Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s upset victory in the New Hampshire
primary last week was every bit as impressive as
Senator Barack Obama’s
Iowa caucus breakout five days before — if anything, more impressive,
since his win was predicted and hers unforeseen. But the reactions to
the two events couldn’t have been more different. Obama’s January 3
triumph let loose a giddiness bordering on exhilaration among voters
and, especially, media commentators, who hailed his triumph as
“historic,” even though he was not in fact the first African-American
to win a major presidential nominating contest. (Jesse Jackson won 13
primaries and caucuses in 1988.) By contrast, when Clinton overcame
long odds to become the first woman in US
history to win a major-party
primary, no leading news outlet trumpeted this landmark feat. Many
failed to mention it at all.This startling difference underscores one
of Obama’s advantages heading into the do-or-die February 5 contests.
“Obamamania” sputtered in the Granite State, but it is far from dead.
Many of the voters and pundits who were thrilled by Obama’s compelling
Iowa speech two weeks ago remain intoxicated, heady with the hope that
he can deliver not just “change” but a categorically different kind of
change from Clinton or the Republican candidates. So what explains the
magic? The most obvious explanation is Obama’s stirring oratory, with
its notes of generational change and unity. The key to his seduction,
though, resides not just in what he says but in what remains unsaid. It
lies in the tacit offer — a promise about overcoming America’s shameful
racial history — that his particular candidacy offers to his
enthusiasts, and to us all. Obama’s allure differs from the
infatuations of past election cycles because it can’t be traced to what
he has done or will do. In his legislative career, Obama has produced
few concrete policy changes, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a
rank-and-file fan who can cite one. Not since 1896 — when another
rousing speechmaker, William Jennings Bryan, sought the White House —
has the zeal for a candidate corresponded so little to a record of hard
accomplishment. But merely asking if Obama has done enough for us to
expect he’d be a good president misses the point, because that measures
the past rather than imagining the future. Yet if Obama charms us by
pointing to tomorrow, he doesn’t come bearing a new ideological vision.
In the 1980 primaries, the insurgent Ronald Reagan won on his robust,
pro-military, anti-government conservatism, a philosophy that until
then had languished even within the GOP. Similarly, in 1992, Bill
Clinton triumphed because he was the first Democrat since the 1960s to
formulate a viable and vital new liberalism — one rooted in years of
policy wonkery, a frank reckoning with his party’s failures and an
early recognition of the importance of globalisation.High-minded and
process-oriented, in the Mugwump tradition that runs from Adlai
Stevenson to Bill Bradley, it is pitched less to the Democratic Party’s
working-class base than to upscale professionals.The Obama phenomenon,
then, stems not from what he has done but who he is. As the social
critic John McWhorter has written, “What gives
people a jolt in their
gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a
ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land.” He is the great
white hope.None of the candidates has discussed race much this year.
Even John .History provides a precedent of sorts: In 1960, John F.
Kennedy, a dashing, almost aristocratic figure who defied many nasty
stereotypes of Irish Catholics, made Protestants feel not just safe in
voting for him but downright virtuous. Similarly, Obama — whose
strongest appeal has thus far been to upscale white liberals — allows
those whites to feel good about themselves and their country. He lets
them imagine that a nation founded for freedom yet built on slavery canbe redeemed by pulling a lever.At the same time, Obama doesn’t threaten
or discomfort whites. He doesn’t strike them as wronged or impatient,
or as the spokesman of a long-subjugated minority group or even as
someone particularly culturally different from themselves. As much
Kansan as Kenyan, Obama does not descend from families who suffered
American slavery or Jim Crow. His family tree has fewer slaves than
slaveholders, fewer chains than Cheneys.This background may be what
some people (mainly blacks) have meant when they asked the regrettable
question of whether Obama is “black enough” to earn their votes. But
Obama has always been black enough for his elite white enthusiasts, who
would never presume to judge an African-American’s racial authenticity.
Some pundits scratched their heads when Obama was trailing Clinton
among black voters. (He recently pulled even or ahead.) But it made
perfect sense. Clinton had a track record of working for
African-Americans’ interests. Obama was not just skirting controversies
such as the “Jena Six” — the black Louisiana teen-agers punished
disproportionately last year for their role in a racial fracas — but
was aiming his appeals squarely at the white Iowans who he knew could
make him the front-runner. None of this is to minimise the barriers
that Obama has faced and still faces because of his race.