But Obama’s impact is bigger than that and every effort to define it is absorbed in the bigness.
A woman at a party I attended, where there was dancing, and singing and grooving to the music and much other hullaballoo pent up after eight years, said, “From Lincoln to Martin Luther King to Barack Obama….”
Yes, there’s a narrative. A woman of color embellished, “Even I’m old enough to remember segregation. Eating in different restaurants, going to different bathrooms.”
But a tormented youth tried pulling a buzz-kill, posing endless questions about how---from a Palestinian perspective---Obama might become just one more oppressive U.S. president.
In the wee hours a friend on the phone said, “Just look at the challenges he faces.” Oh the list is daunting and growing by the minute. More explosions in Iraq, a Mexican leader murdered just hours ago. Afghanistan a basket case, Pakistan held hostage by its own secret service. Chinese coal. Iranian nuclear ambitions. American auto companies turning to rust, to dust. The rise of right-wing populism from Alaska to the Deep South.
A voice on the radio tried defining the election in terms of dogma, quoting billionaire Jack Welch saying, “He’s got to show right away that he’s not in the pocket of the Left.”
Oh really? But it’s bigger than that. It's worthy of Greek drama, Shakespearean tragedy, American mythology.
As the winning team took the stage, someone at the party said, “It’s like a movie. Oh look at Jesse Jackson crying. Look at Oprah. Look at Joe Biden up there, after all those runs at the White House. Remember the car wreck? And look at his little frail mother. Oh my, look at Obama. Imagine losing your grandmother, the woman who raised you, on the eve of winning the presidency. Look at Michelle and those girls.” Every face on the stage represents a compelling personal story.
Even I can summon a personal narrative--about how this victory redeems my own journalistic career in a way. Only… only… this is bigger than that. And yet smaller.
Wonks are wonking and politicos are politicizing and Obama himself put this in context of political history on the front end of his gracious acceptance speech, noting how David Axelrod and others ran the best campaign in the history of the country, maybe the world. Who can argue?
Still, write the truest thing you know about this and you still fall short. A dear relation emailed, "I think Obama’s the salvation of the world…"
And another: “I feel like I am back in the sixties again working on Gene McCarthy's campaign... And, for the first time since then, I am experiencing HOPE!!!!!!!!!!! Dang!”
The losers have their own narratives, thank you kindly. One in my own extended family compares Obama-worship to Hitler worship, unable to see how eight years of being force fed an America involved in war crimes, defoliation, botched rescues, mountaintop removal, bank failures, trillions in corporate welfare, assaults on eardrums of whales and dolphins, deteriorating air, ineffectual war, kidnapping, global crises, character smears, truth suppression, vote suppression, incredible debt, cultural decline, scapegoating, nuke building and worse… will make a star out of anyone who triumphantly opposes such forces in ways that elevate the debate, the nation.
Then there’s the International take as recorded yesterday in the New York Times online. “It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas…. Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it so: Mr. Obama ‘brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to—that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen."
On the other hand, I’ve heard Obama called a Muslim, Arab, Jew-lover, socialist, terrorist, rag-head, lapdog of corporations, and all sorts of racial epithets have been hurled his way. He's been absurdly associated with names like Charles Manson, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Satan, the anti-Christ….
Others look askance and say, “Hey, we're a little more like the Europeans now. We don’t need to be starting wars and making everybody crazy.”
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