Reflections on the Political Possibilities Before Us
It has not been easy to ground what I think about this newly elected President. But my ideas have been orbiting around the clarity Barack Obama seems to offer American political culture, after decades of a politics informed by what Stephen Colbert calls 'truthiness-' a politics of spin, dissem¬blance, and manipulation, a politics in which mythology takes precedence over what we know our experience to be. Many who turned out to vote for Obama perceive in him someone who is pre¬pared to say things as he genuinely sees and understands them, and as he knows others see and understand them, and who is able to articulate what they see and understand, even as they lack a language precise enough to put a name to their overarching discontent.
Fear over the economy aside, fury and resentment over wasteful and disastrous military adventures aside, what is lacking in American politics is the sense that our leaders, whatever their party, are capable of plainly and simply speaking the truth, but instead, consistently twist language to meet what they imagine to be preconceived public belief. Obama presents the possibility that we are moving into an era where politics will be about engaging the underlying realities of our national dilemmas, not disguising and evading them. What he brings to the political scene is not simply the fact that he is the first African-American President, but that he comes to that scene with an open, rather than an adversarial and paranoid political style
Obama’s talk, at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, in the aftermath of the explosive Jeremiah Wright video-- 'Not God bless America, but God damn America'-- is an example-- perhaps the clearest example-- of what I'm talking about. Who would have thought any political figure associated with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright-- black or white- could have prevailed after that fiery and condemnatory sermon broke upon the scene? But Obama came back because he put on the table both the nature of racial conflict in America-- conflict which is real and palpable, but which we are taught we are supposed to ignore and 'get beyond,'-- and the reality of the discomfort, distance, and distrust we all feel, to greater or lesser extent, towards those who are different from ourselves. “…(R)ace is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said bluntly. Wright’s comments, and the responses to them from all sides of the racial divide, Obama told his audience, “reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.” Seemingly self-evident propositions, but ones seldom stated openly by candidates seeking Presidential office, and clearly, convictions that got through to those constituencies that Obama needed to re-assure, if he were to prevail in the campaign. He did not, after the Wright video was released, sink and disappear beneath the flood waters of American politics, as many fully expected he would- because, I believe, a majority of the American people not only understood the truth of what he was saying but because they were glad to hear someone say it at last.
Obama’s speech at the Constitution Center, I would argue, was critical in helping transform his public persona from a black man trying to be President, to a man trying to be President who happened to be black, and who was unafraid openly to state uncomfortable realities. And if I am right, then, without romanticizing the racial situation we will continue to face in this country, or pretending that, from the moment of Obama's inauguration, we all, black and white, will be able, hand in hand, to go to the seashore, I can say that Obama’s speech helped move us closer, however infinitesimally, to the realization of a world in which, to paraphrase Dr. King, character, not color, is what matters.
Fear over the economy aside, fury and resentment over wasteful and disastrous military adventures aside, what is lacking in American politics is the sense that our leaders, whatever their party, are capable of plainly and simply speaking the truth, but instead, consistently twist language to meet what they imagine to be preconceived public belief. Obama presents the possibility that we are moving into an era where politics will be about engaging the underlying realities of our national dilemmas, not disguising and evading them. What he brings to the political scene is not simply the fact that he is the first African-American President, but that he comes to that scene with an open, rather than an adversarial and paranoid political style
Obama’s talk, at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, in the aftermath of the explosive Jeremiah Wright video-- 'Not God bless America, but God damn America'-- is an example-- perhaps the clearest example-- of what I'm talking about. Who would have thought any political figure associated with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright-- black or white- could have prevailed after that fiery and condemnatory sermon broke upon the scene? But Obama came back because he put on the table both the nature of racial conflict in America-- conflict which is real and palpable, but which we are taught we are supposed to ignore and 'get beyond,'-- and the reality of the discomfort, distance, and distrust we all feel, to greater or lesser extent, towards those who are different from ourselves. “…(R)ace is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said bluntly. Wright’s comments, and the responses to them from all sides of the racial divide, Obama told his audience, “reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.” Seemingly self-evident propositions, but ones seldom stated openly by candidates seeking Presidential office, and clearly, convictions that got through to those constituencies that Obama needed to re-assure, if he were to prevail in the campaign. He did not, after the Wright video was released, sink and disappear beneath the flood waters of American politics, as many fully expected he would- because, I believe, a majority of the American people not only understood the truth of what he was saying but because they were glad to hear someone say it at last.
Obama’s speech at the Constitution Center, I would argue, was critical in helping transform his public persona from a black man trying to be President, to a man trying to be President who happened to be black, and who was unafraid openly to state uncomfortable realities. And if I am right, then, without romanticizing the racial situation we will continue to face in this country, or pretending that, from the moment of Obama's inauguration, we all, black and white, will be able, hand in hand, to go to the seashore, I can say that Obama’s speech helped move us closer, however infinitesimally, to the realization of a world in which, to paraphrase Dr. King, character, not color, is what matters.