Did anybody read the Sunday NYT front page article on how Obama in the Senate was an inexperienced star? It is hard to know what to believe from the Times but if you read between the lines of this story what you actually get is what a canny and manipulative politician Obama is. I don't say this as praise mind you simply as recognition of Obama's eye for the jugular.
__What has been lacking on this list is any analysis from a radical point of view of the political reasons for Obama's success. I can't provide it because I don't know enough. But the intersection of personality, strong organization, and youthful middle class hatred of the old should be analyzed. How the generational "shift" and generational conflict factors in with race, sex-appeal, personality and class, could be interesting. I am not saying that anyone should write "The 18th Brumaire of Barack Obama"(such wouldn't be appropriate until he wins a national plebiscite anyway.) but some real analysis of the phenomena would be welcome, instead of carping about Obama's personality cult. (Maybe I missed this analysis, if so I apologize)__
>From the NYT article it seems Obama,as far as his relation with his
fellow senators, spent most of his time keeping his head low and
asking advice from everybody, but especially from Ted Kennedy.
(Advice to you young-uns: What we old-fogeys like most is when
youthful rising stars come to us for sage advice. Wins us over
immediately.)
More importantly, what he did was use his star power to raise money for other Dem Senators. The Times article doesn't say so but (again reading btwn the lines) it seems he did this specifically to collect chits for the future. (It wasn't clear what that future might be, at the time.) It seems to me that Obama's current run for President was simply a trial balloon, and that he himself is surprised that he is in the position to actually grab the nomination. (Some reflection on the "weakness" of Clinton and Edwards is appropriate here.) I think he was positioning himself for a run for Illinois Governor and from there he would probably try for another run for Prez.
It seems clear that the Obama phenomena has been building ever since he entered the Senate. His fund raisers for other senators across the country were always full to over-flowing and he was the star where-ever he went. It also seems clear to me that the Obama phenomena as an electoral success story represents as much disgust with the long-time politicians as much as anything else. Hatred of Hillary is not a new thing but also hatred of inside the belt-way is also high among the few people who actually vote. In this sense the precedent for the Obama's candidacy is Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Obama looks a lot more canny than Carter. He's obviously "smart" but so was Carter and that never did him any good. The more I read about him the more I realize he is simply a new politician with a strong organization and a lot of "personal" skills. What Obama seems to excel at is "charming manipulation". He knows how to manipulate the people around him in a way that convinces them that what he wants for himself is what they want for him. This is an old-fashion "republican" political skill that not all politicians are good at. The reason I write this is not to praise Obama. I hope nobody takes what I write as a compliment. Who-ever gets elected President is "the enemy," and it is good to know your enemy; if through some fluke it happens to be Obama then might as well get to know his skills now.
One more note. For those who think that Obama's campaign can be reduced to charisma, I suggest you read more about his organization. Obama seems to have an eye for talent and also not much of a need to "control" every aspect of his campaign. He has deliberately run his campaign so that volunteers have a high level of input and control of technology, etc. What I am writing here is that there are good old fashion reasons for Obama's political success and they have to do with hard work and organizing. Out of necessity, perhaps, a lot of this organizing has been a model of faux "self-organizing" with quick promotion of volunteers to positions of responsibility. It is good to reflect that if Clinton could do this she wouldn't. Her model is that of a controlled campaign and allowing volunteers to open up offices and to even boss around paid staff members is not the kind of "idealistic" shenanigans either of the Clintons would ever engage in.
On 3/9/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [from YF, via Debate - ain't this fresh thinking?]
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