Concern and hope are related emotions. Both have to do with an uncertainty about the future. They are impulses rooted in the evolution of our species, and so very powerful to us.
Senator Obama is a really, really smart guy. Really smart. I’ve always felt, particularly after meeting him on several occasions in Springfield, that his basic thoughtfulness and intellectual honesty would be a political liability. When asked a question, he seems to generally want to answer it correctly, which makes him stop and think. This is a good quality, but one that does not translate well to media-compressed forums like village halls and debates. It is his great intelligence, though, that also gives those of us concerned about his vision of his Presidency hope, to use a now-deflated word.
I have been expressing here contrasts between Senator Obama’s campaign and that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I was pleasantly surprised to find an alternate reading of the 1932 Presidential campaign by historian Donald Ritchie, in his book Electing FDR. Ritchie’s book details how "maddeningly vague" FDR could be at times, despite a general determination (stated privately) that he wanted to turn the country in a fundamentally "liberal" direction.
In reading Ritchie’s book, I found that Roosevelt’s election in 1932 had many such parallels to Senator Obama’s campaign. This goes against conventional wisdom and my own understanding, which is always a good thing to discover.
The thing is, Franklin Roosevelt was heavily criticized for his failure to provide policy specifics. He told his aides,
I need to get elected, first.
I want to include a couple quotes from Ritchie’s book, but I won’t quote it too extensively; I encourage you to read it yourselves, to not let my understanding of it predispose you.
When Roosevelt spoke to a vast throng at the Hollywood Bowl, he praised the city’s sunny weather and otherwise "skated safely over all other recognized issues," noted the Los Angeles Time’s conservative political reporter Kyle Palmer. The young liberal journalist Carey McWilliams felt equally disappointed with the candidate’s vague abstractions that day. These were tactics that Roosevelt employed through the campaign, skipping over local disputes and picking and choosing his themes from the conflicting input he was receiving from the planners, the trustbusters, the b udget balancers, and the protective tariff and free trade advocates. He would try different approaches before different audiences.
The candidate showed a great capacity for absorbing attractive ideas and a knack for avoiding political pitfalls. He patiently explained to his academic collaborators that a political campaign was a fight for office, not a program for adult education. Once elected, he could try to enlighten the public, but as a candidate, he "had to accept people’s prejudices and turn them to good use."
To deflect Republican efforts to paint him as a radical, Franklin Roosevelt shifted to the center in October, toning down the rhetoric of change and stressing such traditional Democratic doctrines of balanced budgets and restraint on government spending. Some of his advisers began to worry that he would not be radical enough to meet the national crisis.
As the campaign against Hoover commenced and charges of "radicalism" flew against Roosevelt, he enlisted the help of Bernard Baruch, the party’s biggest financier and an old-school Wall Street Democrat, to speak to the business community to reassure them that Roosevelt was "safe". This speaks, to me, to the criticism of Senator Obama found in the Ken Silverstein Harper’s article, Obama, Inc. However displeasing it is to those of us who consider ourselves Leftists that he has such connections, in an overall plan to build consensus, perhaps it makes sense. Hell, if Roosevelt could do it—and look what he did!
Roosevelt’s critics regularly accused him of promising the moon. Keep in mind, at the time an activist federal government was perhaps not anathema, but certainly not familiar. Promising the unemployed jobs from the federal government would have seems loony back then—how can the federal government just give you a job!? There were no massive federal bureaucracies, like today.
But most heartening is looking at this in context. Roosevelt was clearly more interested in the liberal ideas of government, and specifics were unimportant—what was important was getting elected on a broad consensus of some kind of change, and then turning to those with the best and most reasonable ideas and using those ideas to provide the policy. FDR then used his goodwill from the election to "enlighten" the population as to the wisdom of those particular solutions. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a crushing victory in 1932, and Republican losses were so staggering that the only real opposition could come from within his own party—but his popular support (initially) blunted that opposition, which notably came primarily from the southern Democrats (conservatives) that would flee to the Republicans within a generation.
