Thus the London Telegraph’s Charles Moore on Barack Obama. It’s a thoughtful and largely sympathetic piece. But it articulates a powerful . . . what to call it? Reservation? Misgiving? Uneasiness? Everyone knows that “The Audacity of Hope” is the title of one of Obama’s memoirs (he’s written two). Mr. Moore reminds that the phrase comes from a sermon by Obama’s close clerical friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Once it emerged that Rev. Wright also preached that black people should sing not “God Bless America!” but “God Damn America!” Obama quietly distanced himself from his pastor.
But as Mr. Moore saw, the Jeremiah Wright episode did raise an important question:
are black politics in America still defined by their hatred of white domination? If Obama’s politics are “black” in that sense, he does not stand a chance.
Mr. Moore continues:
What is so fascinating in this contest is that no one has thought more about this than Barack Obama himself. It is the subject matter of Dreams From My Father [Obama's earlier memoir]. Half white American liberal puritan, half feckless, clever, disappointed Kenyan, he searches for his roots.
And what has he found? And what, more to the point, have Obama’s supporters found? What does it mean, for example, to suggest that if you are not a supporter of Obama then, ipso facto, you must be racist? That popular scenario–what we might call the Wright Protocol–is the real racist alternative, for it would have us believe that we should support Barack Obama because of the color of his skin, not because of his policies, promise, or accomplishments.
There is an undeniable romance about Barack Obama’s story. It’s an important part of his appeal. But the question that haunts his campaign–a question that has been asked with increasing urgency as the campaign unfolds–revolves around the issue of identity: Who is Barack Obama? What, deep down, does he stand for? To what has he plighted his highest allegiance?
These are not questions that are easily answered. “In a remote area of Kenya,” Mr. Moore continues,
where his grandfather lived when not working as a cook for the British Army, he learns the family history. In this cradle of the human race, he longs for “that first common step, that first common word – that time before Babel”.
Yet the history of his parents – he met his father only once after he left home when he was tiny – is of fracture. It is all the story of “the puzzle of being a black man”. Barack falls on the ground and cries out to his father’s ghost: “There was no shame in your confusion.”
The implication of the book is that Obama, by understanding the unrealised dreams from his father properly, can somehow fulfil them in and for the United States of America. The intoxicating thought that it might be true is what makes so many of us want Mr Obama to win.
Indeed. As Hemingway said at the end of The Sun Also Rises, It would be pretty to think so. “But what,” Charles Moore asks, “if it isn’t true?”
In the book, Obama introduces the Kenyan phrase “home squared”. It means the place – in the Kenyan case, your tribal village – which you think of as your real home, though you live in the big city.
For Obama, it is “home cubed” – from America to Nairobi to the village. It sounds like the great dream of “from log cabin to White House”. The trouble is that its direction is the reverse; it seems to take him away from America.
So Americans, who actually have to decide what all this means, have a much more serious task than we do. It will not prove that they are bigots if they decide that Barack Obama is too big a risk.
I somehow doubt that the folks from MoveOn.org will be quite so understanding.
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8 Comments
1. Sissy Willis:I must confess I had Barack Obama’s number from practically day one when I realized in December of 2006 that the media was giving him a pass when he up and asked rhetorically “Are some voters not going to vote for me because I’m African-American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn’t vote for me because of my politics,” As I blogged back then, “Being one of those voters who probably wouldn’t vote for him because of his politics, we were naturally offended at his suggestion that people like us are racists. Swept up in the locals’ devotional hysteria, however, the media didn’t seem to notice. Folks hear what they want to hear.”
Sep 13, 2008 - 4:29 pm 2. 11B40:Greetings:
Back in my Psychology studying days, I had a professor who used to say that our personality is what we are not. His point, in an Ego, Id, Superego way, was that the Ego was the way the three parts resolved themselves.
What most disturbs me about Senator Obama is what we factually know; that he was abandoned by his Kenyan father at an early age and then, years later on, sent away by his American mother.
These are significant traumas to be experienced by any child. And yet, we hear nothing from the Senator about how he resolved these twin traumas. My concern is that he is vying for one of the most pressure-filled jobs in the world and his kettle has to be, at the least, on a low boil. The Presidency of the United States, in this day and age, is no place to try to work out your personal psychology.
