David Brooks is handsome; he's just not that smart and too often is wrong. Look at all the ink he's wasted over the years supporting Bush in Iraq and Bush everywhere else. Recently, however, he's been kvelling (though he's probably not Jewish) over Barack Obama as the great white hope, the ultimate spokesman for an America that is not red or blue, black or white. In today's NYT (1/4/08) he wrote that Iowa was an earthquake because Obama won so handily, turning -- at least for now -- what had been an "ethereal" dream into palpable reality.
But I fear he is wrong again -- this time in less palpable ways. First, the hatred many white people have for black people is also palpable, and definitely not ethereal or ephemeral. Brooks says Americans won't stand in the way of Obama's candidacy, won't "stand up and say no" to his unprecedented bid. But one can say no the way it's been said to the Kennedys and MLK in the past, or as said to Bhutto just last week. Not too tough to do. Bush had tons of body guards unnecessary in America because Democrats don't assassinate people; Republicans do. Obama cannot have enough body guards to keep him safe; while at the same time he'll have too many body guards to let him be the kind of in-touch president we all crave.
He also said that Edwards is washed up politically. That may be the case, but I think that kind of sentiment fits too well with the media's pattern of ignoring Edwards entirely. They ignore Edwards not just because he finished second, which to Brooks is the same as finishing dead last. He's so simple; so American. But what really galls Brooks is that Edwards bills himself as the anti-corporate candidate. That he claims to be a man of the people and from the people may be OK; but that he is against oil interests, pharmaceutical interests, and health insurance interests is another thing entirely. Someone like that has no chance with mainstream media - whether print or broadcast.
But most importantly, Brooks seems to have forgotten the 2000 campaign in which Governor George W. Bush ran as "a uniter; not a divider." What is the difference between that rhetoric -- subsequently proven to mean the opposite -- and that of Obama -- other than the fact that he is yet to become president? One man was a southern white, a well-known racist at least since prep-school days at Andover when he adorned his dorm wall with a gigantic Confederate flag. The other man is a northern black of mixed-race parentage who has no such provocative history as far as I know. Maybe he is secretly radical the way Bush was secretly right-wing. After all, Obama early on advocated talking with Iran's leadership until Hillary attacked him and forced him to tone it down. So let's hope W and O are different from one another more than their respective campaign speeches sound, though each in his own way may be obfuscating hidden agendas.
There are no negatives in the unconscious, something to pay close attention to in political speeches. When a person says who he is not he may well be revealing who he wishes he weren't, not who he actually isn't. Bush was and remains a divider -- arguably the most divisive president in our history. So when Obama says he doesn't see red and blue, I want to know what he does see.