Obama Slays Faulty Thinking, Frank Rich Points it Out

Having already spent considerable time debating with one of my friends that half the reasoning used by Hillary Clinton to argue her case against Obama was utter nonsense, the results of this election provided me with a moment of satisfaction.  After all, I was not even the Obama person. She was. I was happily hoping someone like Huckabee could peel away from the pack and assert himself with a combination of new face, conservative values, and distinct ideas. But no, it didn't work like that and McCain--the name best known--stumbled to the front of the pack.  I was inclined to get behind him under the assumption he would be his own man and put forward some ideas that differed enough from standard Republican group think.

Meanwhile Hillary and Obama battled on, with Hillary rotating through themes trying to maintain traction with voters. Apparently Hillary hit upon the right theme to attract women, and my friend, part of Hillary's target demographic, latched onto the idea that somehow Obama was not in fact deserving enough, female enough, experienced enough, or particularly white enough to reach necessary voters.  Counting Hillary's stints as wife to the former president Bill as experience in office, Obama faded in her eyes.  Or as she said once, "There is just something about him. He seems arrogant."  I took this as interesting, since, if anything, Obama's seeming arrogance can only be matched or surpassed by Hillary's demonstrated arrogance and supreme confidence.  Indeed it was her arrogance that led her to assume she had the primaries locked up back in December of 2007.  That arrogance forced her to constantly re-theme her efforts, rolling through issues of class and race before settling on sex as the primary tool to beat Obama over the head with.

Once Obama succeeded in his win (and leaving many pro-Hillary supporters carping from the sidelines), McCain latched onto Hillary's efforts with abandon. He decided to raise Hillary from the dead and resurrect her message in the form of Palin.  Of course Palin was no Hillary, so it was akin to substituting soy for chocolate in the cake mix. But still it was his attempt to reconstruct what he thought he was seeing. And what he saw was Hillary appealing to issues of race and gender to make an argument against the black, male candidate. McCain assumed that Palin could continue the task, while scooping up the women's vote in the process.

Frank Rich has a much needed piece in the N.Y. Times today pointing out the degree to which assumptions being made by those in power (politicians and the media) were quite simply wrong.  Some of us who knew this, and had to listen through friends saying, "Well I just can't put my finger on why I don't like him" when his positions were principled in the same direction as Hillary's, were quite vexed. Raised eyebrows and all.  If you can make an argument that not voting for a black person because he cannot win the white vote is not a racist argument (against the black candidate, against white voters), then one is doing miraculous cognitive things in the head with a level of unprecedented compartmentalization.

Rich lays it out:

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.
So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

(N.Y.Times)

Now I actually think McCain took things in a more cynical direction than Bush ever did, and believe Bush thought he was acting on principle on most occassions. I do not extend such benevolence to McCain, who so clearly deviated from his previous self that it was a shock.  Nor is it wise to assume that every Republican, or every conservative is somehow acting out of cynicism or evil intent, and Rich seems to imply that as a trend.

If anything this election has lifted us out of the cookie cutter thought patterns that allowed us to assume that people could not put race behind them when it mattered most.