Why Obama?

I've not posted much lately on the candidacy of Barack Obama. But reading Andrew Sullivan's piece from the Atlantic Monthly reminded me why I was attracted to him early on.

Yes, I was attracted by his faith, but it was something else, something that made him different from everyone else. Of those running for President, everyone else is older than me. He's about the age of my younger brother, at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation and in many ways not part of it. Like me he didn't come of age in the 1960s. Like me he may have watched the 60's on the TV, but the formative experiences came in the 1970s and maybe early 1980s.

Sullivan says that we may be at a time and place in history when Obama is the necessary candidate. It's not so much his policies or his governmental experience. Instead it's his life experience, part of which is not caught up in Vietnam. We talk about the current war, but in many ways it is that other war that we continue to fight.

Obama brings to the table a life experience that is composed of many different parts -- he's black, but he's also white. His father was foreign born and he spent time living in a foreign country -- even attending a Muslim majority school. He opposed the current war before it was fashionable and did so because he understood that it was a "dumb war."

Obama is compelling now for one major reason, he is the only candidate that represents change (yes maybe even change for change sake).

Consider these closing paragraphs from Sullivan's lengthy but compelling article:

None of this, of course, means that Obama will be the president some are dreaming of. His record in high office is sparse; his performances on the campaign trail have been patchy; his chief rival for the nomination, Senator Clinton, has bested him often with her relentless pursuit of the middle ground, her dogged attention to her own failings, and her much-improved speaking skills. At times, she has even managed to appear more inherently likable than the skinny, crabby, and sometimes morose newcomer from Chicago. Clinton’s most surprising asset has been the sense of security she instills. Her husband—and the good feelings that nostalgics retain for his presidency—have buttressed her case. In dangerous times, popular majorities often seek the conservative option, broadly understood.

The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. And a Clinton-Giuliani race could be as invigorating as it is utterly predictable.

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is
necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a
bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.

The Baby Boomers finally received the baton in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton. Perhaps it's time to pass it off to the next generation. The "early Boomers" have influenced everything from cars to clothes, from toys to movies, but as for politics perhaps they/we aren't well suited for this task. With no desire to go back to an earlier generation (John McCain), perhaps we are best suited to take the risk and pass things on to the younger crowd!