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Hope We Can Hope In

Nicholas M. Guariglia - 3/28/2008

Like a modern-day Demosthenes, it’s becoming increasingly evident that Senator Obama has embraced the prose of the classic pied-piper, the role of abstract orator. He says everything and nothing all at once, with a kind of eerie religiosity sweeping across his great, mystifying vernacular. Chris Matthews has declared that “(Obama) comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” Oprah Winfrey and Maria Shriver swear up and down that Barack is “the truth” –– leaving one only to wonder if he is likewise the way and the light.

Just how can his panhandlers contrive an entire speech filled with assurances that “our time is now” and “yes, we can” and feel these inanities will suffice the appetites of the general public? His pleasant wife pledges her husband will “torch our souls,” but I’m sure at least some of us are curious as to know what the three-year senator actually thinks about a topic or two.

Without a teleprompter, Sen. Obama relies on the cheap effects of class warfare populism. “The insurance and the drug companies aren’t going to give up their profits easily,” he pontificates, as if we are to expect –– as if we are to want –– them to do so. Victor Davis Hanson amassed the phenomena quite well:

“The more he talks about not talking about race, the more he talks about race, apparently so that he never has to take a position or offer details about his European-like socialism… in the white liberal mind, a suave rhetorician of half-African ancestry from Harvard can be safely reconfigured as an African-American victim of historic racism… The more he writes and talks about his father, the more one is reminded that his critical training and education were more likely due to his mother and maternal grandparents.”

In a sense, Obama welcomes the symbolism in being the candidate that allows guilty whites to “correct it all,” forgiving themselves and their kin of past bigotry. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama sermonizes. “This time can be different because of this campaign… it’s different not because of me. It’s different because of you,” he followed, spurring Joseph Klein of Time to counter “This is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire.” Well, there you have it: self-referential, salivational, messianic –– and creepy to boot. “The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is,” Klein asserts.

So we sit and watch the phenomena move along steadily unfettered, while Obama’s personal mega-church Chicago pastor –– friend of Qaddafi, Farrakhan, et. al. –– concludes that 9/11 showed us that “people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns.” Don’t expect any outrage anytime soon, or any segment of the leftist-secular alliance who fretted over Bush’s “Jesus Land” in 2004 to speak out at the moment. And why would they? I mean, hell, this guy can turn a phrase!

All of this unwarranted gushiness over Obama has started making me feel a little sympathetic toward the plight of the now periodically teary-eyed Senator Clinton. But then one steps back to look at her conquer-and-divide politics, and queasiness sets in. “Can she attract enough male voters?” “Can she wean away Hispanics and blacks?” “Can she stop him from persuading whites?” “Who appeals to the lower class?”

There is little query into the issues themselves. What are their finite differences on, say, Social Security? Was it spending or the tax cuts that led to deficits, and are they truly in favor of upping the former and reversing the latter? Is flight from Iraq in 60 days really going to be the first thing they set out to do? Is one trying harder to sway his or her constituency about a host of ideas, or is it police-lined off at who can garner more support from a particular demographic?

It is odd to watch Hillary’s “I am woman, hear me roar” mantra get conglomerated into, and overshadowed by, her more successful husband’s speeches, which seem to be about him first, second, and her third. Even mainstream Democrats are getting tired of Bill’s antics and serial attacks on Obama. Mr. Clinton went, very easily and very swiftly, from senior statesman to trite partisan evoking racial denunciations somewhere between New Hampshire and South Carolina.

One may have thought the Clintons were withholding all the weapons in their arsenal –– from Obama doing “blow,” to his racist religious mentors, etc. –– because they felt they could win, and should they win, would want the young upstart on her ticket. But now, on the brink of defeat, from what was supposed to be a coronation to the end of a failed campaign, one wonders where the Clinton “machine” has gone.

In the end, I suspect Sen. Obama will pull off the nomination, and if he does, I suspect he will pick someone like retired commander Gen. Anthony Zinni as his running mate; someone older, with the real-world experience to offset whatever McCain may throw at him. In truth, this strategy is the only way Obama can win over the vast portion of the electorate –– outside the dorm rooms and tree houses of the country –– which has resigned itself to the harsh fact that the sun does not rise and set with one of his damp platitudes. He says “yes, we can” because he can’t say “yes, I have.” We get it. He’s young and he’s hip.

So are the guys from Maroon 5.