Andrew Sullivan, after plastering a photo of Obama made up of the flags of the 50 states and bragging about Obama’s 1.5M donors, writes :
This has been a revolutionary campaign already. Because it has been built as much from below as from above. And because it has brought so many to believe in their country and its politics again. I don’t care if I am thereby tarred as an Obama kool-aid drinker. The facts remain, and one day, the MSM will absorb them.
Seriously, what are the facts here? Here’s how the facts I’ve identified regarding Obama and his supposed ability and desire to unify the country and cause people to believe in their government (and it always strikes me as funny when people who claim to be distrustful of government bemoan the fact that people don’t believe in it) stack up as follows:
Pros:
1. Nice speeches promising unity and change.
2. 1.5 million people gave him money.
3. A couple of books he wrote.
Cons:
1. 1.5 million people is a large number of people, but it is .5% of the population. And Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee attracted large numbers of small donors. Not to detract from Obama’s achievement, but it’s not like this means that the entire country is on the Obama express.
2. Voting record consistently to the far left of the Illinois state legislature.
3. Voting record consistently to the far left of the United States Senate.
4. No interest in joining or leading major centrist, bipartisan efforts on controversial issues like the Gang of 14.
5. Stayed for 20 years in a church with a raving lunatic as a pastor.
6. Called said pastor his spiritual mentor, put him in a ceremonial position on his campaign, and named his book after one of his speeches.
7. Hung out with a literal bomb thrower.
8. Called said literal bomb thrower someone within the mainstream of respectable Chicago society.
9. His wife.
Look, I was initially skeptical about the relevance of the Jeremiah Wright thing before eventually coming around, and endured a fair amount of abuse here for it. So I’m not coming to this with an entirely closed mind.
But really, looking at the list above, any support for the idea that Obama can or even particularly wants to be some sort of post-racial, post-partisan unifier who brings the country together becomes circular. We know that the Wright thing is irrelevant to his ability to be a post-racial healer, because we know that he’s a post-racial healer. We know that his voting record is irrelevant, for the same reason. At a certain point the only way to dismiss the facts that seem to point away from the man being a unifying, post-racial, post-partisan healer is to offer up the conclusion that he is a post-racial, post-partisan healer. And that’s really the case here: The only real fact that isn’t merely spoken word that supports such a conclusion is the conclusion itself.
I have to say though, its amusing to watch people like Sullivan acting like a caricature of the caricature of Dear-Leader-worshipping Republicans they have derided for the past eight years . . .
May 6th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Sullivan’s cognitive dissonance on Obama reminds me of a poster that hung in Fox Mulder’s office on the TV show “The X-Files”, which read “I WANT TO BELIEVE”.
It’s really disheartening for me to read Sullivan these days (well… it’s actually been so for a while now) as I see a writer who I respected and admired so much completely lose his mind.
Being contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian is not noble Andrew.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Sullivan is the one Sullivan has been waiting for.
How dare you criticize his Audacity to Hope!
May 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Well stated, Sean. Good analysis!
May 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
You guys really don’t see that Obama is a huge breath of fresh air to many Americans? Non-ideological Americans who don’t yet know about or understand his leftwing history?
There is much truth to the phenomenon Sullivan writes about. Talk to people. Talk to non-politicos.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I don’t doubt that.
What I doubt is the justification for that optimism. If he had the record of a Mark Warner or even an Evan Bayh, I could understand it.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Metro #4,
Yeah… But Sullivan should know better.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Sean, thanks for the great laugh! Sullivan and his cobloggers at the Atlantic are all going loopy beyond reason for Obama.
Metro, out here in the inbred, gun-totin’, trailer-trash boonies, folks are far from thrilled by Obama’s cheap talk in light of his snooty, elitist political track record. It seems to me that our urbanite brethren are afflicted by a peculiar collective mental illness that makes them suspend skepticism about Barry, their rather vapid Messiah.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Sean-
I’m not sure if you are familiar with this old blog post, but it looks like you would benefit from reading it. I doubt it would convince you of much, but it might balance you out:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/10/barack_obama.html
And for the record, here are the people who I’ve not only “been friendly with”, but rather close friends with, in my life:
Hard drug users, meatheads who at various points in their life have violently beat the crap out of random people for no reason, a blatantly unethical attorney, and people who have immediate family members (parents, brothers, etc.) involved in organized crime.
That doesn’t make me any of those things. And I don’t know a fraction of the people someone in politics knows.