Our Nation’s “Lonely Eyes” Seek A Savior

What’s behind the astonishing successes of Mike Huckabee’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns last night in Iowa? BBC correspondent Katty Kay knows. People are “fed up,” she said tonight on BBCAmerica’s exceptional hour-long news program, BBC World News America. Ms. Kay continued:

It’s the wonderful age-old mantra of “I can fix it for you by being an outsider. I am on your side.”

We are “fed up” alright. We, the people of this nation, are so desperate to get past the Bush administration that we’ve been obsessing since last year about the race for a president who won’t take office until late January 2009. In the last of his series of columns for The Guardian — which The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg says is “an unparalleled running history of the ideological and moral squalor of the George W. Bush Administration” — Sidney Blumenthal summed up how far America has fallen:

Every aspect of George Bush’s foreign policy has now collapsed. Every dream of neoconservatism has become a nightmare. Every doctrine has turned to dust. The influence of the United States has reached a nadir, its lowest point since before the second world war, when the country was encased in isolationism. [...]

The quest for absolute power has not forged an “empire” but provoked ever-widening chaos. … Squandering the immense influence of the US in such a short period has required monumental effort. [...]

But this is not rock-bottom. There is further to fall.

About the “neoconservatives” who wrought this catastrophe, Blumenthal notes that, for them, “Self-examination is too painful and in any case unfamiliar.” So too is “self-examination” too painful and unfamiliar to most Americans, especially how they got themselves in this horrific mess with Mr. Bush. Indomitable and hegemonic as Americans been for so very long, we, as a people, are not given to the sobering habits of self-questioning or self-doubting. So, instead of self-examination, the American people have rushed heart-long into paroxysmal love affairs with saviors who promise them a “new morning” in America — like a dying patient who is willing to try any quick-fix treatment, undeterred by sober warnings about quackery.

The mantra of “I can fix it for you by being an outsider. I am on your side” is an elixir for humiliated, desperate and frightened people. Fittingly, the conservative Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele talked on Charlie Rose’s post-Iowa show about the “magic appeal” of Barack Obama. He represents “dramatic change,” said Steele. Obama is a “bargainer,” Steele continued. He’s someone “basically who makes a bargain with white America saying that I won’t rub America’s shameful history of racism in your face if you won’t hold my race against me. And whites show a lot of gratitude for that kind of a bargain. Oprah Winfrey is a classic bargainer. They have a special magic.”

“You’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this.,” writes David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, about Obama’s Iowa win. Pragmatism and “political substance” are out; “personal uplift” and idealism are in.

Conservative speech writer Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal, uses the word “huge” — three times — to describe Obama’s victory. “[S]omething new begins on the Democratic side,” pens Ms. Noonan, with Obama’s message, which she italicizes: “Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together.”

“Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together.” If that’s not “ethereal,” I don’t know what is.

“[S]omething new begins.” What exactly that might be, we have no idea. But Ms. Noonan urges us to believe.

But, suspicious as I am, I have to wonder why conservatives like David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Shelby Steele — and, also today, Karl Rove and rightwing Web sites like RedState.com and even Free Republic — are gloating over Obama’s victory.

Suspicious as I am, I think that perhaps I should have titled this article, “Republicans Celebrate Obama Iowa Win: Obama Sized Up As Weakest Democrat.”

Mark Crispin Miller hits on the problem with, as I wrote about the other day, Obama’s “mushmelon bipartisanship”:

In his big summary speech in Iowa the other day, while going on and on and on about the “change” that he keeps saying he represents, [Obama] said that “it’s change that won’t just come from more anger at Washington, or turning up the heat on Republicans.” With his gaze, as ever, nobly fixed on some bright galaxy far, far away, he added: There’s no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there. We don’t need more heat. We need more light.”

Now, I’m as keen on civilized relations as the next man; but if the next man is a fascist, it would be foolish to expect him to reciprocate. …

Larry Johnson laid it out first and best in his “give ‘em no quarter” piece, “Why Are the Rightwing Republicans Hyping Obama?”

Following close on the heels of Obama endorsements from the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the conservative Republican newspaper the Sioux City Journal, yet another conservative Republican newspaper the Dallas Morning News has now rushed to support Obama.

There’s definitely an Obama bandwagon out there – built and pushed by Republican neocons eager to put another right-wing Republican in the White House.

There is no question in my mind that the right views Obama as the one Democrat most easy to beat in a general election.

Larry points out the motivators behind the Kumbayah praise from all of these conservatives and right-wingers:

Could it be because his positions on the crucial issues of health care and Social Security are closer to those of the Republican right wing than those of any other Democratic contender?

