the absurd agitations of hope. They're looking at Obama with the same starry eyes that, getting back to Maureen Dowd's analogy, parents suffer when they watch their son zip a football across the backyard or their daughter smile and sashay across the living room; they're thinking, hey, maybe we have something special here. And maybe they do. But mostly they do not. Either way, it's a long time before they know for sure. And that knowledge -- that disappointing check of reality -- comes while little Johnny or Susie are paying their dues, not playing at being the leader of the free world.
Am I overstating? Perhaps. And yet even some of Obama's newest, high-profile supporters seem to love the idea of Obama far more than the reality of him. In a 5,000+-word cover story in this month's issue of The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan christens Obama as the truce in America's post-Vietnam cultural civil war. As the empowering new face of America for a skeptical Muslim world that will find his name, and presumably his skin color, attractive. As Bill Clinton's Bridge to the 21st Century made glorious flesh. As everything, in fact, but a candidate with the experience and accomplishments and detailed policy prescriptions we should want to see in a president. By the end of the article, I'm convinced that Obama would make a great spokesmodel -- Diversity, the new political perfume from Calvin Klein! -- but not a great, or even a capable, president.
As Maureen Dowd notes, even Cornel West, Princeton professor and self-apointed baptizer of all things black and righteous enough, sounds more like the anxious parent of a (possible) child prodigy than the fierce supporter of a fully formed and experienced candidate:
West tried to help Obama in his uneasy quest to claim his place in the black community, calling him “my brother,” “an eloquent brother,” “a good brother” and “a decent brother.” He urged the audience to put Obama in a historical continuum with the spirituals on the plantation and Apollo stars like James Brown and Billie Holiday. Black, he said, has variations. “We don’t expect Alicia Keys to be Aretha,” he said.
West's metaphor speaks to style and genre, to the nuances of musical and political rhythms. But it also acknowledges -- intentionally, I suspect -- the considerable divide between a rising star of great potential and a superstar of great accomplishments, between someone who may one day wear the mantle and someone upon whom the mantle now rightly and comfortably sits. Alicia Keys may one day become Aretha Franklin, but, the ardent cheers of unconditional fans aside, she has a long way to go and a lot more to prove. Just like Barack Obama, who, the agitated hope of unconditional supporters aside, has a long way to go and a lot more to prove before he's beyond my criticism, much less caught up to the dreams and visions of his anxious political parents.
The less obvious but still critical (in both senses of the word) answer is that, well, someone has to be. As I’ve chronicled many times before, all the way back to the days of the great Obamedia Watch, Barry the Wonder Boy has been the beneficiary of a tremendous amount of fawning and propping and outright puffery from both the blogosphere and the mainstream media, almost all of it grossly disproportionate to the senator’s adequate resume, inadequate experience, and often pedestrian performance. He excites editors and reporters and, it seems, most of his supporters not because of who he is or of what he has done, but because of who he could be and what he might do — which is great if you’re drafting a quarterback in the second round that you're hoping to groom for a couple of years, not so great when you’re drafting a president you need, as soon as politically possible, to chlorinate the current administration’s global cesspool.
I’ve made this argument before: that Obama is a blank slate brimming with a potential, a name and a story that, with just a little more success and substance in his rearview mirror, is compelling to Democrats now in the same way that George W. Bush was compelling to Republicans then. And we know how well that — aided by a blogosphere largely unformed for, and a mainstream media largely uninterested in, considering him critically — turned out. I, for one, would rather we not repeat the mistake. And so I do what little I can — which is, from my perspective, little more than speak the truth, just as I do for every other candidate — to call him as I see him. If that adds a little bit of tarnish to the Golden Boy, and if that upsets the delicate sensibilities of a few of his less-than-critical supporters, so be it.
And all the more because, when you get right down to it, the remarks I’ve made and the criticisms I’ve levied here have been as much about Obama’s supporters and enablers as they’ve been about him. Perhaps even more so. I’ve always known and understood this, of course — I’m the kind of guy who likes to be exactingly critical of a film like Pulp Fiction, not because I think it’s a bad film (it’s not), but because, a few weeks after its release, I was already weary of all the people who wanted to declare it the best movie EVER (it wasn’t even the best film of it’s year; The Shawshank Redemption was) -- but those sentiments and sensibilities were roundly reinforced this weekend, when I read Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column about Senator Obama, his suspect urgency, and his certified reboot as the press corps’ media darling.
