Gary Hart is right to suggest that Barack Obama is reviving the language of idealism in American politics, but it won't be sufficient to get him elected. Reaching for the rafters with soaring rhetoric is fine for some occasions, but effective candidates also have to develop a practical conversation with the American people.
The reason Huckabee won in Iowa on the Republican side is that he knows how to talk with people as if he were having coffee with them. In this context it's useful to ask why John Edwards still got 30% in Iowa, even after turning himself into a one-dimensional cartoon of anger at corporate America. It's because the animation of his language exhibits real passion for the rights and lives of ordinary people who feel sidelined by the system.
There is little equivalent sense of identifying with ordinary people coming from Obama, who sounded last night as if he were on Mount Olympus, conferring with the gods of history. Fine, for the peroration of his convention acceptance speech. But democracy is practical as well as aspirational politics. It's about divining the urgent concerns of the moment, as people feel them in the day-to-day text of their lives, and giving voice to those aspirations in terms that people believe represent a practical way forward. We are talking here about the depth psychology of moving a majority to mass action, of how you create a mandate for a wholly new direction for government. Such a majority cannot be mobilized unless it feels that the would-be leader whose words are inspiring also understands the hard realities of living which the existing system has produced and that he knows how to change that system. Obama hasn't made that sale yet. Let us hope he can.
posted 01/04/2008 at 13:10:01
The reason Huckabee won in Iowa on the Republican side is that he knows how to talk with people as if he were having coffee with them. In this context it's useful to ask why John Edwards still got 30% in Iowa, even after turning himself into a one-dimensional cartoon of anger at corporate America. It's because the animation of his language exhibits real passion for the rights and lives of ordinary people who feel sidelined by the system.
There is little equivalent sense of identifying with ordinary people coming from Obama, who sounded last night as if he were on Mount Olympus, conferring with the gods of history. Fine, for the peroration of his convention acceptance speech. But democracy is practical as well as aspirational politics. It's about divining the urgent concerns of the moment, as people feel them in the day-to-day text of their lives, and giving voice to those aspirations in terms that people believe represent a practical way forward. We are talking here about the depth psychology of moving a majority to mass action, of how you create a mandate for a wholly new direction for government. Such a majority cannot be mobilized unless it feels that the would-be leader whose words are inspiring also understands the hard realities of living which the existing system has produced and that he knows how to change that system. Obama hasn't made that sale yet. Let us hope he can.
posted 01/04/2008 at 13:10:01
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