Who is Fairest of Them All?

Epiphany (or maybe just stood in the sun too long yesterday):

The Obama campaign has positioned him as the "post-racial" candidate, which is a cogent fit with their overall message of change. What I have come to appreciate is what a brilliant electoral strategy it is, especially now. It's brilliant because it turns Obama's weakness - white racial thinking about making a black man President - into his greatest strength.

One of the keys to winning Presidential elections is to make white people feel good about themselves. White people, being the top of the social and economic heap in American society, enjoy their status but are filled with anxiety. White males, especially so, being at the very tippy-top. They have the most to lose, and they fear what would happen if they did lose it, so their relative wealth and privilege provides them both a great deal of pleasure and a sense of dread. Dread of what? Scary black people, scary lesbian and gay people, scary poor people, scary Muslim people, scary atheist people. (Once upon a time, scary Russian people, but they're sort of our buddies now. Like the formerly scary Chinese people, who are occasionally still scary, but not when they're keeping our economy afloat.)

Nearly every presidential election in my lifetime has been won by the campaign which best allayed white people's fears, and made themselves feel good about themselves.  The most obvious example is Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America", which had a strong racist component that conveyed to white voters that the government would no longer be lenient on criminal blacks (and lazy whites - note the correlation). Bill Clinton won twice - and Hillary Clinton almost won this time - by reassuring working-class whites that the government would be on their side economically again, because as Hillary so pithily put it, white people are the "hardworking Americans".  Bush won in 2004 by promising to keep white, Christian America safe from the scary, swarthy Muslims, and told his voters they were the brave, freedom-loving ones. And so on.

One of the persistent sources of unease among whites is, ironically, the feeling that America is not making much progress in the area of race relations. (Just typing "race relations" evokes the politics of decades long gone by, which is sort of the point.) They want to maintain their relative social and economic dominance, but they want to feel good about themselves while doing it.

Feeling good about themselves is what Obama offers white voters. And they don't have to do much to get that feeling - all they have to do is support him.  The number one applause line in Obama's speeches is not about the war, not about the economy, not about a new kind of politics - it's the line about how different people have come together in this movement for change. This is the heart of the "post-racial" appeal, and white voters love it. They see this campaign as a watershed moment in American history, when we reach a milestone that will take the country in a better direction, and leave the past behind. They want to be on the right side of that moment, they want to be present when it happens, they want to help make it happen. All they have to do to claim that they helped is to put a bumper sticker on the car, pull the right lever in November, maybe hit a contribution link online for a few bucks. No legislation, no social spending, no policies or programs, none of the expensive, complicated and contentious stuff they only fitfully and rarely get behind. Just one guy, and poof! Progress, as it says on the poster.

Not only does the Obama campaign capture the energy of this pent-up demand for white self-regard, it also casts the opposition as being the champion of old-style racial division. Who is against progress in race relations? The images that come to mind are of George Wallace, Alabama state troopers, Bull Connor, fire hoses and police dogs. Many white voters lived through that era, were ambivalent about the events then even if they can't remember being so now, and are consequently very interested in looking for something that symbolically defeats the forces of evil. This places the McCain campaign and Republicans generally in the role of the forces of evil, which is exactly where the Obama campaign wants them.

Brilliant.

I may sound cynical or critical in this post, but I don't think I am being either. I want to win this election, and although I wouldn't say I would be happy to win whatever it takes, I think this sort of inclusive, progressive propaganda is well within the bounds of acceptable behavior. It may even have substance, perhaps a lot of substance, behind it. But even if it is almost all smoke, it's still better than promoting division and hatred. And having a Democrat in the White House at a time when we're bogged down in a foreign policy disaster and when a couple of Supreme Court vacancies are coming soon is worth blowing a little smoke.

Comments

[calling all toasters]

I think this is right on. The one thing Obama has done perfectly in this campaign has been to never lash out, to never let them see him get angry. He is playing it like Jackie Robinson or MLK did, and it is working. In this way, being a black man gives him some leverage: everyone gets that he's had to take a lot of crap in his life and he still keeps tight control over himself. The way he has run his campaign is a rebuke to racism that no racist has figured out how to beat.

[Basilisc]

Well said. Obama can win by being the Cosby candidate - a black man that white Americans not only like, but like themselves for liking. Gets rid of that uncomfortable feeling that we might really be bigots just below the surface.

[Jamelle]

I'm not sure if the trackback worked, so if you're interested, I commented on this post here.

[Mithras]

Jamelle-
Nope, it didn't work. Also, for future reference, trackbacks are moderated, and it takes me a while to get them out of the queue.

[Jamelle]

Ah, okay. Well, thanks for the comment over at my blog.