Obama's Last Hundred Days

It's always the same with our culture. Some fad or person or cultural artifact becomes disgustingly popular way too fast. He or she or it is on everyone's tongues, their name is repeated relentlessly on television until it's drilled in to our heads. Inevitably, this mass popularity translates into profit and consumerism, either by way of a tell-all book, a made-for-TV movie or of course, the T-shirt.

Just as inevitably as the snowballing rise of popularity of these fads, there comes the backlash. One moment, The Matrix is the biggest, coolest, most must-see movie ever. The next, you have eight year-olds scoring points with their friends by doing Neo or Agent Smith impressions. "What good is a...phone call if you are .... unable ... to speak?" For the media, as well as for our own sick voyeuristic pleasures, nothing's better than the rise of something new than that new thing's tragic fall. See Britney Spears.

In any case, to get to the forever delayed subject of this article, I turn to the number one celebrity in the world, the all-but-crowned Democratic Presidential candidate and junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Mr. Obama has, through his natural charms, his team of brilliant strategists and his sheer political wits, delayed a backlash against his volcanic rise to international prominence.

A mere seven months prior, Mr. Obama was a long shot for the Iowa primaries. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York (remember her?) had been pencilled in by the elites and the experts as the front-runner for President for years. He was a nobody, a guy who had made one good speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston amd who had been on Oprah a few times touting his books and who was sort of liked by the few political observers who knew of him.

Jump ahead to last week where this very American politician managed to attract a throng of 200,000 people to a speech...in Germany. Mr. Obama's tour of Europe and the Middle East involved one-on-one meetings with the most powerful men and one woman (Ms. Merkel) in the world. These supposed world leaders, from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Jordanian Monarch King Abdullah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, amongst others, all seemed to jump at the chance to shake the hands of 'the One,' as Mr. Obama's opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, privately refers to him.

The world tour was the peak of fame for a man who would save America and restore it to its rightful place as former President Reagan's proverbial 'shining city on a hill.' And so, as with all things from Icarus to a frisbee flung by a child, what goes up, must come down.

Over the next three months, Mr. Obama faces his toughest challenge on the path to succeeding George W. Bush. How can he translate his vast media presence and his fevered grip on the imaginations of millions into political victory? It's one thing for doe-eyed reporters and twenty-something college students to love the man and wear t-shirts of his face. It's entirely another to score a victory on Election Day, November 4, 2008.

Chief amongst Mr. Obama's obstacles is to maintain his aura as Great American Hero and delay the backlash against his persona. Already, there has begun a steady patter of arrows being launched towards his direction. Accusations of elitism, of being a weak-kneed Liberal are being spoken by Obama's natural opponents, the Republican Party.

However, we're still in the stage where a lot of the accusations are still far-fetched, or just flat-out wrong. Die-hard Hillary supporters fault him for being a man. Daily followers of he news cycles have begun tagging him with the dreaded 'flip-flopper' pejorative, a term which eventually helped to do in Mr. Obama's predecessor, the Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry. Cynics chastise him for being too 'perfect', too clean-cut and popular for his own good. Religious fundamentalists think he's really a Muslim (God forbid) in disguise. Closet racists of course, we know why they're not going to cast their ballot for him.

The question becomes, how to dispel all these potential threats when Mr. Obama has less than a hundred days left until the big day?

The answer is multi-faceted. Mr. Obama must, above all else, ensure his priority over the coming weeks is to assure the American housewife. This statement is yes, a little simplistic, but what I mean is that the vast centre of the American political spectrum is comprised of working-class Americans. It is these Americans who spend their time taking care of their families, their savings accounts, paying their bills and working endlessly who always have the last say in Presidental elections. Modern day observers like to ponder how an incompetent dreg like W won two elections for himself and secured the Presidency for eight years, but the answer is really as simple as W managed to appeal to the average American. He made the housewife feel secure. Setting aside his differences with the current Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama ought to take some lessons from W and learn how to appear as just a regular guy and not as he still portrayed; an exotic usurper with mysterious intentions and a sometimes off-putting personality cult.

If anything, Americans are not as dumb as we like to make them out to be. Furthermore, they are generally suspicious of anyone who can summon the kinds of hyperbolic praise that Mr. Obama has done. He knows he has the young left, the Democrats and the true believers in his pocket. The real trick for the Senator is going to be how to destroy his 'messianic' media image while still calling upon the very talent and charisma that built this image to attract regular voters.

Can a Harvard-educated Constitutional Law professor come off as a barbeque-eating, beer-drinking average Joe? No. He doesn't have to. What he does have to do is to convince those who do subscribe to this stereotype that he is going to to be President just as much for them than for the marijuana-smoking liberal arts college student.

Secondly, Mr. Obama has to make a mistake. Something as simple as making a public error, and then recovering from it, would go a long way towards convincing people that the man is human. His previous problems with Reverend Wright, Hillary Clinton and Tony Rezko all involved the mistakes of others. Now he himself must learn the brittle art of fucking up on a national scale and then apologizing for it. Nothing reinforces a relationship like a little bit of make-up sex, if I may make use of such a crude metaphor.

Finally, Mr. Obama has to make the case that his opponent is not a feeble, out-of-touch old man with nary a chance of winning. Americans love underdogs and so does the press. If Mr. Obama continues to come across as the Heir Apparent before a single ballot has been cast, Americans will have yet another reason to resent him as being haughty, arrogant and presumptuous. Again, it's a tricky balance of making Mr. McCain (who doesn't have a shot in hell to win by the way) appear as if he could win and that such a possibility would spell disaster for the already beleaguered union, all the while continuing to promote his own strengths.

This election cannot remain simply a question of whether Mr. Obama is worthy of the Oval Office or not. It's got to become what elections were originally supposed to be - a contest between two individuals to decide who will be the better person for the job. If Mr. Obama and his skilled team of strategists can refocus the fickle media's attention on making a comparison between the two men rather than just on him, then there will be no contest.

A hundred days is a long time to predict a final outcome. Anything can happen in that time. On November 4th, we'll know what the next four years for the American people, and by extension, the world, will hold. Until then, go play GTA4.

=//Turnquest