OBAMA BASHING: MOBILIZING RESENTMENT AS A POLITICAL STRATEGY

[Karen Anderson]

While watching prominent supporters of John McCain’s campaign for the presidency use sarcasm and derision while describing Barack Obama’s candidacy, one question loomed for me. Why does this give these people so much pleasure? What emotions loom behind the sneers? Why do so many privileged people enjoy feeling victimized, whether by “big government” or Democrats or the purportedly liberal media? How can anyone believe the Republican Party, whose major economic policy for thirty years has been tax breaks for the rich, stands for the common person? The sheer irrationality of it boggles the mind.

Are they attacking Senator Obama with such relish because he is Harvard educated? Because he is articulate and reflective? Because he is an African American who is seeking to go “above his station”? Certainly, the racism in the attacks can go unnamed when it flies under the flag of partisan politics. Moreover, it is clear that some white Democrats, men and women, had supported Hillary Clinton over Obama because they could not vote for an African American for president. Many of them are now supporting McCain. Attributing that shift to some kind of feminism makes it appear progressive, when, in fact, it does not reflect any feminism I recognize.

It is important to remember at this point that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for the presidency in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. Reagan sounded the themes that Republicans today embrace enthusiastically—“states’ rights,” limited government, and lower taxes. He did not mention the murders that had made that place notorious. White Mississippians got the message and turned out in droves to support him. Racism can be both subtle and blatant at the same time. As President, Reagan tried his best to support white flight by offering tax exemptions to segregated schools (he lost on that one), by gutting the EEOC and attacking the Voting Rights Act, and by cutting social programs needed by poor people of all backgrounds. He also amassed federal deficits higher than all previous presidents added together. This gave content to his call for “limited” government. He continues to serve as the poster boy for the Republican Party to this day. It is no wonder the recent convention was so lily white.

It is tempting to conclude that racism fully explains the resentment that Obama’s candidacy engenders, but conservatives have used such emotion-laden appeals against white men and women very successfully for a long time. During the Cold War, charges that America had been “sold out” by privileged elites loomed large in the accusations brought against a legion of public officials by Senator Joseph McCarthy and numerous others. In the backlash against the civil rights movement, also, many white southerners claimed that powerful others (most of whom were white and included “Yankees,” Communists, and local elites) were forcing them to accept racial change in part because these powerful people disrespected average white Americans. It is important to understand that this politics of resentment had immense appeal and very significant effects on our political life.

Given the extraordinary power Republicans have been wielding in the federal government since 1980 it is hard to fathom their sense of grievance against Washington. Why do these people claim to feel so disempowered when the Republicans have controlled the presidency for eight years and dominated the halls of Congress for most of the last two decades? How can you continue to run against Washington time after time when you control it? Politically, it is a very deft move. The constant claim to outsider status allows them to disavow any responsibility for the effects of the actions they have taken when they are insiders. By locating power outside of themselves, they distance themselves from the failures so clearly associated with the current president. They forget that they installed the guy in the White House in the first place. Emotionally, these assertions allow them to indulge freely the masochistic pleasures of the appeal to victimization and to claim the mantle of a righteous discontent.

All of this distracts from a reasonable discussion of the issues, including one that focuses on the responsible exercise of power in all of our institutions. So, I am glad that Barack Obama is highly educated, intellectually disciplined, and willing to take a reflective approach to our politics and policies. I want him to know more than I do about all our salient public issues and to appoint people to powerful positions based on their expertise and experiences. It is equally important to me that he has had experience as a community organizer and can see America’s problems from the ground up. That is not elitism, it is leadership of the best kind.


Karen Anderson