The Crossed Pond

I have to admit that lately, on the Democratic side, I’ve been giving Barack Obama a long, hard look, and that so far, I really like what I see. Whether it would be enough to get me to vote for him I don’t know yet, but we’re certainly a lot better off for him being in the race (and not because he’s black, by the way). Most of the Democratic candidates strike me as being both strong on paper and totally generic in reality. Certainly it’s hard to get a sense with any of them that “wow, I’d love this person to be president!”. There’s no “it” factor at play in the Democratic primary, in other words, except with Obama. The last person I can think of that had that sort of shine on him, Democrat or Republican, was Bill Clinton.

The question is, is that “it” factor just window dressing that we should dismiss (and evaluate instead more substantial, concrete aspects of his record and agenda), or is there perhaps substance to charisma in its own right?

I don’t think he has much experience, and his record, such as it is, is hard to judge or, where not hard, not always spectacular (nothing wrong with it per se, just not a guy whose past legislative accomplishments really jump out at you and scream “leadership”). As a sidebar, he does have a record, and claims that there’s simply nothing about Obama to substantively judge are unfair (here are his stated positions while in the Illinois Senate, and here is his voting record over the last two years in the Senate). Or course, the case for Obama is not and never will be based on a long record of quiet legislative accomplishment (which never seems to be a great selling point anyway–see Bob Dole, Orrin Hatch), but rather on charisma and character, biography and rhetoric.

The question is, is there not a substance to those qualities also?

I might argue that the differences between Clinton and Bush, in terms of their effectiveness as head domestic executive and chief international diplomat has maybe less to do with policy agenda and as much if not more to do with just simple character. In other words, their ability to pave a road for America wasn’t all vision (or lack thereof), but was, in large part, simply measures of the respective men. I want to be very careful to not overstate that (and certainly, I have very little time for the “I’d like to have a beer with him” standard of voting), but I don’t think it’s without merit.

Andrew Sullivan responds to some critics of Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience, and comes up with a very cogent and lucid case for why charisma and biography might in fact not just be window dressing in Obama’s case, but a very real asset with very broad real-world, practical impact.

It’s funny, I was listening to a Supreme Court historian being interviewed a few weeks ago, and he said that when having hearings on prospective justices, rather than asking them “what would your position be on such and such a case”, a better predictor for how effective a justice they might be would be to ask “how was your high school experience? How many times have you been married? Do you get along with your parents?” Charisma, biography, people skills, and character matter (and this historian’s point was that, especially in the small circle of 9 justices working together for decades, you can have all the vision in the world and be a shitty justice, or no vision and be a great one, depending in large part with how you are able to negotiate the social space).

I think that point generalizes, and agree with Sullivan that, in terms of American soft power abroad, Barack Obama would be a public relations dream come true. That’s not to say that the rest of the picture shouldn’t be looked at as per usual. But it’s also probably being underestimated, the positive effect of having a charismatic cosmopolitan president that everybody likes. That’s worth considering, and taking seriously, in its own right.