What’s in a Title

    It’s always questionable to rely on a single issue to illuminate a larger insight.  But at a bookstore recently I saw side by side on display two books – one by Obama and one by McCain.  Without having read either I was struck by the difference in the titles.  Obama’s was “Dreams From My Father”.  McCains, “Faith Of My Fathers”.  Seemingly similar but actually quite different.
     Of course, publishers have a say in the titling of books and perhaps there was no great thought given to these titles and they were chosen off-handedly.  But for the sake of argument, assuming each took care in choosing the title of their book, what do such subtle differences mean?
     Take McCain’s first.  “Faith Of My Fathers” implies a received wisdom, a shared truth, a solidity of structure and purpose, along with a certain reciprocity demanded of the recipient of the gift.   It may even imply a certain separation or exclusion from others that might represent a proud superiority from and towards others who lack such a template as an inheritance. This “faith” becomes a part of the faithful’s gene code, at the same time it’s a birthright and a charge received and an ideal and standard of behavior to be lived up to. 
     The title of Obama’s memoir on the other hand, “Dreams From My Father”, is a very similar but yet entirely opposite configuration of the same parental inheritance.  The word “dreams” is unspecific, ethereal, expansive and redolent of openness and opportunity.  It is aspirational as well, though neutral and undemanding of the recipient, as in goals achievable but as yet unrequited.  It is more winsome.  
     The “faith” of McCain’s book is something one deepens into and comes to understand and fulfill gradually.  In his case, in a military family, it resonates of soldierly honor, dark oak rooms, long marbled hallways of responsibility and long tours of duty, discussed at length in later years among the wisps cigar smoke and reek of tradition before the fire at the club.  
     The dreams of Obama are those one opens out to, world wide and open ended and far less specified with no markers or particular achievements implied.  Faith is a relatively closed system, dreams are open to the sky.  Dreams are all open fields of endeavor and wide, unlimited horizons.
     Even the article “from” resonates differently in Obama’s book title than the “of” in McCain’s.  “From” in this context implies no responsibility or reciprocity but is more of a bequest, an inheritance that one receives and may choose to accept or not.  As the dreams of his father are more “from” him than “of” him, though these two terms are not always mutually exclusive, it is an inheritance more in a transactional sense, an optional beneficence, as to that of a spectator, or an objective observer of his own inheritance, which he may then choose to accept, fall short of or rise above without particular expectation or recrimination from the giver.
     The “of” of McCain’s book is genealogical, a heavier responsibility from which one cannot escape no matter how one might try and which one risks ignoring at the expense of a failed life.  There is no sense of onus in Obama’s life, while McCain’s is filled with it.
     The term “father,” singular in Obama’s book, is also illustrative in its differences to McCain’s conception.  It gives the sense of circumscribed individuality, a uniqueness, a singularity of detail of Obama’s particular existence.  This is opposed to McCain’s concept of “fathers” plural, indicating a long line stretching back into a distant misty past.  McCain indicates he is a smaller part of a much larger movement, or faith, which he must conform with and carry on as it has been carried on before him.  The long line must remain unbroken, it seems, or it may die out, hence the responsibility inherent in the formulation.  This is a very conservative notion in every respect of the word conservative.
     Obama’s reference to dreams from his “father,” singular, is a statement of supreme individuality and singular ambition, of a man who stands alone on the hilltop with only his own ability to transcend the norms that McCain is beholden to, and achieve things (or not) never before seen, or dreamed by himself.  There has been no leg up from familial connections for Obama.  He is one who stands or falls entirely on his own merits.
     In short Obama is more of a progressive, filled with optimism, promise and high intellectual achievement and innovation.  McCain’s is a life of effort, determination, grit, whose educational values are acquired by rote.  Obama looks ahead for inspiration.  McCain looks back.

The run to the middle

     The extreme charges and countercharges which each side’s partisans level against the other are unacceptable caricatures and not true to life, of course, but even without that, it is easy to see the visceral divide which this election has tapped into due to the absolutely divergent character types of the opponents.  The smooth talking Obama, to the fearful and unimaginative, seems unmoored by tradition to the past.  While the blunt McCain, the child of tradition; to those energetic, youthful and fed up seeking change, seems hopelessly embedded in the past.
     Therefore, it is fascinating to note, that true to the long standing tradition in American politics of running to the middle in elections, how much they have each tried to gravitate to the opposite of their inherited tendencies.  Therefore, McCain insists on his maverick nature, his youthful rebelliousness and the non-conservative, risky side of his nature.  While Obama, to the contrary, emphasizes his safeness, his regularity, his consistency and his conservatism.  Both emphasize the part of their personality that their upbringing denied them or at least does not expose to the public.  Part of this is stylized, of course, a political appeal to a broader range of the American electorate.  But surely much of it is also a yearning to transcend their own beings.
     Because, like the book titles, their natures cannot be hidden no matter how their policies try to disguise them.  Obama, for instance, has an intelligence and ease of adaptability that immediately adopts forms and formulations which might be thought to be naturally foreign to him as a way to disarm opposition and fit in.  McCain, more of an intellectual plodder, as someone trying to be just like everyone else, looks (at least while campaigning) as if he’s actually physically trying to escape himself, to jump out of his own skin.  
    For purposes of this election, Obama’s flexibility (even apparent in his loose limbs), his adaptability, his fluidity, his mental agility and the effortless grace and ease with which he has moved toward the middle ground has proven superior and more comforting than McCain’s.  McCain’s greater rigidity in upbringing (also evident in his tight smile and ill at ease demeanor) as well as the personal responsibility he thinks he bears to succeed and prove himself, have made his wild and laborious leaps toward acquiring the same middle ground seem herky jerky, halting and essentially derogatory.
     On the surface, it isn’t hard to see which attitude this election cycle would most reward.  To a large degree, to the dismay of the more wonkish, perhaps it’s on this deeper, more symbolic level that this entire election has really turned.  After all, to an electorate begging change McCain must convince people that he will represent them.  This is obviously not only foreign to his politics but to his very nature.  Obama is already there.  He is change itself.

