Obama: Out of Context

We're all incredibly tired of hearing/seeing the videos that have defamed the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. and I think we're all peeved at the attention that was focused on those videos by bloggers and the press. Likewise there is that contentious "bitter" remark by Obama led into the Pennsylvania Primary. Two threads seem to hold this style of reporting together: a) the unprecedented candidacy of Barack Obama and b) the tendency of journalists to latch onto anything that makes a headline.

Obama supporters have claimed that a panicked Clinton's campaign will promote anything that dulls the sheen of Obama. But, on the other hand, maybe there are deeper issues here too that need to be questioned.

Snares and Bear Traps

This primary season has been like watching a snare-line of bear traps springing shut along the campaign trail as each candidate runs a gamut of media attention. Race, gender, elitism, ethnicity: Each trap snaps as the candidates passes, taking bits of clothing and snatches of flesh and a little more credibility with each bite. But the candidates keep on going. And of course, they should. Democrats understandably worry that, by the time the actual convention takes place, there will be little or nothing left of the selected candidate's persona to campaign.

In defense of Obama, most of the controversy has been about statements taken out of context. But isn't context exactly the issue at the heart of his woes?

A Nation of Context

The United States is undeniably a country with a multitude of contextual signposts -- some very trite, and some hidden and unspoken. On the trite side, these include apple pie and motherhood and respect for the American flag. But they also include guns, hunting, equal access to services, race, religion, Mickey Mouse, Disney Land, NASCAR, Halloween, and a list of partially concealed snares that are tried-and-true Americana but seldom exposed.

Democrats argue that our strength as a nation comes from a celebration of our contextual diversity. But it also sometimes exposes our weakness, especially when cultural context is distorted. Rev. Wright says this was what has happened with his remarks, and when that distortion occurs, a slight against one closely-held value becomes an offense against the culture itself.

Yet, that is legitimate copy for journalists and political analysts. For any politician to say "My remarks have been taken out of context" is to defy one of the universal axioms of public life that Tip O'Neal famously identified: "All politics is local."

What is the real context?

In the world of politics, context can be more important that content. And in this light, the entire campaign of Senator Obama is one of context -- to be celebrated and closely examined.

• Washington is out of touch with the American people.
• We need to build an America that reflects our values.
• My candidacy is viable because I am an outsider.

The message resounds with some of the Democratic electorate because goings-on in the Congress and the White House seem so foreign to the average citizen on the street. Washington appears as a great traffic jam of American contexts: Those who oppose the consensus of a perceived "common context" -- or those who try to manipulate an issue to a particular advantage -- are labeled "special interests." But usually, it's the special interests themselves that complain about the special interest of others, and no one seems to acknowledge that a common context of the Will of the People might be increasingly difficult to identify.

Obama's message seems to be that he wants to change the context of American political discourse. One might paraphrase his message as follows: "Washington is broken," he observes. "I have the background and the personal fortitude to overcome the context of Washington politics and the special interests and to do the Will of the People." In a sense, by implication, he wants to reshape the landscape so that positive change can begin for the benefit of Americans and the world at large.

Who has changed context more than Bush-Cheney?

Yet when we look at our recent history as a nation, no president has changed the context of America more than George W. Bush.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has already radically modified the premise by which we, as Americans, are served by our government. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a frightening example of that kind of service, and the privatization of governmental responsibilities like prisoner and detainee incarceration is another.

Bush-Cheney has also modified how we finance our government's infrastructure, with tax subsidies for the very rich, heavier tax burdens on the poor and middle class, and a clear pandering to the corporations that lobby for special favors.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has likewise changed a basic equity of our legal system -- defining special classes of individuals who are excluded from legal protection. This legal framework defies the traditions of our country that stretch back to the founding of our legal system. This change has included the simple rights to have access to evidence, the right to be confronted by the persons who are accusing you, and even the right to be actually charged with an offense. We see these changes in how this administration has detained prisoners at Gitmo, how it has prevented individuals from access to legal council, and how the administration has used extraordinary rendition and torture to obtain intelligence. All this under the guise of homeland security.

And, to top it off, we find ourselves in an endless civil war in a country far away. This is a civil war that we, as a nation, were led into by the Bush-Cheney Administration And we permitted it to happen by assuming the administration was telling the truth about weapons of mass destruction; about collaboration between Al Queda and Sadam Hussein; about "mission accomplished."

