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  'The Appeal of Throwing the Dice': Obama's Double Magic

'The Appeal of Throwing the Dice' Obama's Double Magic

By Gary Kamiya

Part 2: But which of three Democrats would be the most effective?

Against Obama's transformative appeal, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards offer their own compelling symbolic narratives. Clinton offers the promise of competence, hard work and commitment to progressive causes -- and the too-long deferred dream of a woman leading America. Edwards offers a slashing, muscular anger and a refusal to turn the other cheek to the forces of reaction and privilege. Most Democrats I know, including Obama supporters, would be happy if either of them were elected president. But neither Clinton nor Edwards hold out the sense of transcendental hope that Obama does.

Of course, "hope" is just a word. And while emotional catharsis is important, in the end what really matters is performance. But on the issues, there are no decisive differences between the three candidates. Those Obama critics who argue that his bipartisan rhetoric means he is the second coming of Joe Lieberman have seriously misread him. Obama is a classic liberal Democrat, whose message of inclusion and unity is at once sincere and tactically shrewd: He knows that a confrontational, partisan black man, even one who refuses to play the racial guilt card, has no chance of being elected president. At the same time, he clearly believes that conciliation is better than enmity. In this regard, ironically, he resembles the husband of his most formidable adversary, who also ran successfully on a "new Democrat" platform of hope and inclusion.

Which means that pragmatically, the decision comes down to effectiveness: Which of the three Democrats would be able to achieve the most?

Those who support Obama argue that he will be able to work more effectively with Republicans and independents than his rivals. Those who support Clinton or Edwards argue that Obama is a political naif who will go down singing "Kumbaya" while being eaten alive by the right wing. His critics also claim that Obama is too inexperienced to be entrusted with the nation's highest office, but that argument smacks of bogus "war-on-terror" fear-mongering -- Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who helped bring us the Iraq war, had decades of experience. It's a false argument in any case: Character and brains count more than decades of cutting deals and shoveling pork through Congress.

The truth is, it's impossible to know whether Obama would be a more effective president than his opponents. The question of whether bipartisan gentleness is more effective than tough confrontation is meaningless, both because there's no single answer to it and because we have no way of knowing how any of the Democrats will actually govern -- for all we know, Obama may turn out to be a harder-edged negotiatior than Edwards. So it's really about intangibles. In the end, it may come down to how one feels about the great divide that was so painfully revealed in the 2004 elections.

In a widely discussed piece in the Atlantic, the idiosyncratic conservative and former outspoken war supporter Andrew Sullivan argued that Obama alone can end the "nonviolent civil war that has crippled America." I don't agree with Sullivan's characterization of that civil war -- his equation of rabid hate-mongers like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly and innocuous liberal groups like MoveOn is wrongheaded and ignores the fact that MoveOn and its ilk only came into existence in response to the destructive depredations of the Bush administration and its powerful right-wing allies. The "nonviolent civil war" was not started by the left, it was started by the right, which could not tolerate the inevitable triumph of moderate secular modernism announced by benign liberals like Bill Clinton. And Sullivan may be too optimistic in his judgment that hardcore conservatives will embrace a liberal, antiwar, pro-choice black politician. But I agree with Sullivan's larger thesis, that the great American divide is bridgeable -- and that Obama holds out the best promise of bridging it.

To be sure, a country that lives by symbolic reconciliation also dies when it is not achieved -- which is why nominating Obama would be a gigantic gamble. The big built-in Democratic advantage in 2008 represents the best opportunity for Obama to win, but it also means that a loss would be devastating. If the young, dynamic, qualified Obama loses to one of the pathetic crop of Republican candidates -- whether it be the unreconstructed Iraq war supporter John McCain, the pathological 9/11 fetishizer Rudy Giuliani, the empty-suit Mitt Romney or the genial but unprepared Mike Huckabee -- the logical conclusion would be that large numbers of Americans were not ready to vote for a black man. In which case, America's symbolic leap forward into a post-racial age of comity would be revealed to be an illusion -- an outcome that would be almost unbearable.

But after Bush, the appeal of throwing the dice is irresistible. If Obama wins in November, a political miracle will have happened: We will have gone from following an authoritarian fool into an insane war to electing a progressive black president, without missing a beat. Can it happen? Who knows? But if America can go down that far into the dark side, perhaps we can emerge just as quickly into the light. And after eight years without it, I don't want to be the one to bet against hope.

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