“I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans.Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good.”

 -Poem of Disconnected Parts – Robert Pinsky

 It’s been said over and again that America is full of opportunities. Yet, as if in some Kafkaesque model, some opportunities appeared too great to be acted upon. For the moment, that all appears a bit moot. And as a troubling and bellicose time of governance turns toward promise and hope, the republic’s grandly imperfect circus now flirts with the possibility of stepping from the low-down to the lofty. These days, amongst the turning leaves and college football, talents of mendacity and ambition seem to meld and get along just fine with high-minded notions of service, of striving, of living out, and living, well, large. The awe steps out with the awkward.

 While celebration and revelry continue, even for those in the cheap seats, offstage, and waiting in the wings for change, both activist and operative have slowly begun their tango, their grasp and grapple for walk on parts and center stage roles with all of the twirling and tart flaws such after campaign-command performances produce. Now, the ongoing and growing cluster of the photo-political runs from the classical to the wildly vivid, driven in part by helpings of leftover adrenaline and in portion by perceived pay-back long overdue. With his tony, avant-garde campaign successfully throwing off the hollow baby-boomer mantra, “I disagree, therefore I am”, and after dusting and beating the reactionary right like a piñata, our fast-tracked, fast paced, “President-elect Cool” seems called into the realm of parlor games and the guess work which accompanies both agenda and administration building. Some want a stroll into the clearing, some face time, and there break into one of those ‘well, look’ conversations. In all transparency and full disclosure, it ain’t happening. The new Gautama will not gather in the garden with the victims of post-modernity carrying their pre-existing conditions, mythologies, and hyper-vigilance like begging bowls, in tow.  Rumor and fear abound in such periods, and such stuff is the residue of the permanent campaign.

 “If large numbers of Americans are turned off by politics”, wrote Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, “it’s in no small part because they are sick of the consuming that singular process ‘the campaign’ represents.” They are too long and too costly. They possess the propensity to blur the senses. They could be teachable moments, but no. They could explore the rationale for a grueling primary season, the Electoral College, super delegates, proportional representation. That’s heavy. That nonsense is stone cold and problematic. But, naw. These seasons are axiomatic. They are sometimes frightening. They are promissory and cruelly exhilarating. For the loser, nothing softens its ending, and for the ideologue, like the junky, nothing contains a numbing. The historic newness of things can be muddied, scores settled, wounds re-opened and so forth…and so on.

The fog of political campaigns has always held moments of drama and name calling. There’s hollow accusation, humor and banality amidst those balloons and bunting.  By the time these exercises close out, Americans generally find an odd ingredient of nut cases providing occasional flashpoints, strident choruses, complimenting groans and speculation amongst the spin-room chatter. Few, honestly, know what the others mean exactly.

Unique to such enterprises, the champion of the ’08 outing, the longest and most costly in the country’s history, owns his words, although some were tested by his handlers in a governor’s contest in Massachusetts a couple of years earlier. Even for an idiot, they provided a coherent narrative: Change. Hope. Believe. We can. O.K? The contours of the end game were formed by them. We’re told by Larry M. Bartels’ in his, The Irrational Electorate, recently in The Wilson Quarterly, the political campaign “..claws at the intelligence of the electorate. Does it really matter whether voters can name the secretary of defense or know how long a senate term is? The political consequences of “public ignorance” must be demonstrated, not assumed. And that requires focusing not just on what voters don’t know, but on how what they don’t know actually affects how they vote. Do they manage to make sensible choices despite being hazy about the details of politics and government? (Okay, really hazy.) If they do, that’s not stupid – it’s efficient.”

In real life, the somewhat politically moderate, Barack Obama, junior Senator from Illinois, found his voice, email lists, and a winning electoral equation, around progressives and black America in particular, later drawing attention from other moderates through a kind of Kantian sensibility. There was never a real coalition so to speak. And the reader will see this as campaign buttons are quickly replaced with “me” pins, in some circles. Obviously Barack Obama has had a profound impact on ways of thinking about America, and in fact the world. However, attempting to sort out messages for true vision, and hope from the real go down, may prove daunting, providing varying results. Plugging tenets of rationalism into sockets of empiricism is not for the faint of heart. And though few hold for a ‘ghettoization’ of the incoming president, some of the faithful have already began to wonder where shall they turn for ‘our stuff’ should faith and slippage collide. And when things don’t rock, we should be recall the letter Cicero crafted to his brother Quintus on electioneering in which he adds, “…for your status as a ‘new man’ you will compensate by your fame as a speaker.” (Nominus novitatem dicendi gloria maxime subevabis). A lack of social inertia in ‘the campaign’ is magically preserved.

