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In the early days before anyone thought Barack Obama had a chance to win the Democratic nomination for president, he was everyone’s shining knight in armor. The right wing was too busy training its guns on Hillary Clinton to take Obama seriously. They even confessed to a certain infatuation with him. Hillary herself said she was proud to be on the same stage with this Galahad of politics. The left wing was totally smitten. To them, Obama represented nothing less than the reincarnation of their beloved Bobby Kennedy. Like Muhammed Ali in his prime, he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. His star ascended into the political heavens. It seemed as if nothing could stop him, but nobody figured on the scrutiny success inevitably brings.
Obama’s problems began with Rev. Wright. It ended with him changing a number of positions on key issues. That’s when the whispers began he was just another politician.
There is an old political axiom thought to have been authored by Richard Nixon; You cater to the whims of your Party’s political base to win the nomination and then move toward the center to win the presidency. But Nixon was expected to shift, to do anything he had to do to become president. After all, he was Tricky Dick. Obama, the noble knight in shining armor, was supposed to be different. Indeed, it wasn’t just the shifting of positions that stunned both allies and opponents alike, it was the speed with which Obama did so.
Obama has encouraged the notion he is above the fray, that the grit and grime of everyday politics is for mere mortals, not himself. Critics said, how could the knight who was going to cleanse the body politic become just another politician overnight? But almost everyone has missed the true essence of the Obama success story.
Barack Obama is certainly not "just another politician" anymore than Ali was just another fighter. He is the most skilled politician of our time, a natural, the Roy Hobbs of politicians. Imagine the odds against an African American becoming president before Obama ran. Imagine those odds if that African American was a freshman senator. Obama is not above politics; he is better at it than any of us have ever imagined. He has out-Nixoned Nixon and out-Clintoned both Clintons.
When Hillary cornered him in the debates on his lack of experience, he jabbed and danced away. You could almost hear him say, "You can’t touch me, I’m too pretty." Like the young Ali who stunned the boxing world by destroying Sonny Liston, Obama did the same to the Clinton political machine. It was no less stunning a triumph.
Will he eventually outsmart himself by moving to the political center? Obama is being disingenuous when he claims he hasn’t changed, but he is right when he says we haven’t been listening. Nothing in his record shows him to be a fearless crusader and that is not what he promised as president. Obama is no Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Read Ryan Lizza’s account in The New Yorker to see how many dead bodies Obama left in his march to political success. Obama promises instead to be a consensus builder, someone who can erase the chasm between the red states and the blue. Sorry, MoveOn.org, but that may not always accord with your agenda.
If I had to speculate, an Obama presidency would be much like that of Bill Clinton, except for the sex scandals and with a more muscular foreign policy. Clinton governed from the center. At times he frustrated his supporters, but he was a popular two-term president whose eight years in office were marked by a period of peace and prosperity that looks awfully good compared to the last disastrous eight years.
Make no mistake about it, this election is all about Obama. He controls his own destiny. His opponent is a wonderful war hero with a questionable vision of the country, but he could be almost any one of the Republicans who vied for the presidency in the primaries and it wouldn’t matter.
As you read this, Obama is on a world tour like some rock star. Between now and November, we’ll find out if this political phenomenon is destined to change how we look at the world and how the world looks at us, or if he is a passing fancy, the flavor of the month, a shooting star destined to burn out and fall to earth.
