Barack Obama’s Rise…And Fall?–UPDATED

When live blogging the Democratic national convention, the energy seemed, well, the word I kept using was weird. Here’s what I said:

I don’t know. Overall, I like Barack Obama. He has a nice family. He’s a great speaker. And yet, it feels hollow. Lots more fireworks. Huge display. I can feel the eyes of the world watching this spectacle in wonder and amazement. It is a great show. Impressive, really. Dramatic music. Ticker tape. Shining stars shooting across the sky. Everyone looking up in awe.

I get the sense that if everyone believes it enough, it can happen. I get the sense of an undercurrent of sadness. Isn’t that strange? I’ve said that there’s been a vibe that’s tough to pinpoint. Melancholy?

Maybe that this is the pinnacle? Maybe, that this is going to be the top moment? The last top moment? Yes, I think that’s it.

This show doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything, but the end.

So via Conservative Grapevine, I’m reading this piece by Spengler (what too big or too anonymous for a last name?) of the Asia Times:

Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city’s Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like thick smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

And then, the author dissects both the psychology of Barack Obama and that of his supporters. I mused, in a blogpost too, I think, but I’m too lazy to go look for it, where are Obama’s friends? Most people have at least a few people who can vouch for them as children, teens and adults, who knew them through every phase of their lives and could give a measure of the person. Their supportive presence would indicate a lifetime of connections. And that would indicate character.

Barack Obama seems untethered to the world, drifting and ethereal and not in the Obamessiah good way, either. He’s there but he’s not here. Does that make sense? The only time he seems fully present and within himself is when he interacts with his family. On the night of his DNC speech I noted:

… it’s nice to see Barack’s love for Michelle. It looks real. He looks real when he interacts with her and the kids. It’s the only time he feels real, actually, but it is his greatest real accomplishment.

Spengler also picks up on this quality:

Combine a child’s response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system. No country’s politics depends more openly on friendships than America’s, yet Obama has not a single real friend, for he rose so fast that all his acquaintances become rungs on the ladder of his ascent. One human relationship crowds the others out of his life, his marriage to Michelle, a strong, assertive and very angry woman.

His devotion to Michelle is absolute. She is the only realness in his life–including her emotions. He lives vicariously through them. He seems beyond feeling himself. He cannot allow himself to feel, to trust, to rely. In cutting himself off from the world, he is at once the boy in the bubble and looking at the world as though it were a snow globe–holding the glass ball, watching an unreal world. He’s an observer, detached.

When Barack Obama did not choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate, I was incredulous. It was the obvious choice because he’d obviously win. Yes, having a Clinton breathing down his neck would be dangerous:

Obama ignores her at his own peril. He makes her his running mate at his own peril. I wouldn’t want that family anywhere near power, but Obama might not have a choice at this point. Evidently I’m not alone in my political instinctitude. Ace says:

Obama, however, has had a bruising couple of weeks, and if his cultists’ caterwauling is any indication, he’s almost panicking. He’s not doing especially well with swing voters, and he doesn’t have a lock on Democrats’ votes, either.

It’s Hail Mary time.

So…

Vice President Hilary Rodham Clinton.

The decision to ignore her displayed a level of arrogance not seen since the Clinton’s themselves. It demonstrated a disregard not only for half of his party but for women too, but most shockingly, for Obama himself. If it is true that Michelle Obama deep-sixed the idea of Hillary as #2, which would make sense, Obama chose his one personal connection, his only identity, over the potential to change the world, so important is she to his psychological survival.

The fact is, Michelle would have gotten over Obama’s decision to go with a winner like Hillary Clinton. Redecorating the Lincoln Bedroom can salve a lot of wounds. Obama couldn’t risk the discomfort of Michelle’s discomfort, though. He would lose, even temporarily, his emotional lifeline.

Spengler writes of the adoration and projection of the crowds themselves onto Obama’s personality. Attributing to him their own crazy notions of policy and plans as if Obama can literally be all things to all people. Which, logically, he cannot. But logic hasn’t been any part of the cult of Obama:

I sat in on a session with three leaders of Veterans for Obama, a group of retired young officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of the New Republic’s writer on the scene, David Samuels. With passion and enthusiasm, these young people spoke of their hopes for nation-building in Iraq. The George W Bush administration should have put twice the resources into the beleaguered country, they harangued me – not just soldiers, but agronomists, traffic cops, lawyers, judges, and physicians. The Department of Agriculture should have mobilized, along with the Department of Justice.

Nation-building? Doubling down on the US commitment to Iraq? Isn’t that trying to out-Bush the Bush administration, while Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq and spending the money on programs at home? Unblinking, one of the soldiers said, “That’s what we think Barack will do.” They believed in a more expensive version of the administration’s program, and faulted Bush for half measures – and somehow they believed that Obama really agreed with them, all the public evidence to the contrary. And they believed in Barack with perfect faith.

