My Concerns About Obama

I had been looking forward to Obama's speech for some time.

He seems to understand the breadth of his mandate and the patience the people have for a reality check, and so his tone of late has been hardly as soaring as it was, say, in the mid-primaries. This is to be expected.

But to my "American" ear, the tone of today's speech was unnecessarily morbid. Perhaps 8 years of Bush and 7 seasons of West Wing have attuned me to the tenor of boundless optimism and cheer that has characterized presidential speech since the demise of Jimmy Carter. But despite my recent seasoning there was nonetheless a peculiar relish the new president seemed to have in the seriousness and pessimism that marked the first several minutes of the speech. I admit, I was taken aback.

Where was the "We can achieve, we will break through this, America shall rise again from the ashes of cynicism and cronyism. . ."? There were glimpses throughout to be sure, but it was hard for me to feel that they ever took us out of the grimness of the address enough to lift our spirits over the next horizon. Indeed this seems to be one of the rare moments when Barack appeared truly tone deaf. The national mood, fully aware of the impending doom, has been in particular good cheer lately in anticipation of the inspired leadership Barack has to offer. And amongst many of us, there was the faint hope that the soaring rhetoric of the old days might make a brief reappearance, if only to remind us that what brought us all into this guy's camp in the first place was not his cool-headed competence but his fantastical idealism.

So for me the speech was a bit of a let down. And I hate to say it, but I even sensed the slightest bit of self-satisfaction in talking down to a lazy, sloppy worldview for which the self-made man must have some real personal contempt. The overall thrust of the speech was that, yes, government will do its share, and as well as possible, but it will be you, the people who must raise yourselves up and do the extraordinary. You, the people will lead the country to better days. In your hands, in your care will be your future and the future of this country. This, I'm sure Obama imagines, is the true call of leadership- to lead people into their own power, to step out of the way and give people the opportunities to better themselves and create their own greatness.

And herein lies my concern.

Americans believe in the exceptionalism of America, but not of Americans. In general our citizens pride themselves in their ordinariness, not in their specialness. Being an "average" American is a point of pride in this country, and distaste for and mistrust of individual excellence is almost a national religion.

Obama's rise above his life's obstacles, his taking responsibility for his actions and his choices- these are the hallmarks of great men. But the electorate, indeed the country, is not made up of great men. It is rather made up of many, many small men.
The idealist in Obama has been vindicated because he, himself has done the work on his own behalf. The idealist in most people flounders because they expect their ideals to come true for free. And in many ways this is the American dream that most Americans want. They are small, anxious to evade tough decisions, and eager to pass the blame onto someone else. This is not the course to greatness that Obama has charted in his own life, but it is the course to mediocrity that most men have charted in theirs.

Many an idealist has risen to a place of power with the earnest goal of liberating people from their predicaments. Empower them, give them responsibility for their own decisions, these leaders believe, and the people will rise to the occasion. Well often as not these leaders retire realizing that if those people had really wanted to be self-empowered, they would have done it already, and that really what these people want (despite their own inner pretensions) is to be led. This is a sad moment of realization for the idealistic leader who has tirelessly toiled to manifest his own dreams in reality through perseverence, struggle, and the exercise of exceptional gifts. That the rest of the world does not relish these virtues comes as a shocking diasppointment to the leader, himself a truly great man. He may find, reflecting on his disillusionment, that his desire to save the people was an abstraction- to feel needed, wanted by the enormous masses was the deferment of the hope to be needed, wanted by anybody.

After all, the man capable of the self-discipline to realize his vision is himself by necessity an outcast. He can not fit in, because to fit in would mean to dilute the attainment. So as the man walks alone, he can not but dream that somewhere, some time, there will be a world, a culture that will include him. And by projecting that culture, that clique, onto the vast, anonymous masses of a country, indeed a world, he will seek redemption through their embrace.

But this is my fear for Obama. That they will not embrace him once they fully digest what he is asking of them. "You are the change you have been waiting for." If that were really the case, then they would not have needed to wait. They would have changed themselves already. That people do not want to extract from the herd, that masses of people do not want to individuate, do not want to self-actualize is a fact of history that can not be denied. It is only the man forced by his fate to become himself that is capable of the discipline, the hard work, to accomplish this worthy goal. But to expect that of others, indeed to demand that of others. . .well that is only to remind them of their own unworthiness, their own lack of discipline, their own insecurities about their gifts and their ability to achieve.

And this again is my fear for Obama: that the people will turn on him. That the mirror he holds up for them will not reflect their glory but their weakness. That the light he shines will show, in even starker relief, their flaws and their failures. That his demand to raise themselves up will be too much for those desiring only a savior- and they will revolt.

There has been for some time speculation about the specter of assassination in the tradition of promising young leaders in this country. I am no longer as concerned about this as I once was. I don't think the loony fringe will decide to take him out in the name of white supremacy or some such. My greater fear, though, is that America will grow weary of the difficult dream that Obama has for them. They will prefer to keep the outcast in his traditional role as scapegoat and shove him aside rather than face their own sins.

If this is so, then I can foresee the public's internal estrangement from the Obama ideal being cause for his leaving the stage, any assassination being the outward expression of unconscious collective will rather than petty vengeance or agenda. This will be all for the best perhaps, as Obama, arriving at such a state will be filled with disillusion beyond measure. He will know when and if he has lost the people. And he will know that his dream for them is not enough to wake them from their sleep.


Of course like all idealists, I am hoping to be wrong about this. I am hoping that Obama's own path has brought him the balance of wisdom required to seek his own fulfillment through himself and not strictly through service to an anonymous "the people." It is so easy to project one's fantasies of love, acceptance, and community onto those whom one will never personally know (and it is equally easy to accept the love of a leader whom we will never know as well). If this is Obama's course, then I am sad for the let down he will face with us and we with ourselves. But if Barack is able to use his own competence and intelligence in the service of the people, then that will be for the best of all, and finally that is all the people will require.

We must not forget that Americans were seduced more by Reagen than by Carter, more by Bush than Kerry. From our politicians, we like the dream, we like the horizon- the nuts and bolts not so much. That we get enough of in regular life. If the politicians can turn our daily grind into magic, into the myth of America, then we will work forever. If we must work to curb our own excesses (or worse, the excesses of others), then the inspiration goes missing. The last time we needed to work like this, Russia gave us the motivation. The time before that it was Hitler. They were the great causes, the great adversaries. Now it is only us. Bush tricked us for a while into believing our adversaries were the teeming swarms of anonymous Muslims, but Barack has reminded us that our true adversaries are really ourselves- and may have been all along. America no longer has any great enemy. We are at war with ourselves, with our own souls. We are at war with our own sloth, with our own greed, with our own arrogance.

Obama has already won that war within himself. It's what makes him a great man. To lead the American people to victory over their own souls. . .that will be a challenge unprecedented by any leader of any time. I wish him Godspeed.



NB: in case the eschelon machine happens upon this blog through the keywords of "assassination" and "Obama," let me make myself clear that I have no intention or desire to see such an act occur, nor would I in any way imaginable participate or encourage participation in same. DG