A Response to Tom Hayden's 'Appeal to Barack Obama'

A Response to Tom Hayden’s Appeal

Tom Hayden recently posted “An Appeal to Barack Obama,” wherein he criticized Barack’s statements in a New York Times Magazine interview rejecting the Vietnam-era framework of Scoop Jackson Democrats vs. Tom Hayden Democrats. Hayden accuses Obama of Clintonian triangulation and centrism in general and in particular with respect to the War in Iraq and the issue of race. He argues that Obama would be better served politically by appealing to the antiwar “Tom Hayden Democrats” who will predominate in the Democratic primaries and intellectually by engaging in “substantive thinking” instead of just looking for a point exactly equidistant from each extreme. He also believes that Obama is consciously downplaying to his detriment “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy -- his race.

In my opinion, for Hayden, Clinton and others of the Sixties generation, the urgency to end the ideological battles that have stymied political progress in America is just not the same as it for younger people. After thirty years of ideological warfare in Washington and elsewhere, the Baby Boom generation will be the first in American history to bequeath to its children a worse quality of life than they themselves enjoyed. On issue after issue, we have seen the failure of our governmental institutions to make even the most basic progress on the fundamental issues facing our nation.

As the lives of the rich and poor diverge ever more widely from each other, our very status as a First World nation seems in question. Even as the affluent few enjoy unprecedented wealth and luxury, far more of us are sinking deeper and deeper into a quasi-Third World kind of existence where the basic necessities of housing, education, health care and a clean environment are increasingly out of reach. Meanwhile, our foreign policy spreads hatred and violence around the world, creating new enemies for American by the millions.

I, for one, am willing to trade a little bit of ideological purity in favor of a President who will roll up his or her sleeves, bring people together from across the political spectrum and produce some tangible progressive change in the status quo. Yes, the war in Iraq was a huge and immoral crime against humanity and Barack is the only major presidential candidate who spoke out against it when it wasn’t popular to do so. Iraq, however, is not Vietnam. We all want to end the war, but you don’t have to be a Scoop Jackson Democrat in order to be in favor of pulling our troops out in such as way as to avoid creating a humanitarian disaster and/or breeding ground for anti-American hatred and terrorism in our wake.

Hayden also seems to think that Obama’s alleged centrism is somehow connected to a desire to deemphasize his race – supposedly the “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy. Again, Hayden portrays his inability to lift his consciousness out of the false dichotomies of the Sixties generation – this time in the realm of identity politics. Obama transcends the old dichotomy of black militant/Uncle Tom Negro in the same way that he transcends the antiwar/hawk paradigm. He hasn’t built his popularity amongst whites by opposing affirmative action, like a Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas. But at the same time, he’s not an Al Sharpton either, running from one racial flashpoint to the next in order to express his “outrage” at the latest example of white racism. Although he has an excellent record of achievement on black causes such as racial profiling and death penalty reform, he doesn’t analyze every issue facing our nation through the prism of race. Most of all, he provides inspired and effective leadership to our nation that is informed but not proscribed by his experiences as a black man in America. That, for me, is the “deepest rationale” for Obama’s candidacy.

Obama’s blackness is, by itself, no rationale at all for his becoming President. This is not to say that race has nothing to do with it. I’m sure that Obama’s racial consciousness probably contributed to his decision to forsake a cushy life on Wall Street in order to become a community organizer on the Southside of Chicago and, later, a civil rights lawyer. The fact that he successfully represented the Southside for two terms in the Illinois State Legislature indicates to me that he understands and can be an effective advocate for the needs and concerns of black constituents. I believe I can honestly state, however, that if a white, Asian or Latino candidate emerged with the exact same record, platform and abilities as Obama, I would be equally excited about his or her campaign.

I would invite Mr. Hayden and others of the Sixties generation to try to put aside the old litmus tests and take a good look at what Obama has stood and fought for throughout his career. His platform and record with respect to every progressive cause is there for all to see. Yes, he has the ability to reach across the aisle, but it’s because he triangulates himself to the center; it’s because he listens and finds common ground in order to move forward a progressive agenda. His campaign eschews money from federal lobbyists and has directed considerable resources into grassroots political organizing in disenfranchised communities.

It is only through some magical combination of luck, charisma and timing that someone like Barack even has a remote chance at winning – a set of circumstances that I don’t expect to see again in my lifetime. Progressives would be making huge mistake, in my opinion, to ignore the Obama campaign because he’s not perfectly ideologically aligned with them on every single issue and does not want to replay the battles of past decades. This is the best chance we’ve had in a generation to bring about real progressive change at the federal level in America. Let’s take advantage of it!