Even as the truth about Obama becomes clearer, the dream trance becomes deeper. A prescient look from "The Times" of three years remove.---rng
from thetimesonline.typepad.com
July 21, 2008
from thetimesonline.typepad.com
July 21, 2008
Both The Independent's John Rentoul and my colleague Oliver Kamm are rolling out the red carpet for Barack Obama, as the Democrat begins the trip that will bring him to London.
Why? Because both want him to succeed so that he can then fail. Here's the nub of Rentoul's Sunday column:
There was a moment last month – it was when Susan Sarandon, the actress, said she might emigrate to Italy or Canada if McCain won – when it seemed essential to the sanity of America that Obama should lose.
But, no, it is more important that the daydream should be broken. The idea that there is some kind of clean, different, painless, perfect alternative to politics as usual is a distraction from taking difficult, compromised decisions in an imperfect world. If Obama lost, too many people around the world could continue to believe that if only America got out of whatever it is in, everything would be better.
And Oliver says that this is exactly what he has been thinking.
I haven't.
If Obama wins and fails to satisy his unrealistic supporters, Obama may be broken. The daydream will not be broken.
Just as the failure of Ramsay MacDonald's government in 1931 was blamed on everything - treachery by Ramsey Mac, a banker's ramp, the King - except the intrinsic ridiculousness of Democratic Socialism; so disillusion with Obama will lead everything to be blamed - Obama's treachery or incompetence, his advisers, the military-industrial complex - except the naivety of the daydream.
The daydream is very powerful, even if there was no such thing as cognitive dissonance.
What were those words Shrummy wrote for Ted Kennedy?
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
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