'Obama is the new politics'

[RunInRed 16,392]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=300422I

Win or lose, whatever happens next, Barack Obama is now established as one of those rare, courageous teachers who leads the country onto new ground. He has given us a way to talk about race and our other differences with the clarity and honesty that politics does not normally tolerate. Whether this hurts or helps his presidential prospects is not yet clear, but he has done this for us and it will change the country, whatever the costs to him.

His words should discourage the media frenzy of fear-driven gotcha. His speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday may also make the Clintons re-think their unsubtle exploitation of racial tension. But nobody knows the depth or strength of the commonplace fears streaming through the underground of public feelings. No one can be sure of what people will hear in Obama's confident embrace, beckoning Americans in all their differences, leaving out no one, to a better understanding of themselves.

The essence of the blues, as I learned to understand, is what Barack Obama accomplished in that speech--the beautiful and hopeful wrapped in pain and sacrifice, the despairing truths about the black experience in America that mysteriously exalt the human spirit when we hear the music. We don't need to understand why or define the meaning. In this case, Obama himself is the expression of what we are feeling. His speech will live on as a complex, exalting memory, whatever happens, because what he said about us is true.

Remember, this is a very shrewd politician, not just highly intelligent and worldly, but wise about himself. He must have understood fully the nature of what he was doing in this speech because all of his life he has coped successfully with the dangerous cross-currents of race. In that speech, Obama was taking all the risks onto himself, going where no one had dared to go before in politics with awareness he might personally pay a price. That is what leaders do, isn't it?

First, Barack Obama did not speak to Americans as though we are children. His discussion assumed that people could relate to a sophisticated explication of the American experience. He did not repackage the realities of race into uplifting myths. Above all, he did not leave anyone out of this generous approach, not his white grandmother for her folk fears of black strangers, not the cruel narrative of the African-American struggle, not the white working class whose immigrant stories have their own legacy of suffering and resentment. Nor would he renounce his friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright, the minister who expresses deeply felt anger and disappointment at the American story.

If you understand the risks Obama undertook, you can see the beauty and pain in what he did. He could not back away from the risks without betraying himself and all those people who are part of him. On the other hand, he was putting at risk his own great promise as a politician. In psychological terms, what's extraordinary is his refusal to split off himself and his own experience from those others. So he embraced them, knowing the risks. Then he tells us--audaciously--that we are capable of doing the same. Yet most of us do the opposite in everyday life, defining ourselves in contrast to the others we are not, idealizing our own selves by demonizing the others. Obama knows all this. He still insists we can do it. He has seen it happen in life.

Could Obama be right about Americans? The proposition itself is thrilling to hear. We feel ennobled by his hopeful account of who we are, but also a little scared. Obama didn't let anyone off the hook. He threw the choice back at the people. But what if he is wrong? We are scared to find out. His hopefulness makes us feel nervous for him.

Obama sounds like cool blues. The calmness of style, the strength of his self-confidence, pull us through the nervousness. If people have the opportunity to hear him in full and think about it, they will recognize the strength it took for him to open his arms this way, casting aside all defenses and evasions. With the hope and everything else he stands for, this guy is one very strong character.

Obama is the new politics, I believe, whatever happens this year. His way of talking and thinking will shape the future because I think he has got it right about the country.