Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's upset victory in the New Hampshire primary last week was every bit as impressive as Senator Barack Obama's Iowa caucus breakout five days before - if anything, more impressive, since his win was predicted and hers unforeseen. But the reactions to the two events couldn't have been more different.
Obama's January 3 triumph let loose a giddiness bordering on exhilaration among voters and, especially, media commentators, who hailed his triumph as "historic," even though he was not in fact the first African-American to win a major presidential nominating contest.
(Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses in 1988.) By contrast, when Clinton overcame long odds to become the first woman in US history to win a major-party primary, no leading news outlet trumpeted this landmark feat. Many failed to mention it at all.
This startling difference underscores one of Obama's advantages heading into the do-or-die February 5 contests. "Obamamania" sputtered in the Granite State, but it is far from dead. Many of the voters and pundits who were thrilled by Obama's compelling Iowa speech two weeks ago remain intoxicated, heady with the hope that he can deliver not just "change" but a categorically different kind of change from Clinton or the Republican candidates. So what explains the magic?
The most obvious explanation is Obama's stirring oratory, with its notes of generational change and unity. The key to his seduction, though, resides not just in what he says but in what remains unsaid. It lies in the tacit offer - a promise about overcoming America's shameful racial history - that his particular candidacy offers to his enthusiasts, and to us all.
Obama's allure differs from the infatuations of past election cycles because it can't be traced to what he has done or will do. In his legislative career, Obama has produced few concrete policy changes, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a rank-and-file fan who can cite one.
Not since 1896 - when another rousing speechmaker, William Jennings Bryan, sought the White House - has the zeal for a candidate corresponded so little to a record of hard accomplishment. But merely asking if Obama has done enough for us to expect he'd be a good president misses the point, because that measures the past rather than imagining the future.
Yet if Obama charms us by pointing to tomorrow, he doesn't come bearing a new ideological vision. In the 1980 primaries, the insurgent Ronald Reagan won on his robust, pro-military, anti-government conservatism, a philosophy that until then had languished even within the GOP.
Similarly, in 1992, Bill Clinton triumphed because he was the first Democrat since the 1960s to formulate a viable and vital new liberalism - one rooted in years of policy wonkery, a frank reckoning with his party's failures and an early recognition of the importance of globalisation.
But where Clinton converted voters to his philosophy with binder-thick proposals, from AmeriCorps to welfare reform to the earned-income tax credit, Obama fans rarely tout his specific ideas.
No one claims his agenda entails radical innovation or differs much from Hillary Clinton's. On the contrary, Obama's ideology, insofar as he has articulated it, seems to be a familiar, mainstream liberalism, heavy on communitarianism.
High-minded and process-oriented, in the Mugwump tradition that runs from Adlai Stevenson to Bill Bradley, it is pitched less to the Democratic Party's working-class base than to upscale professionals.
The Obama phenomenon, then, stems not from what he has done but who he is. As the social critic John McWhorter has written, "What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land." He is the great white hope.
None of the candidates has discussed race much this year. Even John Edwards' focus on poverty primarily stresses class, not race. But silences can reveal as much as words.
When Senator Joe Lieberman accepted the Democratic vice presidential nomination in 2000, he exulted, "Only in America," and he celebrated his Jewishness in his opening spiel. But the first words of Obama's victory speech in bone-white Iowa - "You know, they said this day would never come" - alluded to race only through deft indirection.
The national unity he went on to outline was, superficially, a harmony between red and blue states, with the much more elusive and important reconciliation between white and black America left tacit. Not until his closing did Obama acknowledge the speech's subtext with a remark about lunch counters and fire hoses, Selma and Montgomery, and "a father from Kenya."
Throughout, his voice and cadences suggested that he had studied Martin Luther King Jr.'s register and rhythms, the better to subtly evoke liberalism's great lost moment of revolutionary achievement and unfulfilled promise.
Obama's rhetorical gifts clearly contribute to his allure. But that allure resides not simply in the mellow timbre of his larynx but, more deeply, in his near-perfect pitch in talking about race to white America. Obama doesn't shun race altogether - if he did, he would provoke suspicions - and he certainly doesn't "transcend" race, whatever that means.
