I never really liked David Brooks, conservative columnist for the NY Times. He’s written books disparaging “bobos” (bourgeois bohemians), yet he seems like a bobo himself. (I believe that he has admitted this; takes one to know one). The whole bobo concept seems like a lame version of “yuppie” from the 1980s (especially lame since the yuppies, i.e Young Urban Professionals, aren’t young anymore). Brooks himself seems like a lame version of the late, almost great William F. Buckley. “Brooksie” doesn’t seem to have much going for him; in my book, he’s only good for selective tributes to virtue, anti-collectivism, restraint from interference with personal choice, and for other selective conservative bosh.

But lately, Brooks has written a lot about Barack Obama and has actually said a lot of insightful, almost admiring things about Obama. Despite their great disagreement about the role of government in society, Brooks seems to relate to Obama’s call for national unity transcending political interests. Strange bedfellows, for sure. (But here’s another conservative who admires Obama — again, quite strange).

Anyway, Brooks just wrote a column about Hilary Clinton’s declining chances to take the Democratic nomination, and the great damage that her refusal to surrender will cause if she goes all the way to the convention in late August. I have to admit, bobo-Brooksie convinced me that it really is time for Hilary to do the noble thing and give up. The longer she fights, the greater the chances are that McCain will be the next president (which Brooks would still prefer). Given the self-inflicted wounds caused by Obama’s response to the Wright videos, and all the other non-patriotic stuff that Obama and his wife have put out there for the Republican attack machine, every week that Hilary continues to struggle brings Obama closer to the point of no return.

Could Hilary make a stronger run against McCain? Very likely. Can she thus convince the superdelegates to overturn the wave of popular support that Obama has gained within the Democratic Party? Very unlikely. The only real options now for Hilary are to scorch the earth and watch Obama lose in November (the so-called “Tonya Harding option”; perhaps she hopes to run in 2012, when she will be 65 and McCain will be 77), or to do the right thing and get out of the way (not exactly what the Clintons are famous for, but never too late to start!). She can choose “told you so”, or she can direct her attack-dog instincts against McCain, so as to give Obama enough cover to seize the economic issue. That’s the high-ground that the Dems need to reclaim if they are to avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of seemingly inevitable victory this fall.

Barack Obama’s chances of becoming President are entirely in the hands of Hilary Clinton right now. It would be quite touching if she were to somehow decide to swallow her raging Clintonian ambition and allow Obama have his day. David Brooks himself would no doubt be impressed (even though he will still vote McCain). Stay tuned!

By now, just about everyone in the nation has said something about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos and about Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on Tuesday. The country now seems tired and ready to move on from it; that’s just when I’m ready to jump in. Too bad for me that just about everything that could be said on this already has been. Nonetheless, with my usual sense of exquisite timing, here are my thoughts on the subject.

First off, the Obama campaign was expressly NOT supposed to be about race. Senator Obama basically told us that the fact that he has African blood in him should not matter. But now, thanks to his closeness to Rev. Wright, it does. After the Wright videos surfaced last week, Obama was in effect asked to choose between being a black man and being a generic, trans-racial member of the human race, as previously advertised. He chose to be black. And I take my hat off to him for doing so. He is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church, a church community that expressly defines itself as “unashamedly black”. When called upon to break his ties to that community, the Senator refused. So, Barack Obama is now the unashamedly black candidate.

Again, I admire his courage in choosing his community bonds over political expediency. Senator Obama is an extremely bright man who knows darn well that his shot at the White House, if not the Democratic nomination, has been endangered by his choice not to condemn the Rev. Wright. I don’t have to tell you that the GOP 527 committees are going to have a field day with those videos in the fall (along with Obama’s express refusal to wear an American flag pin, the video of him not placing his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, and his wife’s words about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life).

Now, as to the speech. Obama is a bright man who knows that his candidacy has been endangered, and the speech represented a necessary damage control effort. That’s not to detract from its brilliance and bravery. Obama decided to “grasp the nettle” of underlying racial tension that America has not yet resolved (but at least has the good sense to keep from boiling over in public). He told us that he knows what many blacks say and think about whites in private, and likewise knows what a lot of whites say and think about blacks in private. He promised to keep working toward greater understanding between such blacks and whites.

He told us that he didn’t share Rev. Wright’s more fiery views; in fact he condemned them, at least from his perspective as a national celebrity. However, he asked us to accept that he hasn’t previously challenged or personally censured such expressions while in the company of his black community, and he won’t now. He’s asking the nation to acknowledge that this sort of thing is all right within the African American community. He didn’t opine whether the nation as a whole should extend similar toleration to comparable situations within the Euro-white community, the Hispanic community, the Arab/Islamic-American community, etc.