Could it be because his pose of rejecting what the Morning News calls “the divisive politics of the past” make him an easier mark for Republican leaders who still go down the line with the partisan and hyper-divisive George Bush and Dick Cheney?

These Republicans have proved for many, many years that they are all for divisive politics, so as long as it helps the right. So maybe that’s why they are promoting a Democrat who talks like Barack Obama does – and why they loathe the prospect of running against tested fighters like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

Or maybe it’s just that these Republicans just want the Democrats to nominate someone they know will be easy to best. Yes, I know some polls suggest Obama does better in a nationwide match up. If you buy that nonsense let me sell you a bridge.

Does anybody seriously doubt that the Dallas Morning News – or the Sioux City Journal or the Weekly Standard–or Karl Rove – who have all hyped Obama, will all support the Republican nominee in the fall election …?

Me? All I can hope for is that voters — so desperate to feel good again about themselves and, most of all, their country — will see that it’s the Republicans who most want them to see their savior in Barack Obama. All I can hope for is that those Americans, somehow, will sober up and take a hard look — why, even a pragmatic “due diligence” review — before it’s too late.

While besotted voters are awe-struck, the conservatives are having the time of their lives, lying in wait, for an untested Barack Obama they can defeat in a general election. The conservative bloggers at Hot Air are giggling themselves silly over Hillary’s runner-up position. And here’s the image up last night, and all day today, at a smirking RedState.com:

And Clinton enemy Dick Morris? He’s so ecstatic that he links Barack Obama’s speech last night at the top of his column today. Then he says:

THE amazing victories by Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in Iowa last night are truly historic. They demonstrate the impact and viability of a message of change in both parties.

Dick Morris adds this laughable, and cruelly untrue, statement to buttress his promotion of Obama:

On the Democratic side, Obama - by winning in a totally white state - shows that racism is gone as a factor in American politics.

Racism is gone? My god. Morris is so eager to bash Hillary and get Obama as the candidate-to-beat in the general election that he indulges in utter fantasy.

Morris then denigrates experience:

Her campaign professionals (including Bill) decided to stress experience, precisely the wrong message in a Democratic primary. Prematurely appealing to the center and abandoning the left, she fell between two chairs - not sufficiently centrist to win independents or liberal enough to attract Democrats.

Morris is still worried though. He’s worried that Democrats will take a hard look at Obama, and get past their giddiness:

With the limelight comes the spotlight. Obama will be subject to the scrutiny that comes with being the leader. Can he weather the examination?

Perhaps not. Democrats may turn on him, worried that he may not win in November. The doubts about Obama, up to now hidden behind concerns about Hillary’s candidacy, will be on center stage.

Morris remains upbeat about Huckabee and, more importantly, his ultimate target, Obama — who you can be sure he’ll fight against tooth and nail until November 2008:

Their appeals are truly unique and obviously resonate with voters. Their approaches are now and the outcome shows how relevant their message is.

“Their approaches are now?” What in the hell does that mean? “[H]ow relevant their message is”? Whatever that message actually is, Morris doesn’t make clear, mostly because the vagueness, the ethereality of that “message,” he knows, is what makes Obama such a prime target for a 24/7 attack during a general election.

Further, I contend, that to get past “the ideological and moral squalor of the George W. Bush Administration,” we’re going to need a hell of a lot more than a message. What we will really need is a president who can take charge before Day One and actually make change happen through true grit and hard work. Soaring speeches won’t go far in the relentless scrutiny of any presidency. And the promises that we can work with Republicans will fail, with depressing regularity, thanks to the day-to-day resistance of a Republican party that will be dedicated to destroying an Obama presidency.

If you still don’t believe me, read what a person posted at Free Republic. This is exactly the kind of tripe that Obama will face in a general election — and not just in print, but also in whispers across backyard fences:

Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.

By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.

Hussein’s exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.

I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.

As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.

Don’t dismiss them as fringe crazies. That’s how a lot of Americans still think, even if they know better than to talk like that to you. (It’s no matter that Dick Morris doesn’t agree, at least in print.) And they’ll rush to the Republican candidate, and go “nuclear” to destroy Obama’s message.

The only mistake that that Free Republic nut made was to reveal their fondest wishes too early. He needs David Brooks and Karl Rove to explain the game plan to him.

Please heed Sidney Blumenthal’s warning:

But this is not rock-bottom. There is further to fall.

Indeed there is “further to fall.” And further we will surely fall if we end up with eight more years of a Republican presidency.