It was the 1936 election where Roosevelt was able to essentially recast the party in his own image. The spirit of the policies he implemented in his first hundred days in 1933 became the underlying principles of the New Deal coalition, almost arbitrarily—given what Roosevelt had campaigned for (vague promises of liberal change), any policies he had chosen to implement, had they shown even modest success (and keep in mind, the Great Depression was by no means over by 1936) would have been the cornerstones of the Democratic Party. The dissolution of the Republican Party only reinforced this, because they were not in a position to make a persuasive argument for any alternative—they were simply too unpopular.
If we allow the FDR/Obama analogy (campaign-style wise, obviously), and with the premise that the Republicans are going to suffer an even deeper rebuke than they suffered in 2006, then we see that the Obama administration could have a chance to fundamentally realign the Party (and therefore the voting population) similar to the one Roosevelt had.
This makes his first Hundred Days critical, and makes our duty to a) get an idea of what those first Hundred Days will look like, and b) push to make the policies as close to Left governance as possible.
It is important not to take the 1932-2008 analogy too far (I’m not referring to DHinMI’s compelling series about the electoral realignment. I'm more interested in campaign styles than the psephology of it.)
By 1932, the nation had been in a deep, deep Depression—with 25% unemployment—for nearly three years, and everything was getting worse. Democrats had also been locked out of power completely for 13 years, with the exception of a slim 3-vote majority in the House between 1930 and 1932.
There is another major factor, which is that at that time, the Republican Party had a significant progressive wing, surviving from the days of Roosevelt. The progressive presence in the Republican Party fundamentally undermined that party’s ability to effectively fight Roosevelt either electorally or during his first term. As we know, this isn’t the case today. The Republican Party does not have any real "progressive" wing to speak of, and their moderate wing is almost exclusively geographic and has itself collapsed.
Also, we shouldn’t exaggerate the similarities in style. Roosevelt was proposing some very radical things in the campaign—federal job assistance, as cited above, but also the general idea of activist government. I think even Senator Obama’s strongest supporters will admit that he has been cautious on this point.
We can’t be blamed for needing this historical symmetry. Although parallels between JFK and Senator Obama are often drawn, they are not particularly helpful, because Kennedy did not affect either an ideological or practical political realignment. His victory margin was slim and his presidency short. While his impact on the American culture has been enormous, his actual "reign" was, obviously, cut too short. The parallels to the FDR election campaign are much more useful as a tool for supporters of Senator Obama.
This also leads us to an interesting explanation for the intensity of the rivalry between the campaign’s supporters. The parallels here to FDR are a reason to be excited, but they do require two leaps of faith: first, that Senator Obama will have judgment similar to FDRs (which we can’t know until he’s in office) and second, that the policies he does choose to doggedly pursue (the "centerpieces" of his administration) are of the "correct" (Left) character.
I think it is at this point that accusations of "personality cults" start to arise. There are people who either won’t or can’t make those leaps of faith, and those who can and have. Both sides feel (rightfully, I think) frustrated that they can’t reasonably communicate with one another.
I have been passionate on this point here. I want to make clear something about my criticisms (and the more reasonable criticisms): First, the Obama campaign has not endeavored to create a personality cult. Second, the vast majority of people who support Senator Obama are not hypnotized by some personality cult; third, enthusiasm for a candidate, and optimism in their future, is not something that prima facie means there is deception or sleight-of-hand going on. Nevertheless, the particular vehemence with which some significant portion of Senator Obama’s supporters, and in particular those on the internet, are taking on the characteristics of a (political) cult-of-personality. Intellectual dishonesty and absolutely rejection of heterodox thinking are clearly evident. This is not a reasonable argument against Senator Obama or his very cutting edge, inspirational campaign. I still take umbrage to those who classify any criticism of those supporters or who express concern as to the nature of an Obama presidency as closet Clinton supporters, politically tone-deaf blowhards, or right-wing "meme" perpetuators (also, can we stop using that word so much?)
If we think about Senator Obama’s campaign along the lines of the 1932 campaign, I think we can all be hopeful, but we shouldn’t let that hope subsume our natural, Leftist inclination to skepticism and creative doubt.
If this is a candidacy like FDR in 1932, then our job is to be vigilant in making 2012 our own New Deal.