This is what I love about having Political Virgin involved in political blogging this election: articulate, thoughtful responses to questions and issues. This post is no exception. PV took on my challenge (which already puts her above the rank and file) to discuss her reasons for supporting Obama.
PV has definitely done a good job of showing that there is a class of Obama supporter who doesn’t fit my characterization:
“What I have not yet met is someone who supports Obama the man for any reason they can actually point to and back up. They cannot point to a single issue he has taken a hard stand on, a single legislative action he has take or a single act of leadership in his entire career. The eventually simply mumble about “hope” and “change”. In the end they will get all upset about being asks for their reasons and say something about me the questioner being a racist.” – Me
For instance PV can and did take on the challenge without resorting to a racism charge or discussing why she is anti-Palin or McCain. That alone makes her unique in my experience. I will go ahead and accept her premise that there are probably others like her.
The rest of her post though is a mixed bag as a refutation of my point. She definitely has reasons that she feels are factually supportable for her support of Obama. My first impulse was thus to dissect the reasons posted one by one because:
- I am just that kind of guy
- For the most part I consider almost all of them unsupportable by or even flat out contrary to the facts
I’m not going to do that because not only would it seem needlessly confrontational but it would miss the core point of my question or PV’s response.
In short the core issue is that PV (and those like her) are making this decision in the absence of factual evidence and based almost entirely on their judgment of the man’s projected image*.
The brilliance of the Obama campaign has been it’s success in wooing these types of voters. The greatest weapon in the Obama arsenal has been to project one image while holding back the facts that fatally damage that narrative. In so doing they give folks an opportunity see the best in him without having to face any contradictory experiences**. Let’s take a single example:
“I like his willingness to face potentially damaging flaws head on. In “Dreams of My Father” he wrote about his drug and alcohol use in college, as well as his struggles with race and resentment. He doesn’t belittle or white-wash it with comments about how he “didn’t inhale”, but turns it to a positive tale for others, that mistakes do not have to brand us tainted for life, mistakes can be overcome.” PV
Sounds downright inspiring doesn’t it? Wouldn’t we all like to vote for that guy? I know I sure would. Unfortunately that guy is absolutely not Barack Obama.
“Dreams of My Father” is not a honest recalling of a life lived by a man who opened up to his readership. “Dreams” was a carefully crafted bit of propaganda created by Obama and edited by his advisers to further his political career. In as much as it admits these “flaws” they are absolutely in keeping with the biases of the Chicago electorate he wanted to influence at the time. To those he was courting at the time admitting his anger at and resentment of whites was hardly a flaw: it was required.
Ignoring that, let’s say for a moment that “Dreams” was a frank admission of something Obama actually considered a flaw and thought would hurt him. In other words that he really thought it would be “potentially damaging”. If so then this open and honest admission was a momentary aberration and hardly a core character trait. Behind the scenes in both his Chicago days and more effectively in the presidential race there has been a huge push by Obama and his confidants to play down, lie about,cover up and hinder investigation into his past. Obama is the tip of an organizational iceberg that is so reflexively secretive and litigious that they make the Bush cabinet look like an open book.
How then do we reconcile PV’s view of Obama with mine? PV is certainly not a dumb person and she is genuinely interested in selecting the best candidate. I would consider her an independent voter who is not simply looking for ways to pick the Democrat. She is not commonly given to being blinded by her biases so it isn’t that she won’t take new information on board: how is it that she can come to this conclusion?
The only answer I can see is that she simply doesn’t have or doesn’t believe the contrary information: and this is the Obama campaign at it’s best. By getting the majority of the high trust / high value media outlets on board they have been able to systematically suppress or marginalize almost all the information that they feel is damaging. When possible they will use the court system to slow down the acquisition of information, when that fails they will tailor the reporting and when all that fails they still have the charge of racism as their final option. Not sure about this? Watch over the next few weeks as the “Keating Five” stuff is leveled at McCain full force while the much more disturbing Bill Ayers stuff is pushed aside as racially inspired.
If you ever doubted the power of a strong narrative frame you really need to be watching the Obama campaign this election cycle.
As I said, we could go through most of PV’s reasons and it will be essentially the same. Those that she feels are grounded or informed by the facts are generally based on incomplete information or information that can be traced directly back to an Obama source. Those that aren’t are generally charisma issues or leaps from broad facts to infer character traits. We must all decide those for ourselves about each candidate, there is no way to argue them.
PV sees in Obama a transformational figure who is already changing our world for the better. This may be true but if it is that is a response to Obama, not a reality of the man himself. She goes on to discuss him this way:
“It’s about the entire way he sees the world, how he conveys that vision to others, how he puts that vision into action and encourages others to do the same.” – PV
I cannot reconcile that view with the actual man who is Obama. She sees a man who has a vision she admires but he is actually a man whose actions belie a worldview I know she would not support.
- Obama is a man who knowingly and intentionally supported his staff as they defrauded the Democratic primary vote.
- Obama is a man who knowingly and intentionally supports organizations who continually defraud the national election process (ACORN).
- Obama is a man who knowingly and intentionally took action to steal his first national level election via election rule technicalities and maneuvering when it looked like he
would lose. - Obama is a man who knowingly and intentionally traded political favors to advance his wife’s career.
- Obama is a man who knowingly and intentionally traded political influence for a good deal on a house from one of the most corrupt men in Chicago at the time.
Far from a man driven by a new worldview the facts (actual real world it happened and we can show it facts, remember those?) reveal a man who is the consummate politician in the Chicago style. He will show you a smiling face and say nice things while sending the thugs around the back to bust up your house it’s no wonder the union bosses love the guy.
In the end I cannot really explain how PV comes to the conclusions she has. The information, the facts and the research is freely available. The paper trails are all there. The evidence can be followed and the sources checked but none of it will matter. The armor of “hope” and “change” is rooted too deeply. This is the final beauty of a strong frame it has a built in immune system.
This election will come and go, Obama will win (probably) or lose (possibly). I can see advantages to both outcomes. What it has done is show us the effectiveness of framing an issue well.
* That is basically the same point I made earlier, just said in a less dismissive tone.
** I have tried every way I can think of to write this post without making it seem like I think my friend is flat out wrong and I can’t while remaining honest. I think PV is smart, honest, articulate, insightful and in this case we just disagree.
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