Obama, Ourselves

History is a story we tell ourselves--not so much a record of everything that happened in the past, but a narrative crafted collectively (in part deliberately, in part unconsciously) in which some events are remembered, others forgotten, in which some events are read as momentous turning points, others deleted for being inconsequential.

Storytelling--the need and ability to shape events real and imagined into coherent narratives with beginnings, middles, and ends and a sense of inevitability to their arcs--is so fundamental to human psychology that it must be an evolutionary adaptation, an aspect of the human mind that gives our species a dramatic, competitive advantage.

Sometimes events occur that seem so sudden that our coherent cultural narrative breaks down and we struggle to reshape it. The September 11th attacks were one such event. But sometimes events occur, or public figures arrive, that fit so neatly into our shared public narrative that we can almost read the end of the narrative arc from the beginning moment.

Barack Obama is one such figure, a politician who appeals to the young like no presidential candidate since Jack Kennedy (the undergraduates I teach, most of whom are barely political, absolutely adore him, as does my 15-year-old daughter) because he is so recognizable to them. Like other contemporary pop culture heroes--Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods--he is a charming, good-looking, bi-racial overachiever, although like Jeter and Tiger he is soft-spoken. It's a fresh cultural identity. Obama is probably the only person who could go on TRL and get votes.

The biography Obama detailed in his first book, Dreams from My Father, places the man in the inevitable flow of nearly every contemporary American narrative of identity---he's a black man from Chicago, a white man from Kansas, a Hawaiian whose grandfather fought in WWII after Pearl Harbor, and a second generation American son of an immigrant who, through access to education, became the first black man to edit the Harvard Law Review. Becoming the first black president drops so neatly into the Obama story that it feels perfect, inevitable even--just as Tiger's story makes his primacy as a golfer inevitable.

Fitting into the psychological narrative is an intangible political asset. It can't be measured like campaign donations and endorsements can, but it is a real asset nonetheless because of the nature of human consciousness: the species thrives by crafting stories and Obama's story is immaculate, straight down to his no vote on military intervention in Iraq as a freshman Senator.

I'm a Democrat and I want to support Barack Obama for President. I can feel it when he speaks (making people feel it is an attribute shared by many successful presidential candidates including Regan and Clinton). And to some degree I also think of him as my homeboy since he was a few years ahead of me as an undergraduate at Columbia University in the early 1980s (I didn't know him although he was a Spanish language classmate of one of my best friends). He fits my story.

To make the intellectual commitment to support Obama--a green Senator with almost no legislative record worth discussing--I will need to see a detailed policy plan and to be given some sense of who would comprise an Obama cabinet, something more than the broad statement of feel-good principles articulated in Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope. But emotionally I'm there because of the way I respond to the Obama story.

This is not to slight Hillary Clinton--a tough, practical, capable woman whose story is nearly as compelling. Among all presidential hopefuls on either side of the aisle, no person is more qualified or prepared to be president.

Nor am I naive about the chances of getting a black man elected president (I did see what happened to Harold Ford in Tennessee after Bob Corker started running race-baiting ads). But Obama's story is my story, and that's an evolutionary advantage.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

I like the guy too, but will need to hear A LOT more of platfrom before getting excited. His lack of record and experince is a very big hurdle.

[Tom K]

Hey, Jason. I enjoyed this post, and the title is perfect.

Two points:

1. I think Obama was in the state legislature at the time of the Iraq war resolution. (I could google it, but what the heck, I'll fly blind). I'm pretty sure he made his opposition known, but didn't have a Senate vote. Maybe this illustrates your larger point: the story urges that he voted nay, so our minds push the facts to fit the deeper story we feel.

2. To get a little controversial, let me address the point of storytelling as an "evolutionary advantage". If the story of a person of mixed (and therefore partly different) race is compelling as a matter of evolutionary urge, why then has race prejudice been such a marked human tendency? Surely, it must have had some evolutionary advantage, to become so common? And it that is true, why aren't those imbedded tendencies at work to make supporting Obama more difficult, rather than less? (I know there are some who won't support him because of his race, but the number of those people, I believe, is pretty small to be the vestige of a hard-wired survival instinct.

