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Obama’s “Historic” Triumph: Did He Win or was it a GO George – Get Out George W. victory by default?

November 13, 2008 by giltroy

By Gil Troy, HNN, 11-12-08

Historians have to navigate carefully when entering the strange, alluring world of media commentary. To maintain our integrity, we need boundaries. Presumably, those of us who comment believe that offering historical perspective even as history unfolds can elevate public debate, using current events as “teachable moments.” But most of the time journalists want us – especially on television – to do things we should not do, namely predict the future or determine the historical meaning of fleeting events as they unfold. Even on the air, historians should dodge certain questions. We should never predict. And we should sidestep premature queries such as “Is George W. Bush the worst president ever,” halfway through his term. Anyone who survived oral exams should be able to handle it. During last week’s remarkable redemptive moment as Barack Obama won the presidency, it seemed that most of the media wanted to trot out historians to certify that this election was indeed “historic.”

Of course, it does not take a Ph.D. in history to note that the first elevation of a black man to the White House in a country with America’s racist past was momentous. Moreover, every presidential election is historic given the attention we pay to voting and the job’s significance. But this question of “was this election historic” was fishing in deeper waters. Reporters wanted historians to label 2008 as significant as 1980 when Ronald Reagan launched his revolution or 1960 when John Kennedy inspired a generation or 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt tackled the Great Depression. And historians can safely say that there never had been such a cataclysmic domestic event during a general election campaign as this Crash of 2008. But we all know that it is too early to know whether Barack Obama’s presidency will be as transformative as he hopes. He could be the next Franklin D. Roosevelt – or Jimmy Carter redux.

As we wait to watch, and assess the historical impact of Barack Obama’s administration, we should start debating just what caused his victory. Here we have a legitimate “teachable” moment – showing how historians start thinking about a problem, start solving an historical mystery. One debate I have started with my students is whether Barack Obama won this election, or John McCain and the Republican lost it?

In asking the question, we have to acknowledge its artificiality. The accurate answer is “yes,” meaning it was a combination of factors. But the question gets students thinking about what were the most significant causes. My next step is suggesting that we construct a timeline of turning points, which helps answer the question and gets us to start weighing historical significance. I propose four turning points in this election:

– The first is Obama’s extraordinary 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. I believe historians will deem it more significant than William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 speech because it launched Obama into the celebrity stratosphere and toward the presidency.

– The second turning point is something that did not happen – or happened subsequently. Had Hillary Clinton run a war room as tough and efficient as her husband’s, and had her campaign uncovered the Jeremiah Wright tapes in the winter of 2008 before the Iowa caucuses, I doubt Obama would have won Iowa. This is a mischievous turning point, which raises questions about how historians assess missed opportunities, and speculate about potential outcomes. It also helps raise the question that will emerge as we start debating George W. Bush’s legacy – how do we assess something that did not happen, in his case, the fact that as of this writing there has been no catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil since 2001. How much credit can someone get for a bell that did not ring, a fear that was not realized. As for Hillary, how harshly do we judge a candidate or a campaign for overlooking what could have been a knockout blow?

– The third turning point is the market implosion. Whatever momentum McCain enjoyed after the Soviets invaded Georgia during the summer and his energized convention (thanks to Sarah Palin’s debut) vanished. As the fourth major disaster under George W. Bush’s watch, following 9/11, Iraq and Katrina, the financial crisis made it all but impossible for a Republican to win.

– Finally, I point to Obama’s performance during the debates, especially the third debate. That the young, inexperienced upstart Democrat appeared to be the mature candidate against his older, more experienced rival, made Obama look presidential and helped allay many Americans’ anxieties about this relative unknown.

This list is intended to trigger debate. Others would mention Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday strategy that ignored the causcuses, Sarah Palin’s nomination, McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign, Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war. It is important also to go beyond this event-driven list and talk about Obama’s extraordinary strategy, his effective use of the internet, and his brilliant ground game, organizing thousands of workers across the nation. And while the four turning points offer two affirmative actions of Obama’s and two events beyond his control, I ultimately conclude that Obama was lucky to be blessed with two flawed opponents.

