A few more thoughts on yesterday's big speech from Sen Obama:
Glenn Greenwald, quoting Steve M.:
The premises [the speech] lays out require you to be an adult, and I'm not convinced that most Americans are adults, at least when looking for a candidate to support. . . .
This isn't what Americans like to hear in political speeches. They like to hear: Good people = us (America, our party). Bad people = them (communists, terrorists, criminals, drug dealers, our ideological opposites, the other party, or some group we identify in code rather than explicitly).That wasn't the tone of this speech. I hope I'm wrong, but Obama may pay a price for not giving people what they like to hear.
The entire premise of Barack Obama's candidacy is built upon the opposite assumption -- that Americans are not only able, but eager, to participate in a more elevated and reasoned political discourse, one that moves beyond the boisterous, screeching, simple-minded, ugly, vapid attack-based distractions and patronizing manipulation -- the Drudgian Freak Show -- that has dominated our political debates for the last two decades at least...
But in Obama's faith in the average American voter lies one of the greatest weaknesses of his campaign. His faith in the ability and willingness of Americans to rise above manipulative political tactics seems drastically to understate both the efficacy of such tactics and the deafening amplification they receive from our establishment press. Even Americans who authentically believe that they want a "new, better politics" may be swayed by the same old Drudgian sewerage because it is powerful and ubiquitous.
This was a refrain I heard constantly last night on TV, and one that I read frequently today in major newspapers and magazines. Most people seem to think that Obama's response was simultaneously brilliant and too-high minded for most Americans to appreciate.
I don't buy it. As Glenn says, Obama's entire campaign is premised on the idea that Americans want more out of their political system. So far, that premise has been validated over and over and over again in state after state. If it has worked up until now, why suddenly do people think it will fail?
It reminds me of a brief conversation my wife and I had with a stranger in the Cincinnati airport on our way back from Montana. We were sitting waiting for our flight in one of those giant holding rooms that all airports seem to have when a report on the economy came on CNN. After a few minutes, the man sitting next to us started ranting about how "the media" is determined to scare people into a recession. The implication was that most Americans were so gullible that they would believe whatever the media told them. But not, of course, this man. Although his fellow citizens were mindlessly taking in whatever the media fed them, he knew better.
That seems to be the assumption most people make about both the media and politics. They are smart enough to know what's going on, but most of the rest of the people out there just aren't smart enough to think for themselves. And like I said, I don't buy it. I think most Americans do want something more from their political system. But most politicians, together with most of the members of our media, assume that they don't, and that worse, even if they were given something more high-minded they wouldn't know how to make sense of it.
Glenn's right: Obama's campaign is premised on the idea that people want more. If he succeeds, it will be proof that he was right. And so far, he is succeeding. Take a look, for example, at this roundup of reactions from newspapers around the country. With the exception of WaPo's Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for Bush who colleagues often described as a man with an enormously inflated ego, all of them wrote glowing reviews about both the substance and style of the speech. Even Maureen Dowd dropped her usually snarky persona to write a thoughtful response. TV is, of course, a separate issue, and I haven't had any time today to watch the coverage. But what I did see last night was in many ways quite similar to these reactions: thoughtful, serious, and careful.
People want more than they have been getting. Stop assuming that you are so unique and look around you. Many, perhaps even most, of your fellow citizens want what you want. We can do better than this. Know hope.
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