But neither, as the social theorist Shelby Steele has written, does he rub white America's face in its corrupt history of slavery and segregation. Traditionally, whites have appreciated such gentleness.
History provides a precedent of sorts: In 1960, John F. Kennedy, a dashing, almost aristocratic figure who defied many nasty stereotypes of Irish Catholics, made Protestants feel not just safe in voting for him but downright virtuous.
Similarly, Obama - whose strongest appeal has thus far been to upscale white liberals - allows those whites to feel good about themselves and their country. He lets them imagine that a nation founded for freedom yet built on slavery can be redeemed by pulling a lever.
At the same time, Obama doesn't threaten or discomfort whites. He doesn't strike them as wronged or impatient, or as the spokesman of a long-subjugated minority group or even as someone particularly culturally different from themselves.
As much Kansan as Kenyan, Obama does not descend from families who suffered American slavery or Jim Crow. His family tree has fewer slaves than slaveholders, fewer chains than Cheneys.
This background may be what some people (mainly blacks) have meant when they asked the regrettable question of whether Obama is "black enough" to earn their votes. But Obama has always been black enough for his elite white enthusiasts, who would never presume to judge an African-American's racial authenticity.
Some pundits scratched their heads when Obama was trailing Clinton among black voters. (He recently pulled even or ahead.) But it made perfect sense.
Clinton had a track record of working for African-Americans' interests. Obama was not just skirting controversies such as the "Jena Six" - the black Louisiana teen-agers punished disproportionately last year for their role in a racial fracas - but was aiming his appeals squarely at the white Iowans who he knew could make him the front-runner.
None of this is to minimise the barriers that Obama has faced and still faces because of his race.
Greenberg is a historian at Rutgers University. He is at work on a history of spin in American politics.
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I think you have hit on several "truths" in this article. I just got done reading a scathing article about one of the other candidates who is quite a bit older and with a thicker resume than Barack, and realized that the reason Barack is getting a free pass is that there really is not much to blast him about. I am certain if a poll had been taken a year ago very few of the people that now support Barack had ever heard of him and most definitely know very little about his record. On the other hand, lots of people knew about other black candidates like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton because they had a much higher profile life within the black community. So it seems the longer a candidate stays in politics the dirtier their resume becomes, or at least has the potential to be misconstrued depending on who is doing the assessment. So if a voter is purposely looking for the candidate with the least amount of dirt written about him/her, Barack is the winner. Is that a good enough reason to "hope" Barack can come through with the change voters envision which is what exactly? I think the "change" that most voters are thinking about is having a president that the media likes just so the average joe doesn't have to hear about scandal after scandal and the many missteps the current administration has made. So it is time to flip the record over and hear some different songs. The bad news is that the media might consider Barack a darling now UNTIL he rolls his eyes at them a few times too many and dismisses them with a wave of his arm because the questions are getting too hard or redundant. Journalists are looking for blood because writing upbeat stories of "hope" get old very quickly and they don't sell newspapers.
I agree with everything you say re the different and unfair media treatment given Clinton as opposed to Obama. Unfortunately, it almost appears that the unspoken issue here is really sexism rather than race.
My theory is that the Republican Party is really and squarely behind Obama. Wait, hear me out! How can such an unknown, a nobody compared to the other contenders, raise the kind of money he has? And moreover, go as far as he has? My answer is, mainly because the Republican Party has been providing the funds and the fanfare. Why? For reasons that primarily benefit their own party, while keeping Obama and his cult-like followers into thinking that Obama can win the presidential nomination. (Sound like Karl Rove? You bet.) The aim is for Obama to win the Democratic nomination. The Republican Party definitely needs to foil Clinton's chances for the nomination.
The easy part comes next. Once Obama gets the nomination from his party, the Republicans will promptly drop him like a hot potato (except this time, Obama wont be so hot anymore). He would have a snowballs chance in hell becoming president. The Republican Party knows too well that if Clinton won the nomination, they could very well lose the presidential election. With Obama, its a done deal for their party. The same misguided, close-minded people who voted Bush in twice are the very same people who will definitely not vote for Obama.
