Top StoriesMay’s sharp fall in jobless numbers added to the greenness of the ‘recovery’ (or less bad) thesis; overnight June’s unemployment figures were so awful that they could have stunted at least, the wavering shoots.
Rundle08: Tears and laughter. This is what Obama means
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These are the days of tears and laughter. Up mid-afternoon after filing for UK media at 7am, light pushing past the curtains. After the result was declared last night and Barack Obama gave his speech, we all headed down to the White House, where a street party had been brewing since McCain had commenced his concession speech. The city which had given Obama a 93% to 7% victory was going wild. Along the broad avenues — spokes in a wheel, an expression of the enlightenment worship of the pure form of the circle, written down in town planning — people were hanging out of cars shooting, sounding their horns. Cops stood at each intersection, inscrutable. People hugged each other spontaneously in the street, shook hands, slapped palms, black and white and brown and yellow. Everyone was gentle with each other, everyone was kind. Even the occasional disconsolate Republican — you could see them , the young men and women who work at thinktanks, the boys in blue suits and red ties, the girls in black dresses and pearls, walking, no marching, hand-in-hand, eyes fixed ahead, desperate for a cab to levitate them out of this hell-hole. If they had any sense they’ve already put together the survival kit — the stack of DVDs, a half dozen big books you wanted to read, the single malt and the smooth merlot, a few lines of china white, maybe a holiday in some awful all-in resort at Hilton Head. Pull the cable out the back of the TV, smack the laptop sharply against the wall, and swim into the embracing waters of the timeless imaginary. Emerge a week or two later when President-elect Obama — PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA! — has already announced his core staff, outlined a bunch of policies, set the course for the next year. A fortnight or so of chasing the dragon and Lord of the Rings and World of Warcraft, and you can emerge at least partially restored to face at least the next four years ahead. God knows the left has done it often enough. Outside the White House last night there were the young, there were old black women, in pan-Africa scarves and Sunday-best hats dancing a war-jig, there were old hippies, there were gay couples holding each other singing the Star Spangled Banner, there were drums and songs, and a sign hung on the wire fence with a photo of the Obamas’ daughters, saying “Mali and Sasha, welcome home” — and think about that for a while and what it means. At 2am I ran into Alex Kelly, an old comrade I’d first met at S11, that moment in 2000 when Melbourne rose up and challenged the World Economic Forum, the most-effective — Seattle included — challenge to these series of slick elite meetings to date in the anti-globalisation movement. S11 — September 11th 2000 — was swallowed in history by what happened a year later. But it felt like a direct line from there to here. As the anti-globalisation movement had, as it always would, fallen apart, I had gone West to London, and Alex had gone north and taken up the harder yards of working in, with, at the frontier of, indigenous Australia, out of, I think, a sense of absolute responsibility to battles close to home, battles most of us simply couldn’t hack. Seeing her there felt like the completion of a passage, through dangerous waters, over a decade, and I hugged her tight enough to break her ribcage. It was the relief of possibility, of renewed hope. On TV, in the streets, people kept breaking into tears. Colin Powell, on a TV interview could barely continue, Jack Garretty an old newsman on CNN who lost his wife eight weeks ago, had to turn his face sideways and spit out a conclusion to his segment before he fell apart. Condoleezza Rice teared up. Even Dubya in a White House lawn speech seemed struck by the moment. I lost it this morning, after filing the last article and radio interview, and staggering down to the lobby for a coffee and some ice. DeShaya, a young black woman who’d been on the desk when I’d checked in, was on there for the graveyard shift. We’d traded insults over my routinely screwed up reservation — this is the US after all — and then bitched together about the inadequacies of the booking company. She was at the end of her 12-hour shift because thats how you work in Bush’s America — and I was at the end of it all, and mutually wreathed in exhaustion and relief, we just held hands and wept for a minute or so, in happiness, in relief, in the victory of something larger than both of us, that contained both of us. But I wouldn’t mention it if it were unusual. All over the city, the Rome of the twentieth century, the Capitol monument and the Dome on the horizon wherever you look, people were doing the same. Tears and smiles, in the street, in the Starbucks, in the metro station. No-one is ashamed of