New Rules

The cliche tells us that we get the leaders we deserve; but occasionally, the forces of history conspire to grant us the leaders we require, and I believe it was clear from Barak Obama’s acceptance speech last night that he is such a leader.  Among its many merits, the deft invocation of Lincoln simultaneously acknowledged the significance of the moment for African Americans and reminded everyone that the country was once more manifestly divided than it is today.  But above all, his speech (as has the tone of his whole campaign) politely rejected the entire post-WWII, post-Reagan, political paradigm that stopped being relevant before W. even took office.

I believe and hope that the overwhelming mandate of the electorate yesterday was not a victory of democrat over republican, was not merely a referendum on the abysmal failures of George W. Bush, but that it was the dawn of a collective recognition that the old labels and the old platforms no longer apply.  I think it is safe to say that the republican leadership burned their playbook at midnight; but it is significant that in their gasping efforts to hold McCain’s campaign together, they lobbed every dud grenade in the box at Obama — liberal, socialist, Marxist, terrorist, and let’s not forget, black.  In the last several weeks, the McCain campaign became an unstable element, like uranium, radiating particles as it decayed; and now, just as with chemistry, the the element itself has changed, but the radiation is still dangerous.

Last night, my wife visited a conservative blog on which she has spied for the last  year or so, and she found comments like, “I’m a racist and have never been so proud to be one,” and “I’m going to buy a gun tomorrow.”  And while it may be easy to dismiss these voices as the lunatic fringe, they represent the underlying fear millions of Americans feel at the prospect that everything they believe in is changing.  The Change We Can Believe In is also the change that scares the hell out of these people; and the only thing more dangerous than a coward with a gun is several million cowards with several million guns.  

Transformation in America has never come without a heavy price.  Barak Obama has inherited a volatile country, and I hope, therefore, that neither his supporters nor the press turn him into an unwitting Icarus.  I am already uncomfortable with this morning’s references to “The New Camelot,” a story that ends in tragedy every time.  Let’s not make Obama into JFK or Clinton without baggage or a liberal Reagan; those are the habits of the generation we just retired.  Instead, I think Obama is asking democrats also to wipe the slate clean.  I think, when nobody was looking, shortly after the republicans threw their playbook on the fire, Obama quietly snuck over and dropped the hand-me-down tomes of the democrats on top of it and watched both smolder into memory.