Further thoughts. . .

Hmmm.

Maybe part of the problem with the speech was that it was not what it wanted to be. I'm hoping here.

To make the speech that (perhaps) Obama wanted to hear, to make the speech his supporters wanted to hear, and to make the speech that most of the country and all of the rest of the world wanted to hear- that would be the speech that irrefutably repudiates the past 8 years. Obama's election was a vindication for all those elements - human, environmental, and philosophical - that were so thoroughly trod upon during the Bush years. It was a catharsis. Many of us assumed that out of respect (and political sense), Obama held his tongue during the past three months, but that once the oath was sworn he would hold forth in true revolutionary spirit.

But he didn't. This would have been his chance to stand there in full vindication of those who elected him and the gestures he would seek to make around the world and in one fell swoop announce the end of an era, the end of the bickering and the petty cronyism. Americans are exhausted with outrage and futility and desiring to know that the worst of the intransigence is truly behind us. The world yearns to hear that with-us-or-against-us, anti-intellectual populism is truly a thing of the past for at least the next 4 years.

But we didn't.

There were moments. There was the bit about worn-out dogmas. That was nice. "[O]ur time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed." That was good too. And I think the high point was the insistence that Freedom and Security not be seen as an either-or proposition (citing Hamilton & Co. would have been nice to give this some heft).

But there was no death-blow to the past. There was no "double bar," as we say in music, ending one movement and beginning another. There was a kind of 'coitus interuptus' in the national outrage whose one true moment to be expressed was now.

And this may be the weakness of Obama's brilliance and the limitation of his academic sensibilities. He was in most ways, too polite, too deferential, too demure.

I can chalk this up to two things - neither bodes well for Obama the president.

First of all there was his civility to present company. Much has been written in recent days of John F. Kennedy's visual recrimination of the Eisenhower administration by his simple choice not to be protected by an overcoat during his inaugural. THat was a made-for-TV image of the page turning. Words were hardly necessary. In Obama's case, with the now-former president (feels good to say that!) sitting only a few feet away, it would have been unbecoming for the professor to give him the deep verbal shafting he so richly deserves. And yet, many of us in America (and certainly in Europe) feel that kind of rancorous page-turn needed to happen. In public. Today. And that would have been enough. One good "I told you so" on behalf of the lefties and the Euros would have been all that was required. Instead, we got reconciliation and forberence. Mature, yes, politically intelligent, I'm afraid not.

Because it's true: The left wants blood. We're human - self-righteous, but human. We have those primitive desires for revenge, for overturn, for trammeling on the graves of our enemies. Most of us understood that the untested black man could not bring the rage at any moment before this one for fear of getting dumped into the Sharpton/Jackson heap. Understood. Keep your head dowm, get the delegates, do the thing. But the tacit understanding was that once the victory was sealed, once there was no going back** that the great exhale followed by the great "Fuck You!" could be released.

But it wasn't.

So maybe it's not coitus interrupted. Maybe it's actually blue balls. But that rage has to be given a voice somewhere. It can no longer just be implicit.

And that is the second point. That emotions are always important in politics. That most people will never be capable of the rigors of intellectual debate- which require the suspension of passion in order to make informed judgments. For most folks, passion is all they've got, and to suspend it would simply mean the end of life. This goes for those on the fringe left as well as the wahoos in the heartland. We need the release, otherwise we fester, and that festering will be more deletirous than any one-off Bush-bash at the inaugural would have been. A simple "America has chosen change over stasis, hope over cynicism, and dedicated service over incompetent ctonyism" would have sufficed.

Just like the right, the left has its codewords. Throwing in a biblical reference is a wink and a nod to the right that "I'm on your side." There are countless sleights of tongue that can be used to imply that the spics, niggers, and Jews are out to get you without saying so explicitly. The left has them too, and in polite company (with Bush & Dick within spitting distance) they should be used with subtlety and tact.

Obama did not. Or at least not really. I am fully in favor of his current tract of bipartisanship and his politically unnecessary yet governmentally intelligent embrace of the right. His desire to be president of the whole country is legitimate and to be commended. The need to alienate some of your left flank in the service of this lofty goal is required too. I have no problem with this.

But there was a missed opportunity here to let some of his constituency - which we must admit are also part of the whole country - feel their vindication.

But he didn't.

We shall see. I have no doubt that Obama can walk the partisan tightrope forever. He has the political acmumen and the intellectual fortitude to be more than up to the task.

With the public I'm not so sure. How long can we suspend our passions while Barack reasons us out of this noodle? The answer to this question may inform the outcome predicted in my previous post. For the time being, I think America is content to be exhausted and let the smart people figure it out. The time to have called on us to act and dedicate ourselves to service was on September 12th 2001. Or 2002. Or 2003. But since that time the good will that underpins service has been eroded beyond all recognition and transmuted itself only into vast and unpayable credit card debt. Patriotism to our markets has not payed the dividends that Obama's Americorps expansion would have 5 years ago.

So we'll see. The emotional energy required for action, perseverence, and passion for service is too still at this time to be actively harnassed. THe level of exhaustion in the country can not be overestimated. The almost certain failure of the stimulus to achieve its goals will leave us with a matching twin sister for the debt we are incurring in the Iraq war- and like the Iraq war we will likely have nothing to show for it other than a few extra bridges.

The one pool of emotional energy available in the country at this time is rage against the Bush catastrophe. The failure to harness the power of that emotion may be Obama's political undoing. Dispassionate reasoning is the privelege of the gifted. It is not the motivator of the masses. If Obama continues to ask from the people that which they do not possess, he will drain their morale even further leaving only him and his bipartisanship to steer a ship that has long since sunk.


The engine of the ship of state is the passion of its people which can be directed by a sage leader towards the best of causes. Obama never bested Hillary Clinton on this front, and her camp warned him of the potential consequences. Political reconciliation and good will have their purpose, but it can quickly drain the powerful electric current generated by alternating poles of public passion. Perhaps Obama should expand his quest for alternative forms of energy to include something that will motivate his people without having them fight with one another. This will be the real trick.





**Regarding Obama's being safely sworn in, I'm sure I'll be getting some right wing emails soon challenging the validity of the oath of office, since it was not repeated verbatim from the Chief Justice. These will follow closely on the further emails to invalidate Obama's citizenship documents. So Barack may yet feel like the door isn't totally closed behind him.