their emotions, of this release, of this vulnerability to others in a city where, othertimes and even now, you would want to watch your back. Let’s be clear about what this victory means, and why it means so much. It is not simply the victory of a black man as President. A Colin Powell becoming the new Republican Eisenhower of 2008 would not arouse a hundredth of this enthusiasm. Nor is it a victory of the left. A Dennis Kucinich, by some bizarre cosmic accident, becoming President would not arouse this level of passion. What makes it powerful is that it is a victory of the global left in the incarnation of a black American, that it is a double blow to power and skin-privilege. Will President Obama be a programmatically radical leader? Of course not. But will he be a shivering neurotic Jesus-freak sycophant like Tony Blair? No, equally. His achievement before anything has occurred is this: that every vector of power — money, race, media — has been defeated in the US, the declining but still regnant capitol of the world. That what won was the idea of wisdom, judgement, intelligence, prudence and audacity, conservatism and radicalism, a measuring up to the demands of the world. That, as opposed to past Democratic campaigns, this was not a party machine insider — a Tennessee grandee or a billionairess’s husband — presenting themselves as the least-worst option. It was someone who, by his own account, had come through the world of the radical left, of radical black action, to the realisation that any change in America had to come not against its traditions, but within them, and who therefore drew on the strengths of every residual radical and progressive notion of this one-time revolutionary society. It was an achievement, but it was also a channelling in to a deeper moment of historical shift. In the USA this has been greeted, even by conservatives, as a historic transcendent moment. Why? I am reminded of the Jorge Luis Borges essay about Buenos Aires during 1940, when it looked like the Nazis — who had a lot of support in Argentina out of hatred of British imperialism – would win. Borges, a resolute anti-Nazi, was visited by an Axis supporter. “France has fallen,” he said, “nothing can stop them now!” And then Borges notes:”I realised he was as terrified as I was”. In other words — and am I not breaking Godwin’s law — there are moments in politics when, on one side, no-one really wants to win. That was the curse of the McCain campaign. Deep down they knew that McCain’s moment was 2000, and that it had passes. But they kept going, against a historical moment which, deep deep down, most of them — and that may well include John McCain himself — wanted to happen, and, deep deep down, did not want to stand in the way of. For those of us who committed ourselves to the left, whatever that means, these are great days not because of what Obama will do, but because of what he will not do — because he will normalise progressive, moderate, multilateral, modernised politics in the US and in the western world, and that is the context in which we will work. If you want to see some graciousness in that moment, read (sections of) the US conservative press. If you want to read bitterness and incomprehension about it, read Albrechtsen and Sheridan in The Oz today. For the rest of us it is tears and laughter, laughter and tears. For all the people I’ve marched with, argued with, whatever, this is a moment. I have no compunction at all about feeling part of this in however distant a manner. For the right, globally, you will have to reinvent yourselves. You are the Whigs in the 1850s. You are about to cease to exist. Tears and laughter and laughter and tears. |
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38 Comments
‘His achievement before anything has occurred is this: that every vector of power — money, race, media’ - really - he out raised and out spent his opponents - and the media fawned over his every comment - laughed @ Sarah Palin and allowed Biden to make guff after guff - race yes - but Guy you are wrong on the other 2
Once again you capture the moment perfectly Guy. I urge Crikey to collect your articles over the entire US Election campaign and release them as a book, I would buy it in an instant.
They were leaning out of cars shooting? WTF? Is this the Middle East?
Thanks for all the hard yakka, Guy. It’s been compelling reading to accompany you around the US during the past few months. Your craziness and clear-sighted comprehension of what was at stake make me realise the value of the individual voice, the single take. Among the millions of words pouring out now about the Obamafest, yours are the ones’ I’ll return to, because it’s like we’ve done this together, gone down the road a little ways.
Good onya.
Umm, Darren, “guff” is actually spelled “gaffe”. As in: “You committed a gaffe.”.
“Guff” is the word that describes what you wrote.
I was astonished to see such a stunning win - 349 EV and counting with two states too close to call - and then howled like a baby when I saw Jessie Jackson crying like a baby.