(Indeed, imagine an Egyptian-American imam lecturing at an American mosque in front of many children, “Allah, Curse America!”, “America got what it deserved on 9/11” . . . . do we hope that the participants would tell the imam that they don’t want such values conveyed to their children and that they will withdraw their financial and personal support if such messages continue?)

OK, to me that’s the BIG ONE; that’s the question of the day. Is Obama correct in asking the nation to accept the black community’s toleration, if not complete embracement, of factually wrong and patriotically negative expressions by some of its prominent members? (Black church ministers are about as prominent as you can get in many African American communities.) And that its children should be exposed to such expressions? (Admittedly, there is a countervailing message from adults that no one intends to follow up on those messages by reviving the armed ‘black nationalist’ movements of the late 1960s, e.g. the Black Panthers.)

Senator Obama didn’t have the time on Tuesday to lay out the complicated and often unspoken historical and sociological parameters that underlie the state of racial relations in America today. And neither do I — not to mention that I really don’t know them very well. But I will admit that there are valid reasons for America to extend some understanding to people like the Rev. Wright (and to their relationships to those like Senator Obama).

Jeremiah Wright is not Osama Bin Laden. He has done much to serve the needy, to provide education, and to lift up and support those within his community. He has maintained the flow of daily life within his neighborhood. As with most black ministers, he has unceasingly urged and challenged his Chicago flock to strive and achieve, to educate and improve themselves, to be good faithful husbands and wives and parents, to believe in morality, to shun negative influences such as substance abuse, gambling, prostitution, etc.

And from the broader perspective, whites today cannot expect that the legacy of 300 years of slavery and apartheid on American soil could just vanish within a half century, despite the administration of correctives such as federal civil rights laws, poverty assistance programs, extended educational opportunities, and affirmative action within higher education and the workplace. Most white families today are able to say that their ancestors were not in America when slavery and the reconstruction were taking place. But their ancestors (including my own) did choose come to this country to share in its prosperity, and a significant portion of that prosperity was gained because of the forced labor and other injustices imposed upon west Africans brought to this land in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery did give America a significant economic kick-start, although science and the industrial revolution later took over. So there is an argument that America still owes something to its children of Africa, especially those who have not yet shared in the dream.

But on the other side of the coin, I think that whites, if allowed to speak frankly, would have some legitimate points to raise. One of those questions would be this: how long? Do African-Americans expect to be treated specially forever? Do they really want that? Doesn’t challenge often bring out the best in people, and can’t too much entitlement bring out the worst? The conservatives have some valid points about human nature such as it is.

I myself don’t believe that gangs, drugs, crime and other maladies of the black poor stem from the Great Society programs of the 1960s and 1970s; what did stem from them is the now-expanding black middle class. But at some point, white guilt can be and has been unfairly exploited. Does black culture in America really want to bill itself and be viewed as a damaged group that needs to always be given a head start in every event (other than basketball and hip-hop)? I know a fair number of successful black people who probably don’t think so. And although there certainly are valid arguments regarding redress for the sins of the past, at some point nearly every human being alive today has ties with some social or ethnic group that at some point in history was persecuted or plundered. Can the world heal all of the generational effects from every wound from the past?

Somewhere between these two polar viewpoints lies the truth, along a road of reason. Barack Obama (with help from Rev. Wright) brought American race relations back into the spotlight, but basically left the issues hanging and unresolved. He has to get on with his campaign; political realities won’t let him dwell on the subject. If anything, they encourage him to get away from the topic. Politically, he needs to go back to being “Barack Obama, man of all creeds and colors”, and get away from being “Barack Obama, American black man”, as he was and is when at Trinity United.

For better and for worse, though, I’m not sure that the voters this fall will let him do that.

Being an aging “Baby Boomer”, I’ve found it rather hard to understand the appeal of Barack Obama. But David Brooks of the NY Times did a nice job today in explaining it to those of us on the wrong side of the half-century mark.

OK, thanks Brooksie. Now I understand better. Barack is an idealist at heart, not a politician.

Obama has been trying to sell a dream to our country. As dreams go, it’s relatively modest and seemingly doable (“yes we can” being the campaign motto). It envisions an America no longer split off into waring interest groups, an America where everyone starts thinking more about the good of the whole and less about grabbing their chunk of the pie regardless of what happens to everyone else. Barack Obama is trying to sell the vision of “a different kind of politics”, a politics built around respectful negotiation of honest differences, a politics of seeking “win-win” solutions, a politics of communication, long-term thinking, and fairness. He envisions a political process where using the lowest, vilest tactics to get what you want, no matter what the consequences are for the future, is no longer the norm.