Northeastern Illinois University professor, and member of Chicago’s Task Force for Black Political Empowerment, Robert T. Starks recently wrote, “…when rookie Illinois Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States, the African-American political leadership, academics, and opinion leaders began a protracted and sometimes heated debate over the propriety of an African-American Agenda to be presented to the presidential candidates. The debate continued throughout the primary season. Initially, the candidacy of Senator Obama was not taken seriously by most of these political actors because of the fact that he was a little known quantity. However, when he won the Iowa caucuses it became clear that he deserved a closer look.”

Hungry for empowerment, yet weighted as if by a dramatic tradition, many of these political actors of the ‘sit-in’ generation pulled up late to ‘house Obama’. Mr. Starks, a veteran of political engagements argues that, “While Senator Obama had gained the attention of the black public…most were still unconvinced that he could win the nomination and the presidency. In the meantime, the debate continued without an agreement to begin the process of ascertaining the collective needs of the national African-American community and conveying them to the candidates.”

There certainly was some tension between the “post-racial” transformational campaign of the “skinny kid with a funny sounding name” and the “elders”. Those fault lines, driven by intangibles, those jokes, those habits, those recipes passed down in the average African American household differ from those in the homes of young Barack Obama, in Indonesia, in Hawaii. Some of these “elders” would not be moved, and like a former lover who wants to leave behind pajamas or underwear to be remembered by, you don’t really want to give a fist “bump”, and just say “cool”. Pardon me if I re-call Glenn Close’s unforgettable, “I will not be ignored” scene, replaced by a, “…he actin’ like he..”. At least the candidate from Illinois refrained from donning Sioux headdress as had some of his predecessors in the process.

“Black political actors were reluctant to put race specific request on the table for fear that it would dampen the white enthusiasm and support that he had gained in the early primaries”, Prof. Starks continued, “The same justification for a lack of an African-American Agenda, or wish list, became even more amplified when it was clear that Senator Obama was destined to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

Race and ‘time’ has occupied a position of prominence in the frame of both thought and emotion. It has provided a surreal sense of ownership. The piece, the prize, the sweet slice of history and ownership, “the man”, underappreciated early-on, now garners those driven by need and urgency. The icon has grown enchanting, shrouded in sophistication and coupled with the need to imagine his sorrows and struggles because some want to.

Gerald Early, of Washington University, in an essay that appeared in the October 10, 2008 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, The End of Race as We Know It, suggest, “The presidential campaign of Barack Obama has raised the question of what happens to the black American meta-narrative of heroic or noble victimization if he wins. (Presumably nothing happens to it if he loses; the loss can be blamed on racism, as it will, in fact, be another example of victimization. White folks will always find a way to cut down a successful black man, to not let him get too far, is the common belief. That sort of black cynicism, expressed in different political and aesthetic modalities, underscores both the blues and rap. If Obama loses, he becomes, in black folklore, John Henry, the “natural” man with the courage to go up against the political machine. The moral of the tale, in politics as in life, is that the machine always wins.).”

Now we know that story, or at least parts of it. For those who perceive the election of Mr. Obama as yet another forum in which to continue the discourse on race and the African American narrative, there should be an awareness of others awaiting a seat at the eschatological banquet, and as Martin King said in a somewhat different context, you, “…will be in for a rude awakening is the nation returns to business as usual tomorrow.”

U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have wasted no time warning the president-elect against enacting an “evil law” that would deregulate the “abortion industry.” Pope Benedict XVI sent the president-elect a congratulatory telegram hailing his “historic” election, and Mr. Obama, a Protestant, called the pontiff to thank him for his message. The two men hold differing views on gay marriage and stem cell research, as well as abortion. There is no shame, however, in disagreeing with one whose resume gives space Hitler Youth. resume. Coincidental, Dr. Clayton Smith, a U.S. born hematologist who now heads the leukemia and bone marrow transplant program of Vancouver, British Columbia, was quoted as saying he was, “literally in tears” over the election of stem-cell-research supporter Barack Obama. “Watching the election last night was a singular event, like watching the Berlin Wall fall,” he said.

Like shards of broken mirror, the immigration reform issue also awaits “the One”. This son of a foreign exchange student and nephew of an illegal immigrant is expected, by a constituency of Hispanic voters which turned out 66% for him, to halt large scale federal immigration raids. As many as 12 million illegal immigrants are said to be in the U.S. With increasing unemployment in the country, many hold more vigilant border security and less immigration is the way to preserve Americans’ jobs. Others now press for a path to legal residency. Trenches and barricades are sure to find their way into both sides of the republics legislative forums and it the incoming administration can hardly go unruffled.

