I'm not betting against him. You know why? He's not afraid. And by jettisoning fear as the lodestar of liberalism, he is doing us all a favor, right and left.
I grew up afraid of a lot of things, politically. I was afraid of multinational corporations, the military-industrial complex, Ronald Reagan's bizarre (to me) confrontational attitude towards the Soviet Union. Lots of things freaked me out.
The one group of people that I was not afraid of, as a liberal, were fundamentalist Christians. I was not afraid of them for a very simple reason: my paternal grandparents were fundamentalists, particularly my grandmother. They fit the cliche perfectly: middle class Americans who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, sent their kids off to college, and were living comfortably into old age. But they also fit the negative sides of the cliche. Their perspectives on civil rights and feminism, not to mention sexual orientatin, were on the wrong side of enlightened.
But the fact that I disagreed with them on just about everything politically didn't stop them from loving me or me from loving them. They were good people. When my grandfather made some unfortunate remark, I tried to remember that he was born in 1905, which was only 40 years after the end of the Civil War.
So I was not afraid of my grandparents, and therefore I wasn't afraid of fundamentalist Christians. And I wasn't all that afraid of capitalists, because my Dad is a stockbroker, and I started reading the Wall Street Journal when I bought my first stock (Eastern Airlines), at 9. And I went out in the world, met lots of people who disagreed with me on politics but who were friendly otherwise. And I had a job at an investment bank that was one of the best experiences of my life, because they paid me well, respected me, and I got along with everybody really well.
And one thing I realized along the way is that fear can be addictive. It's a weird thing to consider. But fear and anger, in politics, are sometimes different manifestations of the same concern. And anger is like cocaine: it makes you paranoid and its addictive. Being angry at a political opponent can give you license to pass judgment on them, which makes you feel powerful. Which makes it an antidote to fear. But the anger sometimes has its origins in that fear. Demagogues implicitly understand this.
I slowly let go of my fear and anger. I haven't completely let go of them, and I doubt I ever will. But I hope I've made progress. Listening to Barack Obama and working on his campaign have helped.
But even before I became involved in this campaign, I made a decision that I was not going to be afraid of my political opponents. My standard is this: as long as someone doesn't have a gun to my head, I'm not afraid of them. It undoubtedly helps that I'm a white American male. But I've also realized that I'm responsible for my own fate, and that Republicans and conservatives do not have control over my life. Neither do Islamic terrorists. I might die in a terrorist attack. But I might also get hit by a truck. And the chances of that happening are actually much worse than getting killed by a terrorist. I take my chances walking out the door in the morning. But that's a condition of living.
And I am not afraid of what my political opponents can do to my country, or my state, or my city, because my city, my state, and especially my country are very resilient. We will recover and repair whatever damage has been inflicted. Of this I have faith.
Which finally brings me to Barack Obama and his impact on politics. Expanding on Sullivan's points that Obama is good for all of us, I think what Obama is doing is breaking the addiction to fear and anger, at least for some people. There will always be people who are motivated by fear and anger. But for a long time, we haven't had anyone on the left or in the Democrat party who simply was not afraid of Republicans or conservatives, and took that message to all of the American people. Obama is not afraid of Republicans because he is willing to listen to them, and he is willing to agree with them when he thinks that is appropriate. And that defuses a lot of tension, which diminshes their need to be angry, which ends up cooling things down for all concerned. We've all had this experience in our personal lives: an argument blows up, people overreact, which precipitates other overreactions, etc., but then eventually, hopefully, most of the time, things cool down. The anger dissipates.
But to get to that point requires an initial degree of trust. If that trust is broken, sometimes it's impossible to reach the point where things can cool down. Obama understands that Americans want to be able to trust each other. He also understands how hard it is to do that. He also understands how important it is. And how important it is to break the addiction to fear and anger.
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