He’s Not The Messiah He’s An Ordinary Bloke

1. Obamagasm
The peak of excitement that occurs when Obama does anything good, characterized by strong feelings of pleasure, usually accompanied by celebration. Occassionally results in college students blowing their loads in their trousers at the sight of Obama winning a campaign.

After learning of the the 2008 Iowa Caucus results, Steve obamagasmed.

My blogging about the US primaries has been pretty desultory lately; I’m not a registered Democrat so it’s not my business who the candidate is, really. I’ll have my say, like everyone else, during the election proper. Besides, I’ve already said what I think of the Democratic candidates. Not a lot.

Wwhoever gets nominated and elected, the same shit – war, starvation, runaway globalisation, climate change – has still got to be dealt with, but to get elected a presidential candidate must do deals that ensure that those things will continue, whatever their professed public positions may be. Compromises will made. Situational pragmatism will prevail in policy, as per usual.

A change of President is not going to usher in a a new age of global peace and plenty and a pony. Those who are expecting Obama, Saviour-like, to stride in and sweep the moneymen from the temple don’t really realise quite how many moneymen there are and how deeply comfortable they are in his own party.

Though as far as I’m concerned Obama is the only half-decent human being in the bunch of presidential canidates, that’s all he is. In the end he’s just another politician. An inspiring speaker, yes, but not the secular Second Coming, however fervently that may be wished for by some of the electorate.

HTML Mencken at Sadly, No sees the dangers of this political idolatry:

Eh. It’s not the support I object to, it’s the enthusiasm. For any politician. But especially for such mediocre ones. After all, it’s not as if either Clinton or Obama are exactly FDR incarnate; they are both fairly average “liberal” politicians who are thoroughly schooled in the arts of serial triangulation. They ain’t radical; nor are they idealist; they are simply better than Republican alternatives. And it won’t do to mask such a homely reality with fawning, drooling praise of either politician.

Of course I can see Obama’s appeal. You only have to watch him speak to get caught up in it. Listening to him you’re inspired, you choke up, you feel it – the audacity of hope! He radiates political charisma and intelligence, you trust him, you want to bask in that warm glow that everything’s going to be all right. But words are not actions and hope can a very dangerous narcotic.

Not only have they perverted the political process itself but the Republican party under Bush and Cheney have deliberately undermined and corrupted the apparatus and structure of government, military, legislature and judiciary in order to ensure the continued supremacy of their corpocracy, regardless of whatever the future will of the voters might be and of whoever might sit in the White House.

They’ve seeded all levels of state and national government with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people just like them who’ll continue to cause untold damage long after their patrons are swept out of office.

It’s not just cleaning up Washington; that’s just window dressing. There’s a whole national and international structure of corruption and self interest supporting Washington to be dismantled – and it has guns. That can’t be done with the audacity of hope. Wishing won’t make it so.

I don’t know, call me old and tired and cynical but I feel so sorry for all these people who’re putting their faith in Obama, yearning for a strong hero to ride into town and oust the bad guys. They’re headed for bitter disappointment and I’m going to hate to see a generation feeling the first stirrings of political empowerment become equally bitter and cynical as mine, as they come face to face with reality post-election.

But for now there’s plenty drunk on the moment. HTML sees this in terms of nostalgia for a lost golden age, a turning into the pillow, a return to the dream of sheep. He takes particular aim at liberal centrist Ezra Klein:

The answer, I think, is related to that most childish desire: the security blanket. More specifically, it’s the comfort found in the will to believe, and especially believe in an authority. Or as Klein himself explains in one of those admissions that the older people who dote on him like to tell themselves are evidence of his growth but are in actuality merely reminders to all of his incredibly ill-suited (for a political animal of any substance) instincts:

[W]hat’s really warped in me is not where I stand on the political spectrum, but the trust and assumption of good faith with which I can approach the news, and the Republicans, and all the rest.

Oh, to believe again! Oh, to be able to turn the page, to forget the bad Nixon Reagan Bush years, to sacrifice vigilance and skepticism, to pretend that all the damage was an accident, an aberration and not an inevitable result of the stupidity and wickedness of the Republicans in particular and reactionary ideology in general. Oh, to go back again to the halcyon days when honest conservatives and sensible liberals honorably and civilly overcame their differences to form a trustworthy government! Yes, yes: this infantile desire is a thumb that, once placed in the mouth, will always become a hook.

Yes it is naive and infantile, but I’m loth to criticise someone young for their idealism – we were all idealists once. On the other hand, HTML does have a point that a political pundit really shouldn’t be quite so credulous as to take a candidate at face value.

I think there’s more to it than just Obama as security blanket or crusading hero.

Remember that ’70s Coke ad “I’d like to teach the world to sing”? Wingers, hippies, construction workers and photogenic minorities, all joining together in one big corporate harmony; if we all sang together and kept drinking Coke, we could look to a glorious future hand-in-hand. That’s Obama and it sells.

With younger supporters, we’re also looking at a generation soaked in image and narrative: everything must have a story and stories must have an ending, preferably positive and audience mandated. No downers, man – they are the consumers after all. Obama’s story, that goes along with the image, is the triumph of the underdog and in buying the image voters are pushing that narrative along.

Despite the numbers turning up at rallies and supporting him online what all Obama supporters seem to share is a curious passivity. Some want to be fed something, not to do something, to be consumers rather than active participants, to choose Coke over Pepsi and then to be able forget it about it for 4 years. Some just want to be part of the incrowd, others delude themselves they’re actually exerting power by clicking a MySpace icon. Some in the blogosphere may be hoping for preferment in an eventual Obama administration. All of them want to be given something not do something.

But what if the underdog doesn’t triumph? What if Obama’s not nominated? What if MCain wins – by fair means or foul – and there’s another four years of war, greed, corruption, torture and corporate theft? If US voters are really audacious enough to hope they need to do more than idolise, they need to mobilise.

Organisation on the ground at a local level is what works, not putting an ordinary man on a pedestal and expecting him to do the impossible just because you want him to. It’ll take much more than one man, no matter how charismatic and talented, to rid the country and the world of corporate Republicanism and neoconnery.