Sirota beat me to it. With Obamamania sweeping the Democratic left, all my alarm bells have been clanging for weeks, fueled by remembrances of the many discussions and frustrations that have been brewing around the freshman superstar. I’ve been intending for days to type a diary about my concerns. Concerns that, given how little Obama has really done and how far he has fallen into the game of reinforcing many of the Republican talking points about liberals on his book tour and casting it as reaching out, it may be premature to be falling all over each other to anoint this guy as the second coming (of Clinton, Kennedy or King, depending on who you listen to).
It’s just as well, as my fellow Bernie-Sanders-staff-alumnus Sirota (okay, I was only a little organizing toady, while Sirota was a press secretary…) was typically far more direct and compelling than I ever am:
For progressives, this situation is perilous indeed. Obama is a candidate who has kept his record deliberately thin, who has risked almost nothing for the bigger movement, and in fact who has sometimes gone out of his way to reinforce dishonest stereotypes about the left. This is a man who has helped launch the Hamilton Project designed to undermine Democrats pushing for fairer trade deals. This is a man who belittled Paul Wellstone as merely a “gadfly.” This is a man who refused to lift a finger for Ned Lamont. Flocking to a candidate like that without demanding that he change only reinforces the damaging concept that our movement is a Seinfeld Movement about nothing.
His thesis was, by my reading, simple and irrefutably valid:
I want to be clear: I don’t think our movement is a Seinfeld Movement. But don’t fool yourself: a movement that rushes to embrace a candidate without demanding that candidate actually lead on the issues that the movement is supposed to be about – well, that could be a death blow for what we are working toward. Movements move because leaders lead and because they weild power by forcing politicians to stand up for people. Movements are killed by false prophets, cults of personality and by the unwillingness of those in the movement to wield their power for their agenda.
Okay, so maybe some don’t agree. I happen to, and in fact consider it self-evident. But there are reasons not to. Perhaps someone takes an “electioneering” perspective over an ideological one, and sees Obama as eminently marketable and electable. Regular readers of my scribblings won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t subscribe to that line of reasoning, but hey, I recognize it as a legitimate point of view. Or perhaps you share Sirota’s concerns, but your “gut” tells you that Obama will nevertheless be the guy to run for president. Fine. We all depend to some extent or other on the “gut check.”
Hoo-boy. Was it not that simple. Let’s just say there’s another reason I’m glad Sirota beat me to the punch, as this is the sort of response he received:
Narcissistic Sirota doesn’t think his movement is a Seinfeld Movement. But don’t fool yourself: a movement that rushes to embrace a writer who belittles leading Democrats – well, that sort of mindless negativity could be a death blow for what we are working toward. Movements move because writers write in ways that unify and promote popular causes — and because they spell words like “wield” without inappropriately applying mnemonics like “i before e except after c and sometimes w.” Movements are killed by false prophets like Sirota, who mistake self-righteousness for substance. They “weild” their power for their own, self-referential agenda.
As Sirota responded on his own blog shortly thereafter:
None of this is Obama’s fault, and as I’ve written repeatedly, I strongly believe he has incredible potential to be one of American history’s great leaders, and in fact a great presidential candidate right now – but only if he starts aspiring to actually lead, starts using his bully pulpit to promote a real, substantive cause (and by the way, as I have written before, that goes for ALL of the potential Democratic candidates). In fact, the Obama obsession as a political phenomenon really is less interesting in what it says about him than what it says about us, the progressive movement. People just want to say “shut up, Obama for President” or claim like conspiracy theory freaks that I am on the payroll of another presidential candidate (I am not), or claim that we simply cannot talk about the presidential contest and must fall in line immediately without any discussion. What it all signals is that parts of the progressive movement are so singularly focused on personality that they don’t want to even think about the tough questions that ask whether we actually are an issue-based “movement” at all.
Mr. Sirota, meet the guru mentality. It permeates the left, is an ongoing source of mischief and mania, and with every passing year seems only to get worse.
The guru principle could be considered a pathological manifestation of the leader principle. Unlike many on the far left of mainstream debate who come from a socialist framework, I’ve fallen into the public arena from more of a left-libertarian zone, and as such I’ve always been leery of leaders. Nevertheless, I recognize the role of – and need for – the leader from time to time, whether they manifest as an individual or as some sort of vanguard. Good leaders are visionaries who draw their vision from the people they lead, taking those shared values and making them manifest through word and deed. Good leaders know that they are a reflection of those they lead, and are only leaders inasmuch as there are like-minded people willing to follow. This is not to suggest that real leaders are simply parroting the impulses of their followers, as an important function of leadership is to provide the ugly, unpleasant truth when it is called for, and to sometimes chart a course that is not the one his or her followers would like to travel – but a good leader builds a trust with those they lead that acts as a contract, holding them together through the tough patches.
In other words, there is faith involved on the part of those who are lead, but it is a faith based in experience and confidence – or in other words, based on reason.
Contrast that with it’s pathological counterpart, the guru principle. The relationship between the political guru and his or her followers is not about reason. It is about feelings, stimulus responses and blind faith. Reason is not part of the equation – in fact, reason is anathema to the guru principle, for the obvious reason that it threatens absolute devotion.
The contract created between the political guru and the followers is not based on trust or experience, it is based on emotional need or the desperate desire for someone – anyone – to make things right, either in the world around the follower, or within their own psyches. The guru principle manifests when the political sphere gets too close to the religious sphere – which is, frankly, why the areligious are often the most susceptible to it (and I speak as an extraordinarily areligious sort myself). When we consider ourselves above religion and faith 9as opposed to merely separate from it), I believe we underestimate the human tendency towards faith, and fall into the trap of finding faith in inappropriate places.
The problem with this contract is the extraordinary amount of power it invests in the guru. It is a blank check, and no leader should ever be issued such absolute power from those they lead. That’s a scenario that never goes well. At the very least, in electoral politics, it is a way to cast yourself as the absolute captive constituency, which – in the democratic vacuum created – makes the guru-leader far more likely to grant disproportionate influence to others who may not share your values simply because they need to be persuaded.
It’s bad news folks. It’s a bad way to create a movement, it’s a bad way to create a democracy. It’s a lousy way to be a follower, and – perhaps most significantly for the purposes of the Sirota experience – it’s a lousy way to be a leader. If you think Obama is the greates thing since sliced bread, fine – more power to him. If you’re ready to hand him the keys to the kingdom and rise to cast down any who would question his righteous ascendance, don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re doing your guru any favors.
If you want to see Obama be the kind of leader you imagine him to be, join with others in demanding he make his case clearly, respectfully, reasonably – and most important, completely. As Spider-man says, with great power comes great responsibility. If he wants the power, let’s make sure he accepts the responsibility to clearly account for what he will do with that power. or to put it in a less geeky way, is it too much to ask to see his application before we give him the job?
After all, if this guy has half the potential he seems to have, the last thing we want to do is push him into the deep end before he’s comfortable swimming. We should all have the conversation clearly and respectfully.
It’s just called looking before you leap, and if you’re angrily and defensively covering your eyes before you take the plunge into who-knows-what, perhaps you need to ask yourself if it isn’t because you’re a little nervous about what you might see if you let yourself look…