Last night I was thinking about the Obama revolution, and how it's going to work out. All societies face revolutionary fervors; and in a democratic society we deal with them the way we just did: we bring in a total outsider. It's amazing to watch.
Obama's movement was built on outsider energy. Obama was incredibly scary to the Republican Jewish Coalition, and I mocked them all campaign long, but he must have been just as scary, or almost, to Marty Peretz and Rahm Emanuel. They surely worried that he had revolutionary zeal. He's too skinny to make anyone comfortable. They feared he would chase the moneychangers from the temple, re Israel/Palestine, and they acted shrewdly. Now they're all over him.
That's how the Old Guard works. Now we'll just have to see how far the revolutionary energy goes. For instance, all the leftwing blogosphere attention to Rahm Emanuel; will it break the surface? Will the mainstream media finally address his religious zealotry? Isn't the character of a democratic revolution that Obama will triangulate Rashid Khalidi and Rahm Emanuel; isn't that his task?
Two related data points: It was a beautiful thing for me to see Bill Ayers treated with respect on Huffington Post today. This shows the revolutionary energy in the air. Ayers says the 60s generation is getting one last crack. I like that idea.
David Frum tried desperately to reposition himself in recent weeks. I blogged about this once without fully understanding the process. Huffpo mocks the fact that Bill Kristol is now kissing Obama's behind. These neocon guys have the most to lose; they are about to become total outsiders, just the way I got washed out in the tide in 1980. I stuck with my knitting; but Frum is running away from his warmongering record, and saying that Republicans have run out of ideas. Neocon Shapeshifters Cross Aisles Like Nobody's Business.
Back to the revolution conceit. What interests me, as someone with power issues– who was raised to think of myself as an outsider, who went to Harvard and did my share of groveling to influential people, who has teetered in my magazine work between adoring the elites and sniggering at them– is my own conflict of Outsider/Insider feelings writ large. Obama was surely an alienated young man at times. He had an outsider crowd in Hyde Park. He must have dug Reverend Wright. Then he went inside. A friend at the fancy party I went to last night (I told you I'm conflicted) talked of hearing Obama speak at a palace in Martha's Vineyard 2 years ago ("underwhelming"–callow).
I think Rashid Khalidi is the same way. Outside/inside. If you don't think Khalidi will reap an intellectual/political dividend for conducting himself with such grace and composure through the reputation-rape that was just attempted against him (McCain called him a neo-Nazi), just watch this space. He is sure to turn up on the Op-Ed page momentarily. (Has he already?)
Samantha Power too. Lately I twitted Power for a toothless tract in the New York Review of Books that seemed intended as a job application, but my friend James North points me to this landmark piece by Power in 2001 in The Atlantic: Bystanders to Genocide, about the Clinton Administration and the genocide in Rwanda.
"If you wanted to safeguard the possibility that you would get a job in the next Democratic administration the last thing you would do is write a thoroughly-sourced article saying that people who might have your fate in their hands had covered up genocide," North says. "The piece attacked at least 50 percent of the people who were able to give her a job. It was a courageous act, in my view."
I've always found that appealing about Power, she is both inside and outside. She had a keening outsider energy; lately a news report said she rode a Lexus at her wedding. Obama's got the same confusing vibe. Michelle, too. I don't know how the story will end, but I'm sure enjoying the transition.
Words of the prophet, 1964:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
