The Heart of the Matter
By Larry Johnson on August 24, 2008 at 8:36 PM in Current Affairs
I’m not singing Don Henley’s pop hit, I am talking about Sean Wilentz and his brilliant piece in Newsweek. Halfway thru the piece Wilentz notes:
The list of Bush’s failures is long and familiar. He will depart office in January having registered the lowest sustained public-approval ratings of any president on record—and will hand over to his successor numerous crushing burdens: gargantuan new federal deficits; a political and military morass in Iraq; federal agencies hollowed out by cronyism and narrowly ideological appointments, and an international image that is badly in need of repair. It is no wonder that 2008 has looked as though it will be a year of sweeping Democratic triumphs.
But, as Sean correctly notes, there is a problem with Barack that only those who can recall Jimmy Carter will understand. Jimmy Carter left office 27 years ago. You know what that means? Unless you are 45 years or older you probably do not remember much about Jimmy. What you do know is that he is a kindly grandfatherish figure who helps build houses for the poor. But folks my age recall him as the guy that was taking us to the poor house. He was the guy who didn’t understand that the Soviets were bad people, capable of duplicity. And what Sean points out is that Barack Obama is looking and sounding an awful lot like Jimmy Carter. Wilentz writes:
The convergence is revealing. As Republican strategists have begun to notice with delight, Obama’s liberal alternative to the post-Bush GOP to date has much in common with Carter’s post-Watergate liberalism. Rejecting “politics as usual,” attacking “Washington” as the problem, promising to heal the breaches and hurts caused by partisan political polarization, pledging to break the grip that lobbyists and special interests hold over the national government, wearing his Christian faith on his sleeve as a key to his mind, heart and soul—in all of these ways, Obama resembles Jimmy Carter more than he does any other Democratic president in living memory.
In other ways, Obama’s liberal vision appears clouded, uncertain and even contradictory. During his four years in Washington, he has compiled one of the most predictably liberal voting records in the Senate—yet he presents himself as an advocate of bipartisanship and ideological flexibility. He has offered himself as the tribune of sweeping change—yet he also proclaims national unity, as if transformation can come without struggle. He has emerged as the champion of a new, post-racial politics, even though he has only grudgingly separated himself from his pastor of 20 years, who every week preached a gospel of “black liberation theology” that has everything to do with racial politics.
And it is this last point that represents the tip of the iceberg that is likely to founder the good ship Barack Obama. Unlike Jimmy Carter who served successfully as Governor of Georgia, Barack does not have a legacy of accomplishment to trot out to defuse critics. Worse are the multitude of unexamined and unvetted areas of his life–Bill Ayers, his time in Indonesia, his time in New York City, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko. I am not talking about articles that have appeared on blogs, I’m talking about the unblinking media eye that, until now, gazed fondly and lovingly at the new saviour of the Democrats. But the eye will turn and the scrutiny will come. At that point the true image of Barack Obama will emerge.
Only one question remains–will it happen before or after the November election. Here we are at the Democratic National Convention and Barack has enjoyed a pass. My guess? The free ride is over.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
