G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Obama on the Rise
By Matt Taibbi
Created Dec 17 2007 - 7:45am
All love stories are beautiful at the beginning, and what we're witnessing
now is the beginning of a new one: America and Barack Obama. The story
begins with the world spinning off its axis, the country mired in dark times
and the way of the fresh-faced savior seemingly blocked by a juggernaut
agent of the Status Quo. Only in the end, in the moment that sportswriters
die for and that comes once a generation in politics if we're lucky, the
phenom rises to the occasion, gets the big hit in the big game and becomes a
man before our very eyes. The old power recedes, and the new era is born.
That's grand language for a forum as vulgar and profane as presidential
politics, but this is the moment that Barack Hussein Obama was born for, and
it really is happening before our very eyes. Like Kennedy or Reagan or even
Bill Clinton, Obama is a politician whose best chance for success has always
been on the level of myth and hero worship; to win the Democratic
nomination, he must successfully sell himself not just as a candidate but as
an icon, a symbol of the best possible future for twenty-first-century
multicultural America and an antidote to both the callous reactionary idiocy
of the Bush administration and the shrewd but soulless corporatism of the
Clinton machine.
With just weeks to go before Iowa, Obama is succeeding at that sales job,
thanks in part to an unexpected avalanche of positive press and in even
greater part to Hillary Clinton's recent performance as a creaky, suddenly
vulnerable establishment villain. In just a few weeks, the first real votes
in this insufferably long process will finally be cast, and when they are,
the Powers That Be may find that they waited too long to get the real show
started -- that the long wait gave America just enough time to decide that
it's ready to move on to something new.
For most of this campaign season, I doubted that Obama really was that new
something. Now I'm not so sure he isn't. Whoever Barack Obama is, there's no
doubting the genuineness of his phenomenon. And maybe, who knows, that's all
that matters.
After debacles in Iraq and New Orleans and mushrooming scandals that exposed
much of Congress and the Cabinet as a low-rent crime family hired to collect
protection money for the likes of Halliburton and Pfizer, people simply do
not trust the politicians they vote for to be anything less than an
embarrassment. You get the sense they approach the upcoming election with
the enthusiasm of a two-time loser offered a selection of plea deals.
People hate the mechanized speeches, they hate the negative ads, and they
especially hate venomous news creatures, myself included. It's now so bad
that a poll last month found that fifty-six percent of all likely voters
agreed with the phrase that the presidential race is "annoying and a waste
of time" -- a shocking number, given that it excludes the forty to fifty
percent of Americans who already don't vote in presidential races.
People don't want to feel this way, but the attitude everywhere is the same:
What choice do these assholes give us? And it's that grim prejudice that has
pervaded this process for a generation, forcing the public to choose from an
endless succession of lesser evils and second- raters of the Kerry-Dole
genus, stuffed suits who offered nothing like a solution to the main problem
of feeling like **** about the American civic experiment.
Until now. Emphasizing that this is not necessarily a reflection of who or
what Obama really is, he unmistakably and strikingly attracts crowds that,
to a person, really seem to believe that his election will fundamentally
change the way they feel about their country.
"I just want to see if there's going to be a difference with this cat," says
Richard Walters, a forty-three-year-old New Yorker, who had come to hear
Obama give a speech at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. "Because if there's
something different, we need it -- now."
"At this point, I'd be glad if he recited the alphabet correctly," says
Xiomara Hall, another New Yorker. Laughing, she and her friend add, "We got
hope. Change is goood!"
"I just want to see if he can do something, anything, to change things,"
says Shirley Paulino, another visitor to the Apollo event. "See if he is
what he says he is. We just -- we need it, you know?"
Normally the sight of prospective voters muttering platitudes about "hope"
and "change" would make any reporter erupt with derisive laughter, but at
Obama events one hears outbursts of optimism so desperate and artless that I
can't help but check my cynical instinct. Grown men and women look up at you
with puppy-dog eyes and all but beg you not to **** on their dreams. It's
odd to say, but it's actually moving.
An important component of this phenomenon is that the Obama crowds are
surprisingly free of the usual anti-Republican venom. As much as anything,
his rise is a reflection of the country's increasing boredom with partisan
hatred.
"I'm so tired of the president just talking to one part of the country, or
one group," says Malia Scotch-Marmo. "I was in my twenties with Reagan, but
I felt he talked to me, even though we were all Democrats. It would be great
to have a black president. It would be great for kids to see. It would be a
nice mind shift."
