Six theses on Obama

Barack Obama stands poised to clinch the Democratic nomination for president today and put in an appearance at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, where the Republican convention will be held this summer. It is a remarkable story for a man with such a thin public record and no tangible accomplishment in his 46 years other than writing a best-selling memoir.

Moreover, Obama is the most left-wing candidate the Democrats have nominated since George McGovern. If Obama wins the presidency, it is fair to say that it will be Jimmy Carter’s second term. I think it is more accurate to postulate, however, that it will be George McGovern’s first term. Even so, the Democratic Party has moved left since McGovern’s defeat, and Obama is a product of the Democratic Party’s post-McGovern left.

How did Obama emerge from the pack of Democratic candidates first to challenge and then to vanquish Senator Clinton? Last month I offered six theses on Obama’s emergence as the Democratic nominee for president. I take the liberty of reiterating them today as Obama comes to town.

1. The primary thesis of the Obama candidacy was that, in a multiparty field, he could stake a claim as the Ivory Soap candidate on the issue of Iraq. His opposition to the war was purer than the rest of the Democratic field’s. Having been an Illinois state legislator at the time the roll was called in the United States Senate, he had not cast a vote to authorize it. Free of the encumbrance of responsibility at the time of the Senate vote, he could present himself to Democrats as a visionary opponent of a misguided war. That his presentation of his position on the war was not entirely accurate, as Peter Wehner demonstrated in “Obama’s war,” is beside the point.

2. The secondary thesis of the Obama campaign is that there was a substantial desire among Democrats to move on from the Clinton era. After Obama’s Iowa breakthrough and his New Hampshire loss, this theme had legs.

3. Obama emerged as a messianc figure come to redeem the time. He is a quasi-religious figure for non-believers, playing to the same market that made films such as “Ghost” and “The Sixth Sense” such enormous successes. It is an element of the Obama campaign that many observers have noted and that I explored in “The return of Sister Flute.”

4. Obama’s claim to represent a new poltics ending partisanship and division is as pure a product of the Bush era as Jimmy Carter’s “I will never lie to you” was of the Nixon era. These entirely mythical claims built or build on genuine insight into the will to believe among a significant part of the electorate.

5. Obama’s race is an asset. Americans want to prove their racial good will. A black candidate whose race is incidental to his campaign and whose political skills are manifest is able to take advantage of a great moral yearning that lies deep within the American psyche. Shelby Steele, who has eloquently explored this theme in reference to Obama, refers to it as “the idealism that race is but a negligible human difference.”

6. There is no substitute for organization in a competitive race. Making use of his ample financial resources, Obama developed an impressive field organization to crush Hillary Clinton in the caucus states. Obama’s lead among Clinton in pledged delegates is almost entirely attributable to his deicisive advantage over her in caucus states. This is a particularly old-fashioned thesis to derive from a campaign predicated on a theme of new politcs. D.H. Lawrence’s literary lesson can be put to good use here: Trust the tale, not the teller.

The first three of these theses have a somewhat limited applicability to the contest among Democrats. The second three also provide a solid basis for Obama’s candidacy in the general election campaign. For comparison and contrast, see Bill Bennett’s “My old party” and Victor Davis Hanson’s “Autopsy of the primaries.”

To comment on this post go here.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses