It’s hardly news to say that this election presents a stark contrast in terms of policy choices, but it may be less obvious how the choice we face this November is a watershed between two streams of American political culture that can be traced across our history.
In his book Hellfire Nation, Brown Political Science Professor James A. Morone argues that America is "a nation with the soul of a church." As Morone details, that soul has been torn between a tradition of individualistic moralizing that distinguishes between "us" (the "elect," the "saved," "real Americans") and "them" (embodied in a successive line of "heathen" Indians, slaves, African-Americans, immigrants, "Reds," and undocumented workers), and a prophetic tradition (of the Abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, the Progressive Movement, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights Movement). As eloquently voiced by Martin Luther King, Jr., the prophetic tradition calls on the nation collectively to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
Perhaps the starkest choice we face this November is between these two deeply rooted narratives of our political culture. McCain and Palin shamelessly embrace the "us" versus "them" tradition (small town, "hockey mom" values versus soulless, urban sophistication) to cynically build a "fifty percent plus one" majority for corporate and wealth-friendly policies.
On the other hand, Obama is quite self-consciously rooted in the prophetic tradition of America’s political culture. He says so explicitly. When he announced his campaign, he said, "In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union." At the Democratic Convention, in a speech entitled "The American Promise," he challenged the country as follows: "America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."
These words cannot be dismissed as rhetorical flourishes: they state, quite simply, the collective choice we face this November. Are we better than these last eight years? Are we a better country than this?
The Millennium will not arrive if Barack Obama is elected President, and Progressives will doubtless have much to complain about when a President Obama governs more from the center than we would like. But, given the historical place of Blacks as the perpetual "them" of American culture and politics, the significance of an African-American being elected to lead a nation that once embraced African slavery – with millions of white voters responding to his call to be "one people" – cannot be underestimated. That would be a watershed choice to reject the demonization of "them," and to move toward a political culture where the interests of the vast majority of Americans can at least enter the debate.
The Rove-trained handlers of McCain and Palin are the heirs to the long tradition of "us" versus "them" in American politics. They consciously embrace racially tinged themes to raise the fear that Obama is not "one of us." If they succeed, the effects of our defeat can also not be underestimated. It will raise, in the starkest terms, whether we really are "one people" and "better than these last eight years."
This is one of the rare moments in our history when we have the chance to move away from the politics of "us" and "them" and toward the politics of "one people."
We each need to do whatever we can to elect Barack Obama as President.