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The Meme Lives On (II)

Here’s the rub: As anyone who has listened to Sen. Obama knows [bold mine-DL], the substance of policy positions takes a decided back seat to the more ephemeral ideas of hope and inspiration when he addresses voters. The basic Obama argument is that America can solve its problems, that the country can transcend partisan divides, […]

Here’s the rub: As anyone who has listened to Sen. Obama knows [bold mine-DL], the substance of policy positions takes a decided back seat to the more ephemeral ideas of hope and inspiration when he addresses voters. The basic Obama argument is that America can solve its problems, that the country can transcend partisan divides, that Washington can overcome gridlock and that he, as a new leader unbound by the debates of the past 20 years, is the one who can make all those things happen. ~Gerald Seib

As one of the commenters has observed, and as I was arguing recently, this is exactly right.  In her recent remarks, Michelle Obama said that “hope is making a comeback.”  As I was driving to work this morning, I thought about that line and then asked out loud, “What does that even mean?”  Presumably there is always hope, or so the elpidolaters would tell you, so how can hope make a comeback if it has always been here?  The Obamas have saying things like this for over a year and they expect people to regard such statements as serious. 

Along the same lines, Brooks beat me to the punch with his column today:

For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?

I prefer His Great Expectancy myself, but you get the idea.  Come to think of it, since the motto of the cult glorious people’s revolution campaign is “Yes, We Can,” doesn’t there come a time when someone has to say, “Yes, But Should We?”  We’ve all heard the old saw that having the power to do something does not imply that we should do something.  Indeed, the emphasis on being able to do something is strange.  No one really doubts that “we can” do many of the things that Obama talks about, but what is not at all clear in many cases is whether we ought to do them.  It’s as if this sheer potency is what matters for this campaign, as if to answer the question why by saying, “Because We Can.” 

There is another problem.  Obama risks doing to the word and concept hope what Mr. Bush has done to “freedom,” which is to rip it out of any meaningful context, deprive it of its proper meaning, set it up as an idol and then make terrible sacrifices to it.  Politicians use the idea of the future and hopeful rhetoric to justify all manner of abuses and demand concessions from citizens.  It’s not just that we shouldn’t trust them (though we shouldn’t), but that this kind of rhetoric feeds and builds ever-rising expectations.  These expectations not only will not be met, but cannot be met, because some of the things Obama promises (e.g., transcending partisanship) are structurally impossible and also undesirable in an adversarial, nominally representative system.  It sets up Obama for inevitable failure on his own terms, as his fans will soon turn on him and decry him as a “sell-out” the moment that he does not somehow remake the political fabric of America, and it offers America at least four years of a different kind of “distracting politics,” one that will continually take us down blind alleys of optimistic overkill.  As I have said before, you can advance some kind of “reform” agenda, or you can work fruitlessly to reorganise the political system.  No one can realistically do both, at least not legally, and if Obama chooses to pursue the latter course his administration would accomplish little or nothing.  From my perspective, that might be the best outcome available coming out of this election, but it will yield such intense disappointment that the millions of people who have been riding on their hope high for all this time will crash and become the most embittered ex-optimists you have ever seen.  

This idea of “post-partisanship” is itself so very strange, since this is not really what most Americans want.  The thing that frustrates independents and many partisans alike is not a lack of unity, but the deadening, stifling consensus of the parties in ways are profoundly unrepresentative of most citizens.  On many major policies, we have two factions that seem more interested in collaborating with each other against us than we have representatives serving our interests–that is the frustrating thing that many of us would like to see ended.

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