The tribal nature of elections
 
    Still Obama’s election will not be easy.  All elections, especially generational ones, are essentially tribal.  The young pretender must take on the representative of the old guard with the weapons of their choosing and beat them at their own game.  It is inherently unfair as the old guard has had decades to rig the game in their favor.  The crowd knows the setup is rigged against the challenger but doesn’t care.  They are singularly unsympathetic to weakness or failure.  There is no room for whining.  In politics, only success succeeds. 
    In the Aught Eight election there are three significant headwinds against Obama.  
    One, generational change.  Older people are always leery and unsure of the new world they see unfolding around them.  They always have a natural reactive reluctance to give the keys of the car of the nation to the next untested driver representing the next generation.  
    Two, the unfathomable racial issue.  This is a deep subcurrent to all our history.  That Obama may be thought of as foreign or irreligious – allegedly – are due entirely to warmed over racism.  If his father, whom he hardly knew, was Irish or Italian or Japanese, and his name Timmy O’Brien or Lou Costanza or Itchy Osuma, it is hard to see how this would be an issue.  Such phony questions are all about race.  
    Three, this is a fight against the long entrenched power and might of the Republican Party.  We have seen it arise in all its furor, jealousy and viciousness in extreme defense of itself.  Such entities never cede power lightly and they have thrown every scurrilous charge but the kitchen sink at the challenger until it would seem they must surely soon run out of appliances.  They may as well someday be known as the flying toaster campaign for all the saliency of most of the arguments raised against Obama.
 
    To counter this however, at Obama’s back, is all the vigor and fresh air of a new generation, prodding change, and promising a much needed and long overdue overhaul of policies.  (No one, not even McCain who has been a party to it, dares suggest the system has not grown corrupted.)  This gale of change may well be enough to blow the pretenders out of Obama’s way.  John McCain is decidedly upwind of these changes, behind on all three of these winds that represent the status quo (puffing as hard as he can) and downwind from the cleansing wind of change at Obama’s back.
 
How the Internet saved America

     Over many years and many election cycles the press, our traditional guarantor of truth, has been tamed and regularized, beaten down, bought up, become jaded and even occasionally been intimidated.  Its resources have become stretched too far do to declining revenues and increased competition.  Because of this democracy has flattened out, polarized and become simplistic and patronizing to the public.
     Over many years, as well, the republicans have built up an elaborate support system of their own (and a tear down and smear factory system against their enemies) consisting of think tanks and talk show hosts, those kill switch tyrants of the airwaves, and mind numbingly dumb propagandists, dirty tricks hangers on, etc., to smear, concoct, libel, set false trails and create dense and elaborate theories of justification for whatever outrage they may be engaged in; in order to confound a challenger and help their anointed candidate.  
    As a cumulative result of both these tendencies our political campaigns have devolved into increasing shallow and cruelly vindictive, stylized, flag waving exercises in stupidity, fear and prejudice. All The disparate sources responsible for the degradation of our political campaigns, and therefore our government, have all supported by a vast infrastructure of money.  
    All of these things in combination (and none of it to any discernable good) have compounded together to make the republican party a very difficult party, structurally, to overcome.  And it is above all money, that has been the glue they have come to depend upon more than words or policy to ram their quadrennial electoral engine home.  This extended body of support is the republican’s inbred advantage and it is why they always been adamantly opposed to any and all campaign finance reforms and why they are very difficult to beat in elections at which they have become masters.  
    But like a ramrod straight, parade ground general who looked good in person, trained his troops to a fault, looked resplendent on a horse with a chest full of medals gleaming in the sunlight, but couldn’t fight a lick, the republicans look great in elections, but never bother governing as well as they campaign.
     Against this war machine the influence of the internet cannot be exaggerated.  Obama is a gifted politician, wise beyond his experience and years, who has run an extraordinarily good campaign.  But the internet has neutralized or beaten every one of these built up electoral advantages it has taken the republicans decades to construct.
     So far, the internet cannot be bought or intimidated (those attempts will come later), it cannot be owned by the few.  Like Guttenberg’s press it has become the great leveler.  It is the great slayer of shibboleths, the fearless piercer of bubbles, the eviscerater of the proud egos among us, the enemy of dirty bought and paid for propagandists and a fact checker of the controlled and jaded press corps.  The imbalancing, anti-democratic hold that big money and influence peddling and special interests has wielded over our political system still exists but has been nearly cancelled out by the energy of the internet.  It has been lessened by the ascendancy of the internet to raise vast sums of money, not from the rich exclusively but from the small donations of many.  
     Interestingly, in the way Franklin Roosevelt used radio and John Kennedy used TV, the progressive democrat Obama has been the first to exploit the internet.
     Naturally, like any purely technological advancement it is morally neutral and will not be always used for purely egalitarian purposes.  Like any new force arising on the political landscape it must be watched and guarded.  But thus far it has proven to be a great equalizer and a force for increased democratization in our society and the world.  Given the direction we have been lately headed future times may look back on this election and dub this the time the internet came of age and saved democracy.

     Time is the only true crystal ball we have, it will soon reveal all.