Barack obviously agrees with what I have previously written in this blog, i.e. that America is getting more and more like the Roman Empire during its last hundred years of existence, in terms of domestic infighting. Opposing Roman factions would settle their differences by raising legions and sacking the major cities; we do it less violently, but just as viciously with lobbyists and spin consultants and advertising blitzs and campaign contributions to politicians. The results are the same: the spoils go to the victor, but the nation goes down the tubes as the barbarians prepare to crash the gates.

I’ve also talked here about our culture’s regrettable over-emphasis of competition and its wanton disregard of cooperation. Barack Obama has been preaching to the nation about a change of heart, about embracing cooperation in our political, economic and social lives. And that struck a chord in a lot of people, especially young people. For various reasons (including the fact that I’m not a young person anymore), I couldn’t pick up on this. I just kept seeing him as a politician; no politician could really mean what Senator Obama was saying. It was just a ploy to win, just another competitive tactic all the more pernicious for exploiting the concept of cooperation and fairness and increased collective-thinking (i.e., “for the good of the nation more than for the good of any one of us”.) But Brooksie thinks that Barack Obama was sincere, and I’m starting to agree.

Brooksie also points out that Obama is on the edge of being co-opted and corrupted by the politics that he sought to stay above. Senator Clinton, playing by the old rules, has renewed her threat to stop the Obama movement. To win, Obama is going to have to betray his ideals. The dream is over or will soon be over, although the ghost of it will march on for a while. No wonder Obama’s people think of Hilary Clinton as a “monster”; Samantha Power was just the one who got caught saying it.

I feel kind-of bad now that I understand Senator Obama a little bit better. Not that I’m going to go out and work for him or donate to his campaign. I feel that Obama was extremely naive to think that he could beat Hilary Clinton with idealism, and even more naive to think that it could also get him past the Grand Olde Party, those masters of the darker political arts. But I now think that there actually was something positive in what he and his many followers have been doing. He struck a chord by accessing the inherent goodness within all of us. Hopefully this world will someday present more and better opportunities for those virtues to bubble up and cohere within the collective sphere of international commerce, economics, politics and culture. For now, however, virtue and foresight will remain mainly a private thing. War, economic exploitation and short-sighted ways of living (i.e., America’s energy-hogging, global warming, have-versus-have not economy and the military mega-machine necessary to support it) will go on.

The whole Barack Obama thing brings back memories of another Senator who ran for President: George McGovern. I was a very enthusiastic McGovern supporter in 1972. I totally believed in him; he represented change and betterment to me. He would stop the war and bring peace and harmony and justice. Looking back on myself, I can only laugh. Had McGovern somehow been elected, his pacifist / populist / socialist approach would have been ground down over time; at best he wouldn’t have been much different from Lyndon B. Johnson (other than LBJ’s nasty mistake in getting us deep into Vietnam). But given McGovern’s relative lack of political and leadership skills, he might have been worse than Jimmy Carter in terms of getting things done. We might have avoided Watergate but come to national stalemate, to the benefit of the Soviet Union, OPEC, Japan, China, and everyone else playing hardball with the USA.

The best thing that Obama could do for the country right now would be to stick to his preachy style and his high moral standards. That would be political suicide; if Clinton didn’t get him before August, McCain surely would do so thereafter. However, his persistence and prophecy would make a lot of people think, late at night: does it really have to be this way?

I hope that Obama remains pure, but like Brooksie I strongly suspect that he won’t.

And as to George McGovern, who did in fact go down to crushing defeat in an idealistic fashion, I was a bit saddened to read an article that he wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal. He talks about how government regulations intended to protect disadvantaged people from economic exploitation often backfire and make things worse for them; his case-in-point regards various state regulations against high-interest “payday lending” by sleazy loan companies. “I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.”

(And don’t forget that McGovern endorsed Hilary Clinton early on! You’d think he would at least have started with John Edwards . . . )

What the former Senator says make much sense; but it’s just not the message that I wanted to hear from him. Instead of a pragmatic McGovern, I’d rather see him out there with Senator Obama, preaching a new day for Washington and for our world. Although they were both destined for political tragedy one way or another, their noble persistence might inspire future generations to take up the torch and seek something more than security, warmth, reproduction and ego-gratification during our all-too-short lives. C’mon, George, say it, for old time sake: YES WE CAN.