This is a context self-inflicted upon America, and it's a context that both Democratic candidates are confronting. (It is also a context that Senator McCain thinks is just fine, and one that should be fostered until....)

Changing Context

Senator Obama says he is the best choice to change the context entirely, saying that the problem is Washington itself.

By comparison, Senator Clinton says that the context-problem is actually the current administration and the legacy of the Republican majority that has distorted the Will of the People. She believes that she can bring back a recognizable context for real change in America, and she points to the successes of her husband's administration.

Whose Context is America's Context?

So, in a real sense, the context conflict facing voters is echoed in the demographics of the voters, state by state. Older white middle-class voters and working women lean towards Clinton; Young and well-educated and well-to-do voters lean towards Obama. Each has a different frame through which they see the challenges of America and the hope for the next president.

This demographics are very understandable to me, personally, because older voters remember the successes of the Clinton Administration. Working women understand how their perspective can bring practical change to the workings of an organization. Likewise, new voters don't remember much of the Clinton Adminstration beyond the sound bites of the Republican attack machine: The Lewinsky Scandal; the Impeachment Scandal; the White Water Scandal; the failure of the Clinton Healthcare proposals; the Gays-in-the-Military Scandal.

On and on, young voters can recite the litany of scandals that seem to play like music videos straight from conservative You-Tube pages. It doesn't matter that Hillary Clinton was exonerated of all charges: The video context and the slurs remain fixed in their memories.

Likewise, the well-to-do and the well-educated feel an inherent shame that the public perception of the President of the United States seemed to fall so low during those years of conflict.

Yet, when one looks back at the polls during that most contentious period, over 60% believed that the Clinton Administration was doing a good job. By any measure of imagination, it appears that the conservative movement has successfully re-written history of those years in the public consciousness.

Of course, this is not the context that Senator Obama wants to bring to Washington, and we admire his abilities to frame and imagine a new context of hope, justice, and prosperity. He seems to say that he doesn't want to change the current context, but to actually create a new American context -- based upon the real values of the citizens -- to Washington. Of course, Clinton's image of context bears no resemblance to the past nightmare of charges that she experienced during her husband's administration. Her vision is not about the past, but a future that reinstates the momentum for real progress that was begun during the Clinton-Gore Administration. Her hope is to fulfill the promise of those years -- a promise that was stolen by the Republican majority, the 2000 appointment of GW Bush, and the subsequent demise of a recognizable and progressive context for America.

What is Obama's Context?

Yet the "bitter" remarks reported and debated by the press do raise a significant question about cultural context: Is Obama an elitist? Is he so far removed from the day-to-day context of the American citizen that his solutions will be actually be in conflict with the context of these citizens' reality? Apple pie? Motherhood? The flag? etc.? These are real questions that middle-America is asking, and the fact that Clinton recognizes those voices and those questions is important. And though the press reports Clinton's voicing these questions as negative, personal attacks on Obama -- sometimes characterizing it as coded form of racism -- the questions will persist beyond the primaries and into the fall campaign by the Republicans: Is Obama out of context with the middle-America electorate?

Consider: Obama's extraordinary biography is not the traditional, recognizable stuff of a middle-American identity. Granted, it is the stuff of an evolving American identify in a new century. But that identity is not yet fully realized in the public consciousness; not yet fully understood, and not yet fully tested in the minds of many middle-Americans.

A New Context for the 21st Century?

Indeed, Senator Obama's experience bridges a gap between the identity of the old 20th Century American identity and a new 21st Century American identity. It is an identity that reaches from a new context for this country that is global in nature, multiracial, and ethnically mixed. No doubt that's one of its chief attractions to the youth and the intellectuals and the college educated and the upper-middle income electorate. Obama's identity is a new context that affirms the progressive themes of America's promise.

But, for better or worse, the majority of middle-America is still dealing with the old context -- in their small towns, cities, churches, synagogues and temples: The work-a-day world of home, job, children, and taxes. And today, that 20th Century context is simultaneously familiar and frightening. It's a context distorted by the Bush-Cheney nightmare. And it lends itself to a nostalgic memory of when things were a bit better back in the Bill Clinton Administration.

By comparison Senator Obama's statements that things have been taken "out of context" is important. Because, in the 20th Century his identity still an exception, while in the 21st it will be increasingly the context in which we experience the world.

The question remains, however, how to bring America into this new realm that he imagines, and who is best equipped to get us there.