Obama Offers a Progressive
Vision of Patriotism
By Drew Westen, Huffington
Post
Posted on March 21, 2008, Printed on March 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80390/
I watched Barack Obama's speech Tuesday morning intently. The
"pre-game show" of cable commentators predicted a somewhat grim
outcome. What could Obama say that could possibly overcome his
association with the words of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Would
he throw his pastor on the train tracks? And even if he did,
would he still suffer from guilt by association?
But then, for 45 minutes, I saw a man who for days had
appeared somewhat at sea, buffeted by waves that relentlessly
pushed him off course, seem to find his compass and chart a
course directly into the eye of the storm. I saw a man with the
inner confidence, and the steadiness of a captain who knew he
was sailing on uncharted waters but needed to go there anyway,
take the nation with him and land them safely on the shore.
The pundits were clearly stunned. They knew they had
witnessed something extraordinary, a moment when time seemed to
stand still and a politician in the midst of a withering
electoral storm did the unspeakable: he spoke the truth. The
unspoken, unspeakable truth. He told the nation that he
understood what was happening in white barber shops and black
barber shops, around white water coolers and black water
coolers, and that we are neither free from our prejudices nor
merely prejudiced in our respective grievances, and that in both
our prejudices and our grievances, we have more in common than
we know.
With the exception of commentators who pride themselves on
their bigotry, the speech drew immediate, nearly universal
acclaim, and I suspect that its lasting impact will mirror its
initial impact. But as the great French sociologist Emil
Durkheim described it, we live our lives in the realm of the
profane, punctuated by moments of sanctity, only to return again
to everyday life. And by nightfall, as I listened to reports of
the speech on television, many of the talking heads had returned
to the realm of the literal, the crass, and the profane: Did he
distance himself enough from Reverend Wright? Did he condemn his
former pastor enough to reassure white voters?
But the speech wasn't about Reverend Wright, even though the
controversy surrounding pieces of his sermons was the impetus
for it. Obama delivered a message that spoke to the conflicts
and contradictions around race that have existed since the
earliest days of this nation, and he delivered it in a personal
way that spoke to his own history and his own complex response
to his pastor's messages over many years. The speech brought to
mind a passage written by the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson a half
century ago in his psychobiography of Martin Luther, which could
just as easily have been written last night. Erikson was
describing that ineffable quality we call charisma, and the way
an individual life history sometimes converges with the
historical moment: "Now and again," Erikson wrote, "an
individual is called upon (called upon by whom, only theologians
claim to know, and by what only bad psychologists)," to lift his
personal conflicts to the level of cultural conflicts, "and to
try to solve for all what he could not solve for himself alone."
Obama clearly hadn't wanted to make this election about race.
But the events of the last week led him to do what the nation
has long needed to do: to have the kind of open conversation
about race that Republicans have avoided because they've
preferred to exploit it and Democrats have avoided because
they've tended to fear it. We can't solve problems we can't talk
about, and our better angels on race tend to be our conscious
values. As numerous commentators described it, Obama led us to
our better angels.
But from a political standpoint, at least as important as the
primary message of his speech was a series of meta-messages he
conveyed as much through his actions as his words. Obama's
speech was in many respects a rejoinder to a number of questions
raised about him over the last few weeks that contributed to
defeats in Ohio and Texas.
Is he a moving orator who speaks pretty lines but lacks
substance? No one can seriously ask that question today, after
Obama offered the most eloquent, intellectually penetrating, and
most moving description of the complexities of race in America
of any politician in recent history. But he did more than talk
about race. He began to build a progressive narrative that
Democrats, and the progressive movement more broadly, have had
difficulty developing. He offered a progressive vision of
patriotism, integrating a more traditional view -- referring to
his grandfather's service under General Patton, and the military
service of Reverend Wright -- with the notion that love of
country is not blind love, that forming a more perfect union --
the essence of progressivism -- is part of what it means to love
one's country.
Does he have the courage, capacity, and cojones to lead?
Yesterday, he led us as a nation, and he showed a firm, steady,
and unflinching hand. Not only did he utter words most
Democratic politicians don't speak in polite company but should
have spoken years ago, but he refused to take the low road -- to
denounce and cast aside someone who clearly matters dearly to
him simply because he had become a political liability --
displaying both courage and conviction.
Is he really a Muslim, not just foreign but an "Islamo-fascist"
in sheep's clothing? No one listening to his speech could come
away with anything but the message that he is not only a
Christian but a person who takes his faith seriously. He spoke
of how Reverend Wright had "helped introduce me to my Christian
faith" and baptized his children, and how he had preached about
the importance of "doing God's work here on earth." Yet he
condemned his former pastor for seeing "the conflicts in the
Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart
allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and
hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
And time will tell if he answered one last question: Can he
win the respect, and ultimately the votes, of white males, and
particularly working class males, in states like Ohio and
Pennsylvania? I suspect his speech may have reopened a dialog
with, if not the minds of, the kinds of voters he had won over
in states like Wisconsin but began to lose for a number of
reasons: Hillary Clinton's obvious command of economic issues in
a time of increasing economic desperation, the fact that voters
associate the Clinton name with eight years of economic growth
between two disastrous Bushes, and Obama's resistance to
swinging back when his opponent was throwing punches, which
voters (particularly male voters) tend to take as a sign of
weakness. But the meaning of Obama's loyalty to his pastor in
the face of enormous pressure to cast him aside is not likely to
be lost on white males who value strength, courage, honor, and
loyalty. Nor is an aspect of his life story many Americans may
not have known, about the role played by his two white
working-class grandparents in his upbringing; or his criticism
of the failures of fatherhood in the inner cities; or his
willingness to speak openly about the seething resentments of
the millions of white men who punch a time card every day, feel
increasingly unable to provide for their families as the price
of gas skyrockets and heath care moves beyond their reach, and
who don't view themselves as all that privileged.
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