I think she captures perfectly the Obama political reality at this moment–its limitations, but also its potential if Obama chooses to realize it:
What all transformative movements have in common is the quality of speaking up to an aspirational public, to our best possible selves. Transformative movements act like the world is better than it is, and—when they work—they inspire the world to live up to this partial projection. The Obama campaign, has, in moments, embodied precisely that quality: Obama conjures a better America and that better America shows up for him. But political moments do more than speak to our best selves; they harness that quasi-mystical power to make radical demands to transform the real world. The Obama campaign has not done this, not on any issue at the core of our current crisis. Not on global warming, the war in Iraq, the housing crisis, health care, underemployment, or the assaults on civil liberties. Not a single Obama policy is unequivocal in its clarity and morality, which is the essential quality of a transformative movement.
The campaign's most radical demand, even if unstated, is the idea of electing Obama himself. It is Obama—and not his plans for the presidency—that is the ultimate expression of the "movement." If the process ends there, the Obama campaign becomes less like the civil rights movement and more like the lifestyle brands in the late '90s—the Nikes, Microsofts, and Starbucks that expertly captured the transcendent quality of past liberation movements, and our desire for meaning in our lives, to build their brands.
Of course the real fault is not Obama's, but ours. We have forgotten the kind of risk and work it takes to build transformative mass movements, and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he'd better win. From Mother Jones.
The FISA vote, whether consciously or unconsciously, was his statement to the world that he did not see himself as this kind of transformational figure. And I think the world has to accept him at this word. That isn't to say that he would be a bad president, but only that he'll be an ordinary one. And Klein is right; it's up to the rest of us to make something happen, not some icon.
Well partially right. Significant movements need catalysts; they need figures who trigger or awaken an awareness of a people's collective better self, and that's the disappointing thing about Obama's timid approach since the primaries ended. This might change. Maybe some flame now banked in his soul will break out, but I'm not counting on it.
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