Texas Liberal

If Senator Obama Campaigns As An Agressive Partisan, He’ll Be Tagged As An Angry Black Man

Columnist Ellen Goodman recently wrote about Senator Barack Obama’s stress on a of kind post-partisan and less confrontational brand of politics.

From Ms. Goodman’s column– (The full piece is here.) 

  “…I am drawn to the brand known as Generation Obama. This presidential candidate has repeatedly offered himself as the post-boomer, the one person in the race who can take us past the great divides of the last 40 years.

 This post-boomer theme is spun out in Andrew Sullivan’s recent piece in The Atlantic, where he writes that “if you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man.” It can be found as well in the label that Ross Baker, a Rutgers political scientist, put on Obama: “the post-polarization candidate.”

Now we come to the 2008 primary season. Barack Obama is an appealing icon of change. In reading “Dreams From My Father,” I was engaged by a description of his half sister’s dilemma — torn between the Western values of individual success and the African values of community. He has the capacity to turn a problem around, roaming across its many surfaces. He gets it.

His philosophical frame of mind appeals to the educated elite of the Democratic Party. His largest group of supporters are college-educated. But I am forced to ask, against my own grain, whether Democrats need a philosopher or a combatant.

Sometimes, I approach politics like a parent watching her children: “I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong; just stop fighting.” But of course I do care who’s right, who’s wrong, who’ll win. What if red America is pitted against blue America?

Maybe I am suffering from too little “audacity of hope.” Or an excess of experience. The Democratic nominee won’t have the luxury of a do-good campaign. Even a post-polarization candidate would face a polarized politics.

There’s still a difference between being an icon of change and an agent of change. And there is a difference as well between being a fine philosopher king and a strong presidential challenger.”

My take on this is that if Senator Obama were to run as a forceful partisan, he would never get past questions of race. He would be tagged as an angry black man and an Al Sharpton and he would start to be seen only for the color of his skin.

I say this as someone who believes in partisanship as something basic to democracy.

It would not matter if Senator Obama was speaking about the moon or about the tides of the ocean—If he is seen as aggressive he’ll get the label of angry black man. 

Given that this is America, Mr. Obama may come to be seen primarily through the prism of race soon enough in any case. It may be unavoidable.   

There are debates going on about whether Senator Obama is “black enough.” I’ll leave that to others except to express my regret that he appears to have no Italian blood.    

All I know is that in this country, if you have some color you are not white. And a person with one black parent is seen as black in almost all cases. 

Senator Obama is a black man whatever people want to say about his demeanor or his views or whatever.      

If a black man is to have a chance to be elected President, I’d rather that man be able to define himself before folks hostile to the interests of black people and liberals get the chance to do the defining.

December 11, 2007 Posted by Neil Aquino | Campaign 2008, Politics | Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Ellen Goodman, Politics, Race | 17 Comments