Changing times can't really be the answer, since evolution doesn't work that fast. If it did, we'd have developed into far better storytellers than the ancients (Homer or the Navajo), but I see little evidence of that (apart from technological developments).

Anyway, enjoyed the piece.

[Jason Chervokas]

TomK, of course you're right about the 2002 speech in the State Senate, as well as about how perfectly my attribution shows the point of about the story demanding what it demands.

Maybe I wasn't clear w/ respect to your second point. I'm not saying that race mixing, or the dream of race mixing, or stories about race mixing are in anyway evolutionary (they may be, but that's not what I'm talking about). What I'm saying is that the urge to make life conform to stories is so fundamentally human that it must exist for an evolutionary reason. It's the system our consciousness uses to navigate life. As a result there exists a kind of ongoing cultural narrative and the events and people that click with it can be carried by it.

We crave compelling stories with triumphant outcomes. Having the right story for the times appeals to something hardwired into humanity.

btw, I think you have to be a pollyanna to believe that there are only a small number of people who won't vote for obama because he's black. Enough to swing a coupla states.

[Slappy]

Obama is popular because he is an underdog. People love underdogs. Underdogs make for great stories. However, underdogs are only underdogs because they rarely win.

[Jason Chervokas]

btw, as to the racism and the story of race mixing as evolutionary....yeah there's always been racism but there also have also always been cross racial sexual fetishes

[Jason Chervokas]

Slappy, I think there's more to the story that appeals about Obama than the fact that he's an underdog. Tom Vilsack is an underdog too, but nobody cares about him.

[kali yuga]

"TomK, of course you're right about the 2002 speech in the State Senate, as well as about how perfectly my attribution shows the point of about the story demanding what it demands."

. . . which is exactly what I find so distasteful about Obama. He gets an awful lot of credit for a whole bunch of nothing.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would vote against the Iraq slaughter, but in fact he didn't.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would vote against Sleazy Rice for Secretary of State, but in fact he voted for her.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would vote against the PATRIOT Act, but in fact he voted for it.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would lead a filibuster against Alito, but in fact he didn't.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would vote against a bill which would free corporations from class action lawsuits, but in fact he voted for it.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would support Lamont over Lieberman, but in fact he supported Lieberman.

He SEEMS like the kind of guy who would support equal rights for gays and lesbians, but in fact he doesn't.

Supporting a politician because he looks good on TV, or because he's a tough talking good old boy, or because he spews garbage about "faith" and "hope", or because he fits some fabricated narrative that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside-- no thanks. We can't afford any more "style point" presidents. I'll take substance from here on out, thank you very much, and I've yet to see it from Obama.

[Jason Chervokas]

Well, in fairness to Obama, he wasn't in the Senate when the vote on Iraq was taken, he did however oppose it on the campaign trail in 2002, which was the opposition I was fascinatingly misremembering as a Senate vote in 2002.

Similarly he wasn't in the Senate when the Patriot Act was passed (but he was when it was reauthorized with only nominal changes).

Also, I think the class action bill you are talking about had to do with the kind of greenmail class action suits filed to try to force corporations to make pay outs. These are corporate raids, not suits filed on behalf of truely aggreved parties and they have become a real problem and SHOULD be stopped.

I don't necessarily agree w/ him on gay marriage (he's one of those guys who supports civil unions but not marriage), personally I favor doing away with civil marriage and only having civil unions and allowing many different kinds of partners (say, widows who might chose to live together) to file as domestic partners. But I think to say by supporting civil unions he doesn't support equal rights for gays, is an overstatement.

Similarly to damn a jr Senator for not leading a filibuster on Alito when the votes weren't there asking for something impossible.

Can't defend his vote on Rice or his support of Lieberman.

[kali yuga]

Obama wasn't in the Senate in '02, but let's not just assume he would have voted against the invasion just because the story we want to believe demands it. If anything, his shifting position on Iraq since reaching the Senate suggests he probably would have lacked the political will to vote against it. See Harper's for more on this:
www.harpers.org/BarackObamaInc.html

His vote to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act was unconscionable, really, considering that he didn't even have the excuse of not having read the thing. By the time of the reauthorization, it had become clear exactly what the Police State Act really is, yet he voted for it anyway.

