{"id":296,"date":"2008-03-07T21:12:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T21:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/03\/07\/296\/"},"modified":"2015-02-18T20:48:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T01:48:56","slug":"296","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=296","title":{"rendered":"The Dreamers, Obama and McGovern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being an aging \u201cBaby Boomer\u201d, I\u2019ve 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<\/a> to those of us on the wrong side of the half-century mark. <\/p>\n

OK, thanks Brooksie. Now I understand better. Barack is an idealist at heart, not a politician. <\/p>\n

Obama has been trying to sell a dream to our country. As dreams go, it\u2019s relatively modest and seemingly doable (\u201cyes we can\u201d 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 \u201ca different kind of politics\u201d, a politics built around respectful negotiation of honest differences, a politics of seeking \u201cwin-win\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also talked here about our culture\u2019s 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\u2019t 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., \u201cfor the good of the nation more than for the good of any one of us\u201d.) But Brooksie thinks that Barack Obama was sincere, and I\u2019m starting to agree.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I feel kind-of bad now that I understand Senator Obama a little bit better. Not that I\u2019m 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\u2019s energy-hogging, global warming, have-versus-have not economy and the military mega-machine necessary to support it) will go on.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have been much different from Lyndon B. Johnson (other than LBJ\u2019s nasty mistake in getting us deep into Vietnam). But given McGovern\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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? <\/p>\n

I hope that Obama remains pure, but like Brooksie I strongly suspect that he won\u2019t. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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 \u201cpayday lending\u201d by sleazy loan companies. \u201cI’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.\u201d <\/p>\n

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

What the former Senator says make much sense; but it\u2019s just not the message that I wanted to hear from him. Instead of a pragmatic McGovern, I\u2019d 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\u2019mon, George, say it, for old time sake: YES WE CAN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being an aging \u201cBaby Boomer\u201d, I\u2019ve 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5182,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/5182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}