I glanced at Janet and Greg’s columns and laughed out loud.
darren
d sanderson has already pinned the ‘guff” thing, but the point about money needs answering. what i mean by money in that list is ‘big money’ - huge donations etc. Obama’s fundraising had its share of that, but the bulk of it was built on less than $200 per person - and that is a popular movement, surrounding capital.
The media covered Biden’s guff/gaffes - the difference is that - as Bill Maher noted - no-one thought that Biden’s prolixity indicated a man who couldn’t lead. With Palin it was a realisation that she was a moron. Latest revelation? She thought Africa was a single country not a continent.
Funny. Now.
no Dave I meant guff-
BTW I am also waiting for the media to tell people that Obama’s CoS’s father was a member of a Zionist terrorist organisation
A thousand &one thankyous for your wonderful work,Guy.the hyperbole was hysterically funny at times, sometimes harder to comprehend but you always managed to reach inside to the heart of things.again thanks.
I thought the important statement today was “not because of what Obama will do.but of what he will not do”. I so much hope this is what happens as J.W.Bush gave such licence to do things (& others followed),I could not believe the direction we all were headed.As I now approach 70 I am grateful for the prospect of hope where virtually none existed. Your Borges quote I feel was apposite to the time.
You’r one of my Australians of the year,Guy .May your tribe prosper
darren guff is a collective not a singular noun . your statement is therefore nonsensical.
Crikey, I hope you’re going to compile Guy Rundle’s articles and put out a book. I’d be keen and I have several friends in the US I’d want to send copies to.
Guy, you’ve missed the point. The pendulum has not swung back to the left (a Democrat’s view of the left is hardly what we’d call it anyway). It has swung back to vision, decency and humanity. Your binary view on this election is exactly and literally (quote Obama) what this victory is not about. It’s actually about a considerable proportion of the US population rethinking what life, country and politics should be all about (like we did last year, but our guy isn’t quite so brilliant). This is a point made starkly obvious by the fact that the “grass roots” mobilisation that delivered the most successfully funded campaign in history had as much to do with Microsoft as it did with speakers’ corner. So while I understand that “lefties” may feel the need to “own” this, its far from theirs alone. I consider myself to be centre right and I would have been so disappointed had this gone the other way.
Cheers,
Phil
Darren why dont you piss off? You sad sorry sour loser. Get back into your comfort zone, with Akerman, Bolt and co in News Ltd. You think any sane person wants to read your pathetic whining, grow up.
You’ve done a great job Guy and received the greatest accolade-praise from Phillip Adams !. Anyone who didn’t shed a bit of a tear over Obama’s win is in the words of Bob Hawke “a b*m”. Reading Janet & Greg this morning-what a hoot. Talk about bad losers-even John McCain showed more grace than these 2 nutters. Wonder how much longer Sheridan will be able to cling to his belief that George W.Bush will be remembered as the “greatest US president ever”?. Why is this man writing on foreign affairs? He’s about as knowledgable as Lord Downer was.
Never mind the detail. I agree with Brad and Patrick and Michael and Dan. Bring on the book.
Why can’t people (the right) be gracious in defeat? Imagine that? How hard can it be for them?
I reckon how people accept victory is just important as how they accept defeat. When the GOP won in 2000 and 2004, they behaved appallingly in victory. They rubbed people’s noses in it. Now in defeat they already seem destined to hit new lows.
BHO’s speech was gracious, deliberate, inspirational yet grounded. No doubt a sign (?) of how he plans to lead.
Let the party goers party for as long as they need to. They have surely earned their time in the sun.
Once again Guy, bravo to you for scratching the surface and finding all sorts of interesting things below.
cheers mate
Guy, what a beautiful closing comment on a very surprising outcome. Thank you for so many months of wonderful entertaining, articulate, provocative coverage.
Wow. Amazing what lack of sleep can do. Guy is certainly enjoying a bit of revolutionary euphoria here. Just a couple of points. One: the Left in America is roughly the equivalent of the Right in Australia. Two: there is a vast difference between what is promised during the campaign and what is possible in office. Perfect example - Mr Rudd who swore to implement massive changes if elected and so far has done nothing except apologise to indigenous Australians and decide to give away half the surplus to prop up an non-ailing retail sector. As the guy in Charlie Wilson’s War says “Wait and see.”
