Obama, Our Would Be Savior

Barack Obama strikes me as a seductive candidate that appears from time to time on the American scene: the great and wise man, beyond corruption, who will save us from ourselves. Think Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party or Ross Perot and his reform movement.

I wrote in January on this site:

What is needed in all times, but particularly in times of conflict, and more particularly in democratic societies, is a specific type of courage that is hard to fine and is rarely rewarded: moral courage. This is the courage to do the right thing in the face of resistance, public pressure, and, above all, the will to vanity and flattery. We judge Germans, Poles, and others for their failure to rally on behalf of the victims of Nazi violence. But how much less courage does it take to stand up for the unborn and outcasts of today, when the only consequence is losing the chance to be re-elected? And yet, surprisingly enough, how much more effective is public opinion and vanity in suppressing morally courageous acts than outright violence?

This issue has come up in relation to the the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, who offers the seductive hope of a unifying nice-guy. But, so far at least, he has proven to be a man of tame convictions, complete with feel-good positions on things like school lunches and midnight basketball. (Tellingly, today he took a controversial stand against corruption.) One can’t always square the circle, particularly in a divided society such as ours. On issues ranging from Iraq to abortion, to have a position is to alienate half the country.

Obama identifies the source of our problems not as a failure to pursue specifically liberal policies that he believes to be correct, even if controversial. Instead, the source is corruption, cynicism, a kind of spiritual malaise that we must collectively divorce ourselves from by endorsing him and his optimistic message.

But instead of seeing a romantic optimist, I instead see a typical politician, a man with great faith in himself that he hopes others will endorse without asking too many questions. He is also a man that is all too plastic, willing to avoid controversy because his number one issue is not Iraq or welfare or immigration, but himself and his salvific mission. Obama wants to be President not because he wants to commit to any particular policy but because he believes his mere presence will elevate our politics and his native intelligence will be able to see him through any particular issue on which he has not taken a stand. He finds it unseemly and constricting to commit himself to the liberal policies he has endorsed his entire career when it was safe to do so. Most tellingly, he has voted “present” on a number of controversial votes, including those related to gun control and partial birth abortion in his time as a US Senator. This is all packaging that reveals someone for whom winning will trump matters of high principle and accountability.

Ironically, Bush too portrayed himself as someone that would clean up our political culture. He noted that he wanted a foreign policy that was humble (in contrast to the “arrogance” of Clinton’s) and was willing to work with Democrats in the House to pursue policies that furthered the common good. He specifically invoked his record as Governor of Texas, where he did enjoy a record for bipartisanship and comity with the unusually conservative Democrats in the Texas legislature.

Bush, Obama, and every president in recent memory that talks about elevating our politics is engaging in the worst kind of hubris; those that vote for them on this basis are engaging in an all too human kind of wishful thinking. This thinking is particularly common among those that do not follow politics closely. Ideologically inclined Americans with strong views on everything from abortion to foreign policy to the role of the federal government have deep disagreements about policy, about our history, about our identity. We’re a nation in the midst of a deep cultural rift between traditional America and those who have self-consciously labeled themselves the “counter culture.” That counter-culture is now entrenched in most of our major cultural institutions: universities, the press, the entertainment industry, and in the government. So long as there is a lack of real consensus on the level of ideas and values, no statesmen will be able to tamp down controversy on a whole host of issues which ultimately define what kind of nation we will be.

Obama either accepts this account or he doesn’t. Either way, his candidacy is flawed. If he doesn’t know this, then his narcissism and power for megalomania is peerless. If he knows this and all the talk of one united America without red and blue states is just salesmanship to mask what will likely be the same kind of liberal agenda he has pursued as an Illinois representative and as US Senator, when he was empowered to do so and not cowed into voting present instead of taking a stand that might cost him.