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I’ve tried to claim, throughout my many posts endorsing Barack Obama’s candidacy, that I have not let foggy notions of hope and a selfish sense of liberal condescension cloud my independent judgment about the upcoming presidential election.

To wit, David Brooks’s much-emailed op-ed today in the Times, How Obama Fell to Earth. If nobody emailed it to you, essentially he says that the damage has been done and now Obama is a pedestrian pol with all the double-talk, false promises and pandering that entails. The unsullied usher to the promised land has been reduced to that basest of human life-forms: the politician.

Ready for my retort? Well, I don’t have one. I completely agree. It’s been hugely sad to me to watch Obama engage in all the games he said he wouldn’t play and the tactics he said he’d never use. All along I’ve been worried about his pledges to bring our troops home from Iraq unequivocally, thinking surely his lawyerly prudence would assess the situation from inside the Oval Office and make the best decision for our country and the world. And actually I think this is still the case, but now veering even slightly from his current prescription will mean he lied outright. And that’s really disappointing.

I still find him hugely inspiring as a leader, thinker, speaker, and yes, even as a politician. For as much as he has sadly succumbed to the lowest common denominator, he still stands head and shoulders above the field. As a supporter, one can only hope that Clinton’s unabated and opportunistic attacks have only tempered the steel of his electability and promise, and not done any permanent damage heading into November.

God help us, when we make it to November, that is…

Okay, I thought it would blow over. A comment on my blog actually predicted that this little rain shower that began behind closed doors in the Foggy City would swell into a tropical depression, and whaddya know. We may even be heading for a full-grade tropical storm if the Clintons can’t find another self-defeating maneuver to stop the gracious amount of momentum the gaffe has received.

Now, loyal readers of course know that I’m an Obama supporter. Naturally, I was inclined to put the most positive spin on his statement. In retrospect I think he chose his words poorly, but it seems ludicrous that his mild comment could be used by Clinton or McCain to show that they are somehow more authentically in tune with rural voters.

Still, BO hasn’t done the best job killing this one. I think his intention was better stated by Lancaster, PA’s mayor, J. Richard Gray:

I don’t think he’s demeaning religion or guns. He’s saying the use of those issues as wedge issues plays on the bitterness that people have and diverts attention from the real economic issues, like the disparity between the wage earner and the rich.

The tragic thing to me about Obama’s now regrettable comment is that he was caught in the act of doing exactly what he pledges is his greatest strength: building bridges. He was at an intimate meeting of well-heeled Bay Area liberals, and he was explaining to them why they should care about what rural Pennsylvanians think, and why in the end, there are core social and economic goals they can all agree on. Just as he did in the race speech, he was able to step out of the room in a rural town hall with farmers and factory workers, and into a room on the other side of the country with left-leaning rich folks (and probably a few homosexuals, eh?) and share his same message of hope: simply, let’s come together and improve things. And he does it without the pandering or shape-shifting that has come to typify Clinton’s need to win at all costs or McCain’s fumbling attempts to court a divided electorate.

The other day I once again praised Obama on my blog, this time for his speech responding to Rev. Wright’s statements (a.k.a. the race speech). In my corner of the insulated, left-wing blog world, it was a pretty innocuous entry.

To my surprise, I received a considered rebuttal from a close friend of mine. To wit:

Personally, I have a problem with someone whose entire candidacy is based on “bringing people together,” yet whose “political and spiritual adviser” for the past 20 years is a person who spews hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-American, homophobic garbage on a regular basis. Even if Obama doesn’t believe those things, why would he closely associate himself with someone who does, and expose his family to it every Sunday? At best, it raises serious questions about his integrity and character. Ask yourself this: Would you give a Republican a pass who had a similarly close relationship with David Duke, and dismissed any criticism by merely saying he rejected his “controversial” statements about black people? I would hope not.

