Can an Obama Presidency Actually Succeed? (updated)

There is a refreshing minimalism to Barack Obama's run for president. For all the lofty speeches and soaring rhetoric, he brings a cool to our overheated process, one which can often be mistaken for arrogance, even aloofness. Yet it's the hallmark of his remarkably disciplined campaign: No Egos, No Drama! It is also a quality when contrasted with the audacity of a black man believing he could be the president of this United States that elicits suspicion.

My intial reaction was: "okay, who is running this scam and what's the angle? A demeanor this reserved has got to be calculated-- what is up with this brother and what's he hiding?" But then the months kept rolling on by and he and Hillary were out there battling day after day after day and it dawned on me-- the dude is an effin' freak! No one could pretend this long while getting hammered from both sides without the butter even melting in his mouth.

I started listening more carefully to his speeches, I read his books, all the time searching for that stealth war agenda or a clue that he'd been sent here from some far-out peaceful galaxy. I asked my wife who'd been impressed with him from the start,"so what's this Obama fellow's game and how he'd survive the South Side with that name?" She looked at me and shrugged-- "he wants to fix things... get us to work together for a change."
(figure your wife would say something like that)

And that was Obama's most audacious ambition of them all.
Fix this mess? I don't care that he earned his stripes as a grassroots organizer or that his mother was an anthropologist schooled in microeconomics. Any fool who thinks he's gonna grow a rose in our stagnant political cesspool is either running a con or smoking some damn good weed!

And yet-- even as the skeptics find new ways to mock him... yes even the liberal, sophisticated New Yorker snuck in a Swift low blow... the guy staggers for a second then gets right up and starts climbing back up in the polls. He's cool, he's calm, he's confident--but that's not the sum of it--he makes us believe again. Which means he's dangerous.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

It is a cliche to apply Newton's third law of motion to our social predicaments and often proves to be a tenuous proposition. But what if this hope that half the world is projecting for an Obama presidency proves hopelessly unfounded? What happens when despite his good intentions the detritus of post-industrial capitalism, the fallout from our dependency on constant growth and ever-increasing consumption proves immovable-- when after the bill comes due for Bush's reckless invasion the poor sod that gets laid off from his outsourced job can't afford the mortgage or any medical insurance? --or when for every newly-minted member of the bourgeousie in Cape Town or Ghangzhou there's been another irrevocable step towards environmental degradation? Will we get so mad that common crime grows into violent revolt?

Workers disassembling a mountain of motorcycles, which Guangzhou has banned in some areas to control pollution and crime. ( Alvin Chan/Reuters )

If not, is this what Hope and Change will look like then?

The alternative is going to sound petty and rather glum but if we're willing to consider what actually makes us happy there's a chance that Obama can modestly deliver. We who have benefited from three hundred years of western imperialism understand (whether we admit to it consciously or not) that after thirty years of Milton Friedman's neo-conservatism the readjustment is going to feel like falling off a cliff. But just as Newton proved that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, in reality, neither can wealth. Sorry, but so long as we are consuming five times our share of the earth's resources those folks in Kandahar and Sadr City aren't going to join hands and sing kumbayah. That's right, Dick, there is no free lunch. (I hope your young brown cousin understands that when he's president. All the oil in the world won't save us if the seas and rivers are polluted and our troops are left eating bullets)

But before you go off feeling hopeless think of this modest remedy I propose as the medicine you took back in college after that drawn-out binge. One real benefit an Obama presidency guarantees: we will finally be able to put a check on the rich frat-boys and their ruinous drinking.

So after these disastrous eight years what's left to fear? I imagine that with a little more hope and some stern encouragement we all just might be ready to sober up and start on that diet.