The fair and balanced Fox News video clip that Guy Rundle refers to above is here:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZHTJsR4Bc
It details her ‘Africa problem’, “Hard to control emotionally”, ‘refused preparation’ etcetera, etcetera.
She was the girl from Wasilla and she was determined to stay that way.
Congratulations Guy on your coverage of the US election. I will miss your often surreal posts. I feel as though I have got under the skin of America thanks to you. Yes, bring on the book.
Yesterday was amazing. Never before have I felt so connected to an election in another country (and very concerned about the result).
Waking up the morning after, life at home feels a bit tawdry. Let’s hope other world leaders catch some of that vision and hope.
Thanks Guy, you are great. I was watching MSNBC yesterday. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Keith Olberman so quiet. Lots of tears. Today, I went to YouTube and listened to Leadbelly singing “Bourgeois Blues” Lines like “Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no niggers up there”
and
Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no niggers up there”
can be consigned to history.
Powell, Condi and even Bush (WTF?!?) “teared up”? Well, I think we all know the real reason why!
Suddenly the world is less safe than it was a week ago. At least we won’t get a repeat of the retardedly childish behaviour from Clintons’ White House staffers when George Bush beat Al Gore in 2000 ( if you have conveniently forgotten already they glued down the letter W on all the keyboards. Real intellectual stuff. Mungo MacCullum probably thought it was brilliant. Don’t get on any airplanes for the next few months.
Vai, you’re probably right. The world will be a safer place if you do stay at home.
sorry Dennis - actually my problem with Barack Messiah is that he is too far to the right - his banishment of Jimmy Carter from the stage of the Democrats conference was enough for me
Of course, only slightly more than half of the USA is happy. The Huff Post has a round up of “right wing” blog responses to the upset. Funny, sad and very scary.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/a-childs-garden-of-right_n_141609.html
You have transcended the petty parochial leftishness of op-eds in The Age and I salute your very readable and interesting cover of the US presidential election campaigns. Mind you, out of sheer caution about the unknown and untried I could have voted for the man who made that magnificent, no-notes, concession speech. What a pity about 2000 (that the Bush forces dudded McCain). I don’t know that Gore would have been a great alternative to George the Less, but, in practice he would have left the US and the world in much better shape because all the money squandered in Iraq would probably have gone into making toxic debt more bearable and even leaving the hopeless banking/housing policies started under Clinton a little easier to handle. Now we have to hope that Obama really has grown, emotionally and intellectually beyond “Dreams of my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”. Paradoxically the near certainty that it was virtually co-authored by Bill Ayres may make that more plausible, and, on consideration, the absence of acknowledgment of his (probable) ghost is no worse than JFK’s similar failure in relation to “Profiles in Courage”. I concede that my early suggestion that he was in the Disraeli mould by talent and temperament puts his literary abilities on too high a plane.
I can’t let the ‘Bill-Ayers-wrote-it’ bullshit pass by. The Republican crank who put forward this theory asked a British academic to computer-analyse the text. When the academic agreed to do it he did so on the condition that the results be published regardless of the outcome. Said Republican crank then disappeared down a rabbit-hole and the analysis was never done.
Conspiracy theory nuttiness of this kind is tedious and frankly an indication of a weak or unstable mind - nothing more.
I get what you meant Guy. It’s important that he didn’t start with money and turned down the law firm jobs when he was offered them out of Law School. He took a high moral road. Good luck to him too.
Guy, you have single handledly turned me, a overworked under-stimulated middle aged WA suburban mum and wage slave, into a US political aficionado. I waited for your emails every day and then went to Slate and Politico and the NY Times, and I loved it all. Even the letter to Hillary which was completely hilarious and slightly shocking, too. BTW you are SO allowed to laugh at Palin.
Waiting, like Brad, for the book…
I get what you meant Guy. It’s important that he didn’t start with money and turned down the law firm jobs when he was offered them out of Law School. He took a high moral road. Good luck to him too.
