One Thing About This Political Moment ...for me [UPDATED AGAIN]

. . . only talked about in passing, is that it is a chance (how often do you get one?) to complete the broken arc, psychologically and politically, of the Kennedy dynasty (with Martin Luther King stirred in).  Someone referred to Obama as "the black Kennedy," and that's apt.  Nobody knew how the Kennedy administrations -- Jack's truncated one, Bobby's aborted, never-to-be one -- would finally have played out in the real world, and both the realistic hopes and unrealistic fantasies that were flash-frozen by their assassinations have haunted and possessed the blue half of this country ever since.  It has been a sickness, and one that the Obama administration -- both in how it fulfills and how it dis-illusions -- will finally heal. 

UPDATE:  Maybe this should be a strictly personal post rather than a general one.  I have this very strange sensation that some part of me that has been curled up in a coma, or in deep freeze, for exactly 40 years of suspended animation, is stirring. 

It's a strange feeling because I thought it was dead and buried for good, succeeded by a permanent cynicism (which is not going away, just being weirdly jostled from within -- like being pregnant with a parasitic twin) and resignation.  And that thing that is waking up is very embryonic and undeveloped -- I was 22 when it went into a coma!  How to integrate it I have no idea -- like a coma patient it needs rehabilitation and reeducation.

I was an emotionally retarded 17-year-old college freshman when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Bobby Kennedy's campaign was my first adult political commitment, and it was not an entirely starry-eyed one.  I was working in the publishing industry and was surrounded by people who were for Eugene McCarthy.  It was clear to me at the time that McCarthy was what we would now call an "elitist" -- an academic intellectual, provincially patrician.  Bobby Kennedy was a tough little gutter politician who'd had his heart broken.  His melding of idealism, pragmatism, and ruthlessness, and his ability to appeal to working-class white people as well as minorities and students, seemed essential to me.  No Democrat has been able to do that since, none.  Until now.

I'm not going to respond by reverting to the person I was at 22 -- I couldn't if I wanted to, and I don't want to.  I have no idea how it's going to go.  It depends on whether events and actions as they play out preponderantly reinforce cynicism or this other thing -- I hesitate to call it "hope" because that word has become partisan code.  No, right now I'm just really freaked out. 

UPDATE II:  Apropos, commenter Chip Ahoy at Althouse wrote:

[Smithsonian] ran an article in relation to the John Kennedy assassination anniversary. Readers were asked where they were when the event occurred. That series of letters then ran for several pages. All the remarks were about how glorious the age of Camelot was, how idealistic, youthful, energetic, positive, and optimistic everyone was. How amazing incredibly beautiful the time was. [Almost e]very single one glowed with praise and rued a lost past. [...]

It occurred to me though, reading through all those responses, those writers, were recalling an idealized, sanitized youthful optimism -- their own youths. Their optimism was entirely of their own making and had little to do with facts on the ground. As is their present pessimism.

And now, I'm seeing that phenomenon occurring again right before my eyes. I'm going to enjoy this. As an observer. But this will not affect my own naturally occurring cheerful optimism nor my own self-indulgent satanic pessimism. I'm just going to watch my wonderful country, the less wonderful world, willfully create their own optimism. Myth making. That's what is happening. Observe a new myth. This is how it's created. Begin by overlooking faults, dismissing them, excusing them. Next exaggerate any gain, whatever actual good there is, suddenly is really REALLY, REALLY everlastingly good. Yay! Dance! Glee! Canonize! Deify. Mythologize. Expect comparisons to Camelot, and know then you're in the arena of myth. But know also, this is all occurring within the minds of the mythologists.

But know also, optimism is very real. Just as real an uplifter as pessimism interprets into very real and actual drag. Therefore, I choose to enjoy the optimism in my fellow Americans, no matter how ridiculous it is. I could go for another Camelot myself, even though I know it's all occurring entirely within the minds of all you silly dumkopfs, present company excepted, of course. I vastly prefer my fellow citizens as silly little shits, than as obnoxious unbearable cnuts.  <--- See what I did there? Letter transposition. Disguises a word unacceptable in polite mixed company, one worse even than the s word before it. This completes my remarks about ridiculously delusional self-constructed optimistic mythos.

Begin by overlooking faults, dismissing them, excusing them.  . . .  That was what I wasn't willing . . . or maybe better put, wasn't able to do for the sake of resurrecting an emotion appropriate to a 22-year-old.  Maybe what I'm getting at is that much of my generation is in a state of arrested development. 

Or maybe it's just me.