[Update: Delusion about energy independence, too. Via The Anchoress]

And for all the hope and faith the average voter put into Obama, there seemed to be a real cynicism about him from the black community. Jesse Jackson voiced his outrage and got caught on mic. But more than that, for all the enthusiastic support, there has seemed to be a resignation that an Obama presidency can’t and won’t really happen. It’s a dream, but only a dream. So when the Philadelphia newspaper reports threats of violence, essentially, my reaction was why? Not why the violence? But why, when the election isn’t finished, when the race is just now really on, would the black community imply defeat already? It is as if, the notion of hailing the black chief is beyond them.

It reminds me of how the Republicans have flopped around Congress the last six years of power. Utterly inept at being in charge, used to being the underdogs and fighting against rather than fighting for something, they have never quite seemed to get it together. They seem strangely eager to be in the minority. It’s easier than carrying the mantle of responsibility.

The black community has been the minority for a long time in America. A Chicago native friend of mine wrote me and said that his parents couldn’t go to certain restaurants. It’s only been fifty years, he said. He feels the pain so acutely.

Becoming the majority, and not by number, but by influence, changes everything. There is a difference between being an underdog and the favorite. The team with the winning record carries a different burden, a bigger one, than the underdog. But Barack Obama isn’t the underdog. Well, a huge chunk of America don’t view him this way. The election still is his to lose. Why does it seem like he’s lost?

In March, I noted that the slogan of change was a double-edged sword. “Change” is a charged word and implies something is fundamentally wrong–otherwise why would change be needed? And what kind of changes need to happen?

I actually think the reconciliation talk is just a pernicious extension of the negative beliefs the Obamas hold about America. America is racist. It’s divided. It’s evil. And all that can be ameliorated with someone like Barack Obama. He’s painted as the savior, because he is the savior. He’s a savior from sin, transgression and evil. He’s a savior FROM America because America itself is evil. Obama is the Leftist Jerry Falwell.

Underneath, this message is negative. It has been all along. It is a message that makes many Americans wince. Yes, there are racist Americans, but America is not racist. Yes, there jobless Americans, but most people are happily employed. Yes, the economy is horribly suffering some places (Michigan), but big government has not helped them.

*****

Barack Obama’s language, life and ideology come together to form an unsettling whole. He is a compelling man with a fascinating history, what can be pieced together. I’m watching him speak right now. I like him. He’s likable. He won over Bill O’Reilly. This was the impression while watching the interview, “O’Reilly likes Obama. He’s honored by his presence and charmed.” There is no question that Barack Obama would be a fantastic conversationalist. In fact, based on personality alone, he’s my favorite Presidential candidate, if only because he’s so complex and interesting.

And yet. And yet. Readers know that John McCain has been the subject of my scrutiny both personally and policy-wise. He is still not my favorite candidate. And I’ll talk more about why later. Still, like him or lump him, there’s a there there. It’s a center and sense of self. Joe Biden has it. Sarah Palin has it. They know who they are. I think McCain tapped into something about discovering himself in solitary in Hanoi and implying that Barack Obama is still in the process of doing so.

Last night, while writing this, Obama warned that the right would try to paint him as a Muslim, again introducing a notion that has not come from McCain specifically or Republicans generally. The polling must be weak if he’s playing the race and religion card again. So he’s slicing himself with that double-edged sword. His race is a bonus to him, but by implying that those who disagree with him do so because they’re racist or anti-Muslim undermines his own post-racial message.

If Barack Obama loses, there will be huge postmortem to dissect this candidacy. The signs of demise have been there from the beginning and really point to the emptiness of the left’s ideology generally. It is not enough to be against the ills of America. The left desires change. The just want someone, anyone who isn’t a Republican. There needs to be something more than that. Change isn’t enough. Hope for a better tomorrow isn’t enough. The left needs to engage America instead of being above it and looking at it like it’s some mutant freakshow on the world stage.

Assuming the left continues on their path, Democrats will continue to lose elections reinforcing the alienation they feel. Ironically, they cause their own alienation. Barack Obama is a perfect reflection of this lack of self-awareness. There has to be a self, in order to be aware.

UPDATE:

At PajamasMedia, Obama’s “Existential Crisis”:

Another gauge of the crisis inside the Obama camp is how his cheerleaders have come absolutely unhinged as the psychological strain of the Left having to appear mainstream is beginning to show. The smears that came out last weekend got their campaign way off message. Whether it has been Andrew Sullivan telling us that Sarah Palin recently gave birth to Elvis’ love child, or the lunatics at the Daily Kos asylum trolling the internet for pictures of her having tea with Adolf Hitler, the tight rein that Obama had kept on his smear merchants has suddenly been loosed, exposing to the world the company he keeps — including his Weather Underground terrorist friend, William Ayers. The meltdown has extended to the establishment media as well, with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann sent on a timeout to cover Hurricane Gustav.

There is much in the McCain-Palin ticket for Obama to worry about. The existential crisis for Democrats is that this campaign is no longer about Barack Obama. It really is about the vision that Americans have for the future, and Americans are now able to envision a future without “The One.” Reality has set in on the Democratic Party and they realize they no longer have control of the public narrative or the political momentum. In a pair of authentic mavericks and challenge-the-system reformers, America is starting to see herself and her highest hopes again.

UPDATED:

More on Obama’s disillusionment with community organizing and its principles; and how that experience changed him in to a movement leader.

Posted in Political Animals
Tags: Barack Obama • Election 08