I recently contacted an old friend from college (old, in the sense of a few years), and I made the mistake of assuming that he would be supporting Obama in the upcoming CT primary.
His response:
All we need is another Jesus/JFKish-inspirational-devotional-televangelical- devoid-of-any-substance-President!
It's natural enough for a committed environmentalist and supporter of gay rights to get behind Clinton, but I found the hostility toward Obama somewhat surprising. Of course, he didn't expect me to have "bought into the dream" and become an Obama supporter. Fair enough, given that in the past we related more by our cynicism than our liberalism.
His take on Obama:
You're always going to have 50%+1 electoral strategy in a two-party system. Barack may brand himself as a "uniter," but every wannabe bigwig says that, and every time, within a year of taking office, the government descends into partisanship, pork, and pollsters. I would like to think that somebody could break the pattern, but it's impossible in our system. Sure, politicians can try. They don't get reelected. Those who take their place do so because they practice and perpetuate 50+1. Game theory will tell you that.
Adding in his views on HRC:
Hillary's part of the apparatus. But at least she knows it and doesn't pretend to be anything else. She also has a better command of policy than any president of the last 30, maybe even 50 years. Given how many policies need fixing, that's essential. We don't need a preacher (haven't we had enough?) but a practitioner.
And before I forget: people go on about what a black president would signify. Yes, it would be a powerful statement of social change. But only domestically. Obsession with race is a uniquely American phenomenon. Blacks are not discriminated against in Nigeria. But women are. And in many other countries. Millions are oppressed. And in societies where women are oppressed, everybody suffers. Witness Iraq. It's my firm conviction that if the U.S. had seen fit to empower Iraqi women, we wouldn't have the carnage we do today.
What could be a better guiding light for women worldwide than to have the world's most powerful person be one of them?
My response:
I'll agree with you on identity politics, to the extent that I'm not particularly concerned with having a first "black" president any more than I'm particularly concerned with having a first woman president. Frankly I found the inflated commentary about "history being made" at their two-person debate to be nauseatingly self-congratulatory and sophomoric.
Gender is no more an asset or impediment to HRC's campaign and prospective presidency than it would be to Condoleezza Rice or Liddy Dole -- whom we would rightly have very different feelings about. To the extent that her gender would actually influence outcomes, I'm afraid it could have the opposite effect from what we would hope -- particularly for someone as prone to triangulation as HRC. Her status as "one of them" would provide political cover and presumptive backing on gender issues, without the need for real action or political sacrifice. To use your example hypothetically, had it been an HRC administration who invaded Iraq in 2003, they could indeed have been expected to trumpet women's rights in the "new" Iraq -- much as the Bush administration and CPA did at the time. But when it comes down to the inevitable hard political negotiations and challenges from all sides, I find it hard to put much faith in a hypothetical HRC administration's commitment to women's issues when it's no longer politically expedient. Granted, any minimally competent administration would have done a better job overall than Bush, but Hillary Clinton would also have powerful reasons not to "stick her neck out" on matters of gender in particular.
Much of the same dynamic would exist for Obama in dealing with matters of race, though I'm not necessarily convinced he would react in the same ways. Moreover, as you say, American racial politics means little to the rest of the world. It is not that Obama is "black" -- in the American sense that is fraught with the historical weight of slavery and segregation -- in that sense, he is not "black," at all. For those of us who are most impressed with "who he is," it is not about "discrimination." In Obama, we see someone thoroughly outside the political establishment, whose very identity confounds categorization. To the rest of the world, this sends a far more powerful message than a popular political family handing off power to a first lady, as in Argentina or your average banana republic. And geopolitically, to the extent that the middle eastern "street" can be relied upon to "love Americans but hate Bush," I can think of no more powerful representational shift in American leadership -- a veritable mindfuck, that.
I've made more of the above than is necessary, especially since I have no particular dislike for Hillary Clinton. My opposition to her nomination is more a tactical matter of supporting the candidate who has the most realistic shot of both winning and effectively governing -- based on the recognition that, rightly or wrongly, some 49% of the population really does dislike her and are unlikely to change their minds about it. I intend to support the Democratic nominee, and I'd really rather not be burdened with it being her.
Yes, I hate the two-party system, and yes, the game theory gives us an equilibrium around 50%+1 electoral math (which, for HRC, happens to be her ceiling). But not every election works that way, and it is possible to think much bigger than that. I'm talking about something more along the lines of 1932 -- a real political realignment.
2008 has the potential to be one such historical moment -- a paradigm shift that could powerfully reshape our politics for a generation. Obama has explicitly pointed to this as his reason for running now, and I believe he may be right. It is not "impossible in our system" -- though it would prove impossible with a candidate like HRC.
Ironically, HRC's grounding in the political establishment would make her an easier analogue to FDR, were it not for her inability to attract mass popular support. I wish it were not so. When HRC attacked Obama for "praising" Reagan as a transformative political figure, her campaign may not have been missing the point so much as trying to remove this argument from a more recent context in the public imagination. But make no mistake, the serious problems we face have everything to do with the weight of decades of right-wing political supremacy, and lasting solutions depend on turning that dynamic on its head.
I agree that we need practitioners -- a whole army of technocrats and policy wonks to fumigate the executive branch and restore it to something resembling a functioning government. But this is not something to be vested wholly (or even primarily) in one man or woman, a-la-Cheney. A "political leader" is needed precisely to attract the broad base of political support that empowers the functionaries to effectively govern. Beyond these essential rhetorical and political skills, if you really doubt that Obama has the intellect and judgment to effectively oversee the functioning of the executive branch, I suggest you take another look.
If HRC were successful in narrowly winning the general election, she may well be able to govern as successfully as Bill Clinton did in the 90's, with the adept triangulation of a permanent campaign. However, we may differ as to whether that outcome would be sufficient. I think we need another FDR, not another Clinton (or even another JFK, as the Obama comparisons tend to go).
Update:
I changed the title to reflect that in making the case for skeptics, we are answering cynicism with hope.