In a stunning exchange on the PBS program Bill Moyers' Journal on Friday, the Stanford "race expert" and self-described free-market conservative Shelby Steele had this to say about Barack Obama:
BILL MOYERS: The subtitle of your book [Bound Man: Why America Is Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win, 2007, Free Press], why we are excited about Obama. Are you excited about Obama?
SHELBY STEELE: Yes. Yeah. Actually, I am. Yes. ...
BILL MOYERS: But you go on to say why he can't win. Now, that would seem to suggest you don't think he can become President.
SHELBY STEELE: My gut feeling is that he's going to have a difficulty-- a difficult time doing that. The reason I think is that we don't yet know him. We don't yet quite know. What his deep abiding convictions are. And he seems to have, you know, almost in a sense kept them concealed. And a part of the I think infatuation with Obama is because he's something of an invisible man. He's a kind of a projection screen. And you sort of see more your — the better side of yourself when you look at Obama than you see actually Barack Obama.
Steele's comments are confused -- is Obama "invisible" or translucent ("a screen"), for Pete's sake? -- and either disingenuous or intellectually lazy, unless detailed policy proposals and a 480-page memoir chronicling the successes and failures of a thirtysomething's life are somehow a "concealment" of who its author is. We "don't yet quite know" Barack Obama? What more do we need to see of this guy to get to know him? His chest x-rays?
Steele labels Obama a "bargainer," in contrast to "challenger" figures like Al Sharpton:
a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you're going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.
Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.
Note the use of Manichaean opposites in Steele's thinking: white and black, bargainer and challenger. And look all over Daily Kos for them: Democrat and "Rethuglican," fighters and wusses, traditional liberal and movement progressive (Kos's recent dichotomy). Let's face it: our contemporary politics is more or less a discourse of binary terms and concepts that, depending on one's perspective, usually spell a "violent hierarchy" of one kind or another: black over white, white over black, liberal over conservative, etc. As Marx warned, binary oppositions are what modern capitalism peddles to us at the cost of our own alienation. Which brings us to a central point of the Obama candidacy:
We live in an alienated society, a society devoid of any direction beyond consumerism, and Barack Obama is challenging us to act to overcome it.
It is striking how many pundits and journalists fail to appreciate this. They wear baby-boomer blinders. Like Steele, they look at Obama and see a race story. Or they look at Hillary Clinton and see a gender story. They are obtuse to the fact that many of us ultimately don't care about Obama's race or Clinton's gender. To be sure, both candidates represent a blessedly refreshing divergence from the white male status quo, and both their resumes are marked by achievement in the face of chauvinism, bigotry, suspicious glances, and trite comments for simply being who they are. In my view, such resumes ideally make for strong, insightful, circumspect candidates. But in Obama, I also see a leader who 1) lived a not-too-distant life of service and grassroots activism before entering politics; 2) publicly opposed the war in Iraq and now offers a fresh foreign policy; 3) conceived and passed the most effective ethics reform in Washington since Watergate and now refuses to accept help from federal lobbyists, PACs, and 527s; 4) has a sterling environmental record; etc. Moreover, I see a leader who recognizes a country alienated from itself and calls on us to move beyond the conventional conceptions of race, identity, and even political community itself.
This is what sets Obama apart. This is what thousands keep flocking to experience at his appearances: not some "benefit of the doubt" or flattering "projection" of ourselves, as Steele would have it, but a new communion with others.
Political parties, at an essential level, are about communication and efficiency; they exist to allow the like-minded to speak and act in unison in the corridors of government. In contemporary American society, however, they have become paragons of inefficiency and miscommunication. Democrats and Republicans are more versed in political combat than in compromise, in accusations than in accomplishments. We are tired of this juvenile backbiting and infighting; we want a government with results and a country with a purpose. Barack Obama offers not a Blairite "third way" beyond traditional political oppositions; he is deconstructing them altogether:
Democrats, independents and Republicans who are tired of the division and distraction that has clouded Washington, who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable, who understand that, if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there is no problem we cannot solve, there is no destiny that we cannot fulfill.
Obama says "Independents and Republicans" without disdain or frustration. He reaches out to them without fingers crossed behind his back. Like no other political figure, he sees that, regardless of party affiliation, Americans want affordable health care and a peaceful world in which to raise their kids. Obama's ability to rally Americans around a fresh start, where parties give way to principles, may be abstract and even ethereal, but it makes all the practical difference in the world. The problems that have plagued this country for decades cannot be overcome by one leader, however capable he or she may be. We need to act in unprecedented numbers to solve them -- and act not simply in defense of our own individual interests, but in defense of the interests of others whom we may not know or who may, God forbid, disagree with us. To resist alienation, revive community, and ignite concerted action for the common good -- this is how we move the progressive agenda forward. And this is exactly what Barack Obama is doing now.