JACK AND TEDDY.

After two years on the national stage, Obama is running for President. I can't help but feel he's right on the issues but wrong on the politics. From his speech today:

But challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions.

And that's what we have to change first.

We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.

Obama sees himself as Jack Kennedy, I think, but 2008 is not a Kennedy moment. Jack Kennedy was able to happen, in part, because we'd found a way beyond the rancor of McCarthyism. It was the beginning of a new era, and time for younger men to take charge. It was a fairy tale, really, but there it was. But right now we are anything but beyond rancor. Indeed, the "smallness of our politics" is liable to get worse over the next two years, as the Republicans bristle against their new place in the minority and over a dozen candidates seek the Presidency. When we need right now is not a Jack Kennedy, but a Mikhail Gorbachev -- someone who can lead a transition with purpose and then disappear. Obama underestimates the GOP machine, I think, probably because he never saw it firsthand in the Illinois statehouse and during his two years in Senate its been imploding. That's not going to last, and even if it did, its last throes would be violent ones. A truth and reconciliation moment is needed, but it can't happen until the old guard's defeat is total.

Still, I can't help but hope he wins. He is probably the most unlikely major candidate ever, and his victory would put some meat on the bones of "anyone can grow up to be President" for the first time in the country's history. But that's not why I'd like to see him win. If 2008 isn't his moment, he does still have one in the future, and that moment's probably never going to come. If he runs a competitive campaign (that is to say, well into the primary season at least) but doesn't win, he becomes Teddy Kennedy instead of Jack, close but not close enough and leading the liberal caucus in the Senate for decades. I can't see him getting another chance after his honeymoon is well and truly over and he's already lost once, and even if 2008 is not the time, I'd rather see an imperfect Obama moment than none at all. While Al Gore bides his time, I'm waiting for Obama to convince me.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra ::: 2007:01:16:12:07