May 2008

Clinging

“[T]he more problematic language choice for Senator Obama was not the word ‘bitter,’ it was his use of the word ‘cling’….”

­— Dan Schnur, “Right Fight, Wrong Word,” NYTimes.com Blog April 15, 2008

For the past eight years or so, I have worked very closely with a woman—let’s call her Sheila—who happens to be an ardent Republican. When Sheila’s and my destinies first became intertwined—I won’t bore you with the details of our jobs, and how they intersect—we basically, not to put too fine a point on it, did not get along. We disagreed about nearly everything—policies, procedures, and of course, politics, a subject we tried to stay away from. When Bush, of whom she was at that time inordinately fond, decided to wage war on Iraq, Sheila was all for it, and we had a few tense discussions before we decided it would be best to avoid the subject altogether.

Over the years, though, somehow, our relationship has changed. A few years ago in a meeting, we found that not only had we come to agree about almost everything work-related, but that we had each other’s backs. We also discovered that we had similar taste in clothes, and while I wouldn’t say we have come to look alike, I have on several occasions been mistaken for her.

For some time now, Sheila has been increasingly loath to defend her pal Bush, and though we still try to avoid talking about politics, there are relatively few subjects nowadays on which we truly disagree. I have often accused her of being a closet Democrat, and while she counters by saying that I am obviously a closet Republican, I don’t think her heart is in it.

It’s true that on most subjects, Sheila is a very progressive person. She is against racism, sexism, pointless war, and cruelty, and she has fabulous taste in shoes. But there is one issue that she cares passionately about—clings to, you might say—that causes her to be a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. As a devout Catholic, she is against abortion, and as far as I can tell, it is the central issue that determines how she will vote. I am just as passionately pro-choice, but I understand that her commitment is both religious and ethical.

On the other hand, as I often remind her, I think it’s a huge mistake to vote for anything on the basis of only one criterion. “Do you know what a Venn diagram looks like?” I occasionally ask her. She says she does. “That large shaded area in the middle is where you and the Democrats agree,” I say. She waves her hand to dismiss my argument and we go back to talking about shoes. My point is that our views on things have considerable overlap; despite our incredibly different backgrounds and assumptions, Sheila and I have discovered multiple areas of common ground. In our own Venn diagram, there is a large area that intersects.

***

Recently, in his New York Times column, David Brooks accused Barack Obama of something heinous: of being “like [Brooks’s] old neighbors in Hyde Park in Chicago,” which is where Obama lives. Brooks goes on to note that “some of us love Hyde Park for its diversity and quirkiness,” adding, “as there are those who love Cambridge and Berkeley” (ouch!). But he says that because of Obama’s affiliation with Hyde Park, as well as his church, his bowling score, and of course, Bittergate, “voters are going to wonder if he’s one of them.”

Of course, unlike me, Obama didn’t grow up in Hyde Park; his background is far more diverse and quirky than that, as everyone knows—has there ever before been a presidential candidate who spent his or her formative years in Hawaii and Indonesia, then went to Columbia and Harvard (as well as my alma mater, Occidental College)? No. With a global background as well as a first-class education, Obama is hard to pigeonhole, and apparently, Brooks’s best shot is to accuse him of Hyde Parkiness.

What Brooks fails to note is that Hyde Park is not just a bastion of liberal elitism, but a community that has historically been racially integrated and ethnically diverse since well before Obama was born. The 1960 census characterizes Hyde Park as 59.7% white, 37.7% “Negro,” and 2.6% “other races,” with 11% “foreign born.” In the more nuanced 2000 census, Hyde Park is 45.8% white, 38.1% Black or African-American, 11.3% Asian, 3.1% “Two or more races,” and 16.3% foreign-born. In some ways, for all its cosmopolitism, Hyde Park is like a small town, which is why not only has Obama met former Weatherperson Bill Ayers, but friends of mine, no radicals themselves, know him through the same academic/lawyerish circles, and my daughter Hortense once talked to Ayers on the phone while researching a college paper on the 1960s.

Hyde Park is basically the Tiger Woods of the Midwest, and as such, sure, Obama fits in. But what Brooks means to suggest is that Obama is somehow elitist in being a member of this “academic and liberal” community. “[T]he fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences,” Brooks declares.
Anyone who has read Obama’s riveting and beautifully written memoir, Dreams of My Father, knows that the majority of Americans, or indeed, of people anywhere, don’t exactly share Obama’s life experiences; the man has had an extraordinary life, and clearly it has informed his understanding of the world. To insist on reading that as “elitist” is to miss the poetry of Obama’s experience. Of course he can’t bowl! There is probably not a single bowling alley in Jakarta.

***

When Obama made his remark about working-class people “clinging” to issues, it was clear from the context, which was unfortunately immediately lost, that he was referring to the tendencies of people like Sheila, whose one-issue politics bestir them to vote for Republican candidates who use that one issue as bait and then switch into a vast platform of schemes to enrich corporations. Scores of working-class voters who have felt the economic sting of this bait-and-switch scam have responded to Obama’s comments by saying that yes, they are bitter.

Meanwhile, I, too, am bitter. I have been witnessing the media circus that is our presidential campaign season with a sense of increasing doom. As our oceans heat up and food and water shortages loom, it seems clear that only some kind of miracle can reverse the damage that eight years of Bush will have done to the environment, to our economy, to our global standing, to our armed forces, and to everything else he has touched.

In addition, John McCain’s strike force, the Clinton machine, has done terrible damage to the Democratic party and to Hillary herself with the very politics-as-usual that have been so destructive to the Clintons in the past, the crash-and-burn, gladiatorial, take-no-prisoners, Lee-Atwater-school roller derby that Obama has been trying to rescue us from.

But I continue to cling to the hope that despite the multiple forces arrayed against him—the Clintons, McCain, and the media—and despite the absence of a clear victory in Pennsylvania (though as the media’s narrative fails to note, he reduced Clinton’s lead from 20 to just under 10 percentage points), Obama will win in November and follow through on his promises to bring us together so that we—not he—can save the world.

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