I left this buddy of mine anonymous, since he chose not to make his comments public. I don’t blame him, I can certainly understand his not seeing this blog or its readers as the safest of havens for open political debate (what, did the title “Even the Stupid People” seem somehow unwelcoming?). However, I happen to know there’s a few of you out there who would echo his criticisms, and perhaps offer an even more scathing rebuke of my Obama adulation (Obamulation? Maybe that one’s a stretch, sorry…).

Speak up if you’re out there.

I always hesitate to post about big political events. Lord knows the blogosphere is beyond full with endless chatter, especially as the political season gets increasingly more contested. This morning I read one report that Hillary’s chances are getting slimmer, and then saw that she was decidedly ahead in a Gallup poll. I don’t know if I have the stamina for this rollercoaster…

I can’t go without a mention of Obama’s race speech, though. I mean… wow. I had to pause the YouTube to catch my breath after the “I can no more disown him” part.

I think Stanklin said it best, though, after he read the speech:

he’s truly brilliant. and brave. and not full of shit. i can only hope nothing ridiculous happens between now and november. this is an amazing man. I mean, america is stupid, but even stupid people must see what’s going on.

I told myself I wouldn’t be political again for a while, but there’s a crazy energy in the air on the eve of Super Tuesday, what with Obama’s recent surge in polling and will.i.am’s tune making the rounds. (My own musical contribution to the effort hasn’t received quite as many hits of yet, but hey, we all do what we can…)

I was again impressed with Hillary’s performance in the L.A. debate last Thursday, and constantly pinch myself with questions about the viability of “change” and “hope” in a pragmatic political forum. But it only took a few minutes of watching Carville & Matalin to remember the sickening irrelevancy of partisanship. If it’s naiveté, then hell, bring on naive governance!

For those who want to believe but are still on the fence, we return to George Packer’s recent article:

The next morning, Obama was scheduled to appear before an overflow crowd at the opera house in Lebanon. When he walked onto the stage, which was framed by giant vertical banners proclaiming “HOPE,” his liquid stride and handshake-hugs suggested a man completely at ease.

“I decided to run because of you,” he told the crowd. “I’m betting on you. I think the American people are honest and generous and less divided than our politics suggests.” He mocked the response to his campaign from “Washington,” which everyone in the room understood to be Clinton, who had warned in the debate two nights before against “false hopes”: “No, no, no! You can’t do that, you’re not allowed. Obama may be inspiring to you, but here’s the problem—Obama has not been in Washington enough. He needs to be stewed and seasoned a little more, we need to boil the hope out of him until he sounds like us—then he will be ready.”

The opera house exploded in laughter. “We love you,” a woman shouted.

“I love you back,” he said, feeding off the adoration that he had summoned without breaking a sweat. “This change thing is catching on, because everybody’s talking about change. ‘I’m for change.’ ‘Put me down for change.’ ‘I’m a change person, too.’ ”

It was the day before the primary, and Obama began to improvise a theme, almost too much in the manner of Martin Luther King: “In one day’s time.” It carried him through health care, schools, executive salaries, Iraq—everything that Clinton had invoked, except that this was music. Then came the peroration: “If you know who you are, who you’re fighting for, what your values are, you can afford to reach out to people across the aisle. If you start off with an agreeable manner, you might be able to pick off a few folks, recruit some independents into the fold, recruit even some Republicans into the fold. If you’ve got the votes, you will beat them and do it with a smile on your face.” It was a summons to reasonableness, yet Obama made it sound thrilling. “False hopes? There’s no such thing. This country was built on hope,” he cried. “We don’t need leaders to tell us what we can’t do—we need leaders to inspire us. Some are thinking about our constraints, and others are thinking about limitless possibility.” At times, Obama almost seems to be trying to escape history, presenting himself as the conduit through which people’s yearnings for national transformation can be realized.

Obama spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days.

I know the passage above isn’t really an endorsement. But if people could care, if a smidgen of the rampant apathy was converted to productive involvement by speeches like the above, I believe the caring would be about actually getting things done and slowly fixing problems, instead of further entrenching the divisive notions of winning and losing. This isn’t a game.

So let Mary & James go share a coke while the people get back into the role of self-governance.

How’s that for naiveté?!