The Problem With Obama

Interesting take on the Obama campaign by Matt Taibbi:


"What's confusing about Obama is that he's so successful at projecting an air of genuineness and honesty, even as he navigates the veritable Mount Everest of fakery and onerous bullshit that is our modern electoral system. And the reason it's confusing is that we've grown so used to presidential candidates who fall short of the images they present in public, we don't even know anymore what a man worth the office would look like. Is this him? Or is this just a guy with a gift for concealing the ugliness of the system he represents?"

In part, it seems like what America has at stake in this election is more than just the issues, which are dire enough to make the decision about the incoming commander-in-chief absolutely vital. The promise of Barack Obama (who i obviously, though sometimes reluctantly, support) is as much about a contract with reality as it is about any evaluative criteria for a governing body. The people's hope in his candidacy correlates to that old religious stalemate; faith. But rather than a superstitious kind of faith (though perhaps some could justifiably dismiss it as such), Obama's supporters' faith is a belief in the power of iconoclasty to come alive, and simultaneously self-destruct. The hope is that Obama, by gaining the most title of perhaps the most artifice, will become a symbol of the death of artifice.

Obaama's campaign may use "Hope" as a kind of PR shorthand to huddle the masses behind him, but the emotions behind it, even if exploited for political gain, are real. In the broadness of the theme, Obama and his campaign have allowed for a multiplicity of meanings, all of which can be genuine and empowering. You almost get the sense that Obama's kind of adept at the game. As an insider, he knows he can never overthrow the machinery. But since only insiders can get elected, he can still empower the populace to become the changes they want to see in the world and swing politics out of their current, and perhaps perpetual, corrosiveness.


"The challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night... change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. WE are the change that we seek."

What is perhaps most remarkable about this election is the hubris with which Obama (or candidate Obama, the hope simulacrum- take your pick) acknowledges his inconsequentiality. What he represents is far more important than what he is. In an age where cynicism is not so much a choice as a prerequisite, Obama's campaign represents a desire to one day become a civilization that actually is who it says it is.



Of course, the saccharine music in the above video betrays the politicking involved in this election, the ways in which it is working within the superstructure of a hyperreal culture. However, the very message of the video is about transcending the noise of the political climate and becoming something more than just perception. It's ten shades or irony, of course, but that doesn't mean that it's not working.

Martin Luther King Jr's call to "keep hope alive" swept through the 1960s like a mad rush, exploding throughout the civil rights, antiwar, and free speech movements and beyond. It was a note struck in the midst of apocalyptically tumultuous times. Nations were collapsing, atomic war loomed large, assassination was commonplace, riots were omnipresent. It took a while, but the power structure eventually collapsed that hope. It embedded in us a notion that the system would never change, that we should always vote for the lesser of two evils, that the best we can hope for in minor incremental improves which dull and damage the momentum of hope. Obama's compromised policy initiatives don't promise a severe change from that political disconnection (though his platform's the most progressive that the democrats have run on since the 1970's), but his rhetoric is undeniably populist and people-powered. You really do get the sense that he believes America is a land for all people, where masses can rises and mold government. Whereas with most politicians, you only get the sense that democratic government for them is whatever they say it is (witness John McCain's behavior during this whole bailout fiasco).

You get a lot of senses with Barack Obama. The sheath of political ambivalence and falsehood looms so large its hard to tell what's if any public statement all could be anything but a mirage. It's perhaps the cold-hearted skeptic, the one whose consummate distrust has colonized all but a small margin of my being, that wants Obama to succeed the most. It's a suicide plea for him to at least be granted the possibility of becoming who he says he is.

Because oh sweet lord almighty, I'd love to be wrong about America. I'd love to believe that all the horrible shit we've done to ourselves and to the rest of the world stems from some deep-seeded cynicism, from a belief that the best we can do is grab at straws while the almighty oligarchical overlords decide our fates, that we're not really so cold, shallow, individualistic, materialistic, that deep down we're more than just the products we buy, the color of our skin, the presidential candidates we pick. Because if Barack Obama can really turn us into the ones we've been waiting for, maybe it is possible that he is the light that shines through. Because if not, we are truly fucked.