I’ve been critical, too, of Ms. Dowd, who was an early Obama enabler herself, but lately she’s come around to a more objective -- some people, summoning neither sense nor perspective, might call it negative -- view of the senator. And it seems to me that in the third paragraph of Sunday’s column, she hit the electoral nail on the ephemeral head:
He seems more like a child prodigy. Those enraptured with his gifts urge him on, like anxious parents, trying to pull that sustained, dazzling performance out of him that they believe he’s capable of; they are willing to put up with the prodigy’s occasional listlessness and crabbiness, his flights of self-regard and self-righteousness. Despite his uneven efforts and distaste for the claws of competition, they can see he is a golden child, one who moves, speaks, smiles and thinks with amazing grace.
That's it. Dead-on. Right down to the tips of the senator's rhetorically dancing toes.
I've heard people say that Barack Obama and the frenzy surrounding him are reminiscent of Jack Kennedy's run to the White House in 1960, and I imagine -- that was, after all, nine years before I was born -- there's plenty of truth to that. But Obama's supporters right now remind me of Ross Perot's supporters in 1992, a group of people greatly disaffected with the current administration, justifiably skeptical of the front-running challengers, and so naturally, if a bit naively, drawn to a candidate who looks and sounds like nothing they've seen or heard before, even though a great part of that difference stems from lack of experience and qualification. Obama is, of course, much better qualified and far less crazy than Perot was, but his fan base, which disregards his flaws and inflates his strengths as if he were Troy Polamalu in the eyes of Steeler Nation, seems to me almost as idealistic. Which is to say, only marginally more realistic.
These people aren't running on faith -- they can't possibly have seen or heard enough yet to form a true belief system -- so much as they're running on fervor, on zeal, on the absurd agitations of hope. They're looking at Obama with the same starry eyes that, getting back to Maureen Dowd's analogy, parents suffer when they watch their son zip a football across the backyard or their daughter smile and sashay across the living room; they're thinking, hey, maybe we have something special here. And maybe they do. But mostly they do not. Either way, it's a long time before they know for sure. And that knowledge -- that disappointing check of reality -- comes while little Johnny or Susie are paying their dues, not playing at being the leader of the free world.
Am I overstating? Perhaps. And yet even some of Obama's newest, high-profile supporters seem to love the idea of Obama far more than the reality of him. In a 5,000+-word cover story in this month's issue of The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan christens Obama as the truce in America's post-Vietnam cultural civil war. As the empowering new face of America for a skeptical Muslim world that will find his name, and presumably his skin color, attractive. As Bill Clinton's Bridge to the 21st Century made glorious flesh. As everything, in fact, but a candidate with the experience and accomplishments and detailed policy prescriptions we should want to see in a president. By the end of the article, I'm convinced that Obama would make a great spokesmodel -- Diversity, the new political perfume from Calvin Klein! -- but not a great, or even a capable, president.
As Maureen Dowd notes, even Cornel West, Princeton professor and self-apointed baptizer of all things black and righteous enough, sounds more like the anxious parent of a (possible) child prodigy than the fierce supporter of a fully formed and experienced candidate:
West tried to help Obama in his uneasy quest to claim his place in the black community, calling him “my brother,” “an eloquent brother,” “a good brother” and “a decent brother.” He urged the audience to put Obama in a historical continuum with the spirituals on the plantation and Apollo stars like James Brown and Billie Holiday. Black, he said, has variations. “We don’t expect Alicia Keys to be Aretha,” he said.
West's metaphor speaks to style and genre, to the nuances of musical and political rhythms. But it also acknowledges -- intentionally, I suspect -- the considerable divide between a rising star of great potential and a superstar of great accomplishments, between someone who may one day wear the mantle and someone upon whom the mantle now rightly and comfortably sits. Alicia Keys may one day become Aretha Franklin, but, the ardent cheers of unconditional fans aside, she has a long way to go and a lot more to prove. Just like Barack Obama, who, the agitated hope of unconditional supporters aside, has a long way to go and a lot more to prove before he's beyond my criticism, much less caught up to the dreams and visions of his anxious political parents.
Posted: Thu - December 6, 2007 at 11:20 AM
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