It's a mood thing, not an issue thing, and it stems entirely from Obama's
unique personal qualities: his expansive eloquence, his remarkable
biography, his commanding physical presence. I saw this clearly on display
at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a foreign-policy discussion
arranged by his campaign that I thought was going to be a disaster. The
candidate's handlers had announced a start time of 8:30 a.m., but when
dozens of reporters and a hundred or so audience members arrived, we learned
that the candidate wouldn't be showing up until eleven. Up to then, the room
had to listen to a panel of academic corpses blather about the Middle East.
By 10 a.m., the press section was afire with sarcastic ripostes. "I slept in
the car," said one hack. "I had to. I already checked out of my hotel in
Manchester."
But once Obama showed up, the sarcasm evaporated. There was nothing
remarkable about Obama's speech and subsequent Q&A session, except that he
delivered every line with the force and confidence of someone who's already
been president for years. Obama's shtick is to sell his future presidency as
one that would recast America as the good guy of the world, one that would
be guided by the principles of basic decency ("This isn't just about drawing
contrasts. It's about doing what's right"), openness ("Not talking [to other
countries] doesn't make us look tough. It makes us look arrogant") and a
vision that embraces the challenges of this century ("The task of the next
president is to convince the American people that global interdependence is
here to stay. Global trade is not going away. The Internet is not going
away"). His presentation is deliberately vague on most counts, but the
overall effect is augmented by his emphasis on easily remembered concrete
positions -- like his promise to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within
sixteen months.
But mostly, Obama is selling himself. When he talks about "showing a new
face to the world," it's not exactly a mystery that he's talking about his
face. In person, Obama is a dynamic, handsome, virile presence, a stark
contrast to the bloated hairy shitbags we usually elect to positions of
power in this country.
Moreover, he completely lacks that air of grasping, gutter-scraping ambition
sickness that follows most presidential hopefuls around like a rain cloud --
the vengeful impatience that hovers over Rudy Giuliani, or that creepy
greediness for media attention that strikes one like an oar in the face in
the presence of Mitt Romney. To use a sports clich
By Matt Taibbi
Created Dec 17 2007 - 7:45am
All love stories are beautiful at the beginning, and what we're witnessing
now is the beginning of a new one: America and Barack Obama. The story
begins with the world spinning off its axis, the country mired in dark times
and the way of the fresh-faced savior seemingly blocked by a juggernaut
agent of the Status Quo. Only in the end, in the moment that sportswriters
die for and that comes once a generation in politics if we're lucky, the
phenom rises to the occasion, gets the big hit in the big game and becomes a
man before our very eyes. The old power recedes, and the new era is born.
That's grand language for a forum as vulgar and profane as presidential
politics, but this is the moment that Barack Hussein Obama was born for, and
it really is happening before our very eyes. Like Kennedy or Reagan or even
Bill Clinton, Obama is a politician whose best chance for success has always
been on the level of myth and hero worship; to win the Democratic
nomination, he must successfully sell himself not just as a candidate but as
an icon, a symbol of the best possible future for twenty-first-century
multicultural America and an antidote to both the callous reactionary idiocy
of the Bush administration and the shrewd but soulless corporatism of the
Clinton machine.
With just weeks to go before Iowa, Obama is succeeding at that sales job,
thanks in part to an unexpected avalanche of positive press and in even
greater part to Hillary Clinton's recent performance as a creaky, suddenly
vulnerable establishment villain. In just a few weeks, the first real votes
in this insufferably long process will finally be cast, and when they are,
the Powers That Be may find that they waited too long to get the real show
started -- that the long wait gave America just enough time to decide that
it's ready to move on to something new.
For most of this campaign season, I doubted that Obama really was that new
something. Now I'm not so sure he isn't. Whoever Barack Obama is, there's no
doubting the genuineness of his phenomenon. And maybe, who knows, that's all
that matters.
After debacles in Iraq and New Orleans and mushrooming scandals that exposed
much of Congress and the Cabinet as a low-rent crime family hired to collect
protection money for the likes of Halliburton and Pfizer, people simply do
not trust the politicians they vote for to be anything less than an
embarrassment. You get the sense they approach the upcoming election with
the enthusiasm of a two-time loser offered a selection of plea deals.
