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 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), theirs is a faith 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.

"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 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.