The Real Obama

Caution and canniness marked Obama from the time he became a "teacher" at the University of Chicago. Unlike the Clintons, who were shaped by the 1960s, Obama was shaped by the 1980s, the era of Greed is Good and Ronald Reagan.

He was the end result of "identity politics" going apeshit.

Obama's political views were hard to figure out even then, no doubt because he was trying to see which views would be most palatable to voters. He has manipulated his identity to whatever was most advantageous for him politically.

Obama has survived the process to this point largely because powerful forces in the country recognize that the Bush presidency has been a disaster. A different face, a different look, is needed. Bill Clinton came along to “feel” the population’s “pain” during a sharp recession and after the Reagan phenomenon had exhausted itself. The situation today is far more serious.

Bush and Cheney are identified with war, slump and wholesale criminality. Confused and searching for answers, the population is seething with anger. A mass radicalization threatens. That the relatively inexperienced, bi-racial Obama has been plucked out of the ranks and possibly given his moment in the sun is itself an indication of the depth of the crisis.

Politically, Obama is meant to forestall as long as possible the eruption of mass opposition to the existing economic and political setup. He is being marketed to the public as a caring, thoughtful black man, with hints of Lincoln in the background. He has the constructed appearance, the outer form, of opposition. But only the outer form. He’s clever and adroit. He’s not Bush.

But, minus his carefully crafted identity, he’s not terribly different.