So we had an election. For those in the new opposition the outcome was variously enviable, troubling, or contemptible. For the victors it was…what else, an occasion for gathering an enormous outdoor rally at an urban theatrical stage to chant.
For my own part, I’m always somewhat reluctant to criticize the phenomenon of Barack Obama, because I cannot do so without confessing I miss the point itself. That’s because I possess a certain immunity to his allegedly irresistible charm. I miss the intimate personal connection supposedly conveyed through elaborately choreographed and cinematically lit mass spectacles, I find his celebrated speeches largely barren of purpose, and perhaps above all, I remain permanently unmoved by the emotional ecstasy his presence provokes in so many.
It should be acknowledged as true that if these impressions precondition your criticism, you do miss the point of Obama as political leader and cultural phenomenon on a profound level (and I surely do). For the critic, this can pose a difficulty that one must become an opponent of the phenomenon itself, rather than just its policy projects. And for the moment, that is to be the adversary of a powerful political tide.
The measure of the efficacy of Obama’s ecstatic politics though, is perhaps best illustrated by the extent to which many conservative writers have been tempted to align themselves with the historical dimension of the campaign in its aftermath. As Mike Potemra expressed the tendency:
Can we McCain voters, without embarrassment, shed a tear of patriotic joy about the historic significance of what just happened? And I offer a short, rhetorical answer. Yes, we can.
(National Review)
If you roll your eyes at that, we share a predicament. Obama pledged himself to becoming a transformational political figure early in the campaign, and with maudlin sentiments such as Mr. Potemra’s being so common, he may have won that in addition to the electoral college.
The ecstasy of the politics –in Mr. Potemra’s case at the experience of racial redemption– is something that you either feel a powerful tug toward, or are vexed by or indifferent to. So animated and central is this emotional dimension to the Obama political experience, that an indifference cannot help but lend flesh to the caricature of the ugly critic. Such is my lot.
Yet, as the television cameras panned across the vast human sea of joyously weeping, chanting masses in Chicago last night, it was impossible to escape my immunity to it. What was this captivating fire that draws Obama’s partisans to the man? Why does it move them so deeply? It is something beyond politics that I see the written words for, but cannot apprehend the poetry of.
So be it. To be uncomfortable at seeing grown men crying at the magnetic image of a leader who hasn’t yet spoken, may be a precondition for opposition in more practical policy disputes in the coming years. On the opposite shore, those swept along by enchantment with the ecstasy, are inevitably not as particular about their purposes. The swifter, as always, they are undone.