Feb. 12, 2007 -- You've really got to feel sorry for whoever gets sworn in as
president in 2009. Whichever of the candidates gets there, he or she
will be walking into a shit storm of trouble much worse than the
domestic political turmoil that Lincoln faced in 1861.
This translates into severe socioeconomic hardship at home and
deteriorating influence on the geopolitical scene. Under the
circumstances, Senator Barack Obama seemed perhaps oddly serene in last
night's interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" with newsman Steve Kroft. It
was not an idle, unmindful serenity, though. Obama, who spent many
childhood years in Hawaii, seems to know what it's like to stand on the
beach and watch a killer wave roll in. Just knowing that the killer
wave is only one in an infinite succession of waves that will roll in
eternally lends more dimension to this essentially tragic view -- and
the tragic hero is typically the person required by destiny to get
hammered by the killer wave, but goes forth to greet it anyway. Perhaps
Obama's most appealing quality is his stoicism in the face of this
awful assignment.
His most telling answer was to Kroft's question: "Why are you
in such a hurry to become president?" Obama replied succinctly that "we
may not have ten years" to get our national act back together. By
saying this, he managed to get across what most Americans over eleven
years of age must suspect in their heart-of-hearts, no matter how hard
they are partying, or working to cover their re-set mortgage, or
praying to Jesus for a winning lottery ticket: that circumstances will compel us to live differently, whether we like it or not.
Obama's stoicism extends into the minefield of race. He
typically refuses to act as a shit-magnet for white America's obsessive
guilt, especially the discomfort of "progressives" ever-desperate to
prove their moral rectitude by groveling, patronizing, pandering, and
disingenuously dancing the brotherhood shuffle. (The recent dust-up
over Senator Biden's use of the word "articulate" in reference to Obama
was a typical case of whites' discomfort with the inherent
contradictions of their own "diversity" politics, with its
separate-but-equal language code.) I would also like to be a fly on the
wall of the figurative woodshed when Obama has a one-to-one with
somebody like Al Sharpton.
For the record, Obama would be older on inauguration than
several other presidents were, and he will have had more political
experience than one-term congressman Abe Lincoln.
I would like to be a fly on the wall of the deluxe hotel suite
where Senator Hillary tries to shake down Obama with the offer of a
vice-president slot on her ticket. Never will Hillary's mouth scrunch
into a tighter rictus as in the moment when he stoically tells her to
go get fucked (so to speak).
Anyway, Obama's moment of launching has now come and gone. He
flared off the pad in Springfield, Ill., last week and now the focus
has to shift on what he actually thinks about this country and the
behavior of its citizens. For now, he comes off as a straight-talking,
competent person, comfortable in a difficult role -- and in these times
of disappointment with virtually all authority figures, this is enough
to inspire near-hysteria.
There will not have been a longer election campaign season in
our history. We have all of this year and most of next to endure before
the levers are pulled, or the chads punched, or the touch screens
touched -- or whatever new fucked-up technology we devise for voting.
The candidates (including Obama) may run out of things to say, or they
may be overwhelmed by events. A dark horse may emerge from some
surprising quarter and steal their thunder. Maybe next Dec. 24th,
Santa Claus will declare he's available for the job. (Americans would
like that!) A nuke may go off in an uninspected shipping container in
some port city. George W. Bush might impose a 50-cent-per-gallon war
tax surcharge on the gas pumps. Who knows... ?
LINK: Clusterfuck Nation