Other than politics, my other passion is baseball. I have been a fan of the game for as long as I can remember. I have been priveleged enough to be a fan of one of the premier franchises of baseball (the St. Louis Cardinals) and have seen my team win two World Series Championships.
More than that however, I enjoy the history of the game. I enjoy comparing the incredible skills of Albert Pujols and Stan Musial, and wondering how Bob Gibson would fare against the hitters of this era. There was a baseball game played in St. Louis on June 25, 1876. On the same day, General Custer and the Seventh Calvary were near a small river called the Little Big Horn. It would be a bad day for both the St. Louis nine and for General Custer.
All this brings me to my main point. Much has been made about the revolutionary nature of the Obama campaign, and how he has shattered barriers for minorities in presidential politics. There have been inevitable comparisons with Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in baseball in 1947. When I look at Barack Obama, I see Jackie Robinson. But not in the way that many people may think.
Jackie Robinson was not the most skilled baseball player in the Negro Leagues at the end of World War II. He was a very good player, but did not have a lot of home run power, and there were, I believe, questions about his fielding ability.
However, Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the single man most responsible for breaking the color barrier which had been in place since the late nineteenth century, was not looking for the most talented player. He was looking for the RIGHT player. He knew that an African-American player would be confronting ferocious opposition from both rival teams and from players on his own squad. One Brooklyn player, Dixie Walker, who won the National League batting title with Brooklyn in 1944 and led the league in Runs Batted In in 1945, requested a trade rather than play with Robinson, and soon found himself with the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates. The virulent racism which Robinson faced from opposing teams, notably the Philadelphia Phillies, has been well-documented. There were rumors that the St. Louis Cardinals would refuse to play aginst Brooklyn if Robinson was on the squad. This never occurred.
Knowing how difficult it would be for an African-American to endure such conditions, Rickey made a choice. He wanted the most calm, disciplined player he could find. Robinson was the perfect choice. He had attended college at UCLA, had been an officer in the army, and well understood the merits of discipline. He knew that he could not let him be labelled as an "angry black man", lest he ruin the opportunities for another generation of African-American ballplayers. He kept himself on an emotional leash that all of us must admire.
I see a parallel between Jackie Robinson and Barack Obama. Senator Obama has been the most emotionally controlled candidate that I can remember. He knows the pitfalls that await an "angry black politician". At best, he would have been defeated in the primaries. At worst, he would have jeopardized his political career.
I know that, like many of you, there have been times when I wished his campaign had been a little less controlled, a little more emotional, a little more ready to call a lie a lie, and to engage the McCain campaign at their level. But this would have sabotaged one of the long-term goals of his campaign, which was to gain the trust of the American people, to get them used to the idea of an African-American president. To win his party's nominations, Barack Obama not only had to be as good a candidate as his opponents, he had to be markedly better than his opponents. This is what he did.
In the primaries, he ran a superior campaign, although at the beginning, he was not seen as the superior candidate. But his campaign did all the little things, grinding it out for every last delegate, and by June, they had locked up the nomination.
And every day that his name was out there, more and more people got used to the idea that he might be president.
In the general election campaign, through all the lies and half-truths and smears, he has been calm. While we here obsessed about the latest polling data, about the vagaries of the daily news cycle, he has run the most efficient, well-prepared, drama-free campaign of any Democratic nominee in my memory. No ranting during a press conference, no tirades during a debate. Just a smile, a calm explanation, and when the situation warranted, the deft use of the verbal knife.
And through the VP selection, the conventions, and now the debates, more and more people got used to the idea that they could vote for him for President.
No one remembers who Dixie Walker was. He is just a footnote in history, and his entire, at times admirable, career has been reduced to little more than what I have detailed above. On an even sadder note, it is very possible that a generation from now, no one will remember who John McCain was either. Of course, we are having a hard time remembering who John McCain was now, since the man we thought we knew bears little resemblance to the man we see today.