Welter of thoughts

Barack Obama's truly historic achievement has unleashed a storm of analysis and speculation swirling around the quiet realization that, "Yes, we've turned a page and reached another level in the struggle to form a more perfect union."

I've spent the last few days reading more blogs than usual, following links and finding insights in some unfamiliar places.

Somehow I got to Ezra Klein (via Steven Hart through Andrew Sullivan) who writes:

Obama's speech tonight was powerful, but then, most all of his speeches are. This address stood out less than I expected. It took me an hour to realize how extraordinary that was. I had just watched an African-American capture the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America, and it felt...normal. Almost predictable. 50 years ago, African Americans often couldn't vote, and dozens died in the fight to ensure them the franchise. African-Americans couldn't use the same water fountains or rest rooms as white Americans. Black children often couldn't attend the same schools as white children. Employers could discriminate based on race. 50 years ago, African Americans occupied, in effect, a second, and lesser, country. Today, an African-American man may well become the president of the whole country, and it feels almost normal.

It was, to be sure, not entirely unpredicted. On March 31st, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. preached his final Sunday sermon. "We shall overcome," he said, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Four days later, he was murdered. But 40 years later, his dream is more alive than he could have ever imagined. Not only might a black man be president, but at times, many forget to even be surprised by it.

I realize, especially as I'm writing in a hotspot of Hillary support, that it might have been an equally historic moment for women if the primaries had unfolded just a little differently. I suppose the arc of the moral universe is just taking a little longer to bend toward justice for women. It didn't happen this time around, but it will. I think it will be in my lifetime but if not, certainly in my daughter's.

Why didn't it happen? Why did Hillary miss by a whisker? Her campaign has been savaged for its clumsiness, it's tone-deafness, its insensitivity, its poor management of money and message. Blame has been apportioned to Bill Clinton as a big-footed meddler who did more to harm than help. Hillary, her campaign and the media were accused -- rightfully, I believe -- of trying to foist a sense of inevitability to her candidacy before even a single vote had been cast. People don't like being taken for granted.

Yet Hillary kept coming back and won grudging admiration for being someone who wouldn't quit just because Tweety and KO and the howler monkeys on DKos thought she should.

Even so, I think Steven Hart identifies the deciding factor in Clinton's defeat, the one unshakeable bit of the past that couldn't be finessed for Democrats in the here and now:

[A]s Duncan Black keeps pointing out, the elephant in the room is the Iraq war. If Hillary hadn’t decided to play it safe and let the rumpus room warriors have their way, she would be the nominee and everyone would be saying “Barack who?” She thought she was being shrewd, and it blew up in her face. That vote lost her the nomination, and yet the “analysts” and pundits are scrupulously avoiding talking about it. The war decided this primary, and it will decide the vote in November as well.

And so the Clinton era of Democratic politics is most likely at an end. Bill will go back to doing good works and polishing the legacy he tarnished anew these last few months. He'll also be making money and running with a fun crowd. I expect Hillary to turn into one of the pillars of the Democratic Party, much like Teddy Kennedy did.

All of this makes me feel like a tired dinosaur, staggering to the end of the Cretaceous. Disgustingly young, callow and conservative Ross Douthat writes in the Atlantic (H/T once again today to Andrew Sullivan):

Clintonism represented a distinctively Boomer strain of politics, but Clinton-hatred did as well. For Boomer conservatives, it was a reaction to the Clinton personae, his and hers -- to the way Bill and Hillary embodied, in so many respects, everything that fortysomething right-wingers despised about their own peer group -- joined to an anger at the First Couple's facility for winning political battles (if not the war) in an era that was supposed to belong to Reagan's heirs. For Boomer liberals, it was a mixture of self-loathing, sibling resentment, and the inevitable disappointment at the Clintons' failure to live up to the idols of their youth, the brothers Kennedy ... and then, more unforgivably, their failure to get out of the way when a New Kennedy came along.

I don't agree that Clintonism is "a distinctively Boomer strain of politics." What I do know is that I felt that my generation had finally reached the levers of power when Clinton was elected. It was important, you see, after all those years of powerlessness -- powerlessness to end the Vietnam War, powerlessness to end poverty and injustice, powerlessness to stop the depredations of Reaganism -- despite being the largest cohort in American history.

Andrew Sullivan posts correspondence from a reader in "A Boomer Laments":

As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, I confess a certain sadness at the prospect of Obama as President.  But not because I won't vote for him; I very well may. But consider.  We have had two members of my generation as President; after a President Obama, I suspect that we will not have another.  And what do we see? 

Two men who have embodied the worst of our generation. 

First, a man who refused to take responsibility for himself, and acted like the rules did not apply to him.  Pretty much the epitome of the left's attitude in the late 1960s.  Followed by a man who also refused to take responsibility, and acted like a stereotypical frat boy who never grew up.

In reality, there were a lot of us who were responsible adults.  But apparently that was not the route to the Presidency.  When history looks at us, there will be a tendency to take our generation's Presidents as a proxy for us all.  God, how I wish it were not so!  But there you have it.

Yes, there you have it. Obama is technically a Boomer but he doesn't feel like one. He really is sui generis.

We had the power for a brief time and, alas, we fucked it up. We're not passing a torch, we're passing a leaky Bic.