Faithful Democrats
This past Saturday I took a 5:30am bus from Chicago to Springfield to watch Barack Obama announce his presidential bid. The 50 or so folks on the bus were there mostly because they hoped to see history in the making — to be able to tell their grandkids they were there when the nation’s first African-American president began his campaign. I haven’t picked sides, but I wanted to see the action first hand.
The crowd itself was indeed phenomenal for a newcomer to presidential politics — or for anyone. Springfield police put the estimate at 15,000 to 17,000; another estimate had it around 10,000. Either way, that’s quite a reception given that most attendees had to start their cars at the crack of dawn to make it to Springfield in time (there aren’t that many people who live near Springfield), only to stand outside in a bitter chill to hear Obama give an address that could easily be caught later on YouTube.
The speaking was scheduled to begin at 10am. By 9:30 or so, the crowd was so thick I could have done a trust fall in either direction without moving much. It was like a Chicago L car during rush hour, except it went on for blocks.
Obama himself was cool, as always — calm and hip. He made his way to the stage to the tune of U2’s “City of Blinding Lights” — waving, smiling big, shaking hands, showing off his relaxed swagger.
He started with religion: “All praise and honor to God for bringing us together here today.” And he quickly gave a pretty good summary of what was to come:
“You came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that shut you out, has told you to settle, that’s divided us for too long, you believe that we can be one people, reaching out for what’s possible, building that more perfect union.”
Hope, big dreams, unity, inclusive politics. The speech was classic Obama: visionary, yet uncontroversial; genuine, yet careful; impassioned, yet detached in a JFK kind of way. The ability to merge these dichotomies is a talent most politicians, even successful ones, can only dream about.
One of the things I liked most about this particular speech was the populism of the message. It wasn’t so much about pitting us vs. them — that’s not Obama’s style — but about re-establishing a commitment to participatory politics, about affirming that every American deserves a seat at the table and has the power to demand it.
“Our cherished rights of liberty and equality,” he said, “depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate.” In place of a mobilized citizenry, he argued, our nation has witnessed the rise of “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bill. They get the access while you get to write a letter. They think they own this government. But we’re here today to take it back.”
OK, maybe that’s a little us vs. them-ish. But Obama didn’t keep that up for long:
“This campaign can’t only be about me. It must be about us. It must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, of your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice to push us forward when we’re doing right and let us know when we’re not.
“This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.”
Thus, Obama set out to present his candidacy almost as a movement in which he’s merely a vessel.
Almost, but not quite. Obama didn’t shy away from patting himself on the back. He listed his accomplishments in the Illinois Senate — expanding the state’s earned income tax credit, mandating videotaping of interrogations in possible death penalty cases, and so on — and his signature accomplishment in the U.S. Senate, which is the ethics bill that passed last month. (He heralded the bill as the toughest ethics legislation since Watergate — it’s a fine bill, but if that’s true, it’s pretty sad.)
He relived his own experience as a community organizer in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, where he “learned the meaning of [his] Christian faith.” And, standing in front of Illinois’s Old State House, he even made an implicit comparison between himself and Abraham Lincoln, invoking the greatest president’s ability to unite America and reminding that “the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer…tells us that a different future is possible.” Barack may want to be a vehicle for others’ hopes, but he certainly thinks he’s a “uniquely qualified” vehicle, in his words.
Still, this trumpeting of his achievements never quite seemed arrogant. Barack understood that despite his compelling background and knack for powerful rhetoric, he’s got gall even running for president. “I recognize that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement,” he said. “I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”
And therein lies the real genius, in my view, of the Obama persona. He seems real. He seems authentic. He doesn’t shy away from stating an obvious political truth that most politicians would never consider admitting. His candidacy is presumptuous — and instead of pretending it isn’t, he tells us flat out. And in so doing, he puts the burden on us to wonder, “So what?”
Obama gave us another taste of authenticity when he proclaimed that the people in power are telling us to blame our problems on “the other party or gay people or immigrants.” How many politicians would take the risk of even saying the word “gay”? How many wouldn’t cross it out if some speechwriter had (miraculously) dared to put it in there? Somehow, I almost never hear this most obvious of words — a word that most Americans use freely when talking politics — cross the lips of our leaders in either major party. And yet I’ve heard Obama use it twice now in major addresses — the first being at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when he said that, yes, Americans have “some gay friends in the red states.”
I was once a TA at the University of Chicago’s public policy school in a course on political strategy. One day we had Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. come in and talk about what makes for a good speech. His recurring motif was “There’s nothing like the sound of the genuine.” He’d give an anecdote about someone who gave a successful speech, and then repeat the line. He then told a few stories about speakers who failed to connect, and after each one he’d say, “There was a gap between the Word and the flesh.”
In Obama, audiences don’t see a gap between the Word and the flesh. At least not yet. What comes out of his mouth seems to be what’s in his heart. And that, ultimately, could be his strongest attribute as a candidate. With most politicians, the authenticity gap is a given. It’s one of the most frustrating, annoying, disillusioning, and even disempowering things about politics, but it’s a given nonetheless. A politician who appears to transcend that gap is simply disarming.
This wasn’t the best political speech I’d ever heard, nor was it the best I’d heard from Barack. I still don’t know which presidential candidate to support, and I plan to check out the other candidates as they swing through Chicago in the year to come. There are a lot of good ones to choose from. But on the bus coming home from Springfield, I felt good. I felt good about myself and my country. If Obama keeps on inspiring others to feel likewise, he’ll have a pretty good year.
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