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REYNOLDS |
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Why Obama’s Happy Time Is Over
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 3/12/08
On February 15, I wrote that Obama’s best time was then. He would never be happier politically than he was at that time.
I stick by that opinion. Weirdly a little experiment, a counter-factual thought experiment, indicated to me why this was true. Given the demographic group that reads this site, perhaps it will help others.
Suppose we had to vote for a Democrat for President of the United States.
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
[go to Reynolds index] |
There is, in this imaginary world, no Republican running (which is an outcome some of my liberal friends would find truly Utopian)!
Suppose that Obama were pro-life and pro-family or that the Republican Party had nominated somebody that took these issues off the table.
I would vote for Barack Obama.
Why?
Partly, it is for personal reasons. I like Barack Obama. He seems like a decent and intelligent man. He is a powerful communicator and he comes from a world I understand. He speaks the graduate school language that shaped much of my thinking. He is just a few years older than I am and appeals to many of the cultural touchstones that shaped my youth.
I teach college students and I like the way he energizes them to live for a cause bigger than self.
More important, he has a chance at greatness at one of important jobs of the American president.
There are two main jobs for the American president. First, the president is the head of government. Obama is a conventional liberal and I find his positions pretty bad. On the other hand, there is no reason to think Senator Clinton would be better as head of government than Obama.
Obama also seems politely open to listening to conservatives and (at least sometimes) respectful of traditional values. He is an idea person, while Senator Clinton seems to care more for her own personal power. So, if I had to vote for a Democrat, Obama would get my vote as head of government. Better an idealistic liberal, than a person driven by selfishness.
The second job of the American president is the head of state. The president represents us to the rest of the world and speaks for all of us at moments of national importance. He is the American figure head. It is difficult to think of a better potential head of state since Reagan than Barack Obama.
Senator Clinton would be a disaster as head of state. She simply would not be able to make people forget politics when she spoke. George W. Bush has become this way as well. For whatever reason, most Americans can no longer see him in anything but a political role. He failed, as Ronald Reagan did not, as head of state.
(I think history will think Bush fundamentally succeeded as head of government.)
Since the choice between Clinton and Obama has so few policy differences, Obama would get my vote in a Democrat primary. He represents the best of American liberalism, not counting his embrace of the culture of death. All things being equal, it is also happy to help put a knife in racism, the original sin of America.
Much of Obama’s support outside of the African-American community amounts to this sort of thinking. Given the narrow policy differences between Obama and Clinton, it cannot amount to much more.
It is also why he is doomed in the general election and perhaps in the Pennsylvania primary.
The bad news for Obama is that center-left information workers (those who get paid to deal with ideas) and African-Americans are not a numerically winning coalition by themselves. There is a moderate conservative Republican running and even in this Democrat year Obama cannot count on all the grad school or information-culture vote. Even if he could, it would not be enough and carries with it a huge risk.
There are some independents and Republicans in the college towns and in information-jobs that “get” Obama in a way that they don’t get other candidates. It is not so much snobbery as comprehension, he speaks their language. There is nothing wrong with relating strongly to a candidate’s life experience, however, snobbery is just around the corner from such an attitude. It is all too easy to shift from relating easily to Obama to condescension. The sickening attitude that “we” are better than “them,” because of education or vocabulary rightly makes most Americans rightly retch. The semi-hip tone of much of the Obama advertising I have seen is starting to have this elitist sound.
That is fatal to Obama.
There is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in American culture. That is bad, but it is there and could hurt Obama. There is also a strong sense of republican distaste for self-proclaimed elites. That is a good thing and some of Obama’s followers are justifying this healthy skepticism about messianic political figures. Obama’s campaign has, thus far, allowed both the bad and the good reasons to worry about his candidacy to grow up together.
It is not longer possible to tell the weeds from the good seed.
Thanks to Clinton, Obama has become an elitist candidate and elitist candidates lose: especially in big industrial states. Obama needed to get rid of opposition before he had to rely on his coalition, which might be enough to get him the Democrat nomination, while alienating those outside of it. He did not succeed.
Finally, Obama’s great appeal as “head of state” if over done plays into the Clinton attack that he cannot govern. However, he has played “head of state” so well that to descend into the details of governance risks damaging his golden credentials as the bipartisan head of state. He needed to put Clinton out of the race before she could hit him with this dilemma. He did not and now, if she acts for her own good and not that of her party, she will begin to make her case.
Most damaging of all to Obama would be any discovery that he is a sordid Chicago politician. His appeal as head of state cannot survive ugly revelations of partisan money grubbing with the Daley machine.
In short, Obama’s primary problem is not racism, though sickeningly that is still a problem. It is Senator Clinton’s ability to paint him as an out of touch elitist who thinks he is hipper and smarter than everyone else. For many reasons, McCain could not and would not have made that case, but Clinton has made it for him. Obama’s followers have fallen into the trap of reacting to Clinton in ways that are “confirming” the stereotype.
If Obama does not fight back soon (assuming this picture of him as elitist is false), then he is the Michael Dukakis of what should be a Democrat year. Clinton has destroyed his viability. ExileStreet
copyright
2008 John Mark Reynolds
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