No, He Won’t
Posted on February 13th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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No he will not transform politics. He won’t abolish our problems. He won’t eliminate our enemies. He won’t disappear partisanship. That’s not the point. ~Andrew Sullivan
So, in other words, he lies to his audiences frequently when he is explaining the main rationale of his candidacy, or if he isn’t deceiving them he is not disabusing them of what you could call their false hopes. But then Obama doesn’t believe in false hopes, so perhaps he thinks he doesn’t have to disabuse anyone of anything.
Perhaps you will say that Obama doesn’t actually promise these things, but then why is it that so many people who listen to him think this is what he is offering? Why do prominent supporters claim to believe the same thing? For example:
“Barack is the best candidate to unite our country and transform our politics in the cause of progress,” said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who was the first governor outside of Obama’s home state of Illinois to endorse the Illinois senator.
“Today, voters showed confidence in Barack’s ability to unite this country and transcend divisive Washington politics as usual,” he added.
Transform! Transcend! Excelsior!
Story after story reports that this is what he is offering:
Obama runs as a visionary who would transform politics by inspiring a broad new coalition united behind change.
Bloggers at his own campaign site say the same:
Hillary is running to change of parties in Washington, while Barack is running to transform the political system.
Finally, there is the man himself:
This election is about the past vs. the future. It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.
More to the point, even if Obama never explicitly made such promises his entire candidacy has now been identified with the promise of not just bipartisanship, but ”post-partisanship,” whatever that might be, and the appeal of his candidacy to his fans is that he will accomplish these goals that have been set absurdly high by him and his supporters.
This is why, incidentally, I can’t stand optimism. Optimism is the creator of a thousand false hopes and the source of profound disillusionment and resentment when those hopes are not realised. Few things are more dangerous to sober, responsible citizenship than movements that promise such transformation and transcendence in the political realm, because these things are not available in a realm governed by disparities of power. It is the antithesis of pragmatism. Ultimately, optimism is at the heart of every flawed modern ideology that believes the basic structures of human society and the inevitable factionalism within human polities are somehow mistakes that must be erased or overthrown. The problem with optimism is that it is always and everywhere at war with reality. It is also pits us against the future, as Prof. Dienstag argues in Pessimism:
Optimism makes us perpetual enemies of those future moments that do not meet our expectations, which means all future moments. It is when we expect nothing from the future that we are free to experience it as it will be, rather than as a disappointment.
The Obama campaign is a giant expectation-generating machine, which is another way of saying that it will also generate enormous disappointment. It is not just politically foolish to build up expectations so high, but it is actually the cause of future suffering.
Heh. But if expectations are not met will his supporters blame him or for others not playing along? The opinions of the young on political matters makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be better for the voting age to be raised to 25 or 30. (As if the 18-25 crowd actually votes–do we have any numbers as to how many of them are voting in the primaries?)
Presumably a lot of his supporters will blame “the status quo” or “Washington politics” or, everyone’s favourite, “special interests.” But some of them will turn on him when they discover that he cannot, in fact, transmute base elements and turn back time.
Exit polls have shown 18-25 year olds making up anywhere between 7-12% of the electorate in both parties. 18-29 usually accounts for a total of maybe 18-20% In other words, not nearly as many are voting as could be, and “the youth vote” is still turning out at lower rates. As you say, this is not necessarily a bad thing at all.
As one of those individual who belong to that young demographic, I completely agree.
I am a fairly liberal person. Generally, I agree with Obama’s substantive positions on political and social issues.
However, his rhetoric is self-evidently absurd. And yet most of the Democratic primary voters found him more reasonable and electable than Hillary–specifically for the absurd things he’s saying.
On top of this, Obama base comes from a fervent group of young, educated, professionals. In other words, the smart voters are the ones to be most likely taken in by these vapid cliches.
I find it ironic that Obama, not Bush, has fully converted me to a misanthrope. H.L Mencken was prescient it would seem.
Obama’s popular appeal today strikes me as very similar to Reagan’s 28 years ago. Reagan’s sunny optimism struck me as terribly vapid at that time, but boy oh boy, did it ever sell well. On policy matters, the two are obviously worlds apart. I’m no historian, but it seems to me that contrasting the popular appeal of the two would be splitting hairs.
Optimism means to always expect the best outcome, which is of course, ridiculous. There isn’t a word in English to describe a healthy positive outlook.
I had to concede that Reagan’s positive outlook (however vapid it appeared to me at the time) actually did some good for us. I think Obama could do the same.
When Reagan ran, he had governed the State of California, and what amounts to almost the same thing, co-starred with a chimpanzee.
I’ll equate editing the Harvard Law Review to the chimp caper, but the Master of Stentorian Vacuity has never administered anything, not even CPR, let alone the State of Fruits and Nuts.
Isn’t there some Graustark that will lend us a younger brother or a by-blow, so we can have a proper king?
[...] The disappointment-generating machine that is the Obama campaign is firing on all cylinders, judging from laments such as this one: Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most. [...]