by
Reluctant Junkie - November 23, 2008
Like
millions of others here and abroad, I choked up when the TV pundits finally
proclaimed that Barack Hussein Obama would be the 44th President of
the United States. Certainty came to me when they announced that Ohio had gone
for Obama. At 11 p.m., when MSNBC declared him the winner, tears began to flow
and I woke my wife, who had gone to bed an hour earlier, already confident of
the outcome. After eight years of mutual political foreboding, I wanted to
share the wonderful news as well as the joy and relief we both felt. In that
moment all the nagging doubts I was unable to shake leading up to the election
were swept away. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. Of course I
wanted to savor the moment, and I did; but in the back of my mind was the
awareness that this was just one moment, just a beginning, as Obama put it in
his marvelous victory speech.
There
seems to be a near consensus that the President-Elect and his team deserve the
highest praise for conducting one of the most effective presidential campaigns
of all time, the details of which are now being fleshed out by experts. There
were many times during the campaign that I became frustrated with the Obama
campaign because they weren't striking back forcefully enough, weren't
attacking a vulnerable opposition beset with pronounced and potentially
damaging weaknesses. Why, for example, weren't they bringing up McCain's many
opportunistic flip-flops, his cynical selection of an ignoramus for a running
mate, his shameless sucking up to the religious right whom he previously
labeled “agents of intolerance,” the Palins' association with the Alaskan
Secessionist Party, McCain and Palin's stonewalling the release of their
medical records, the Keating Five, Palin's embarrassing and outrageous
avoidance of the press following the Kouric disaster, and much more?
Predictably, the broadcast media pretty much ignored McCain and Palin's glaring
liabilities, although they did sort of come through on the flashy issue of
Palin's $150,000 coast-to-coast spending spree. Typical mainstream media
ratings-based superficial infotainment. I feared the Obama campaign was letting
McCain-Palin off the hook and the election might end up like Bush-Kerry.
As the
relentless, incendiary slander from the Republican campaign reached a crescendo
in the final weeks, Obama stayed on message and emphasized the issues,
especially the economy, and most of all middle-class economic plight. One area
where he didn't let McCain off the hook was the Republican candidate's support
of Bush. Obama wasn't going to let McCain co-opt his signature message of
“change.”
Well, it
turned out Obama knew what he was doing: He projected a serious, dignified,
competent presidential image that inspired confidence in contrast to the
desperate ravings and mudslinging coming from McCain and Palin. He didn't
exactly ignore the attacks as much as he deflected them, sometimes with
appropriate, contemptuous humor: “I don’t know what’s next,” he
said in response to their attempt to brand him as a socialist. “By end of the
week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys
in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich!” Obama appeared to trust the American people, with just a little help, to recognize
the obvious – the scattershot smear tactics being employed by an erratic
opposition that couldn't compete on the issues that Americans were most
concerned about. He beat the Rovian character assassins without sinking to
their despicable level.
Two
weeks later I am still savoring my happy feelings, and I'm prouder to be an
American than I have been in many years. I feel as if a great emotional burden
has been lifted; and for the first time in years I am experiencing cautious
optimism as well as cautious relief from Republican-inspired dread. I am
optimistic because Americans have elected rational leaders who show every sign
of addressing the nation's many problems in a responsible manner and actually
putting good governance ahead of gaining political advantage at every turn. And
I'm relieved because we have somehow dodged the right-wing bullet aimed right at
the heart of our constitutional democracy, so that for now, at least, the
country's remorseless drift toward fascism has been curtailed.
But it
has been two weeks, plenty of time for reality to reassert itself. As a
confirmed skeptical realist, I can't help looking for the dark cloud behind
every silver lining. And looking out across today's political landscape, I
would have to be blind or in denial on the scale of a Phil (it's a mental
recession) Graham not to see many dark clouds gathering on the horizon. In
fact, everywhere I look there is a huge mess to clean up, the result of eight
years of calculated treachery, criminal neglect, squandered opportunities, and
monumental incompetence. So my skeptical-realistic take on the situation is
this: Despite the bipartisan, inclusive intentions of the new president, the
fragmented opposition may soon reconstitute itself into a purer and even more
virulent form of right-wing extremism – not just lipstick on a pig. We
will still be assailed by the daily din of a dogmatic, hate-mongering,
dishonest, and frighteningly determined opposition. At their most menacing,
they will be a kind of political Borg requiring our utmost vigilance. Other times their simpleminded, faith-based
assertions will evoke images of the comical, ultra-capitalist Ferengi. But
however they come across to us, the army of political, religious, and media
demagogues will continue to exploit the ignorance, fears, prejudices, and
superstitions of their sizable and angry constituency. (Are you out there,
dittoheads?) And they will continue to fan the flames of the culture war in
increasingly ugly ways and to obstruct progressive change with their familiar
lock-step tactics. One of their highest priorities will be to protect the gains
they made in the Federal judiciary during eight years of Bush appointments with
little opposition from a timid Democratic Congress.
Let's
not forget that a small, well-disciplined army of like-minded fanatics with a
well-defined long-term strategy can be more than a match for a larger, poorly
coordinated force of well-intentioned individuals. Democrats by nature are a
diverse, often fractious group. In principle that is what healthy democracy is
all about, assuming that the large majority of citizens are well-informed,
loyal to the ideals of Constitutional democracy, and participating in good
faith. I leave it to you to decide if that's where we're at in the United
States at the present time.
In the
next several columns I will discuss the dangers of complacency and the kinds of
actions I feel progressives need to take to keep the right-wing social and
political cancer in remission. We have won a major battle, but the fruits of
victory remain elusive.
One more
thing: It remains a matter of great uncertainty how the elephant in the room
– I'm talking about the very real possibility of an economic depression
– will affect everything all of us have been talking about. 