While this is crystal clear to me, it must not be for Obama or his non-Republican supporters (or could they be so deep in denial?), blindly following him just because they like how he phrases things. Granted, he knows how to give a speech, but is this all you want your president to do? Too many of our presidents did just that and that alone: talk, talk, talk. Actions speak louder than words and always have. Its what is done and how its done - that counts, not merely empty talk about what needs to be done. Having said this, for all his talk, has Obama really said anything about what he actually had accomplished (maybe its because he hadnt accomplished much of anything?) or what he will do as president, much less how he intends to do it? I will give him this: he does a superb job of leading his naïve, wishful-thinking and deluded followers - by the nose. I can think of a few other so-called charismatic speakers whove gotten into power by woefully abusing this gift.
Obama is much too full of himself to be a trusted leader. For all practical purposes, he had about a year's worth in the senate before the dubious idea that he should be president of our country got into his arrogant head. Being unrealistically overconfident, he's since thrown himself completely into making his improbable, narcissistic ambition come true. Obsessed with his ambition, he continues to accept Republican funds as though they came from his so-called supporters, all the while deluding himself that in the end, he will have the last laugh at both Clinton and his Republican funders. A man who will do anything yes, anything - to fulfill his own selfish and flawed ambition (highly questionable in this case) should not be president of anything, let alone this country. (I now understand why Obama likes the word audacity. He understands it perfectly.). Let me remind you that the rest of the world 'forgave' us for electing Bush the first time around (they took into account the corruption that surrounded this sullied event). But when we elected Bush the second time, we became the laughing stock of the world; and they could not help but conclude that we Americans must all be morons. A stinging and humiliating assessment, especially for those of us who did not vote for Bush either time. But If Obama becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, and god forbid, the president the shame and censure from the world body will surely be enough to wipe the rest of us out for good. Even I would agree to their assessment then.
Ive listened to Obama speak. Ive heard a lot of words, but in the end of each speech, he really says nothing. He speaks in generalities, empty, worthless, pointless generalities. But more importantly, he doesnt give you a straight answer to any of your questions. He sneakily skirts around questions with generalities and pseudo responses couched in bogus eloquence. Does he really tell you anything you want to know, not 'hear'? No, not really. He appears to be more concerned with speech-making and the psychology that manipulates your mind into thinking that he is genuinely concerned about you and that he is serious about finding solutions to your concerns. I find he is no different from any other glib-tongued politician or salesperson. If I wanted to hear someone speak eloquently, Id go to a Shakespearean play. It would clearly be a better choice for my time and money. Do you believe expecting a straight answer to serious questions of substance is asking too much of a wannabe president? If Obama cant or wont answer your questions now (i.e., if he even acknowledges them), what kind of a president do you think he will make? He doesnt share his vision of his presidency with you because I suspect you wont like what you would see. It would be his own personal dream only, not necessarily yours or mine. To put it succinctly, one full of only himself. I trust the majority of us are not enough like Obama to benefit from this limited selfish dream.
This ludicrous and dangerous fascination with so-called celebrities and silver-tongued politicians will be our downfall one of these days, if it hasnt already started. Cant you see that Obama, Oprah, and the rest of their kind, are just hard-sell salespeople? They are the greatest benefactors of their own sales pitches. You, well, you are the misguided people who buy into their dream of greed, power and (more and more) money for themselves; we are so deluded and naive into thinking there is something in it for us too. How brainwashed can we be. Someone said that a fool and his money are soon parted; another said that there is a sucker born every minute. The people who made these astute observations must surely have had us in mind.
Our next president must never be someone that we can BUY. Yet Obama has been decidedly on the auction block, glaringly with Obama himself as auctioneer. Like they say, caveat emptor; and, never let the fox guard the hen house. Only thing left to say is, if we allow Obama to happen, then we Americans must either be thicker than the world ever dared to imagine; or, worse yet, we are not only 'that' thick but also twisted, which is something neither the world nor even I myself had considered.
See the light. Prove them wrong this time.