A Pew Research Center reported that then Senator Obama captured the White House by securing the support of a number of key groups solidly in the center of the electorate. 39% of Mr. Obama’s voters were Democrat with 32% being Republican. This was a significant shift from 2004 when the electorate split even. White voters went 43% for Mr. Obama; 55% for McCain: Black voters went 95% for Mr. Obama and 4% for Mr.McCain: Hispanic voters turned out 66% for Sen. Obama and 32% for Sen. McCain.

The Center’s numbers also reflect a breakdown among white voters as: 41% men for Obama; 57% for McCain: 46% women for Obama; 53% for McCain. Hispanics voted for Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain more than two-to-one, 67% verses 31%.

When it comes to race and the vote, 21% of voters said they personally knew those who would not vote for Barack Obama because he is black. Supporters of Mr. Obama were more likely to know someone who would not vote for him based on race (27%) than were those who supported McCain (10%). Some 21% white and 22% black respondents said they knew someone who wouldn’t vote for Obama because he is black. There’s no difference based on age or gender, but college grads were more likely than those with less education to know someone not supporting Obama because of race (36% vs. 18%).

“Many who argued against the idea of an agenda believe that the non-race specific approach taken by Senator Obama was one of the major reasons for his success”, continued Prof. Starks. “…the fact that almost every other racial, ethnic and representatives of social causes known. The Jewish community made it known from the beginning that for any candidate to get their votes they had to pledge their support for Israel. The Hispanic community…for a…humane and liberal approach to the problems of immigrants in general. Gay activist pressed for elimination of discrimination in the workplace…laws that will outlaw hate crimes. Feminist groups…for the closing of the income gender gap and…prevention of the repeal of Roe v Wade. Now,” closed Starks, who will construct the African-American Agenda?”

“The most important election ever”, a theme rolled every outing, took on a more surreal and menacing tambour this time at the rodeo, and although this writer isn’t always in sync with the afro-centrist based politics and passion of the good Professor, something now holds in his deconstruction.  One can be blinded by the charm, coolness and linkages of President-elect Obama. Like Leviticus, the gentleman may become difficult with visions hard to follow come time to get real with all those expectations. Question it? Good luck with that. If it doesn’t sing, you can lose friends that way amongst both the chic and sanctified.

The post-election survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds grater satisfaction with the choice of the presidential candidates than after any election in the past 20 years. In addition, Mr. Obama gets by far the highest grades for any winning candidate in that period. “When voters are asked for a single word that describes their reaction” to Mr. Obama’s victory, supporters mentioned their joy with words like, “happy”, “excited”, and “ecstatic” frequently used. A substantial number also mentioned the words “hope” or “hopeful” to characterize their reaction to the election. For now, it’s all good.

That said, we must acknowledge, amidst our celebration, there is something systemically structurally atrocious with the way America elects its heads of state, and the casual manner in which we allowed them and other elected officials, for the most part, in our format challenged system to do or not do with our society. There is a crisis in how we govern ourselves. We ought get in front on that now…for the next time.

It would be a waste of time to argue the nuance of some grand, master plan crafted by Citoyen Obama’s handlers. The African proverb, “That until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter”, finds relevance here. It was neither a swarm of locusts, nor the parting of Lake Michigan which brought the nation to this time. It was the tawdry legacy of administration after administration failing to hit its mark, it was justice denied “long time”, it was a frenetic and dis-ingenuous opposing camp, it was a list of criminal wars of choice, and it was the wails of millions craving tangible and substantive change, those who’d grown way tired and sought alternatives to just muddling though. Does it really take two years and a million of dollar enterprise to elicit electoral enlightenment?

That lap dance which convinced some they hold a chit with the new administration would not be without irony if the dot’s don’t connect, and the November story has no legs or wheels for that matter.  The poet Robert Pinsky shared not long ago that, “In the absence of a single folk culture, in the relative absence of the aristocratic notion, where do we Americans get the memory that holds us together as a people? How do we stave off the withering away… One answer”, he said “is that we’re still working on it--that we have developed a national genius for making it up as we go along.”

From this time on, “as we go along,” America would be ill advised to comfortably ignore its present glow, and not work on it, and simply tune into “Survivor: The White House” while finding and leaving this country as it was, and the way we found it not so long ago. Given the meta-theatrical of the past few hundred years, maybe, just maybe, we ought roll like my friend Pinsky said and make, “…it up as we go along.”