The Future
Posted by Michael Cohen
There's a great line from rock journalist Jon Landau describing the feeling he had when he saw The Boss perform in concert for the first time, "I've seen the future of rock n' roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen."
Tonight, I went to high school gymnasium in Concord, New Hampshire and I saw the future of American politics. And his name is Barack Obama.
Watching Obama on stage tonight I actually felt sorry for Hilary Clinton. She's a nice woman, a good Senator, a fine public servant, a true progressive . . . but quite simply she is swimming against the tide of history. She's running the right campaign at the wrong time in American history. When you look at Obama, his very appearance seems to embody the message of change - after all he is a black man running for President who refuses to define himself as a black man. As if there is nothing out of the ordinary with a black man seeking the White House; and of course there really shouldn't be anything unusual about it. In a post-partisan world, he is the ultimate post-partisan messenger. For all her positives, when one looks at Hillary it's just very difficult not to think of the partisan wars of the 1990s. It's the double-edged sword of experience; yeah, she's been around for a while . . but that's part of the problem.
I unfortunately missed the Hillary event in Manchester tonight, but in Concord you could absolutely feel the energy in the room when Obama spoke. I've never been to a political rally where the crowd seemed so energized and so excited.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I had this palpable sense that the people in Concord tonight wanted to believe not just in Obama but in the very notion that they can feel pride in their country again. It's a lesson that Ronald Reagan understood in 1980 when he spoke about national greatness. But Obama's message is different and is more reflective of its time. I think I share the feeling of many progressives that over the past eight years we have lost faith in the idea of America, in the sense of hope that government can bring real change. When many of us have looked to government, we have seen nothing that has given us hope and everything that gives us despair. As much as many progressives want to see Bush leave office, they want to believe in American again; they want to have hope again - and in a real sense that's the message Obama is peddling.
I think it's simplistic to simply define Obama's message as change vs more of the same. Change is certainly part of the equation, there is no question about it. But there is something deeper going on here. Going back to Tocqueville, there has long been a idea in American politics that Americanism, for lack of a better word, is a type of civil religion; it is a secular belief system. I don't want to venture too deeply into an exceptionalist argument here, but America is founded of course on a creed rather than a sense of ethnic or religious identity. Belief in the "ideal" of America (while not always realized) is a strong undercurrent in American politics and Obama seems to have put his finger on it.
His message is not "Change!" it's "Change We Can Believe In." It's a message with a crucial distinction because it's based on the idea of Americans once again believing in the power to affect real change in this country. There's a good reason why, in Obama's stump speech, he presents this election as a continuum, from the minuteman to the abolitionists, to the union movement, to the greatest generation to the civil rights workers to today. We look back at the Revolutionary War and the ending of slavery and the defeat of fascism and the civil rights movement as great moments in American history; because they represent times when Americans not only affected change, but made a concerted effort to ensure that this country lived up to its founding ideals. Obama is selling the idea that America can produce that type of change again, but only if Americans are willing to take the leap of faith and believe that it's possible. Indeed, this notion of believing is the climactic element of his stump speech.
Obama's message is not about change; it's about belief in the future and it's about hope. Quite simply, there is not another candidate who seems to get that; and I'm not sure that even if they did, they could sell it as effectively as Obama. If Hillary loses, I have no doubt the long knives will come out; people will blame Mark Penn; they will blame Bill; they will accuse Hillary of being too programmed; but in the end I'm not sure she ever had a chance. She's running against not simply a movement; but the palpable sense of hope and belief in America's revitalization and in its potential that Obama represents.
I think if I was her in shoes, I'd probably shed a few tears too.
There's nothing more touching than a corporate lobbyist waxing poetic about our candidate's future, but I think Michael's post should give everyone pause.
After Obama's speeches are over, what does it mean? Any talk of uniting our country with these feel good appeals is a delusion. So long as Scaife and Murdoch and Moonie control so much of our our political discourse, we'll be a divided nation. (The fact that Obama has gotten away with being so vague about his plans up until now will ensure that the disappointment among his supporters will be all the greater if/when he's elected, and then the sharks will certainly tear him apart.)
People used to call Nelson Rockefel