Will Obama Really Bring Change?

The conventional wisdom has been that Obama would be able to beat John McCain in November and that many independents and moderates would break for Obama. Many Republicans and centrists has been stirred by Obama’s healing rhetoric which is a breath of fresh air to many of us that are tired of eight years of partisan actions. Many Democrats like Obama more than Senator Hillary Clinton, who is viewed as too cynical. Many people think that Obama will beat John McCain to become the first African American president and the 44th person to occupy the office.

But as appealing as Obama is (and he does have an impressive background) there are some questions about the Illinois Senator. Personally, I get the feeling that Obama’s talk creates a wonderful picture, but that there is more going on than what we are seeing. I remember eight years ago, we heard George W. Bush talking about being a “uniter, not a divider.” He ran as someone who could reach across the isle to work with Democrats and presented himself as a “different kind of Republican.” Well, we know how that all turned out. Bush turned out to be far more reactionary and more partisan than we have ever expected. I might set some people off by saying this, but Obama at times reminds me of Bush in 2000 and that doesn’t leave me feeling all warm inside. I am worried that beneath this talk of change and hope, is someone who is very partisan and will not bring the healing he is talking about.

In his latest article, Stuart Taylor talks (again) about the whole Jeremiah Wright affair. In some ways he brings up the same argument we have heard before about why Obama stayed at Trinity UCC after hearing Wright’s incendiary talk over and over. Normally, I ignore this talk, but he brings a view that one should notice:

would the same Obama who lacked the fortitude to break with Jeremiah Wright be a good bet, if elected, to take on his party’s own special interests? To break, when circumstances warrant, with the across-the-board liberal orthodoxy he has long embraced? Curb entitlement spending? Temper excessive affirmative-action preferences? Tame the lawsuit lobby? Assign the teachers unions their share of the blame for what Obama calls “crumbling schools that are stealing the future”?

Could he get tough, when necessary, with fashionably leftist foreign dictators, highly politicized international institutions, and sanctimonious European America-bashers? Or would he instead heed such soothing platitudes as his wife’s February 14 assertion that “instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists,” we should be “building diplomatic relationships”?

Taylor wonders if he is able to sit and listen to Wright’s hard words, then will he be able to stand up to interest groups of the Left?

John McCain likes to fashion himself as a maverick. Some have said he isn’t that much a maverick, but regardless of that, he has more than once frustrated the base of the GOP by going his own way. He has worked with arch-liberal Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. He did join the “Gang of 14.” He has been willing from time to time to anger conservatives by working for the national interest. Hillary Clinton has also worked with Republicans from time to time. The thing is, Obama hasn’t really done as much to work across party lines. He has rarely gone beyond his liberal base. His words might show a willingness to be open to being less-ideological than the current President, but many of his actions show someone that is unwilling to challenge the “sacred cows” of the Left in the way that McCain has (at times) done on the Right.

What is also interesting is who is voting for Obama in the primaries. Michael Baronenotes that in many cases, Obama won in college towns and capital cities, where academics and public-sector workers live, and not in more blue-collar areas. Barone explains:

Relying on exit polls, analysts have been seeing the battle for the Democratic nomination as tribal warfare, between blacks and Latinos (and Jews), between young and old, between upscale and downscale. These analyses support that view and show another sharp division in Democratic ranks. Barack Obama, who started off with an appeal transcending race, has been able to win impressive percentages from white voters but seldom majorities. He gets majorities from whites only in his home state (Illinois), in states where the white Democratic primary electorate is unusually upscale and non-Jewish (Virginia, Vermont), and in mountain states where the cultural divide is not black-white: in New Mexico, where it is Anglo-Hispanic, in Utah, where it is Mormon-gentile. He gets in the mid-40s among white voters in states where most of them are from fast-growing metro areas (Georgia, Texas, California, Maryland).

But looking at these electoral data suggests to me that there’s another tribal divide going on here, one that separates voters more profoundly than even race (well, maybe not more profoundly than race in Mississippi but in other states). That’s the divide between academics and Jacksonians. In state after state, we have seen Obama do extraordinarily well in academic and state capital enclaves. In state after state, we have seen Clinton do extraordinarily well in enclaves dominated by Jacksonians.

Barone then explains the difference between academics and the Jacksonians:

Academics and public employees (and of course many, perhaps most, academics in the United States are public employees) love the arts of peace and hate the demands of war. Economically, defense spending competes for the public-sector dollars that academics and public employees think are rightfully their own. More important, I think, warriors are competitors for the honor that academics and public employees think rightfully belongs to them. Jacksonians, in contrast, place a high value on the virtues of the warrior and little value on the work of academics and public employees. They have, in historian David Hackett Fischer’s phrase, a notion of natural liberty: People should be allowed to do what they want, subject to the demands of honor. If someone infringes on that liberty, beware: The Jacksonian attitude is, “If you attack my family or my country, I’ll kill you.” And he (or she) means it.

Obama tends to fit the academic image and Clinton tends to fit the Jacksonians. In looking at all the exit polls, Barone notices that in many cases, the reason whites broke for Clinton over Obama had to do with something other than race:

When I first noticed Obama’s weak showings among Appalachians, I chalked them up, as many in the press will be inclined to do, to an antipathy to blacks. But that simply doesn’t hold up. Go back to 1995, and look at the polls that showed that most Americans would support Colin Powell for president. I don’t think you’ll find any evidence of resistance by Jacksonian voters to the Powell candidacy. Rather the contrary, I suspect. He was a warrior, after all, and always exudes a sense of command. Or go back and look at the election returns in 1989 in which Douglas Wilder became the first black governor in our history, in Virginia. Jacksonians in southwest Virginia showed no aversion to Wilder; rather the contrary. Take Buchanan County, which runs along both West Virginia and Kentucky, and which voted 90 percent to 9 percent for Clinton over Obama on February 12. In 1989, it voted 59 percent to 41 percent for Wilder over Republican Marshall Coleman. Overall, Wilder lost what is now the Ninth Congressional District (long known as the Fighting Ninth) by a 53 percent-to-47 percent margin. But that is far less than the 59 percent-to-39 percent margin by which George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the district in November 2004 or the 65 percent-to-33 percent margin by which Clinton beat Obama there in February 2008. Jacksonians may reject certain kinds of candidates, but not because they’re black. A black candidate who will join them in fighting against attacks on their family or their country is all right with them.

Now, things might change between now and November. Obama might be more of a centrist, he might be able to swing blue-collars his way. But some of this data leaves more questions than answers.

In my view, Senator Obama becomes more and more of an enigma every day.