So the Junior Senator is not ready to lead a filibuster, but he is ready to be president? And not only did he not lead the filibuster, he actively undermined Kerry's belated attempt to do so by telling anyone who would listen that it was doomed to failure. Maybe Alito couldn't have been stopped, but where's the evidence that Obama had any interest in even trying?

I'm open to hearing legitimate reasons for supporting Obama, but nobody seems able to provide anything other than his ethnic heritage, good looks, and smooth presentation. That ain't enough for me.

[roxtar]

I, too, would like to throw my support behind Obama. But not yet. Aside from seeing his detailed positions on the issues, I think it behooves us to go slowly. Obama and Clinton are going to suck all the oxygen out of the room where fundraising is concerned. I'm going to support someone less beholden to the big democratic money machine. Could be Edwards, could be Clark, could be someone else. What I don't want to see is a 2-candidate Democratic primary. Sure, I'll support Obama if he's the nominee (not ready to commit to Clinton, yet) but it's in everybody's interests to have a diversity of opinions represented in the run-up to the primaries.

[Jason Chervokas]

Kali- You're right, Obama may not be ready to lead the country, and the Patriot Act vote was the wrong one, and his position on Iraq is not pure (but whomever wins the Dem nod will be someone with a history of changing opinions on Iraq).

But I'm willing to entertain the notion that he might be ready to lead, in large part because he tugs at my heartstrings and lets be honest, emotion and identity are what get candidates elected, not policy arguments. But I want him to show me exactly how he might lead and that he's capable of leading over the course of a campaign (and in the Senate--he has a year in the majority to get something done and show us that there are issues that matter to him).

Roxtar, any candidate capable of winning the Dem nomination will have to raise double digit millions so there's not going to be a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington type regular guy nominee free from the corrupting need to raise dough. Among the three front runners right now there are few differences politically and I'd be more comfortable with any of them than I was with Kerry.

[Slappy]

Jason Chervokas: Vilsack vs Obama. Mmmmm... Vilsack wins that one. Do you think Obama would keep the "Reagan-Democrats"? Nope. The Democrats need to win some of the fly-over states in order to win the election. Obama will scare the crap out of a lot of people. Vilsack is boring and unknown. Obama has a great story but he is black and has a non-Anglo name and is therefore an underdog by default. Like Tom K said above: "...evolution doesn't work that fast." I don't like it but its reality.

Edwards has the best chance of winning. His "two Americas" line is dead on and speaks to the masses. The working class and the middle class are tired of being abused at this point. Everyone knows this war is for profit but they're paying the price. People are fed up with Walmart. Few can afford health insurance. Edwards speaks to these issues best. Once the troops are brought home Americans are going to want to forget about Iraq and concentrate on domestic issues. If the troops aren't brought home before '08, the Dems could could get Al Sharpton elected. Well almost. I think the GOP is going to abandon Bush altogether though and bring them home.

Clinton will be a disaster. The right hate her. The far left hate her. She would be playing defense and trying to get people to like her.

Winning is paramount. Supporting your favorite candidate should be secondary to who is the best candidate.

[kali yuga]

Vilsack is a clown. See here:

http://tinyurl.com/3ccalm

His use of the "culture of dependency" mantra is one of the most offensive campaign tactics I've seen.

[kali yuga]

To a great extent, I agree with Slappy about Edwards, although, like Obama, he's never passed a smell test when there was anything at stake. He voted for the PATRIOT Act, and he voted for the Iraq slaughter-- the two most important votes during his term --because he lacked political courage. His apologies three years after the fact don't mean much to me.

Kucinich and Feingold are the only two potential Democratic candidates who do pass the smell test. Unfortunately, Feingold has said he won't run, and Kucinich is considered "unelectable" by most, presumably because Americans won't vote for someone who believes in civil liberties and consistently opposes the kind of monstrous, psychopathic aggression that Bush represents. It may be that this nation is simply incapable of governing itself at this point.