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Last update - 12:45 01/09/2008
What really scares us about Barack Obama
By Bradley Burston
Tags: Bradley Burston, Barack Obama 

NEW ORLEANS - Take a long walk in this land of dreams and all you'll see is Obama. Obama lawn signs, Obama bumper stickers, window placards, lapel buttons, anklets. In souvenir stores, Obama t-shirts compete successfully with longtime best-sellers touting Bourbon Street and carousing alligators.

The signs are everywhere. Taped to vintage windowpanes in antebellum mansions in the tony Garden District, to wrought-iron balconies in the French Quarter, to the ruins of housing projects in the still-Katrina-ravaged 9th Ward. The signs are everywhere, it seems, except in the polls.

One August survey showed likely Louisiana voters favoring John McCain by a margin of 57 percent to 39 percent. The significance of the poll may go well beyond the fate of the Bayou State's nine electoral votes. Simply put, Louisiana has voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election for the past 36 years.

In the end, one suspects, John McCain may take this election in a quiet walk.

I was reminded of a conversation that took place during a prior visit to California, where this foreign visitor was born and raised. A woman who I believe supports Obama but who, as a member of the Jewish community, has been bombarded with e-mails distorting the Democratic candidate's positions on Israel, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Jews, terrorism, and taxes, asked me an honest question:

"Are Israelis frightened by Obama?"

At the risk of speaking for a people for whom consensus is a concept whose meaning is largely theoretical, my gut instinct still told me that the answer was a simple no. Frightened of many things they may be, but Obama is not one of them.

But in an America which now seems, to this foreign visitor, to be eroding under the pressure of its fears - serious concerns over credit meltdown, military impotence, health care, elderly care, spiraling educational costs, crumbling infrastructures, and an ever-expanding field of economic, environmental, energy and social landmines yet to be defused - now might be the time to ask the question: What is it that so frightens Americans about Barak Obama?

The easy assumption, of course, is racism. But research strongly suggests that race is not the answer.

The gut suggests the companion question, which may hold the answer. Why were Americans so plainly unafraid of George W. Bush that they not only elected, but re-elected him?

The gut suggests an answer that academics and, for that matter, foreign lovers of America, may find difficult to accept.

"Maybe," remarked a journalist in Israel this week, "what Americans really want, is a president that they can easily make fun of."

Someone like Bush.

Fox News Channel, as part of its continuing effort to marshal evidence that the media outlets are blasting away at McCain, while giving Obama a pass, recently cited a study showing that in the first seven months of the year, late-night talk show hosts told 549 jokes about John McCain versus only 382 about Obama. Only in passing did they mention that Hillary Clinton had been the subject of 562. They made no mention of the fact that George Bush headed the list at 605.

In the end, Bush's inexplicable air of harmlessness may be his real legacy. His genius was the glorification of ineffectuality. He played to perfection the part of the good ole boy who revels in the knowledge that things are not as bad as these insufferable, effete, under-manly liberals, intellectuals, elitists, eggheads, high talkers would have us believe. Here was the common man with the common man's truth - be happy with what you've got, and as for these nay-sayers, may they not bring all of us down with them.

And no one was as good as Bush at promulgating - perhaps, also, at himself believing - the big lie. Here, after all, was the man, the moneyed, Yale Skull and Bones legacy son of a moneyed president, grandson of a U.S. Senator trading on his identity as the caricature of the common man, this self-styled rancher, this apparent dirt farmer. A lie as big as the great Texas sky. And Americans lined up to buy it.

It was too scary not to.

What could be more scary, at this point, than Obama being right? The extent of the changes that need to be made are, in fact, frightening in dimension. There is, undeniably, something in human nature that suggests that if things are this bad, changing them could only be worse.

What frightens me, at this point, is the possibility that Americans have come to prize mediocrity over excellence, turning a blind eye to facing hard truths full on. Fox News, meanwhile, has gone back to trying to persuade America that global warming may be a fiction, after all. Who better than Fox to know a fiction when it reports one?

What may frighten some Americans about Barack Obama is his very excellence. His fiercest critics have so far had little else to go on.

But if he is truly that scary, why is it so necessary to lie about him?

If the real truth about him is so frightening, why is it so necessary for someone like Daniel Pipes to ingeniously resuscitate the lie that Obama is a Muslim?

If the actual facts are so damning, why was it so necessary for Fox and others to pump up the packet of hardbound fictions called Obama Nation, a miserable book whose manipulative distribution propelled it to a debut at the top of The New York Times best seller list?