Comments

[Ron]

That's interesting, but far,far from being assured. Assuming nothing as bad as what happened to the Kennedys happens, (and if it does?...does it just deepen the wound? Or worse, mutate it into some kind of pathology?) what if Obama commits some kind of apostasy? Kennedy's public wasn't aware of the movie star possible affairs; today we would know in a heartbeat! What if he becomes some kind of "race betrayer"?

They want Mallory; they may get Voltaire, or better still, Rabelais.

[RW Rogers]

Nobody knew how the Kennedy administrations -- Jack's truncated one, Bobby's aborted, never-to-be one -- would finally have played out in the real world

I wholeheartedly disagree, with the possible exception of agreeing that the second was "never-to-be" in the real world. But I doubt that is what you meant.

[amba]

Assuming nothing as bad as what happened to the Kennedys happens, (and if it does?

It would be ruinous.

What self-appointed vigilante "heroes" don't get (and don't care about) is that reality is the best medicine. Marriage is the cure for infatuation. And we are great to the extent that we are a country of laws, and can fight to the political death for our beliefs and change the guard without violence.

[amba]

I wholeheartedly disagree You mean you disagree that nobody knew?

[Ron]

Marriage is the cure for infatuation.

This reminds me of Napoleon's "No man is a hero to his valet."

Ah, but heroism and infatuation get the juices flowing more mere practicality...

[RW Rogers]

No, I find the idea that the trajectory of the Kennedy Administration was not already established implausible.

[amba]

Say more about the trajectory of the Kennedy administration. You may well be right about Jack, and it may be more Bobby I'm talking about -- Bobby who still seemed able to bridge a much more radicalized and divided country, and who seemed to have been humanized by his brother's death. The working-class "Reagan Democrats" had been RFK Democrats.

[amba]

Ah, but heroism and infatuation get the juices flowing more [than] mere practicality

Yeah, true. The action-movie theory of history. With no hypothalamus your heart stops beating, but with all hypothalamus life is nasty, brutish and short.

[amba]

They want Mallory; they may get Voltaire, or better still, Rabelais. You'll have to explain that one to me . . . it's above my pay grade! (I know, it deflates all the wit out of it to explain it . . . )

[RW Rogers]

As for the trajectory, these entries about the New Frontier and the Great Society flesh that out, I think. Almost all of Kennedy's major advisers continued to serve long after LBJ took office. Fantasists, having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, like to believe JFK would or would not have done this or that differently but I see no reason to believe them.

As for RFK, I don't know about that but I do know that primaries were far less important then than they are now and that, while RFK and McCarthy were slugging it out, HHH was busy accumulating an overwhelming number of delegates everywhere else. The levers of power were controlled by Johnson and there was no way he was going to let Robert F. Kennedy get the nomination. The McGovern reforms were in direct response.

[Ron]

They want Mallory; they may get Voltaire, or better still, Rabelais. You'll have to explain that one to me . . . it's above my pay grade! (I know, it deflates all the wit out of it to explain it . . . )

Bereft of funds, everything is above my pay grade, Amba!

They may want the Big Romantic Story, a la, Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, they'll probably get the surrealistic comedy of Candide from Voltaire, but with any luck, we'd get the Clintonian, sexual, wacky black humor of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Yeah, you're right, it took the hooha out of it!

[Ron]

hmmm...missed sealing off the italics tag somewhere! [It was after Morte d'Arthur . . . got it.]

[amba]

THanks. Sorry. I bet on Voltaire.

[Meade]

"Marriage is the cure for infatuation."

Man oh man... talk about the cure being worse than the disease!

[Donna B.]

Marriage is a cure for one infatuation, not necessarily an immunization against another one.

That fits politically too - I think as a nation we are mostly incurably optimistic. At least I hope we are.

[Ron]

Go back 40 years? No, Amba, no! No psychedelic clothing! No peace medallion! Eeek!

Watch MadMen to be cured of '60s nostalgia!

[amba]

God forbid, Ron. Fortunately not what I said.

[amba]

I'm not nostalgic for the '60s. I wouldn't even want to be in my 20s again. I'd want to be in my 40s again.

[Meade]

Does it have something to do with youthful optimism and love of country - it's promises and possibilities of becoming a more united people in pursuit of the founders' ideals?

[amba]

That sounds about right, Meade.

It's hard for me to put words to it, because it is so unfamiliar after all these years of adaptation. (And don't get me wrong -- I value the adaptation.)

[Meade]

"No, right now I'm just really freaked out. "

Me, I was too young to freak out in 1968 - my parents wouldn't give me permission for one thing, and, well, I was still working on a number of merit badges hoping to become an Eagle Scout.

But I sure remember my older siblings and siblings of my friends freaking out. Freaking out was a good thing back then - it had something to do with freedom. And rock n roll. And acid.

[Meade]

Oh, and energy. There was an unbelievable energy.

