WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?

So, who is Barack Obama? All the evidence we needed to form an opinion was right in front of us all along but, as is so often the case in these kinds of things, most people refused to believe it. Barack Obama is a man who has spent his life looking for his identity, and failing to find it. This is not surprising, born as he was from the union of an African student whose wanderlust led him to the U.S. and, almost as quickly, led him away again, and a Kansan whose wanderlust led her to Indonesia and, to her credit, led her to decide to allow her only child to go to Hawaii to be raised by her more grounded parents.

Obama's superior intellect, and his good fortune at being raised by those grandparents, got him an elite education. Still, he was not part of any world in particular,not a Black African, or an African-American, or a white Kansan, or an Indonesian, or a Hawaiian, but part of all of those things.

It was only when he got to Chicago, became a community organizer, wooed and won Michelle Robinson, became a part of Jeremiah Wright's church, that he truly found an identity. It is the identity of a left-wing, African-American, Chicago politician. He has more of an elite education than most of the other folks in that category, and certainly more of an exotic background, but he made a conscious decision to become a part of that crowd. That decision, of course, had consequences. As he grew into that role he, no doubt, accepted the ideological and political assumptions of the group. He became part of the Democratic machine politics of Chicago, which meant that he needed to say, do, and think certain things to get along. Like all machine politicians, then, it is difficult to clearly know what he really believes, as he will throw anyone under the bus who gets in his way (see Rev. Wright, for example).

This is what so many fail to understand. All the rhetoric about "hope and change" is just that...rhetoric to win an election. Everything he has done so far underscores that point. Yet, like all politicians, he does have goals. Knowing what they really are is the trick. My best guess is that Barack Obama wants to be a transformative figure in American history (what a way to assert an identity). Like FDR and LBJ, he wants to transform American society. That is why he seems less able to focus on the economic crisis. His desire to make the transformation happen is getting in the way of his ability to see the crisis and react to it. This is not surprising, given the fact that he has never run any organization of any size, except a campaign, which means he has to learn how to compartmentalize and delegate on a grand scale (this ability, by the way, is one of the reasons why FDR and Reagan were successful, as both had the ability to keep the big picture in mind at all times). FDR had experience as Governor of New York and LBJ as Senate Majority Leader (and Reagan as Governor of California and head of the Screen Actor's Guild). Obama has no comparable experience.

Obama is learning on the job. He is trying to make changes to American society while also maintaining his popularity so as to assure his reelection. Facing a global economic crisis, which could quickly turn into a crisis of war and unrest on a larger scale than anything we are seeing today, he is totally unprepared by experience, education and inclination to provide the leadership necessary to get us out of this fix. FDR, who was better qualified and could see the larger picture with greater clarity, was also given time by the American people to learn the ropes and profit from his mistakes. LBJ, who was elected by a landslide in 1964 due to a combination of sympathy for the legacy of a slain President and the radical caricature created of his opponent in the public mind, was so thoroughly repudiated by 1968 that he withdrew from consideration for reelection before barely any votes were cast. I expect the repudiation of Obama to begin in 2010. Much damage will be done before he is sent packing in 2012, a fact we will have to live with for decades to come.