Music reveals some of the problems with Obama

This following observation about Obama, which takes as its starting point the increasing number of youth oriented videos lauding him, is correct. It’s made more interesting by the fact that it comes from a Clinton campaigner, Simon Woods, with the irony being that he doesn’t recognize that it’s the liberal equation of politics with salvation that created the conditions in which Obama could be viewed as a political Messiah:

The Obama campaign uses a religious calling as its central rhetorical trope: “I’m asking you to believe,” reads the banner across the top of barackobama.com. His appeal to voters is an archetype of religious conversion: instead of being asked for support, Americans are exhorted to “join the movement”.

In Georgia, he directly equated his supporters with God’s people: “God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city… and when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.”

Later in the speech, he asked the congregation to “walk with me, march with me… and if enough of our voices join together, we can bring those walls tumbling down.”

Ironically, the Obama campaign has taken the logic of the religious and republican right – “You’re either with us or against us” – and come up with its Democratic alter ego.

Obama has created the impression that Clinton supporters, like the Pharisees in the temple, are obstacles to change: “I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change. They know it in their gut… But they’re afraid. They’ve been taught to be cynical.”

It’s not an argument for better government; it’s an exhortation to see the light. It’s not a plan for the Presidency, but a leap of faith.

This idea came to a head in Obama’s Super Tuesday speech, with those much talked about phrases: “We are the change that we seek… We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” This is the language that the second Will.I.Am song has taken on. This marked a new level of discourse, and journalists wrote warily about its “messianic” feel.

The article’s author makes a second, equally interesting point which is that the Obama campaign is a throwback to the 60s, in that the message is the both medium and the end:

But I think that misses the point. The real problem with this is not the cod-religious congratulation of being the chosen ones, but a quieter, more insidious message: that the campaign itself is the change he talks about.

In this way, the Obama campaign is styling itself as a sign of change, rather than an argument for it. As he said in South Carolina: “We are showing America what change looks like.” In that linguistic and conceptual manoeuvre, the goal of accomplishing the specific changes Americans urgently need – in health care, the economy, education – is relegated to the background. You’re not so hungry for reform when you’ve already feasted at the table of self-congratulation.

With this kind of intelligence and insight, I confidently assume that, in the near future, Woods will make a political shift and join the ranks of the neocons.