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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
Letter from Ben Gums
Jamestown, N.D.
Maria Shriver Schwartzenegger had to do something spectacular to distinguish her appearance at the rally where she showed up as a surprise endorser of Barak Obama. She was not only countering her husband's endorsement of Sen. McCain, she was sharing a stage with Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Obama, wife of her candidate of choice. Her stab at cleverness reminded many of her career in television journalism in which her sophistry left her with egg on her face more than once.
Oh, the Obama fans loved it when she compared him to the State of California with an obvious but misguided litany of geographic references. Naively, the audience roared in blind agreement. History is replete with charismatic figures who aroused legions of zealots only to find themselves on destructive pathways.
As I write this, I can't shake the memory of James Jones committing suicide after hundreds of his followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid at his behest at their commune in Guyana. (That's not a comparison with Sen. Obama. It is a stark and recent reminder of the potential evil inherent in blindly following a charismatic leader.)
When Obama gave the keynote address at the '04 Democratic National Convention, I was enraptured. I pegged him as the best candidate in my lifetime to succeed as our country's first Afro-American president. I still see that as a possibility. However, I've studied his performance in his service of one-third of his first term as a U.S. Senator; I've listened to many of his campaign speeches and debates; and, as best I could, surveyed his single term as a state senator in Illinois. It's evident that his success in this primary season is due to his oratory and his charismatic personality, but doesn't take into account his limited performance in elected office and the inexperience for the level of leadership that his youthful zeal has prompted him to seek.
Reflecting on this, it occurred to me that there is a more apt California analogy. When Gertrude Stein, after spending her adult years as a writer living in Paris, got public recognition for a publishing success late in life, she made an author's tour visiting most of America's major cities, ending in San Francisco. She decided to re-visit her childhood home in nearby Oakland. At age 80 she remembered the reasons why she had left and never returned, but hoped to find that her memory had been unfair. It wasn't; Oakland was even sadder and more depressed than she'd remembered. When Gertrude Stein viewed her hometown, she reported, "There is no there, there."
I do think Obama has potentially a bright future. But in terms of the presidency in 2008, "There's just no there, there." Not yet.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 23 May 2008 )
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