Get Herald RSSMany Americans listen to Barack Obama and hear a message of hope, but I look at Obama and think of Jimmy Carter. Lest you think this comparison is faulty, pause for a moment to consider the striking similarities between them. Like Carter, Obama is a good and upright politician who appeals to a nation desperate for change. In fact, just as Americans were attracted to Carter's honesty in the aftermath of Watergate, many are now drawn to Obama's earnestness following the debacle that has become the Bush presidency. And just as Carter was a decent man singularly unqualified to deal with an evil world, many are now raising the same concerns about Obama.
So, perhaps it is not surprising that we are hearing distinctly Carter-like echoes from the Obama campaign. For example, Michelle Obama reportedly said in a campaign speech that her husband "is the only person in this race who understands that, before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls." While this is a stirring, almost evangelical, message, it is also a historically ironic one. Indeed, its suggestion of a national miasma is freighted with the historical baggage of Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" Speech of 1979, the one where he blamed America's ills on a national malaise.
In much the same way Carter appeared to sermonize to America in that speech, Obama is now preaching to his choir of supporters. And as his wife so intriguingly suggests, he seems to be asking Americans to confess the sickness of their souls, so that his candidacy can become the source of their secular salvation. Just as Moses freed the people of Israel from bondage, the subtext of Obama's message is that he has come to deliver disaffected Americans from the long night of their political exile under Bush.
The effectiveness of this message can be measured by the increasingly vigorous measures Hillary Clinton is taking to combat it. In what one of her aides sardonically described as a "kitchen sink" approach, Hillary is trying to do everything she can to stop the onslaught of Obama's campaign. To deconstruct the powerful sway of his message, she has characterized him as an empty rhetorician. To paint him as a false messiah, she has said he provides only empty hope. And to tarnish his saintly image, she has accused him of political dirty tricks. In fact, Hillary reminds many of the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes," who informs the crowd of the Emperor's nudity. However, where the crowd listens to that boy, it remains unclear whether Hillary's campaign will have such a fairy tale ending, notwithstanding her recent wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.
If Obama is still the leading Democratic presidential candidate, he should not forget the biblical injunction of politics that, what the American people give they can also take away. If Obama thinks otherwise, he need only consult Jimmy Carter. After Carter's "Crisis of Conscience" speech, his popularity soared. But it eventually nosedived when Americans concluded that the ills of the nation were caused by his ineffective leadership rather than their malaise. Thus Ronald Reagan easily defeated Carter for the presidency when he told a country longing for optimistic assurance that it was "Morning in America" again.
To Obama's credit, he is attempting to take a page from the Reagan playbook by spreading a message of hope. Indeed, some wags might say that his campaign has become the political equivalent of Prozac for an electorate despondent over the Bush presidency. But in time the euphoria will fade, and Americans will no longer be content to use Obama's rhetoric as a blank canvas upon which to paint their hopes and aspirations. When that shift in the national zeitgeist occurs, Obama will have to replace his soft hope with a realpolitik of hard solutions.
It is hard to predict when this tipping point will occur. But when it does, as it eventually must, Obama must avoid becoming the victim of the expectations he has created. It is one thing to create hope. But it is quite another to fulfill that hope. Thus if Obama is not careful, the strength of his campaign may eventually undermine his bid for the presidency. Like Jimmy Carter before him, Obama may learn the hard way that Americans don't like it if you can't fix what you say is broken.
Lindsey Meyers '09 has been following the Democratic primaries in the U.K., where functions for American presidential candidates are forbidden to serve Kool-Aid
