March 2008

Personality

If Obama is working on me, a hardened old cynic, drugging me with hope, what can’t he accomplish?

In a recent speech in Texas, Hillary Clinton accused her opponent of being “all hat and no cattle.” The implication in her remarks is that while Barack Obama may have a good personality, it will take more than that to govern a country. This is certainly true: Ronald Reagan was often termed “likeable,” though I could never see why. Al Gore, who was in retrospect obviously the far better candidate than George W. Bush, was often described as “wooden,” whereas Bush was characterized as a guy you’d want to have a beer with. (Of course, it turned out that having a beer was one of the few things that Bush was any good at.)

On the other hand, as Maureen Dowd has pointed out, when we vote, we often don’t have a lot to go on: candidates can say whatever they want to about the issues (her example: Bush Sr. and “No new taxes!”) and then behave entirely differently in office (her example: Bush Jr. as “compassionate conservative”). We may try to vote on the issues, but we have no way of knowing how things will play out in reality.

If I examine the reasons that I voted for Barack Obama in the Maryland primary and that I hope to vote for him again in November, I am hard pressed to name anything specific and ergo defensible beyond the fact that for whatever reason, I just really like him. I think he has a good personality—in fact, a great one—and for some reason, that inspires my confidence that he will do the right thing as president. Is that irrational? Sure—but perhaps there is an underlying rational basis for it.

Full disclosure: even if I didn’t love Obama—which I do—I would have to vote for him because not only does he live in my quirky Chicago neighborhood, where he was my parents’ state senator, but for his first two years, he went to Occidental College in Los Angeles, my alma mater, where he evidently lived in Haines Hall and was known as “Barry.” In other words, Obama and me, we’re lantzmen or, if you prefer, homies.

But beyond that, my impressions of Obama—and that’s all one can have, really, impressions—have been extremely positive, from his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention to my recent interchange with him at a rally (I’ll get to that in a second). Everything he does seems really smart, and for me, smartness is crucial. Hillary Clinton is intelligent, but she doesn’t seem anywhere near as smart as Obama in the sense of thinking laterally about the issues. One of the first things that impressed me about Obama’s campaign was his saying on Sixty Minutes that he would try to talk to Syria and Iran, an idea for which he was ridiculed by Clinton, who termed it “irresponsible and naïve.” To me, this novel concept—wow, diplomacy—indicated that Obama was thinking outside the box (a loathsome expression, but one that fits here) about a critically important subject.

And diplomacy involves having a good personality, right? If Obama is working on me, a hardened old cynic, drugging me with hope, what can’t he accomplish?

But if Obama hadn’t already had my vote, he would have nailed it at his recent campaign stop at Prince George’s Community College, where I teach. When I found out he was going to be there, I did some hard bargaining with his people and talked/donated my way into one of the VIP receptions. I was determined to shake his hand, in part because I had missed a golden opportunity to do so a few months prior, in February 2007, to be precise, when my mom and I ran into him in Walgreen’s in my Chicago neighborhood. We were in the pharmacy area, numbly waiting for a prescription for my dad, when we noticed an appealing man standing near the counter—appealing, at first, because of his voice, which was so unusual that I looked up to see who was speaking. Obama has a voice full of authority, and it’s even more amazing when you hear it wafting across the grunge of Walgreen’s from the mouth of an ordinary-looking man in a funky old jacket, beat-up tennis shoes, and a baseball cap.

Perhaps the sunglasses should have tipped me off that this was no ordinary guy with a bad cold. As he stood at the counter, waiting for cold medicine for his kids, as he told the cashier, he picked up a copy of his book, of which there was a large stack at the counter, and said jokingly, “I’ll take one of these.” It was only then that I realized who he was.

For months after that, my mom complained that we should have said hello to him, but my strong conviction is that when someone is in Walgreen’s with a bad cold, he or she should be left alone, and frankly, Obama or not, I have no desire to shake the hands of people who are obviously highly contagious.

But at a campaign stop, there are no such prohibitions. When Obama entered the PGCC gym, surrounded by bodyguards (in Walgreen’s, he was alone, perhaps the last time in his life that he will be), everyone surged toward him as if we were at a rock concert. He smiled—he has a dazzling smile—gave a little speech, and then started shaking hands. I found that when I shook hands with him—he was over his cold—I was reluctant to let go and could only stare stupidly at him. I have shaken hands with famous people before—I used to have what I called a “handshake collection,” which is less cumbersome than collecting autographs—but I have never before been so stupefied. When I was finally able to speak, I said, “I’m from Hyde Park and I went to Oxy.”

“Oxy? Really?” He knew I was telling the truth, because only Oxy students call it that. “What year?”

I told him.

“Oh, you were there before me,” he said, but immediately added, “But you look much younger.”

Come on. Is that not a fabulous personality? Of course I had to vote for him after that. The thing is, he said it with a little smile, as if to suggest that we both knew that this was what he had to say, being a political candidate—there was, it seemed to me, a layer of conspiratorial irony that went nicely with his gallantry.

After the meet-and-greet, we all went outside to hear his stump speech. By that time, the place was packed. As we waited, other politicians talked, and then a marching band emerged from the gym, followed by Obama himself. As he walked behind them, he did a spontaneous little march step, and again I felt that I was seeing the layer of irony, but also, it seemed, a tribute to the band, as if he was for an instant walking in their shoes.

Then he gave an amazing, stirring speech, but I can’t remember anything he said. I had to go teach, so regretfully, I made my way across the parking lot feeling that I had just met our next president. After the rally, I did think of comparisons to JFK, and to the young Frank Sinatra, who also had that aura of coolness.

Over the years, it seems that the Democratic Party has generally put forth nominees for president who had many sterling qualities but who came across as, for lack of a better word, tired old party hacks. Hubert Humphrey, for example, was a wonderful man, but evidently unappealing to voters even when up against Richard Nixon, a man with a personality that was famously bad. Walter Mondale. Michael Dukakis. Even Al Gore, though everyone loves him now, obviously did not play well. John Kerry.

No wonder everyone is talking about personality right now. Sure, it’s dangerous—personality cults can cause people to drink Kool-aid laced with cyanide. But when I asked my son, who is possibly even more of a hardened cynic than I am, how he was voting, he told me, “I’m for Obama because ya gotta believe in something.”            

I’m not sure about the cattle, but Obama has one hell of a hat.

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