Post-Rational

I sat with some devout Barack Obama supporters recently for dinner.  They’re just my friends actually, but they’re all basically Obama supporters.  It’s funny to think about, looking at your flawed friends and thinking about how they are the change they seek;  that they are the kinds of people who can bridge the divisiveness of modern politics; that these are people who believe there isn't a Red State America and a Blue State America, there is just America.  It’s funny to think these things when you look at your friend’s face across from you and it still has pimples.  That’s not really the change I seek.
 
Sitting with them, I thought it was an opportunity to learn more about their candidate.  They did little to illuminate their thought process until, as a mild joke, I told them I was going to vote for John McCain.  Then they did a lot.

Barack Obama wants us to believe that a vote for him is post-racial, and post-partisan.  But if you look at it, he promises almost the exact same things that Hillary Clinton promises but with none of the Washington experience to accomplish it.  From that point of view a vote for Obama sounds post-rational too, because it doesn't make any sense.
 
Believing in things that make no sense is not a new thing.  The dominant faith-based movement over the last thirty years has been the Evangelical Christians.  These are people who seem scared of reason.  Their beliefs, unlike the new Post-Rationals are pre-rational.  Obama supporters are not scared of reason.  They're the opposite.  They're bored of it.

But the biggest difference isn't fear and boredom. Evangelical Christians have a well-defined set of irrational events to believe in. Water turning into wine, curing of a leper. Obama supporters do not. Barack Obama's supporters, a group that is educated and wealthy are generally skeptical of religion and organization. They're certainly wary of miracles that happened in the past, miracles that can be analyzed and debunked. Apparently though, if the miracles are promised in the future, they're quite agreeable.
 
But what are these miracles? What does it mean to place your faith in Barack Obama?  For the answer to this question, the best we can do is study the campaign he’s run against Hillary Clinton.
 
The difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has consistently been painted as the difference between substance and style.  Over and over Obama runs up against the criticism that there is no meat to go along with the kool-aid.  But what exactly does that mean?  Like Hillary Clinton, Obama has laid out clear, detailed policies on every issue that concerns the presidency.  Their policies are so similar it’s almost not worth discussing. The difference, what is worth discussing, lies in their approach.
 
Hillary Clinton's stump speech is full of policies.  She has prescriptions about, health care, immigration, predatory loans.  You name it, she has a policy response to solve it.  The key is, her campaign promises no more or less than fighting for these policies.
 
Barack Obama’s stump speech has policy prescriptions addressing all the same issues as Hillary.  The difference is that his speech is not full of his policies like hers.  It's half-full of them, or half-empty, depending on your perspective.  The other half of his speech is what illuminates their differences.
 
The other half of Obama’s speech is devoted to energizing listeners into believing in a political system that they feel is broken.  The broken political system is an over-arching issue that Hillary Clinton does not address so effectively.  Because for her, it is the impetus for just another policy paper to sit beside all the other ones.  This misses the point, because the broken political system, it can be argued, is not a policy problem it is a philosophy problem.  (Of course, maybe she doesn’t miss this point.  Maybe she realizes that her experience is in navigating this broken political system.  Fixing it, as Barack Obama promises, would diminish her clout and reduce the value of her experience.)
 
Regardless, this is the difference between the two campaigns.  Hillary Clinton is promising a change in policy. Barack Obama is promising that and a change in philosophy.  He is promising to get the same policies passed, all while staying above the fray.
 
Hillary Clinton’s promise is that she soldiers well in the trenches of modern Washington warfare.  Barack Obama’s promise is that just by his sheer willpower he can transform Washington into the more gentlemanly battlefield of yesteryear.  He promises that unlike Hillary, he can stay clean.  The reason people question his substance, is the same reason Barack Obama is a religion.  It lies in that difference. Because when asked how he plans to do that, how he plans to stay clean, his response is essentially the same as any faith.  Just believe.
 
At the heart of Obama's gospel of change is the idea that he cannot do it alone.  He's dependent on his supporters to help him effect this transformation.  This brings me back to when I told my friends that I would support John McCain.  It turns out Obama supporters don't reach across the aisle (or dinner table as the case was) and shake your hand, like you would expect, saying, "I look forward to working with you.”  No.  Obama supporters look at you weird if you support John McCain.  And one out of three of them say, "You're a Republican?  What the hell is wrong with you?"

If I'm going to believe in Barack Obama, unlike my friends, it won't be because he promises a future deliverance.  I guess, just like the Evangelicals, I need to see some miracles, yesterday. He can start by making his supporters self-aware.