aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Ferraro was wrong. But Kaus makes an interesting point.

I normally side with Sullivan in the running feud he’s got going with Mickey Kaus, but I was no fan of Sullivan’s big, widely applauded Atlantic piece making the transformational case for Barack Obama.

This morning Kaus quotes this passage from Sullivan:

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial-it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man-Barack Hussein Obama-is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Kaus wonders:

His face. Hello! Mrs. Ferraro? If one of the “formeost” things Obama offers voters is the “face of a brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia, etc.” doesn’t that mean “he would not be in this position if he were white”?  If you like Obama because he might “rebrand” America to the world--well, he wouldn’t accomplish that simply by having his election televised, as Sullivan suggests he would, if he were white, would he? Or think in purely domestic terms. If Obama were white, he wouldn’t embody hopes of a post-racial future. Duh! That’s part of his appeal. It seems obvious. Why does Obama dispute it? Why isn’t Ferraro allowed to acknowledge it?  Is it OK for Obama’s “face” to appeal to egghead Atlantic subscribers but not ordinary Wyoming caucusers? Or was Sullivan being “offensive”” and “ridiculous” too?

I also think it’s pretty clear that Sullivan-style logic is at the core what Ms. Ferraro meant when she said “[he] happens to be very lucky to be who he is” and that “the country is caught up in the concept” of his presidency. She’s not arguing that he’s where he is because black voters are caught up in identity politics--more the opposite, that white and black voters alike are caught up in the idea of ending identity politics. Nor does she does she seem to be arguing it’s wrong to be at least temporarily “caught up” in this concept.  But the concept wouldn’t be there if Obama was white.

Clickthrough for 1… 2… 3… P.S.s! Here’s the 2nd, “Would Obama be in this position if he weren’t half-white--i.e. if he didn’t have one white parent? That’s a more difficult question. If embodying the post-racial future is an advantage, it would seem to help--but that’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?”

For all we talk about race, for all we say we want to, for all we say we must, we don’t! we can’t! we won’t! We want to point fingers.

And look at me… I just did it too!