Obama, Virginia, and the Legacy of John Adams

Posted by Myrna the Minx on February 10, 2008 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Obama has completed a sweep of this weekend’s primaries and looks good to win the “Potomac Primary” on Tuesday given the demographics of the region, not to mention the latest Mason-Dixon poll (polling close to the actual Mason-Dixon line).

I like Andrew Sullivan’s synopsis of the Obama and McCain campaigns but I can’t help but feel the almost everyone is overestimating John McCain’s appeal. I hope I’m not being too optimistic.

The demoralisation of the Bush era made possible the emotional and social forces that have combined to create the Obama movement. Hurricane Katrina and the terrible treatment of poor blacks in New Orleans made a black man almost necessary. Abu Ghraib made a man of integrity important. And the stain that many liberal and independent Americans felt the Bush era had left required a much stronger astringent than careful, focus-grouped, split-the-difference Clintonism.

And that’s why the Republicans realised that up against the transformative power of Obama, they had to risk a move to the centre or face obliteration. Without Obama, I doubt that McCain would have emerged. But up against a clear, fresh, inspiring character, the Republicans couldn’t run a mere regional candidate like Huckabee or a phoney Bush composite like Romney. They needed a Republican who could appeal to the independents who were rushing to the Obama primaries and caucuses. And so Bush made Obama possible and Obama made McCain necessary.

Keep in mind Josh Patashnik, Virginia elected Doug Wilder and told George “Macaca” Allen to get lost.

On a sort of related note, I am tempted to get HBO just so I can see their John Adams mini-series (which is running an ad on this site). David McCullough’s biography of John Adams is one of my favorites, and I have a long and rather romantic history with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams as a Jefferson history fetishist. (I almost died when a friend of mine took the Monticello tour WITH David McCullough and Senator Alan Simpson–McCullough of course providing all kinds of interesting information to the tour as you can imagine.) Adams’ failed 1800 re-election campaign against friend Jefferson might actually make this one look tame. That their friendship withstood that campaign and their differences on pretty much every topic except for the success of their American project, is remarkable. And the story of their near simultaneous death on July 4, 1826, their respective messengers passing each other on the way to deliver the news, couldn’t be more appropriate if imagined. One can only hope that whoever is elected as our next president takes their cue from Adams, who strove to stay above partisan politics and adhere to his own correct idea of “moral leadership.” From UVA’s Miller Center:

Adams’s legacy is one of reason, moral leadership, the rule of law, compassion, and a cautious but active foreign policy that aimed both at securing the national interest and achieving an honorable peace.

Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?