Sep 13, 2008 - 6:42 pm 3. ricpic:It is a certainty that Obama will be uncertain in a crisis. Even if he manages to momentarily face up to an adversary he will soon waiver, then break. This will be explained by our liberal punditry as nuanced, sophisticated. But it will be at best a humiliation for the United States, at worst a catastrophe.
Sep 13, 2008 - 7:02 pm 4. dragonfly:Part of the audacity of Obama’s hope is his definition of himself as a “post-racist” candidate, pledged to keeping racial references out of the rhetocic of both sides. This identifies him as an unbiased and enlightened contender: who could quarrel with this rule of debate?
The truth is that whaat he as done it to rule out any reference from his opponents, whether other Democrats in the primaries, or from Republicans in open contention, from citing his long years of total immersion in black victimization poolitics. His “Community Organization” work, his greatest claim to experience beyond legislative employment, was in depressed black neighborhoods, tied to the Chicago Daley machine. His main support throughout his advance in Chicago politics was in the black communities, the black press and the black churches. Much of his rhetoric in those days differed little from that of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
So the candidate whose entire political like has been racially centered and driven by racial protest, declares himself beyond any identification with such considerations. When his opponents scrupulously confrom to his declares standards, he brazenly proclaims that “THEY are going to make you fear me. THEY are going to say, “oh, and by the way, have you noticed that he is black?’.
Nobody was going to say that. Nobody had said that. It was false, it was deliberate taunting. Nobody could respond to it without being accused of racial slur. The perfect political catch 22.
At a time when his party is pulling out all the stops and attacking,
like blood-maddened hyenas, an honest, open, and experienced nominee for Vice President, the Republicans are constrained from going into any details of his Chicago record because it cannot be done without racial reference? When criticism of his preference for marxist political relationships is labeled “Smear”?
The GOP will win this election only by defeating a committed socialist with a career immersed in racist activism. It a cannot be done without asking the question, “Please explain why we can’t ask questions about your Chicago experience without being accused of of racism?”
Sep 14, 2008 - 12:20 am 5. Steve Skubinna:I think it is worth while speculating upon Obama’s self identity, his “Americanness.” Not in the stupid gotcha games some have tried with the birth certificate, but does he really identify as an American? Does he really accept the shared values and ideals of America?
My sense is that he does not. His is an internationalist, citizen of the world persona, the sort who always first frames America’s actions and policies and circumstances in terms of what will it mean for other countries. There’s that whole bizarre tirade about thermostats, SUVs, eating, and other countries saying “okay.” I submit that a real American would not ask that question, unless it was towards the end of the discussion, or more likely after a decision had been made. Probably most of the people the Obamas move among share that impulse, and don’t understand why it is met with scorn by ordinary Americans. That is, assuming that they realize it’s met with scorn.
Obama and his clique personify Pauline Kael’s famous negation of Nixon’s election “But nobody I know voted for him!” All of us tend ot associate with those with whom we have something in common, but only a select few believe that their circle’s assumptions and prejudices are the only valid ones.
Sep 14, 2008 - 1:13 am 6. Nine-of-Diamonds:I too am extremely concerned that he doesn’t seem to have grown as a person through any of his prior experiences. When you look at the Obama of today, what do you see? The same black victimhood mentality that he had as a member of Rev.Wright’s church. The same detatched smugness he had as a law school “professor”. The same fiscal irresponsibility that he displayed during the Annenberg fiasco. I suspect that he has never really viewed his jobs and scholarship as chances to develop. Instead, each step in his journey has been either an opportunity to validate his preexisting radicalism or a springboard for ever-more grandiose ambition – ambition that may indeed be his way of coping with childhood abandonment. With so many foreign & domestic problems on the horizon, America can ill afford a president who needs to resolve psychological issues on the job.
Sep 14, 2008 - 3:56 am 7. srlucado:“There is an undeniable romance about Barack Obama’s story.”
I agree, but it’s like a Harlequin Romance, especially compared the superior romanticism of Sarah Palin’s story.
Obama tries to portray himself as “one of us” and “not one of us – someone better” at the same time. Both conditions can’t be true simultaneously.
On the other hand, Sarah Palin is proud that she’s one of us. Her strength is her willingness to engage in problems, not be an aloof judge of them.
The “light” she brings is simply washing him out. He’s like Palin in only that sense…he palin’ in comparison to her.
Scott
Sep 14, 2008 - 10:33 am 8. gaetano catelli:in other words: what is Senator Obama’s *hometown*?
Sep 16, 2008 - 4:18 am