People hate the mechanized speeches, they hate the negative ads, and they
especially hate venomous news creatures, myself included. It's now so bad
that a poll last month found that fifty-six percent of all likely voters
agreed with the phrase that the presidential race is "annoying and a waste
of time" -- a shocking number, given that it excludes the forty to fifty
percent of Americans who already don't vote in presidential races.
People don't want to feel this way, but the attitude everywhere is the same:
What choice do these assholes give us? And it's that grim prejudice that has
pervaded this process for a generation, forcing the public to choose from an
endless succession of lesser evils and second- raters of the Kerry-Dole
genus, stuffed suits who offered nothing like a solution to the main problem
of feeling like **** about the American civic experiment.
Until now. Emphasizing that this is not necessarily a reflection of who or
what Obama really is, he unmistakably and strikingly attracts crowds that,
to a person, really seem to believe that his election will fundamentally
change the way they feel about their country.
"I just want to see if there's going to be a difference with this cat," says
Richard Walters, a forty-three-year-old New Yorker, who had come to hear
Obama give a speech at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. "Because if there's
something different, we need it -- now."
"At this point, I'd be glad if he recited the alphabet correctly," says
Xiomara Hall, another New Yorker. Laughing, she and her friend add, "We got
hope. Change is goood!"
"I just want to see if he can do something, anything, to change things,"
says Shirley Paulino, another visitor to the Apollo event. "See if he is
what he says he is. We just -- we need it, you know?"
Normally the sight of prospective voters muttering platitudes about "hope"
and "change" would make any reporter erupt with derisive laughter, but at
Obama events one hears outbursts of optimism so desperate and artless that I
can't help but check my cynical instinct. Grown men and women look up at you
with puppy-dog eyes and all but beg you not to **** on their dreams. It's
odd to say, but it's actually moving.
An important component of this phenomenon is that the Obama crowds are
surprisingly free of the usual anti-Republican venom. As much as anything,
his rise is a reflection of the country's increasing boredom with partisan
hatred.
"I'm so tired of the president just talking to one part of the country, or
one group," says Malia Scotch-Marmo. "I was in my twenties with Reagan, but
I felt he talked to me, even though we were all Democrats. It would be great
to have a black president. It would be great for kids to see. It would be a
nice mind shift."
It's a mood thing, not an issue thing, and it stems entirely from Obama's
unique personal qualities: his expansive eloquence, his remarkable
biography, his commanding physical presence. I saw this clearly on display
at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a foreign-policy discussion
arranged by his campaign that I thought was going to be a disaster. The
candidate's handlers had announced a start time of 8:30 a.m., but when
dozens of reporters and a hundred or so audience members arrived, we learned
that the candidate wouldn't be showing up until eleven. Up to then, the room
had to listen to a panel of academic corpses blather about the Middle East.
By 10 a.m., the press section was afire with sarcastic ripostes. "I slept in
the car," said one hack. "I had to. I already checked out of my hotel in
Manchester."
But once Obama showed up, the sarcasm evaporated. There was nothing
remarkable about Obama's speech and subsequent Q&A session, except that he
delivered every line with the force and confidence of someone who's already
been president for years. Obama's shtick is to sell his future presidency as
one that would recast America as the good guy of the world, one that would
be guided by the principles of basic decency ("This isn't just about drawing
contrasts. It's about doing what's right"), openness ("Not talking [to other
countries] doesn't make us look tough. It makes us look arrogant") and a
vision that embraces the challenges of this century ("The task of the next
president is to convince the American people that global interdependence is
here to stay. Global trade is not going away. The Internet is not going
away"). His presentation is deliberately vague on most counts, but the
overall effect is augmented by his emphasis on easily remembered concrete
positions -- like his promise to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within
sixteen months.
But mostly, Obama is selling himself. When he talks about "showing a new
face to the world," it's not exactly a mystery that he's talking about his
face. In person, Obama is a dynamic, handsome, virile presence, a stark
contrast to the bloated hairy shitbags we usually elect to positions of
power in this country.
Moreover, he completely lacks that air of grasping, gutter-scraping ambition
sickness that follows most presidential hopefuls around like a rain cloud --
the vengeful impatience that hovers over Rudy Giuliani, or that creepy
greediness for media attention that strikes one like an oar in the face in
the presence of Mitt Romney. To use a sports clich