The Very Best Thing about Barack Obama

My friend Liane sent me this. Thanks, Liane. I agree.

This sums it up for me...


The Very Best Thing about Barack Obama

Nope, it's not what you might think. The best thing about Barack Obama has
almost nothing to do with him as a person or as a leader or even as Oh My God
The First Black President Who Could Really Change Everything I Mean Wow. It's
not even the wondrous oratory power or the charisma or the sweet sense of
deeper change overlaid with all kinds of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.

There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it's rather startling.

See, I've read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent analysis
the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the valient attempts
to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening about Obama and his
family, his past, his middle name, his beliefs and his pastor and his favorite
flavor of ice cream — attempts that, rather amusingly, have all failed.

I've read, too, the glut of wonderment, how Obama is this generation's
JFK, how he makes Hillary Clinton's brand of retro cronyist politics feel
like the equivalent of rubbing salt on a paper cut. He is, they say, that
once-in-a-lifetime candidate, a fantastically rare mix of intelligence,
consistency, inspiration, hope, charisma, humanity, articulation, and an
almost shocking lack of manipulation and sheen (well, relatively
speaking), all packaged in a strikingly handsome unit in whose closet
apparently live almost no skeletons at all.

I also nodded in agreement when snark-master Jon Stewart appeared
slightly stunned and taken aback and very nearly jokeless as he pointed
out, following Obama's remarkable speech on race in America, that at
long last, here was a top-tier politician who dared to speak to us like we
were adults. It wasn't just refreshing; after seven-plus years of humiliating,
monosyllabic dumb-guy Bushisms, it was downright jarring.

And I even enjoyed the overall assessment that the fact that Obama is
untested and inexperienced in the higher and more dire realms of
government is actually a good thing, just the kind of wild card we crave
and need, given how he shows absolutely zero signs that he'd screw it up,
not to mention how the last thing anyone really wants is more of the same
old-school, inbred crap we've had for decades.

Still, this wasn't what riveted me the most about Obama, still not what's
most fascinating about this moment in political history. It was still
something more.

Initially I thought the most impressive aspect of Obama's run was, well,
how the guy made it this far at all. That someone of his caliber and
obvious intelligence could survive what has become a truly caustic, brutal
political system and still emerge into the international spotlight as, well,
not deeply f—ed-up and insane, not possessing that creepy demonic
gleam shared by so many politicos (hi, Sen. McCain!) that suggests they've
had souls eaten whole by the same scabrous trolls of greed and war
and corruption that birthed two Bushes and gave Bill Clinton that nearly
intolerable aura of ego and slickness.

See, I've long believed that, if nearly eight years of the World's Worst
President has taught us anything, it's that the American political system
has moved well beyond merely deeply flawed and broken and sad, and is
now wholly rotted, ruined from the inside out, a true moral wasteland barely
suitable even for cockroaches and leeches and Rick Santorum. I thought
George W. Bush had actually managed to do the impossible: make an
already defective system truly unbearable, turning something already gray
and murky to turgid and pathetic, toxic to all decent human life.

And I'm happy to report that the fact that Obama exists at this stage of
the game is proving me very wrong indeed.

But I'll even take it a step further. Because the greatest thing about Obama
isn't really about Obama at all, per se. It's actually about, well, us.

This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective unconscious,
the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that borders on a
kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can actually look
beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the presence of something
great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?

See, this is what I hear most from relatives and readers and friends and
newborn activists who were never activists before: Obama speaks to the
intuition. It's about the sixth sense. It's not just what he says or how
he behaves in the debates or the policy wonking or the "Change" banners or
any of the typical, tangible factors — although those have proven to
be remarkably positive, too.

It's this: People feel it. They hear an Obama speech or read the articles
or talk to like-minded folk, and they squint their eyes and weigh everything
and then dismiss all that surface crap and get that look on their face that
says, you know what? This guy gets it. He feels right. It's not a trick of
light. It's not complete bulls—. It's not the usual spin and manipulation
and fakery. There is actual meat on this bone. What a thing.

Of course, I've plenty of readers who are die-hard cynics and jaded
anarchists who say: What the f— is wrong with you? Can't you see
it's just another vicious ploy? All candidates at this level are
essentially the same, interchangeable, all abhorrent simply by default
because when you reach that stage of the game there is simply no way to
avoid deep corruption and rampant lies. They tell me that even just to
write a column like this is akin to merely washing the windows in your
little pod in "The Matrix." Sure, the world may seem shinier, but you're
still just buying into the same old revolting corporate/military machine.

After all, once the vipers of big money and big oil and military spending
and corporate cronyism get their fangs sunk in, it's pretty much "game
over" for any candidate's remaining integrity. Has Mr. Perfect Obama
spoken out against the insidious Patriot Act or taken on the absurd farm
subsidies or talked up issues of global warming? No he has not. As nice
and smart as he may be, strip away all the fawning and the oratory tricks
and give him a year in office and boom, just another corrupted,
compromised former visionary. Right?

Whatever. I'm not buying it. At least, not yet. For the moment, I trust the
collective intuition. I trust the shockingly widespread sense, not merely
of hope and change, but of collective wisdom swimming though the air
like an electrical surge between every smart, creative person on the planet
right now, a bolt of energy that says: Hey, we're still together. We still got
it. Smart, intuitive people are still a force. There is life in the revolution yet.

And Obama? He gets it, too. Hell, he may have kindled it anew, all by
himself. Either way, it's back. And it's powerful. And that, to me, is the
most hopeful thing of all.

- Mark Moford

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