When Barack Obama burst onto the political scene in 2004, I thought he was a bit overrated. One good speech sure, but that doesn’t make eight years in the Illinois State Senate and less than a full term in the senate enough experience for the most important job in the world.
Even in 2007 as the presidential campaign heated up, I still thought he was overrated. He gave inspiring speeches but was timid in the debates. He seemed untested, unvetted, and unsure of what he would change about America.
He was sure of how he would change it: by being more conciliatory and bipartisan. This sounded like being nicer to diehard Republicans, which could undo the damage the Bush Administration has done to America.
However, I’m glad to say that Obama’s message has won me over. Or rather, Hillary and Bill Clinton’s mendacious campaigning has turned me away from their cynicism and highlighted how unique and historical Obama’s candidacy is.
The Clintons’ constant use of race as a bludgeon to injure Obama and their constant contradictory attacks on Obama’s style and substance, reminded me that America would be better served without their two-for-the-price-of-one administration.
Leading up to the South Carolina primary, which Obama won in a landslide, with 55 percent of the vote and huge support from the black community, the Clintons both relentlessly and insidiously hammered him in the press.
They first operated through their campaign surrogates who incite controversy on TV. Because some of Obama’s family is Muslim and implicitly Obama is too by association (thank you, former Senator Bob Kerrey) or that even Obama’s record is a “fairy tale” (thank you, ‘first black president’ Bill Clinton), the introduction of the race card, that Patricia Williams spoke so eloquently about, demonstrates why people can detest the Clintons.
The Clintons then deride Obama’s emphasis on change. Obama compared himself to Reagan and Hillary to Nixon when, in an interview with a newspaper in Nevada, he explained that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”
On the surface, it seemed like a rookie mistake for Obama to miscalculate and compare himself to a president who was not only the ideological opposite of the Democratic Party but also dealt the party some of its biggest electoral defeats in 1980 and 84, and Hillary immediately seized upon this quote as proof of Obama’s apostasy.
Ironically, in 1992 Bill Clinton branded himself as the moderate bipartisan governor with a soothing southern drawl who wanted to win by triangulating rather than to divide by recriminating.
But Obama is fundamentally right.
Reagan drew middle and lower class white voters to the Republican Party that had previously supported Democrats since FDR. His optimism and wit allowed him to transcend the nitty gritty aspect of presidential politics in a way that Nixon never did and Clinton never could no matter how hard he tried. Despite Bill Clinton’s personal success in politics, the Democrats ended with fewer seats in the House and Senate when he left office than when he entered it.
America became more conservative because of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did nothing to change that. Does anyone actually think that a Hillary Clinton presidency would realign America along a more progressive track?
So the Clintons’ attack on Obama as heretical for comparing himself to Reagan misses the point. Obama is diametrically opposed to Reagan on the issues but not on his style. His other comparison certainly seems apt since the Clinton campaign’s certainly engaged in Nixonian tactics in their desperate attempt to win.
After Obama’s overwhelming victory in South Carolina, Bill Clinton compared Obama on TV to Jesse Jackson, who ran for the nomination in 1984 and 1988, and who incidentally won the South Carolina primary but nothing else. Again, a transparent attempt to paint Obama into a corner as the alleged “black candidate” in the same way Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been.
This approach illuminates the stark difference between the two candidates. Hillary’s attempt to define Obama on the basis of his race reflects her belief in the politics of identity as a way to win and to govern.
Obama’s vision for politics doesn’t hinge on seeing a multitude of interest groups and voter blocs to be sliced up and satisfied through meticulous polling. For Barack Obama, there is only one identity that matters and that is that we are all American.