The Conservative Wins Again! Barack Obama by a Landslide

Here is the irony of this endless Presidential campaign, and the reason why Senator Obama is likely to win with an electoral landside: the election has been pitched to the world as a transformative moment in which the old, conservative, white establishment is finally overtaken by the new multicultural, post-racial America. Breathtaking! A triumph of existential radicalism.
But the reality is Senator Obama is playing the role of soothing and familiar conservative, allaying the national hysteria and soothing the fevered American brow - promising prudent judgment and deliberate change; while Senator McCain plays out the role of careening radical in whom whimsy has displaced judgment.

With his soothing half hour infomercial, his masterful and quiet approach to the economic crisis, and his highly disciplined campaign, it is Obama who has become the "trusted one," the "calm one," the "prudent one" with whom voters now can feel safe. The very qualities that a year ago most people thought no black man could bring to the country.

After all, in the stereotype, blacks were supposed to be angry, resentful, full of fire and brimstone, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the Reverend Jeremy Wright with whom his opponents tried to link Obama.

Yet Senator Obama has turned out to be the very contrary of all this: thoughtful, unexcitable, soothing. It is John McCain, pulled around the country by his angry pit bull Sarah Palin, who seems erratic, ungrounded, on the edge of hysteria. Not what the nation is looking for in these days of global economic crisis.

Obama's election will appear to the world as a brave and bold decision by Americans to leap beyond race to a new world of multiculturalism. But in truth it will be a tribute to caution and prudence -- a 'conservative' choice to send the maverick radicals home, and put the cautious and reflective man of good judgment in the White House.

Comments

[RobertHenryEller]

Precisely right. But a victory for true, honest and healthy conservatism, not the radical agenda that's been pretending to be conservatism. There is a reason traditional, fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republicans, have been supporting Obama. It's not because they've changed their values. Obama is in fact a capitalist - again, not one of the phony "pro-business mercantilists" posing as capitalists. Many people will be surprised, and, I think, pleasantly so. If Obama can implement the agenda he wants to implement, his popularity will broaden, and he will be even a stronger candidate in 2012.

But everyone must understand completely that, as Obama himself has said many times, none of these good things will happen if we who have worked for his Presidency do not continue to support it on a daily basis. The most amazing and important thing about Obama is not Obama himself, but the people who have come together to support him, and, much more importantly, what he represents, stands for, and wants to achieve. Obama knows this. In fact, it's what he based his decision to run on.

[Jane Devin - Huffpost Blogger]

What a brilliant analysis. The "radical left" has been largely absent this campaign season except in the language of the radical right, which has grown increasingly peripheral and outside even the "real America" mainstream.

While I live in the blue state of Minnesota, it's only blue to a large and thriving Twin Cities. Out in the 'burbs and the country, it's a different story -- but red in this case isn't usually regressive neo-con red, but more "no new taxes, I hate welfare" red.

I saw an ad from the RNC today that said, in part, "Republicans are against abortion", and I thought it was a very sweeping statement to make about an entire party, and totally out of keeping with the original Republican agenda.

[GregJL]

Except that anti-choice is a plank in the official Republican party platform.

[CaliforniaMichael]

Mr. Barber's column is largely directed at Sen. Obama's style, rather than his policy prescriptions and I agree that his demeanor has been "conservative." The question is whether, if he is elected, his governing style will be conservative. My guess is that he will be moderately liberal. He will try to enact his health care reforms and probably succeed if the Dems do as well in the House and Senate races as projected. That will be the signature domestic policy change of his presidency. His tax policy will probably also pass, but those policies are hardly extreme. Essentially we'd be where we were under that awful Marxist Bill Clinton. On foreign policy, my sense is that Obama is nobody's fool and nobody's pushover. He will greatly improve our relations with allies and press them more successfully
than Bush to support collective measures to address terrorism and the threats from N. Korea, Iran and Russia. But should the need arise, I doubt he'd hesitate to employ military force. In short, those on the left who are expecting a golden age of progressivism are likely to be disappointed. But I believe a governing approach along the lines I suspect he'll follow is the wise one.

[MPeter]

Great article. I agree, McCain and Palin are the rabid, angry and erratic type whose hysterionics threaten to push this country over the edge. They need to be retired from the public stage.