Gordon Wood with Andrew Bacevich both said ( or seemed to say) that one man cannot make that much of a difference.

By “not making much of a difference” they were talking about certain forces and policies that cannot be changed dramatically by any one so quickly. But there are other realms……

There will be too many high expectations riding on an Obama presidency already and that would bound to disappoint. So perhaps it is good to have this reality check from historians. But again, as Al Gore reminded us the other day, that he would have made a difference in 2000, quite a big difference.

The word being used is “transformative” in connection with Obama ( Colin Powell used it) but it’s more about who he is and what he brings as a person: his innate qualities, sensibility, wisdom to that leadership position. Eugene Robinson says it is more “confirmational”. The change has been happening for decades.

But some thanks belongs to John McCain for showing the devils in our nature that are alive and well.

Gordon Wood spoke about this country being ever naive, and young, needing to learn it’s lessons again and again. It would be good to discuss why.

Here is the Eugene Robinson column:

A New Kind of Pride

The example I hold up is Jackie Robinson. He had a transformative effect on the game but would anyone say he wasn’t qualified? In fact, he was the best player on the field. And that’s what it took to finally break the color line…the best player by far. It could never have been an average black baseball player breaking that barrier. And it’s the same with brother O, he is sooo good that even the prejudiced in our society are forced to stand back…stand back in the way the white Civil War troops stood back as the 54th marched first into Fort Wagner.

You write: “but an opportunity to be truthful in our discourse about the brokenness in the narrative which must be acknowledged, confronted, and reconciled if the common good which looms radiantly on our horizon towards which we all yearn is to have any integrity at all.”

Thank you for the beautiful sentiment, Thomas. With every individual water cooler conversation struck up about brother O, we get closer to that elusive summit where your horizon of common good will stretch out and envelope us – even the most disillusioned of us.

“To do less than this would be to dawdle in illusion when the reality could be so much more beautiful.”

-thomas

“the unities of Truth and of Right are not broken by the disguise. There need never be any confusion in these. In a crowded life of many parts and performers, on a stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute Nature.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson from “Illusions.”

http://www.emersoncentral.com/illusions.htm

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. — Emerson, Man the Reformer

What better endorsement for the theory of Intelligent Design?

enthusiasm from enthousiazein “be inspired,” from entheos “inspired, possessed by a god,” from en- “in” + theos “god” (see Thea)

[submitted by a local writer and originally appeared on the editorial page of the local paper.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

Today, the point at which the United States naturally resides echoes Plato’s contention that “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy”. Obama is hoping that he can return the USA to some semblance of democracy post proto-fascist dictatorship, pulling away from the paranoid Bush legacy.

Obama is important because if he doesn’t win, the world is going to see not just a dictatorship that subjugates the people of the USA but also other cultures and nations.

Americans do not realise that the country is in the condition akin to the decline of the Roman Empire. The George Bush era is reminiscent of the reign of the Roman Emperor Andronicus III (c. 1296-1341) in its negative jingoistic engagement with Islam and the Middle East (Iran-Iraq) and other expansionist achievements across the globe. Obama then is most likely to fall into the role of John V (c 1332-1391) – the successor of Andronicus III. He will have to deal with increasingly resurgent Islamic forces, Russia, China and other cultures and nations seeking an assertion of self-respect and dignity (Venzuela).

It will be turbulent times and if he wins, perhaps Obama will have the opportunity, more than any other preceding US president, to attain the “deep tragic sense” of a Lincoln.

That is, if some white racist supremacist madman doesn’t “off” Obama!

I was just passing through, I happened to glance at your post, especially the last point. you wrote,

““He will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black.” I find this view very narrow. Barack Obama’s transformative effect is because he’s black – and it doesn’t matter. The whole of Mr. Obama’s movement is the idea that we are transcending categories…that is the change.”

I certainly share your general view that the transformation that Obama represents transcends the issue of race but nevertheless, brother O will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black. This sentiment comes from a young person (25 yrs) from my narrow perch in Fairburn, GA outside the perimeter of Atlanta.

With all due respect there is no issue as deeply painful for black folk and wounding for white folk (see Wendell Berry’s The Hidden Wound) as race. It more than simply a ‘problem’ that can simply be ‘passed’ by the young or any other people by a transcendence of categories.

Obama does transcend categories out of both expediency and idealism but I would imagine he is also well aware of the transformative effect he, as a black man, would have simply as the resident-n-chief in the White House.

The larger question for me in this issue of race in the national narrative as a southern white pastor in a largely black middle class suburban area is how does this race present an opportunity, if obama is elected, to not merely see it as a transcendence of categories on the way to just all getting along, but an opportunity to be truthful in our discourse about the brokenness in the narrative which must be acknowledged, confronted, and reconciled if the common good which looms radiantly on our horizon towards which we all yearn is to have any integrity at all. To do less than this would be to dawdle in illusion when the reality could be so much more beautiful.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

I like to think about President Reagan when I think about this one:

It isn’t the oceans which cut us off from the world – it’s the American way of looking at things.

And from this quote, this is what for me is a core message from candidate Obama:

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

Political banter:

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

And …

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

What I find most intriguing about the affect of candidate Obama is that his rhetorical strategy and tactics have us once again courting expectations as ritual. After President Clinton and President Bush I find this a fascinating ritual to observe. Hope/fear spring eternal. Some things may never change.

One day America is going to retire its Empire and elect a Zorba person who teaches us to live in joy moment to moment and move beyond the abundance of scarcity and conflict. A bridge too far at the present foreseeable.

Thank you Chris and Mr. Wood. Great interview, left me full of conflicted thoughts and feelings, as real life often does. Decisively I still put one foot in front of the other in spite of such attempts of self inflicted paralysis.

Game Day Tuesday November 4, 2008. Everyone, GO VOTE. To much blood and treasure has been spilled to deliver this right and franchise.

Peace to all and may the next victim(s), er, President and Congress serve us all well…

“One plucks, one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes, every body confesses, — with cap and knee volunteers his confession, yet none feels himself accountable. He did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it. What is he? an obscure private person who must get his bread. That is the vice, — that no one feels himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man.”

GoBama! Yes We Can!

1. “Circumstance are far more important than the individual.” -Gordon Wood

MLK’s whole mission and success was to turn circumstances on their head. Alan Greenspan’s mission and failure was to create the circumstances that lead to universal wealth. Maybe circumstance vs. individual is a chicken and the egg argument, and if it is, I guess I side with the chicken/individual.

2. In response the question of the U.S. being “overextended” with 700 bases in 40 countries Mr. Wood states: “there is nobody really ready yet to take our place.” We won’t pull back because the world needs our leadership and “the worlds too scary” to back off.

To my mind this sounds neo-con lite. It’s exactly this hubris that we must expunge. We do not operate all those bases to protect the world from scary things, we are there to protect our trade (and thus our standard of living) from scary things. And this is what Ralph Emerson thought of our trade even back 1841:

“I content myself with the fact, that the general system of our trade, (apart from the blacker traits, which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable men,) is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage.”

-Man the Reformer

3. “He will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black.” “He will change race relations.”

I find this view very narrow. Barack Obama’s transformative effect is because he’s black – and it doesn’t matter. The whole of Mr. Obama’s movement is the idea that we are transcending categories…that is the change. To say that youth are enthused with this candidate because they want to eradicate the race problem – severely sells the youth short. By and large the youth have already moved on…pass the race problem. They are enthused with Barack because Barack is enthused, and in the words of my man Emerson:

“Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.”

-Man the Reformer