A Word on Obama

Let's get off-topic for a second.

I'm a Barack supporter. The short answer to why is that I feel like he Gets Me. Not enough? Here's the long answer.

The appeal that Obama holds for me is not one of 'what', but of 'how'. His message is contained within the way he talks, not necessarily in the specifics of what he talks about. The worldview and mindset that he represents carry more weight for me than his case-by-case particulars vis-a-vis individual issues.

If the attitude that underpins everything a candidate does and says is something that inspires/excites me, then all the specifics are negotiable. Trying to 'drill down' that far won't yield me much useful information. I can't predict what he'd have to deal with over the next four years, but I can make a good guess as to how he would.

Remember that Bush got "elected" on character. He was regarded as a guy who stuck to his guns, who shot straight, who had strength of belief. It boggles my mind why anyone would want to judge a candidate based on their specific, hypothetical responses to -- at best -- educated guesses as to what might happen over a four-year period, as opposed to, say, the stance toward the world that they represent.

It's not surprising that this sort of politiking has a hard time flying in the mainstream arena. We've become conditioned to think of the country as a business, and expect to be presented with some hard data, with measurable specifics. We want bar graphs and pie charts, and we want them shown to us alongside some neat graphics at Prime Time. Bush ran his adminstration with that mindset. As a result, when Obama talks, its dismissed as 'fluff' -- but there's no better evidence that he represents change than the fact that his appeal is wholly different from what we've become used to.

Yeah, its tired, but the JFK comparison is apt. We need to be reminded that an important job of a leader is to inspire and to bring out the best qualities in his people. If one can do that, many other things will fall into place on their own, but maybe not in ways that are strictly measurable. People that understand the appeal of Obama know this to be true on an instinctive level. Those opposed to him resort to dissection: they have to pull his convictions down into the realm of systematic analysis and conventional political physics, where, not surprisingly, they wither and die under the microscope, having been coldly dismembered and found "lacking".

In a way, this is symptomatic of America's disease: cynicism, an extreme brand of "rationality", an insistance that the past is the only indicator of the future -- and, by extension, hopelessness, meaninglessness, tediousness. Obama represents an opposing paradigm, one of -- for lack of a better word -- holism. Its one that can't be understood within the predominant mindset, which must dissect, divide, and categorize to survive. That's the kind of change he represents. A change in our collective outlook so fundamental that we almost are forced to come up with new ways of thinking about politics just to discuss it.

Obama is a transcendant candidate.

To me, that's a Good Thing.