ON OBAMA THE SOJOURNER

VIVE LE DIFFERENCE

One often finds that the road to an answer to a question is more interesting than the question itself.  That's how I felt reading this op-ed by David Brooks of the New York Times, who asks the question "Where's the Landslide" for Obama vs. McCain.  Specifically, he asks:

"Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that has happened, does he have only a slim two- or three-point lead over John McCain, according to an average of the recent polls? Why is he basically tied with his opponent when his party is so far ahead?"

He then goes through a list of possible answers:

"His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they’re wary and uncertain."

And focuses on what he thinks is the key explanation:

"And the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner. He opened his book “Dreams From My Father” with a quotation from Chronicles: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.”

There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded."

David goes on to give a lot of examples of this "sojourner" phenomena from Obama's varied background, where this observation may apply.  The whole piece is worth reading just for that.

But whether or not it's the right answer, I think David's hit on a key point on what makes Obama tick, and why he has widespread appeal not just politically, but as a person:

"This ability to stand apart accounts for his fantastic powers of observation, and his skills as a writer and thinker. It means that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in Obama’s eyes. But it does make him hard to place.

When we’re judging candidates (or friends), we don’t just judge the individuals but the milieus that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest. Andrew Jackson was a backwoodsman. John Kennedy had his clan. Ronald Reagan was forever associated with the small-town virtues of Dixon and Jimmy Carter with Plains."

One could make similar grounding arguments for Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, both life-time creatures of the political process in which they thrived.

But Obama is different on this one measure from all of them.

The risk we take on voting for him is that the difference is a good thing.  But that may be the very thing that makes all the difference to being a successful President in these uniquely difficult times.