The View from the Mountaintop
by Marion Maneker
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We all make fun of the daily commentary that tries to assign a single motive to market moves but willingly accept the same sort of reductive analysis when it comes to real life events like elections. No doubt, Barack Obama’s skin color makes his electoral victory a historic event. But if we look at the trajectory of his victory, his background and the situation he inherits, is there anyone but Thomas Friedman who seriously thinks Obama’s win was about race?
Here’s how Friedman, a foreign policy columnist, opens his piece today:
“And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.”
Friedman goes on to try and weave Warren Buffett into his tableau:
“How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.
But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.”
The assumption of a baseline racism to American politics seems terribly tone deaf to me. Last night Americans didn’t vote for Obama despite his race. They voted for him because they had no better alternative. Or, to put that in a positive light, they voted him because he presented the best leadership through the looming darkness.
Dan Gross captures this perfectly in Slate:
“McCain managed to give Obama a run for the money through mid-September. The polls began to turn (decisively, it turns out) against him when the global financial system suffered a run on the money.”
But at three crucial moments, McCain lost the public’s confidence. The first was his Hoover-esque, the-economy-is-sound comment as Lehman went down; the second was his ineffectual grandstanding around the bailout bill. It wasn’t Obama the black man who grabbed the center and showed how he would lead us through this crisis. Here’s Gross:
“While McCain seemed detached, Obama caucused with financial graybeards and kept his campaign plane on the tarmac to get updates from his new speed-dialing buddy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Self-serving? You betcha. But doggone successful. And the passage of the bailout bill, which McCain grudgingly supported, neutered the increasingly ideological economic warfare McCain waged in the closing weeks.”
Finally, after the third debate, Obama had aligned himself with Buffett and Volcker–economic mensches–while McCain went off on another reckless gambit with Joe the plumber, the last act of a deaf man answering a question no one put to him. In that divergence, the election was won. And race played no part in it.
In conceding, McCain went straight to the race issue, pre-emptively cutting off attempts to rally the party around resentment. That speaks to McCain’s status as an American hero who has lived the ideals of his country in nearly every possible way. But race is a distraction that does nothing to help us understand what Obama’s strengths and weaknesses will be. The election night coverage of Obama’s speech struggled with making sense of Obama’s lack of a racial identity. There was Oprah crying in the crowd. She’s another figure who’s fame and success is almost wholly unconnected to her skin tone. Shots of Oprah were interspersed with glimpses of Jesse Jackson at times stoic and at times in tears.
Whatever you think of Jackson, there’s a poignancy to seeing the race man (”I am qualified”) witnessing a truly race-blind victory. And that points to something essential, almost biblical, in this story. Obama’s grandmother died days before his victory, poignantly reminding us of the story of Moses. The image of a leader on the moutaintop seeing but never entering the promised land is, of course, one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enduring rhetorical images.
Yet in Obama’s version we have Jesse Jackson standing in the crowd–symbolically remote from ever becoming an elected official–and his beloved grandmother expiring with the knowledge that she had raised a President.
But symbolism comes at the end, not the beginning. The twin images of sacrifice are what should remind us that race has been left behind–and the real work of measuring Obama and his ability to lead has begun.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Today we and the world celebrate, with great relief, that our 8-year national nightmare has ended. In one day we have been transformed from a nation in despair, without real leadership, to a country with a leader that comes but once in a lifetime. A true leader who has won the respect, admiration, and support of not only a majority of Americans, but of countless millions around the world.
Yesterday we were an unfortunate people with woefully inadequate leadership; today we are a truly fortunate people whose hopes have rightly been restored by a great leader. We may wonder what it was like to live in the presence of a great leader like Abraham Lincoln who saved our nation, and whose words still endure to inspire us now like those of very few others. Well, I believe we will now know what it is like to live in the presence of such greatness; I see it in Barack Obama.
There is a saying that when serious trouble comes, a great leader emerges to guide us. Just as George Washington emerged to help us win independence and to reject monarchy in favor our presidential form of leadership. Just as Lincoln emerged to save the nation from breaking apart and to end the shameful exploitation of slavery. And just as Franklin Roosevelt emerged to lead us through the depression and WW2.
Now Barack Obama has arisen seemingly from nowhere, in just 5 short years, to become the leader who can guide us through this new economic crisis and through the quagmire of Iraq and Afghanistan and a seemingly perpetual war on terrorism, and to overturn the disgraceful, unAmerican policy of preventive war that has turned the world against us. This is not the America of our forefathers. But President Obama will restore our reputation in the world so that we will not meanly lose, but instead will nobly save “the last great hope of mankind.” (see excerpt from Obama’s acceptance speech below)
Let no one say now that America lacks great leadership. We have it in Barack Obama. Many have compared him with John Kennedy, but in my opinion he will exceed even that standard and will take a place in history alongside the greatest of our leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and soon Obama.
After enduring eight long and difficult years of the worst presidency in my lifetime (going back to JFK), I feel very fortunate, thankful, and proud to now witness the beginning of what I believe will be the greatest president of my lifetime.
From Obama’s acceptance speech last night:
“…And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”
Lastly, I have never seen a president who was less beholden to “the powers that be” as Barack Obama. What he said last night is true and exemplifies his independence from the rich and powerful and his devotion to the common people:
“…It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.”
And this…
“…So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.”
From the words of Lincoln,
“We shall either nobly save, or meanly lose, the last great hope of mankind.” December 1, 1862 Message to Congress
November 5th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Great Obama photo’s here!
Link