Barack Obama,Hardcore Opportunist

The future President has many a dark side, but during the campaign he and his advisors were successful in glossing over anything negative. Author Leon de Winter writes about when Obama’s mask will crumble, what we don’t know about him, and why Obama benefits from the fact that he’s not really black.

A black will be the new President of the United States. The enormous symbolic power of this historic moment cannot be denied. What qualified this man for the job was of secondary importance to voters. He had the right charisma, the right rhetoric and he was a little bit black – everything McCain, whom voters only saw as another George Bush, didn’t have.

Barack Obama looks like a highly cultivated man and voters wanted a black contender who was absolutely nothing like Bush. Everything will be different, claimed Barack. Hope is good, he said, and displayed great adroitness in avoiding answering questions about what we should be hoping for: that was left up to each individual.

Barack is dark-skinned but not black (a darker-skinned man would have never gotten as far as Obama has), and he appears simultaneously nonchalant and superior much like the intelligent and engaging character played by Sidney Poitier in the Hollywood classic film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in which a young white woman introduces her fiancé, who also happens to be black, to her wealthy parents.

Barack – an African Arabization of the Hebrew name Baruch, “the Blessed,” waged an amazingly effective election campaign. The fascinating thing is that not a single criticism thrown at him ever stuck. When the man whom Obama called his spiritual mentor, the man from whom he borrowed the title of one of his autobiographies was outed as a black racist and anti-Semite, Obama was successful in turning the awkward situation to his own advantage: he gave a speech about race and racism that, in hindsight, consisted of little more than cheap clichés, but it’s nonetheless a speech described by many as historic.

Historic – many would love to bask in the glow of such illumination. It’s considered to be an act of sublime morality to vote for a black man just as it’s an act of sublime morality to blame George Bush for everything that’s wrong in the world. These are cheap attempts to attain even cheaper “historic” feelings: whoever chooses an unknown and inexperienced black over an experienced white, proves his moral transcendence to himself and to the world.

In Chicago, Getting Power Means Getting Dirty

To all outward appearances, skin color played no role in the outcome of the presidential election. On the contrary, that’s what the election was really all about. It’s the very essence of what January 20th actually means. Many American voters wanted to prove that they had definitively left a shameful history of slavery behind them and were therefore prepared to support a man who had neither executive experience nor could show any particularly legislative accomplishments, but one who could be described as a cultivated black man. Obama was the ultimate anti-racism candidate despite the fact that questions of race weren’t even on the ballot. He had a reliable intuition that told him a majority of voters longed for a dramatic event of historical importance, a positive moment of optimistic light after the years of darkness under George Bush.

Obama’s political career began in Chicago. That this fact didn’t hinder his success in the least is perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment of his campaign. Whoever wants to be involved in Chicago politics can’t operate effectively without taking political conditions in the state of Illinois into account. In Chicago politics, nobody reaches the top cleanly and unscathed.

Illinois is a notoriously corrupt state and the Democratic Party there has been in the hands of powerful politicians and their families for decades. The relentless rulers of the state are Richard Daly, Mayor of Chicago, and Emil Jones Jr., President of the Illinois Senate. They control the cash flow and the dispensation of public offices within the state. They also control which young politicians are allowed to grow and eat at their feeding trough. Obama is their product. Above all, the influential Emil Jones Jr. took Obama under his wing and granted him the opportunity to gain experience. If anyone knows how dirty the political game sometimes has to be played, it’s Obama, who learned first-hand that a political career is inseparable from the demands of individuals and interest groups.

In Chicago, Obama not only mixed with the upper crust of a corrupt political system, but also with left-wing radicals like William Ayres, son of a wealthy Chicago businessman. Ayers is one of the stars in the Illinois “radical chic” world, a culture that consorts with radical millionaires on the one hand and University of Illinois salon-revolutionaries on the other. Radical clergymen such as Wright, politicians like Daly and Jones and businessmen like Tony Rezko (Obama’s friend and neighbor, currently in custody on suspicion of fraud and corruption) all live in mutually beneficial coexistence in Chicago. Rod Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois, is currently attracting a lot of media attention but what he is accused of, corruption, comes completely naturally to anyone raised on Illinois politics.

Blagojevich, a crass, merciless ruffian who supported Obama many times in the past, turned out to be so stupid that he publicly claimed he had only done what every other Chicago politician who has an important position to give away does. That’s the way things are done within the “Chicago Machine,” the mighty Democratic political apparatus in Illinois.

Nothing from this deeply corrupt environment has stuck to Obama. He gives the impression of being fresh and clean despite the fact that he learned power from Emil Jones and social and racial injustice from William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. In 2004, as he campaigned for the Senate, Obama got rid of his competitor, Mr. Blair Hull by going behind the scenes to the media, requesting they make public the details of Hull’s divorce settlement, at which point Hull withdrew from the race. The same thing happened to Obama’s Republican opponent Jack Ryan. These events drew little attention in the American media – they considered Obama’s image to be that of an untainted political virgin that heralded the coming of salvation, upright, as if the image were the extended arm of his election team

Understanding Obama’s success means understanding the role played by David Axelrod. Axelrod, the most important member of Obama’s campaign team, began his career as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Later, he became a “political consultant” and supervised politicians’ election campaigns. In 2006, he helped elect Deval Patrick as first black Governor of Massachusetts with a campaign he called “the politics of aspiration.”

