The Barack Obama phenomenon intrigues me. Not that he’s really young, or that he’s a black man who’s actually got a shot at the Oval Office, or that he’s the storied “outsider” charging in to save us all from the same old boogeymen that we always stumble back home to after a bender with some other storied outsider that led us through a white-knuckle ride that only a true outsider can provide a nation as large and complicated as this one.
No, it’s not any of that. It’s the manner in which the crustiest and most venial of hard-boiled politicos have had moments of swooning like 12 yr old girls over this guy. Right in front of me (oh yeah, and the rest of the nation) on live political talk TV. You’d think they’d try a little harder to maintain some professional decorum when confronted with whatever the hell it is that this skinny guy brings to the podium.
I live in SW Ohio – 2004’s version of Florida and the dangling vote debacle – and the only part of Ohio that keeps it a swing state, and not a staple of the National Democratic Committee. Obama is bound to show up around here eventually, and I may decide to go see the whole thing for myself. It’s hard to predict what the reaction to him in this part of the state will be. The folks here are pretty naive in one sense and pretty resistant to being emotionally affected in another sense. I’ll be interested to see how they react to the Obama magic.
After all, these folks actually re-elected Mean Jean Schmidt back into her Rep seat after she showed up on SNL skits as the Raging Repub – blasting a career Marine as a coward for opposing the Iraq disaster. I mean, you could almost see Tom Delay and his pals giggling off screen as she marched up there and read the speech they gave her, but still, you’d think she would’ve skimmed it a moment before launching a viral moment like that on herself. And yet, even after that “lapse-in-judgment” these bedrock denizens of “God, gays and guns” sent her back again, and with their blessings.
So, you wonder how a fresh-face, African-American Liberal with a set of ears that look like they were yanked off the sides of a sippy cup will fare in front of these hardcore grape Kool-aid drinkers.
Now, I like Barak Obama. Don’t get me wrong here.
Well, actually, it’s more that I like the idea of Barack Obama. Then again, I like the idea of Batman too, but – to be quite honest – the idea of a real-life billionaire who dresses up in tights and a cape, running around in the night and “fighting crime”, kind of creeps me out a little in a classic clown sort of manner, so maybe the idea of a complete political neophyte as savior of the greatest empire in human existence has its elements of unreality attached to it as well.
The thing that really concerns me is that he’s only known for being a good speaker, and for literally nothing else. Some street organizing in Chicago, a good Senate campaign against Alan Keyes (not too controversial a character) and a speech against the Iraq invasion back when it was politically unpopular at the national level to make such a speech. That’s all you got here.
To be even more blunt, the anti-Iraq invasion speech he gave was given when he wasn’t at the national level at the time, and it wasn’t the same kind of immediate suicide move for him as it would have been for a national political figure – like, let’s say, Hillary Clinton, for instance. I don’t know. I like the idea of a guy like this shaking things up, but I also need to be able to trust that he’ll know how best to shake things up, and not just shaking things up for the mere sake of shaking things up. We have a lot of very serious issues to address, and no time to waste on false starts and blunders.
GW Bush destroyed way too much that needs to be resurrected again, and the next guy needs to know what it’s going to take to resurrect those things, and who to work with to make that happen. Obama is a very young guy with no deep personal relationships with the kind of people he’ll have to put the strong hand on to make them do what he’ll need them to do. I don’t know if anyone is capable of the kind of learning curve he’ll face as the next president this nation needs.
The hell is that every other candidate is a complete loser for other, and even more fatal, reasons. So, what do we do?
Maybe one aspect of Barack’s campaign is a clue, and maybe this is what people are lighting up on? At least I can hope that this is what’s putting that glassy look in the eyes of Belt Way trolls like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert when they gush about the man.
It actually was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who I first heard take note that Barack talks in terms of “we”, and not in terms of “me”, and maybe this is where the difference lies. John Kennedy talked in terms of “we, as the nation” and called that nation to service in a way that few did even in those more naive and optimistic times. It’s been a long time since a leader has tried to get us to solve our own problems by coming together and caring more about each other that about ourselves. Maybe this is what’s needed now.
This is the greatest empire that has ever existed, but it’s also a powerfully dynamic and impactful vehicle. It’s kind of like a big bus that we’re all sitting in, and we hire drivers every 4 years or so to keep us moving forward and on schedule. Right now, it’s fishtailed off the road and is sitting with two wheels in a ditch. No one man or woman can lift it out of this ditch that the driver we’ve had for the last 7 years drove it into. We need a new driver – that much is clear – but first we need to get the damn thing out of the ditch.
Now, we can bitch about the crazy driving of our present driver, and I see room for some disciplinary action in response to a lot of what went on behind the wheel, but no matter what we do to the old driver, or what the next driver claims he or she can do, this bus will continue to sit with those two wheels off the road until we all get out of our seats, get off the bus, get a plan together to free those wheels, and put our backs into whatever it’ll take to get all four wheels back on the road again. Until that happens, it won’t matter who we hire to drive. We’ll just sit in this ditch forever regardless of what the talking points are.
If this whole Obama thing is a call to service for a new generation of brilliant talent and belligerent optimism, then I hope I get a chance to feel it when he comes around this corner of Ohio. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a calm sense of this nation’s future, and back then, it was only because all I could think about was girls and putting bands together. I was happily ignorant and just assumed that the folks in charge actually knew what they were doing.
Here’s to hoping that Barack Obama actually knows what it is that he’s doing. Well, beyond the getting elected bit where he works to convince us that he knows what it is that he’s doing. He seems to have that part of it all down pretty solid. It’s the actual governing for the good of the whole nation bit that I’d like to see someone get a firm handle on for a change. Now that would be refreshing.