Guy, you have single handledly turned me, a overworked under-stimulated middle aged WA suburban mum and wage slave, into a US political aficionado. I waited for your emails every day and then went to Slate and Politico and the NY Times, and I loved it all. Even the letter to Hillary which was completely hilarious and slightly shocking, too. BTW you are SO allowed to laugh at Palin.
Waiting, like Brad, for the book…
Never have I been so glad to be so wrong, wroNG, WRONG!!
Like Guy, I thought that BO was going to blow it by being too centrist, too polite, too decent to deal with Repug campaigning by the likes of Turdblossom. My favourite moment was when he admitted it was all over on (their) Sunday.
Gail Collins of the NYT has an amusing piece that deals with the post-election fallout:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/opinion/06collins.html?hp
At the risk of being a bore I recommend these two moving and intelligent takes on the meaning of Obama’s win:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/opinion/06Cohen.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/opinion/06kristof.html?hp
I know it is only a teensy little thing but Obama’s book was written and ready for the publisher before he even met Bill Ayers.
If you want to see some graciousness in that moment, read (sections of) the US conservative press. If you want to read bitterness and incomprehension about it, read Albrechtsen and Sheridan in The Oz today.
How very true. I bought all the papers in Sydney to read about this momentous occasion and Sheridan sounded bitter and petty. He could learn a thing or two from Senator McCain about how to be gracious in defeat.
David Sanderson and Marilyn may think that the case of Obama having had a ghost for “Dreams”, a case which I at first dismissed, is not based on careful research by some very smart people who simply like to follow the evidence where it leads without wanting to draw damning conclusions about Obama. But it would be a remarkable book to write, unassisted, with practically no writing experience beforehand beyond an insignificant undergraduate poem and a few legal briefs. He must be unique amongst presidents of the Harvard Law Review in never having published a legal article. He certainly knew Ayres before 1995 when he started distributing the $50 million Ayres had got out of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and Ayres own great literary output paused at just about the time Obama’s book was being written. Obama had previously had to hand back a $140,000 advance for a book he couldn’t finish. Then there is the analysis to be found. e.g. in
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html & http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/evidence_mounts_ayers_cowrote.html . The person who cited those also said Obama probably gave an unpublishable manuscript to someone with the skill and experience to fix it. She also cited
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTlkMTdmNDRkMTM1ODZkNGNkZmRiNDFjMDE4YzRjMjg= and
http://www.analyzethis.net:80/blog/2005/07/09/barack-obama-embellishes-his-resume/
Another person with no axe to grind pointed to
http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/yavelow.htm
and also to the Wikipedia entry which shows Ayres to be a vastly experienced writer and editor. I’m more interested in the possibility that Obama is seriously numerate by nature, and therefore, presumptively,capable of being economically literate. After all mother did (or at least started) a maths degree and was accepted by the U of Chicago at 15 and his father was an economist and pretty smart intellectually, if not otherwise.
JamesGuest - even if what you write were true (cf Pontius Pilate) what has it to do with the price of fish?
AR - you ask what Bill Ayres’ (or some other ghost’s) has to do with anything that matters. I suspect, from your anonymity, that you knew your comment lacked the benefit of even a moment’s thought. It probably matters little that Obama had an unacknowledged ghost, or that the ghost was Ayres, though nearly all public figures in the US do acknowledge such assistance (e.g. McCain for his five books). As I noted JFK seems to have had an unacknowledged ghost. But so little is known about Obama either as to his history or his capacities that it is naturally alarming to many sensible Americans if he is suspected of lying or active concealment of this or something more important. So it is worth discussion, not dismissal as some superficial right-wing bloggers fantasy. As far as I am aware there was nothing more than his allowing a ghost to remain - well, ghostly. Another question, now pretty well irrelevant, is what his true abilities are. His academic record has been kept from public disclosure, one knows that his parents were obviously at least as bright as he sounds (though pretty wacky in ways he is not), he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review which may be a popularity contest but is still something in that intellectual powerhouse, but does he really have a talent for the written word as “Dreams” would suggest. Maybe never very important but when there are so few reliable clues about the man for those considering whom to vote for it naturally engaged people’s interest.