“Hope” and “Change” – Not New Slogans

As far as content is concerned, one can hardly call it a platform yet Patrick successfully conveyed a message of “hope” and “change” to the voters and he won. “Hope” and “Change?” These two words, meanwhile, have become world famous. Patrick also understood how to use Axelrod’s battle cries like “Yes, we can!” and “Together, we can!” to ignite veritable storms of rapture among the people. After his victory, Patrick got into trouble when he had to govern and replace these empty phrases with accomplishments. But Axelrod had tested these phrases and now knew how effective they could be. While Patrick was a good candidate, Axelrod’s ideal candidate was Barack Obama. They knew one another for years from the “scene” in Chicago, and Axelrod was able to change Obama from a clever Chicago Machine politician into an immaculate prophet of hope and change.

Whoever wants to know who Obama really is won’t get much clarification from his two autobiographies. The several hundred pages in them only serve to deepen the mystery surrounding the man. After nearly two whole years of presidential campaigning, even experienced American journalists like Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose have no idea who Obama is, despite the fact both of them favored his election.

A few weeks ago on Charlie Rose’s talk show, the following dialog between Rose and Tom Brokaw took place:

ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.

ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don’t know what books he’s read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know.

Obama’s résumé contains some unattractive gaps: he keeps the work he did during his student years at Harvard under close wraps because he obviously fears his activities could make it difficult for him to mask his connections to leftist radicalism. It’s also obvious that he lied about his relationship with radical pastor Jeremiah Wright whose views he now condemns but to whom he willingly listened for twenty years (Wright married Obama and Michelle and baptized their two daughters). Obama worked closely with William Ayers, who made no secret of his extremist pedagogical views (children should be raised as young revolutionaries). Obama also has little to say about his relationship with Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, who was Edward Said’s replacement and heir at Columbia University (the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of Khalidi being honored at a gathering Obama also attended as guest of honor. The newspaper refuses to make the video public and Obama is tight-lipped about the event).

Who is Obama? Has he just used everyone he met in Chicago who helped him achieve his ambitious goals? Is he a neo-Marxist clad in a moderate politician’s cloak as many of his friends in Chicago academia claim? Or is he merely the pragmatic politician he appears to be, one who has put together a centrist Cabinet?

The American media have largely avoided asking these questions much less answering them. They’ve kept Obama out of the line of fire while finding the price of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe more interesting than the price of the columns erected for Obama’s nomination celebration in Denver (Palin’s outfits cost $150,000 while the columns cost over $5,000,000). Obama is an enigma, yet millions of people around the world have succumbed to his style, his rhetoric (i.e., Axelrod’s rhetoric), the tranquility he radiates (try to imagine him becoming infuriated and looking like an “angry black man!), and to the entire romantic-utopian sphere emanating from the Obama phenomenon.

Bush Will Soon Cease to be the Wellspring of All Evil

Thanks to Axelrod’s makeover, Obama has succeeded in projecting the image of a progressive centrist politician and with the help of the mighty Chicago Machine he has wrested away power over the broad progressive coalition that makes up the Democratic Party formerly held by the Clintons. That’s a rich accomplishment that speaks to Obama’s talent for creating confederations and attracting people to him. But can he, as the most leftist-oriented president in American history, govern a conservative country? Two-thirds of the American population describes itself as conservative. The majority believes the state shouldn’t accompany its citizens from cradle to grave but should stay in the background. Obama, on the other hand and as far as we know, dreams of a welfare state modeled on the European concept, and the current banking crisis has given wings to that dream.

Prior to the advent of the financial and economic crises, polls had McCain far ahead of Obama. The Wall Street catastrophe, however, was seen by many Americans as Bush’s fault – wrongly so, but in our world facts don’t count as much as appearances. Democrats had a congressional majority for two years and its approval ratings were even lower than Bush’s but people nonetheless blamed the Republicans for their current problems. Obama was simply lucky when the world skidded into a huge, emotionally loaded financial crisis just before election day. The only message Obama really needed at that point was McCain is just another Bush. But Bush will leave the White House on January 20th and will no longer be to blame for all the world’s evils.

For the second time in his life, Obama will have to take the reins. On the first occasion, he, along with William Ayers (who got a large portion of the pie) were in charge of $150 million worth of funds destined for improvements to the Chicago school system. It was a total failure, and now Obama sallies forth to try to govern the world.

Axelrod converted Obama into a gentle, permanent-press prophet of integrity – but it’s an illusion. The truth many fail to see is that under this ornate mask lurks a hardcore opportunist who deliberately fought his way to the summit exploiting every available resource. What is fascinating is the fact that the world presently needs the hardcore opportunist more than it needs the gentle prophet. That mask will begin to crumble in the coming months and the real Obama will finally be seen.

These are going to be interesting times.