There will be those for whom race is the deciding issue, but I believe their numbers are few. For many more, well-meaning and tolerant people, I believe the reason is fear. It is fear of the unknown, but not only fear of the unknown Obama.

I believe that the real fear is finding out what lies behind the big lies of George Bush, and, more ominously by far, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and a host of other neo-con-artist aides, many of whom have wisely jumped ship.

Perhaps it is only here, viewing the monstrously peculiar case of New Orleans, that one can begin to fathom the blind eye phenomenon of Bush's re-election.

At the weekend, The Associated Press released the results of an investigation into the federal government's efforts to safeguard the Crescent City from a catastrophe such as that which followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood."

Concluded flood protection official Tim Moody, "What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."

Here is a place which has suffered as no other American city from what may be called the Reagan Effect - the urge to vote for the person who, in the face of crying problems, responds that this is the greatest country in the world, that things are not so bad after all, who counsels staying the course, rebuffing the pesky pinhead pencil-neck critic, letting the disaster-profiteer and the energy profiteer and the war-profiteer go about their business as good Americans.

Let us understand, therefore, that social ills are at root the fault of those who suffer from them, that lowering taxes is all that's really needed. Let us understand, therefore, that if part of the United States of America has become a part of the Third World, we should let it go, move on, get on with our own lives.

Thus far, Americans have shown themselves adept at bailing out financial institutions threatened by the credit crisis that the institutions themselves helped create and propagate.

At some point, this foreign visitor believes, America will also have to deal with its crisis of moral credit. Someone will have to pay for the catastrophes caused by the neo-cons, still curiously self-delighted after all these terrible years. Someone will have to deal with the world, and the New Poverty of America, that the Fox-blissed administration is about to leave behind.

Fox, meanwhile, continues to tell the people of New Orleans and California that the answer to the energy crisis and soaring gasoline costs and dependence on foreign oil is limited to drilling faster, deeper, stronger. Turn up the Fox Conditioning, lest you hear the whole enterprise creaking as it begins to collapse.

This foreign visitor doesn't believe that this election is about race. It is about the difficulty and the sacrifice involved in changing course, acknowledging error, actively working for a better common future.

It is a battle over the kind of complacency and fear of change that put into the Oval Office its most underqualified occupant in living memory. Perhaps that is how the joke statistics should be understood - and taken seriously.

After eight years of George Bush, the foreign visitor can say with assurance that Obama frightens him not at all. He is not even that frightened by the sincerely troubled person who watches Fox News hoping for an honest reason to vote for John McCain.

There are those who believe that what this voter, scared but not racist, may be saying is, "please, Fox News, give me a reason to vote against Obama that doesn't include the word black."

But what the foreign visitor finds the most frightening, the most dangerous, is the voter who, after eight years of abject catastrophe, continues to pray "Please, please, give me a reason to vote for the person who says that things are all right, after all."

Someone like Bush.


Previous blogs:

Ten Mideast traps for Barack Obama to avoid
The pleasure that Hezbollah takes in torture
Experiment: People's Peace Plan Number 1
Fear of calling a terrorist a terrorist
Palestinian terrorism as a natural act
How would Jesus vote on Mideast peace?
Perhaps we killed Christ after all
Bookmark to del.icio.us  
 
