Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Obama is already old news, yet it points to a still growing phenomoneon: accomplished women and former feminist icons who are falling at the feet of a savior-figure.
The psycho-drama of Caroline Kennedy's Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes was there for all to see starting with the title, "A President Like My Father." It was drenched in nostalgia and yearning as she projected onto Obama everything she hoped and imagined her father to be. In her misty vision, JFK becomes Obama as Obama becomes JFK, like a hologram. She describes the vision in religious terms, as if it were a calling:
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
In other words, we need to shelve reason, give in to nostalgic and psychologically-laden emotions, and follow the father figure to a world of utopian child-like bliss.
Much much more...
When she says,
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
she is also saying "I believe have found the man who could be that father figure."
Another early convert was Maureen Dowd, who weeks ago, days after the Iowa win, was already picturing Barack kicking back in the Oval Office JFK-style in her own misty school-girl boyfriend-daddy-figure vision. She described it thus,
the dream of a cool, smart, elegant, reasonable, literary, witty, decent “West Wing” sort of president
in an Op-Ed piece titled, "Voting for a Smile." For Dowd, in princess mode, Barack is the young prince come to rescue her, while Hillary, week after week, is portrayed as the evil step-mother. According to Dowd, indulging her own nostalgia and yearning, he's also bringing back rat-pack style, and we know how good those boys were to their gals:
Even though Obama was wooing the young demographic so coveted by Hollywood, he took a page from J.F.K. and avoided the casual look last week. There were no jeans or snow boots. Just dark suits, stylish ties and dress shoes.
The newest, and most surprsing, convert is Barbara Ehrenreich, who leaps beyond the daddy complex and elevates Obama to the level of God. She sees Obama as a divine force, "unstoppable," with the power to make "your grown feminist daughter" weep "inconsolably" (women and tears, you know). For Ehrenreich, he is mysterious and irrational (in her analysis good things), a rock-star, the embodiment, she says, of "Beatlemania," the comparison which gives her own nostalgic yearings to return to some sort of adolescent bliss away. For Ehrenreich, Hillary is "technocratic and elitist," "embarrassing," a kind of blow-up doll: "the frozen smile has to go too, along with the metronymic nodding, which sometimes goes on long enough to suggest a placement within the autism spectrum." Ouch. This description, which makes one recoil, betrays some irrational projection on her part onto Hillary: a mother complex?
Then she just goes off the deep-end:
Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents "change." A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, "I love you America, but isn't it time to start seeing other people?" As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama's election could mean the re-branding of America. An anti-war black president with an Arab-sounding name: See, we're not so bad after all, world!
What is going on here? Long-time left-wing progressive activist cites conservative commentator Sullivan and gives in to the notion that America is a "brand," that the president is not much more than a "bumper sticker," that image is everything. Paging Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, and Worst Years of Our Lives! But then again, in Worst Years she evicerates Nancy Reagan; again, a mother complex?
Ehrenreich works herself up to a fever pitch. For her, finally, Obama is not simply God, but a martyr:
We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption.
In other words, for Ehrenreich, Obama is a distincly American Jesus Christ. She wants to attone, she wants to be redemmed, she wants to be saved. Yet, she disclaims the notion that the Obama camaign is a "cult of personality." Right.
As the much maligned truth-sayer (they always are) Erica Jong said a day or so ago, "Flip Flop, Flop Flip. This is the nature of our political dialogue." Psycho-sexual drama. Nostaliga and yearing. Hero-worship. The desire for daddy.
Swarming kossacks, feast!