Frank Rich: They Didn’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

[seafan]

They Didn’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow



Barry Blitt


By Frank Rich
January 6, 2008

AFTER so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it’s like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. “They said this day would never come,” said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.

What felt good was not merely the improbable and historic political triumph of an African-American candidate carrying a state with a black population of under 3 percent. It was the palpable sense that our history was turning a page whether or not Mr. Obama or his doppelgänger in improbability, Mike Huckabee, end up in the White House. We could allow ourselves a big what-if: What if we could have an election that was not a referendum on either the Clinton or Bush presidencies? For the first time, we found ourselves on that long-awaited bridge to the 21st century, the one that was blown up in the ninth month of the new millennium’s maiden year.

The former community organizer from Chicago and the former Baptist preacher from Arkansas..... are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don’t run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the “compassionate conservative” president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.

The “they” who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism’s status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.

.....

But if Clinton operatives know how to go negative, they don’t have the positive balance of a 21st-century message. Iowa confirmed that the message the campaign has used to date — experience — is D.O.A. in post-Bush America. It was fascinating to watch that realization sink in on Thursday night. In her concession speech, Mrs. Clinton had her husband, the most tangible totem of her experience, standing right beside her, yet she didn’t mention him or so much as acknowledge him.

Even before that tableau was swept away by the sight of the Obama family all but dancing across the stage in celebration, it looked like the passing of an era.

We are on the crest of the tsunami.


We have predicted it.

[TwilightGardener]

1. I'm so tired of people trying to draw parallels between Obama and

the utterly psychotic dipshit Huckabilly--Hucky won because of evangelicals in Iowa--not because he was a "change agent" or anything else. It was his religion, and the pastors and homeschoolers who turned out for him, and Iowa talk radio that had him on everyday, that gave him his win. It won't happen anywhere else that there isn't a huge rural/evangelical faction. I guess journalists and pundits need to fit both Obama and Hucky into the same narrative, for some reason, but it doesn't work.

[Triana]

4. Huckabee is American Taliban - dangerous religious extremeist....

....in "friendly-likeable" clothing - just like GW.

I know folks who knew him (he was their pastor) - and they are trying to KEEP HIM FROM the White House.

[seafan]

6. From the article:

Here is another graf that addresses in full context the point you're concerned with:

The former community organizer from Chicago and the former Baptist preacher from Arkansas have little in common in terms of political views. But as I wrote here a month ago, the author of “The Audacity of Hope” and the new man from Hope, Ark., are flip sides of the same coin. The slogan “change” — a brand now so broad and debased that both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney appropriated it for their own campaigns — does not do justice to the fresh starts that Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee represent.

Rich isn't comparing Obama and Huckabee in the sense you alluded to... what I think he means is that with the emergence of Obama on one side and Huckabee on the other, the Establishment in both parties has hit the wall. What is emerging is two candidates who arose from very humble beginnings, and, with the voters, have repudiated the Big Monied Establishment across the entire spectrum, both Left and Right.


This, IMHO, is the Big Picture stunning reality for the Corporate Barons/War Machine makers/Big Oil/Big Media types. Suddenly, the future of their whole bloated, greed-driven, blood-hungry agenda is evaporating before their very stricken eyes.


There is a monstrous tsunami on the horizon, and these people are helpless to escape it.

And they know it.

[TwilightGardener]

7. But he's got it wrong--Huck's victory was not because Iowa was

rejecting the "establishment"-- he won because he's the most religious and the most pro-life. The populist spiel helped, but it wasn't the driving force. It was a fairly meaningless victory, because Iowa was tailor-made for him--they loved Pat Robertson at one time, too. There is simply too much being made of his win. Obama is a different story--his victory is VERY meaningful.

[babylonsister]

2. Recommend with thanks to you and Mr. Rich! nt

[NC_Nurse]

3. Great post!

Thanks!

[understandinglife]

5. Hopefully this will reside at the top of the DU Homepage for a few hours ....

One of his best ...

[wisteria]

8. Oh please.

You might think Obama was sent down to us by the gods to lead us into the valley of a new dawn.
This is all getting to be too much. Last time I noticed him he just looked like a well backed, media darling,Democratic candidate.

:eyes:

[Jade Fox]

9. Huckabee won because.....

he is the only GOP candidate with a solid base--Conservative Christians. The rest of the Republican rogues gallery of candidates all have big negatives that alienate much of GOP base. And yes, they are all fear-mongering and angry--probably because their party is tanking and taking their Presidential hopes down with the ship.

Comparing Obama and Huckabee seems like quite a stretch.