The Election: IV. Barack Obama

This article is the fourth in a four-part series.

I submit the following principle: any election review which claims to be comprehensive is decidedly not if it fails to offer the reviewer’s forecast. If political commentators won’t divulge their favorites – in both the personal and the speculative sense – then they shouldn’t be in the business of punditry, should they? Yet it’s a paradoxical symptom of the entanglement of American politics and media that talking heads, who are paid entirely on the basis of their opinions, are forced to maintain an artificial and castrated neutrality. (One might, as an aside of an aside, ask “How did this come to be?” In modernity, pundits are only an endorsement or two away from political office themselves – and vice versa – and they are more aware than anyone that their commentary never occurs without consequence. Deniability is even more valuable to a certain kind of ambitious pundit than it is to a politician.)

But notwithstanding its actual incidence, since when has political neutrality been a virtue? Could any informed person be said to be without political persuasion? No, of course not, and I’m no exception; I’m to the left of most Collegian readers, and in fact, probably to the left of most people. But this bias is hardly crippling, and it allows me to urge without reluctance that if any pundit ever tries to stake a claim as a disinterested observer, it is one’s own power, right, and furthermore, obligation as a rational consumer of information to ignore this person. That being said:

Senator Obama will win the election, and handily. And moreover, he should.

The first point does require a disclaimer: to win a presidential contest “handily” is a different notion now than it once was, even in the recent past. In the election of 1984, almost twenty points separated Reagan and Mondale, whereas in the most recent election, only a little over a tenth of that separated Bush and Kerry. The acrimony and partisanship of the last few years will exclude the possibility of an outright landslide, but my suspicion is that Obama will still win by more than five points. The reasons are diverse; four thousand American lives and three trillion dollars have been spent in Iraq, and Americans and Iraqis alike have ultimately gotten little in return. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, one bureaucratic scandal after another have emerged, each more disgraceful than the last, jobs and capital are fleeing for terra firma, and our healthcare system continues to be an international embarrassment. The largest liability of all, of course, is the bankrupt economy, and not only does the GOP continue to support its disastrous fiscal policy, McCain – in contrast to Obama – unabashedly vows to continue it.

The second point is somewhat more contentious. While Obama’s politics are far more sensible than those of his opponents’ and his strengths are monumental, of equal prominence are his flaws. His relationship with Trinity United and Reverend Wright has always been his most devastating blemish; the United States is not prepared to accept a president who is an apologist for racism, and while his own rhetoric has always sang of unification, his motley crew of associates have the unfortunate habit of speaking for themselves. He has lesser faults as well: among others, he does lack the traditional sort of experience, and he also seems to have developed a disturbing cult of personality around him, a cancerous overgrowth of his charisma. But these objections simply won’t be enough. He has too much support, and too much momentum, and he’ll have his chance to prove his thesis on an international stage. If he’s successful, that reserved little boy from Hawaii could very easily become the most important black man in the history of the United States. He has certainly done his part; now we must do ours.