Interview with a killer
Yigal Amir describes how the idea to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin came about.
Absentees for McCain
Exit poll reveals U.S. absentee voters in Israel back McCain over Obama by 3-1.
  1.   DELETED BY MODERATOR 11:35  |  indrajaya 26/08/08
  2.   POWELL FOR OBAMA 11:41  |  indrajaya 26/08/08
  3.   The Bill Maher effect 15:09  |  MichaelN 26/08/08
  4.   America is going down along with the rest of the world 16:37  |  lady from USA 26/08/08
  5.   Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville 23:20  |  jake 26/08/08
  6.   Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville 23:24  |  jake 26/08/08
  7.   Thanks for Promoting Fox News 10:57  |  Stewart G. 27/08/08
  8.   blue red 11:07  |  aryeh shore 27/08/08
  9.   The only thing scaring is the IQ of the American voter..... 12:34  |  Swiss (Dino) 27/08/08
  10.   What really frightening me about Obama is his failure to get... 12:42  |  Cat Constante 27/08/08
  11.   People stop believing politics changes anything. Want reassurance 12:46  |  Michael 27/08/08
  12.   I Q in AMERICA 12:57  |  Neutered Observer 27/08/08
  13.   For all people on this blog, for and against Obama: 13:03  |  S 27/08/08
  14.   #1 They just mean it`ll be harder for him 13:25  |  Devil 27/08/08
  15.   Burston is spot-on 13:39  |  Mike Friedman 27/08/08
  16.   #1 indrajaya - one out of two you say 13:40  |  * BEN JABO 27/08/08
  17.   Obama 13:40  |  Kacey Mathew 27/08/08
  18.   9: Yes, Dino, Switzerland`s isn`t scary 14:07  |  David Teich 27/08/08
  19.   Afraid? No. Just not stupid. 14:22  |  Jeff 27/08/08
  20.   9 - But are there now going to be minarets all over Switzerland? 14:28  |  redmike 27/08/08
  21.   Yes, I am scared 14:38  |  Mike 27/08/08
  22.   Burston is an idiot 14:39  |  Kerry 27/08/08
  23.   Sensationalist Pessimism 14:49  |  Aeli 27/08/08
  24.   Burston is spot-on 15:03  |  Mike Friedman 27/08/08
  25.   The American dream and the Fox syndrome. 15:13  |  Stephen 27/08/08
  26.   "Four more years of the last eight years" 15:24  |  Clickfool 27/08/08
  27.   MY US friend Jackie is right 15:30  |  Clickfool 27/08/08
  28.   Wrong again, Burston 15:30  |  Deborah 27/08/08
  29.   One more thing 15:34  |  Deborah 27/08/08
  30.   WHAT MCCAIN IS AFRAID ABOUT BARAK? HILLARY 15:38  |  indrajaya 27/08/08
  31.   Plato warned us! 15:41  |  utagawa 27/08/08
  32.   Block head Burston 15:47  |  joe Smith 27/08/08
  33.   My worry for Obama 15:48  |  Clickfool 27/08/08
  34.   Obama vs McCain on Israel: A no-brainer 15:49  |  A Hillary Democrat 27/08/08
  35.   Intelligence, race, Moslem? 15:50  |  howiej 27/08/08
  36.   #9 15:53  |  Deborah 27/08/08
  37.   #23 Clickfool - American want change 15:54  |  * BEN JABO 27/08/08
  38.   More BS Analysis from Burston 15:54  |  The Historian 27/08/08
  39.   Watching Hillary today at the Democratic Convention 15:59  |  Clickfool 27/08/08
  40.   INDY....I learned something about the "first black man" 16:05  |  Lynn 27/08/08
  41.   Are Americans in denial? 16:11  |  sc 27/08/08
  42.   #33 Clicky .....will the same Middle America 16:13  |  Lynn 27/08/08
  43.   # 16, BEN JABO 16:20  |  indrajaya 27/08/08
  44.   Dinkins - the first black mayor of New York City 16:20  |  Boris 27/08/08
  45.   Obam will be elected and things will worsen for Blacks and poor. 16:21  |  The Equalizer 27/08/08
  46.   #31 utagawa....Yes, we do have problems 16:22  |  Lynn 27/08/08
  47.   Afraid? No, but maybe just a bit jealous. 16:22  |  Tzfonit 27/08/08
  48.   # 40, LYNN 16:24  |  indrajaya 27/08/08
  49.   The real question that nobody wants to ask 16:26  |  Boris 27/08/08
  50.   I`m afraid of him ,if he`s elected I would pay global poverty tax 16:27  |  maria 27/08/08
  51.   ENDGAME - ALEX JONES - BLUEPRINT for GLOBAL ENSLAVEMENT 16:28  |  Linda Rivera 27/08/08
  52.   # 39 Clicky.....I wholeheartedly agree but 16:32  |  Lynn 27/08/08
  53.   #30 - Indrajaya 16:37  |  Deborah 27/08/08
  54.   # 18 David Teich shows that he has no clue...... 16:40  |  Swiss (Dino) 27/08/08
  55.   3 types of people in this world... 16:44  |  Ben 27/08/08
  56.   39. Clickfool. On Hillary 16:46  |  Stephen 27/08/08
  57.   # 20 redmike, nothing easier than that..... 16:49  |  Swiss (Dino) 27/08/08
  58.   Sorry to say, but after reading The Economist article - 16:51  |  S 27/08/08
  59.   # 36 Deborah, I`m afraid you are suffering from.....