To meet the man—that is, to stand a few feet from him, close enough to touch him and fire off a question and watch as he dissects it, repeating it and disassembling it like a handyman; and then to actually shake his hand and learn that despite his marathoner’s frame, dude’s got a sure grip, presidential even; and later to watch the guy as he works the crowd, all of his disparate parts (biracial; Harvard-educated; Southside Chicago-molded; Capitol Hill-schooled)—is to understand why Barack Obama has become the aspirational, if not inspirational, favorite to occupy the White House.
Rock-star popular, he’s the John F. Kennedy for the YouTube generation — good-looking and butter-smooth. And what he lacks in Kennedy pedigree, he makes up for in personal backstory: born to a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas; reared in Hawaii, matriculated at Harvard; baptized by community work in Chicago; sculpted in Illinois’ rough-and-tumble political world; a one-time drug dabbler currently struggling to kick cigarettes; a pudgy high school hoopster who likes to mix it up in pick-up basketball games; a skilled orator who actually writes his own autobiographies; freshman senator and would-be Hillary conqueror. And unlike Kennedy, he has an everyman quality that disarms—you may not like him, but you don’t dislike him.
See him first at the West Las Vegas Library—stopping through to stump for local Democrats in the crucial 2006 mid-term elections—and he’s right at home in the surrounding hardscrabble neighborhood, noting that the area reminds him of the violence-torn Chicago communities he’s worked to improve. Or see him later in front of Culinary Local 226 members, as he was on Friday, talking about his union-friendly Employee Free Choice Act and ribbing the folks in the audience for their roles in sky-high gas prices. (“Hey brother,” he joked, stepping briefly into back-in-the-’hood Obama, “I bet you roll an SUV.” The man nodded.) Chastisement with a smile.
Obama’s almost too perfect. Which is why his star, currently brightest in the political constellation, might ultimately flame out due to overhyped expectations.
To wit, thanks to ferocious first-quarter fundraising ($25 million) transforming him into an instant contender, he represents Black America’s best chance for producing a president. Tough carrying the weight of a race on your back. It’s a burden that Hillary, who’s scored support from influential African-Americans, doesn’t exactly bear. Four score years after it was commonplace for black men to be lynched without repercussion, and nearly 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, is America—land of the free, home of the former slave—ready for a black man to sit in its highest office? By contrast, Clinton doesn’t carry the banner for women precisely because so many women revile her (or, more correctly, her adulterous husband). For her, winning the White House would be more for Democratic careerists than women.
Voting for Obama just because he’s black is no better, says Rainier Spencer, than whites only voting for their own. Obama needs to be scrutinized just like anyone else.
“I’m a Hillary person. I’ve not yet been convinced I need to change that,” says Spencer, an associate professor in UNLV’s Department of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies and founder and director of the university’s Afro-American Studies Program. “I think his candidacy mostly deals with being the great black hope. If he were a white guy, I don’t think he’d be all that popular; he’s popular precisely because he’s black and the everyday electorate is happy to finally have someone they can vote for, who’s not divisive.
“I also wonder about his newness,” Spencer says, “and I would say the same thing about [former North Carolina senator and failed vice-presidential candidate John] Edwards. [With an Obama presidency] would there a Democratic Dick Cheney in the wings who’ll be running the show? That we’re even discussing this, his viable candidacy, is an accomplishment, I suppose.”
What would an Obama presidency look like? A dartboard, probably. Nearly every presidential candidate has more political experience. So his administration would be dissected more than those dead frogs in 10th-grade biology class—perhaps even more than Clinton’s, for which the GOP denizens are already sharpening their Ginsus. At least Clinton would have the luxury of sharing the bed with the world’s greatest political advisor, Bill, and have at her disposal a cadre of the best government minds out there. The notoriously vindictive Clintons probably wouldn’t cotton to the idea of their backers taking positions in the Obama White House, which could hurt because he figures to inherit a quagmire of a war in Iraq, a stretched military, a resilient but not prosperous economy, a rickety health care system and an America struggling with its place in the world. There’ll be many long nights. He’d need to run things well, lest he become the national version of blundering Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons. Any screw-ups could been seen as a referendum on black men’s leadership skills.
But what if Obama loses?
Aside from the expected we-told-you-so’ing, he risks political and cultural marginalization, going from political messiah to also-ran. A Harvard law degree ensures he’ll never be jobless, but what do you do after trying and failing to be America’s CEO? Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988, fashioned himself into a go-to voice on black issues before muting his effectiveness by wantonly spreading himself (and his sperm, by fathering an out-of-wedlock child) thin. Obama doesn’t have Jackson’s decades-long activist pedigree. Nor has he Hillary’s resiliency—she could lose and still mount a credible run for 2012. Or Bill Richardson’s vast political chops. Or Rudy Giuliani’s hero status. Or John McCain’s vaunted stature. Nor (at least not yet) a defining issue to keep him politically viable—à la Edwards’ fight against poverty or former vice president Al Gore’s full-throated assault on global warming. How will he stay relevant?
This might be Obama’s one, best shot, his only perfect storm. Lose, and odds are he might not get another chance. And then he’d be like another John—John Kerry, who receded into the political periphery after losing (some say, giving away) the 2004 election.