My political schizophrenia

A battle is raging in me as the inauguration day approaches. In the short term, I know which side will win as the excitement and pageantry begins, but in the long term it’s a real bind...

Alex 1 says that this is the dawn of a new era. Let’s say that we’re far from bottoming out in this economic crisis. Let’s say also that some of these ridiculous spending plans are going to turn out to be a bad idea in the long term, even if there’s no immediately obvious alternative. Let’s also accept that Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, and who knows where else are going to continue to be intractable problems. None of these are things that one man, however articulate and judicious, can fix, anyway.

But despite all that we can be certain of something: that Obama in the White House means that Dubya’s left, that for the first time in eight years the guy driving the bus actually knows how to operate a stick shift. So as much as I, like most of us, are going to miss having someone so appallingly incompetent around every day, someone to get together and beat up on, it really is the dawning of a new day in Obamaland.

Alex 2 is nervous that Alex 1 is getting just a little too optimistic about politics. All that ‘dare to dream’ stuff is just marketing, remember? The best thing about it is that a team that’s great at organizing a campaign may well be great at organizing other things, too. The big man is still a politician in the end, and that means compromising with the powers that be, especially in congress and the party system. Don’t buy into this idea that a new face topping an old system will somehow stop the United States government from pursuing its crazy war on drugs in Colombia, for instance. Power is inescapable and eternal, and justice is subject to it.

As a Brit, it’s hard not to be tempered by the experience of Tony Blair – a charismatic, disciplined and talented individual who was able to pull together the fractious elements of the Labour party through a determination to win, pull them towards the centre of politics, and win a record number of elections for them by inspiring people to have faith in his political project. I remember the day after the Labour party landslide in May 1997, the sun was shining just a little bit brighter. And then I remember how half a decade in power was enough to give Blair such a sense of his own wisdom that he pulled Britain into a conflict that the majority of the public opposed, in a manner – through spin and deception – that, irrespective of the justice of the invasion – has tarnished our country irredeemably.

I was never as enthusiastic about Blair in the first place as I am about Obama. (Even if I do have some doubts about the rump of the Democratic party.) Obama has a lot more power to act than Blair did, because we’re talking about the US, not the fifty-first state. And I was mostly excited in ’97 because the Tories, who had been driving our public services into the ground for twenty years, were out, as that the Labour party was in. So Alex 1 counters that Alex 2 is being just a little bit cynical. But Alex 2 is too immersed in his thoughts to listen...

I know what Obama would say. That’s what right-wing politics is about. You run everything badly and that damages peoples’ faith in the possibility of making positive changes through government. Now’s the time for faith, to redeem the potential to act. Well, I hope you’re right, big man... but Alex 2 still has that nagging doubt lurking in the back of his half of the brain...

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