[Tom Strong]

No, right now I'm just really freaked out.

Perhaps this can be Obama's next campaign song.

[amba]

I never took acid, but it is flashbacky.

[Gran]

Hope, like love, is something that you should try to cultivate -- Knowing full well that you will be dispointed often. But not to try leads to giving up

I know that "hope" has taken on political meanings but in this context I use orginal meanings

[Meade]

I enjoyed that comment by Chip Ahoy. It will be interesting to watch. This digital always-connected new medium is double-edged and sharp.

How about enthusiasm? Could that be what is uncurling and wakening from coma -- an enthusiasm for democratic political process to solve the problem of government being the problem and not the solution? Now that the campaign is over, does "we are the ones we have been waiting for" mean we've been waiting for ourselves to wake to discover the job is our own and not the government's?

RFK's older brother was a tax cutter who challenged Americans to ask themselves what they could do for their country. He also delivered to us the harsh sobering (especially from a liberal) message that life is not fair so roll up your sleeves and get to work. When campaigning in West Virginia, people asked Bobby what could be done for them and he told them they could begin by cleaning up the trash in their own backyards.

Now that he is in office and the federal treasury cupboard is bare, will Obama be able to pivot from his Male Oprah persona and deliver the cruel Dr. Phil-like message: Their is no money for national health care right now. Do something for yourselves -- cut calories, get more exercise, and clean up the trash in your own backyards.

[amba]

It's when he makes noises like that that I like him. For instance, he could, as a combination of role model and bully pulpit, have a galvanizing effect on the African American community. If the ideal was working hard in school and having ambitions and being a loyally married father? Wow. Come to think of it, that might be a good idea well beyond the African American community.

[Callimachus]

There's an awful, unspoken assumption in your post. That it will have the chance to turn out. It's terrible right now to even allow that it could be otherwise, even in the most detatched, rational analysis.

In a way, the Kennedy analogy is exactly right -- for those of us who held back from the Obama enthusiasm. There's a passage from the history of modern America written by Paul Johnson (a favorite writer of reader_iam and myself) that keeps running through my head this week:

"The man who got it right at the time was the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He grasped the important point that electing a Kennedy was not so much giving office to an individual as handing over power to a family business, a clan, almost a milieu, with a set of attitudes about how office was to be acquired and used which at no point coincided with the American ethic. Having paid his first visit after Kennedy's election as President, Macmillan was asked on his return what it was like in Kennedy's Washington. 'Oh,' said he, 'it's rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable North Italian city.' "

That's the fear this time, too. Like you, I am eager to be wrong about that guess. But it was a fair guess to make, and some of us made it.

And still, like you, I feel this is a wonderful moment in American history. That we have to remind ourselves how breathtaking it is, by going back to photographs of the civil rights movement and saying, "That was not so long ago," is a testimony to the fact that Obama is not the messiah who brought change to our hearts, but the proof that our hearts changed, and WE did it, ourselves.

Having voted for McCain doesn't disqualify you or me from enjoying the moment. In a way, we played our part in it, by putting up a fair and reasonable opposition, by making this a real election, not an affirmative action pass into the White House.

Of course, a great many people will dismiss us as mere racists, or bitter Pennsylvanians, or, a la Reynolds, fools. Personally, I'm glad I voted for McCain, and not at all displeased that he fought hard and didn't win.

[amba]

Obama is not the messiah who brought change to our hearts, but the proof that our hearts changed, and WE did it, ourselves. Obama is the opportunist whose ambition and ambiguity gave us the opportunity to demonstrate that we had arrived there.

[amba]

making this a real election, not an affirmative action pass into the White House.

I resonate with all of that, Cal. I feel good about my vote, too.

[Meade]

I do too, and would revise only Cal's last sentence to read: "Personally, I'm glad I voted for McCain, and not all that displeased that he fought hard and didn't win. "

[PatHMV]

Cal... Unlike the Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes, there are, at this point, no other Obamas with any political future or ambitions on the horizon. Michelle, while a professional in her own right, shows no signs of intending to be a "co-president," a "2 for the price of 1" deal. Obama's relatives are mostly poor relations living off alone either here in the U.S. or abroad.

While the relatives abroad will likely either use their connection to the President-elect for their own gain, or will themselves be used by others, there's nobody else from the family likely to inherit any political mantle from the man.

Heck, the more I think about that simple fact, the more inclined I am to think favorably about his presidency. There was a Bush or a Clinton on every national ballot from 1980 through 2004.

At any rate, I'm tired of political dynasties of all stripes. Unless the kids turn unusually precocious, their will be no heir-apparent in President Obama's family. The cult of personality will end with him (this time around).