Yes Obama uses empty platitudes and is likely to do nothing of any substance altogether different from the current regime (save putting little bows on the bombs and tying ribbons around the ruins of the US welfare state. His choice of advisers and rhetoric virtually ensure that the Obama mania will not extend to the level of actual policy. But for some reason all this criticism of him (along with the adoration) resonated strongly with a book review essay in the Nation a few weeks ago. I'm sure there is some insipid history in relation to this author (his position makes him sound like he has sleepovers at Todd Gitlin's place where they reminisce about the times when the revolution was still strong), but in any case, the description seemed rather apt:
<Blockquote> The fate of the student movement of the 1960s, she argued, was determined when its leaders made the "curiously apolitical" decision to start thinking of themselves as revolutionaries:
"Because revolution was effectively impossible one did not have to dirty one's hands in compromise, nor mingle much with the hoi polloi (meaning: the middle class; the un-Chosen) along the way. And it was also ahistorical and smug, since it mistook revolution, a rare historical event, for a moral choice."
That the New Left "mistook revolution...for a moral choice" is the best one-sentence summary I've ever read of the complexities of late-'60s radicalism. I would suggest a corollary that seems implicit in Langer's essay. The movement's revolutionary turn was not so much a measure of its un- or anti-American character, as conservative critics would have it, but rather an indication that, if anything, the New Left might have been a bit too American for its own good. Its impatience with the half-measures of liberal reformism, its lack of interest in creating a stable constituency or institutional base, and its promotion of a politics of confrontation and risk ("putting your body on the line," as the saying went) revealed the movement as an exotic but recognizable descendant of the powerful Protestant antinomian tradition of radical individualism--one whose adherents defied social custom and religious law to follow the inner promptings of God's voice wherever they might lead. "John Brown is a good symbol for us," Langer noted in passing. "At one point he wanted to run a school for Negroes but he came to find the idea too small: he had to attack Harper's Ferry." <end blockquote>
full available here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/isserman
It now seems like every kind of American revolutionary movement has taken on this antinomian quality, pretty much since the 1960s. I see shades of it in the Ron Paul Re-love-lution (with the militant stencil graphic reversing the word love and making me wonder if it is supposed to make love subversive or if it is really a revolution which subverts love. I'd say that any pure Libertarian movement is limited to taking a position at one of these two poles depending on the hour of the day.) That the Paul is standing out as the anti-Obama for some people on the list, is striking in this regard.
I would say that the difference between Obama and Reagan or Thatcher is that the issue of the collective is quite differently articulated.
On one side, there is no society, only individuals; on the other "yes we can." Perhaps it is a dangerous (or at least naive) illusion to say that there is something different this--whether as a rhetorical strategy or as an idea that seems to have a broad resonance. I guess the question is if we'd rather have a cult of the individual or a cult of the "we." Obviously both have had their periods of overindulgence cum political terror, but it seems like Bush has been struggling with how to carve a path between his own antinomian delight in the rugged individual (yet evangelical) cowboy and the obvious collective demands of the country. Yesterday he said this about the tornadoes:
"Loss of life, loss of property — prayers can help and so can the government," Bush said. "I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hEVVdA-Jj41Pg6oB6TwkpA_6ygZgD8UL4MGO0
This is not an uncharacteristic statement, even if there is some dissonance it creates for people who recognize what he has actually done i.e. FEMA, Katrina, the Gulf coast rebuilding etc. But it does speak to something that, try as he and the conservative movement might, they can't quite get out from under. They have tried to re-frame it in terms of the government helping to answer their prayers about circumventing alternative lifestyles homosexuality and tried to re-frame all the economic and security woes into the xenophobic issue of immigration. But they can't quite get back to the government's role of doing nothing. When Romney, who tried to bill himself as the truly conservative candidate, spoke in Michigan, his most memorable line was that he would "fight for every last job" in Detroit.
Of course his plan for how to do this was conventional,
( e.g. "increased government spending for research on advanced fuels and vehicles, aid to automakers to deal with the costs of health care and pensions for retirees, and tax cuts for most taxpayers to help them buy new cars." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/politics/13campaign.html?_r=1&oref=slogin )
but the call to put the wheels of government back in the service of the people seems to be the basic rallying cry, even if the empty signifier is as dangerously unstable here as in Laclau's "a people must be constructed" approach. It does make Frum's comments about this being the end of the Conservative "revolution" seem more pertinent, but I can also see why people would be suspicious of a Clinton, round 2. The problem there was, as indicated above, he ended up doing things that the right wing free traders would only have dreamed and made it seem like a really swell thing for everyone (a consensus that even now doesn't seem to be fading). That Obama would likely be elected with a similar kind of evangelical support as Bush (though with him as the leader rather than Jesus http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/05/barack_obama_is_not_jesus/#more ) is certainly important to consider--not because he would not be able to do all the vague things he says he would, but because he'd be able to couch whatever he's doing in the same vague terms. If I understand correctly, this is the other basic reason for resistance to him on the list.
I also think Edwards losing wasn't evidence that the progressive message he was using was not appealing: the race got chalked up in most places to being between the two front runners in most major media outlets and since Obama was preaching a message of Change as well, it seemed like a wash, despite the details to the contrary.