For all the skills Obama demonstrated and the forces he marshaled, I argue that Hillary Clinton, John McCain, George W. Bush, and the Republicans lost this election as much as Obama won. Just as Ronald Reagan won an ABC election in 1980 – anybody but Carter – Obama won a GO George – Get Out George W. Bush –election this year. This conclusion does not diminish from the dare I say it, historic nature of Obama’s victory. Rather, it is an early attempt to plunge into the debate assessing the outcome of the wild, rollicking, unpredictable, and potentially transformative 2008 campaign.

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Gil Troy on CBC’s the Link Discussing the Presidential Election

November 13, 2008 by giltroy

CBC Radio Canada International - The Link - Monday, November 3, 2008

Listen to the second part of the program 

Hour 2… 
 
VOTERS FROM U.S. MINORITY GROUPS SEEN AS PIVOTAL IN 2008: Throughout the U.S. Election campaign, we’ve heard much about American voters and what influences how they vote. But how do various ethnic groups, immigrant populations and other minorities figure in the 2008 presidential race? Gil Troy, a McGill University history professor specializing in modern U.S. political history and American presidential elections, joins Marc Montgomery to talk about the pivotal role ethnic and religious minorities could play in the outcome of the election, especially in the key states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

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Gil Troy on “How Generation Y became Obama’s political animal”

November 12, 2008 by giltroy

“This is not a generation of enduring loyalty,” said Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University. “They have quicksilver loyalties compared to their parents. At some point, there’ll be a confrontation between hope and government.”

POLITICS: YOUTH MOVEMENT

How Generation Y became Obama’s political animal

PATRICK WHITE, Globe & Mail, November 11, 2008

For a brief moment on election night, a 21-year-old University of British Columbia student and 15,000 friends managed to temporarily eclipse Barack Obama’s victorious glow.

Networks cut away from Chicago’s Grant Park to show a horde of fist-pumping youths chanting outside the White House.

Was it an angry mob? Or a rapturous celebration?

No one seemed to know, including CBC’s Henry Champ, who reported that the Secret Service was in a tizzy and that the crowd had co-ordinated the gathering using “text message machines.”

It was a symbolic capstone to Mr. Obama’s campaign, which lit a fire under Generation Y, those voters under 30 whose purported characteristics are anathema to the democratic process: apathetic, over-coddled, narcissistic, illiterate, hopeless.

The results could mark the biggest generational power shift in North American politics since baby boomers took the reins nearly two decades ago.

And thanks to a few Canadian political missionaries who volunteered for Mr. Obama, it’s a stumping style that is already creeping northward.

“That was no riot,” says Braeden Caley, a UBC political science major who campaigned for Mr. Obama in five states before marching to the White House gates on election night. “That was a celebration. And it was completely spontaneous, which gives you an indication of how this campaign worked.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign was a full-fledged youth movement. His field offices and online campaigns were run almost exclusively by bushy-tailed voters under 30 years of age.

They harnessed the young brains of Silicon Valley to co-ordinate everything from Mr. Obama’s rallies to his personalized text messages. And in the end, Mr. Obama drew an eye-popping chunk of the youth vote, outpacing John McCain in the under-30 segment by an unprecedented 2-to-1 margin.

As Mr. Obama said in his victory speech, the campaign “grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.”

One of those sleep-deprived campaign workers was Ajay Puri, who along with Mr. Caley founded Canadians for Obama, a web-based group that sent 20 volunteers to Washington State, where they made up three-quarters of Mr. Obama’s Snohomish County team during the winter primaries.

“We didn’t care about sleep,” says Mr. Puri, 28, who spent most nights in a sleeping bag on the campaign office floor. “We cared about Obama.”

So what is it in Generation Y’s DNA that predisposes them to Obama devotion?

Born in 1961, Mr. Obama is the first Generation X president, though his personal tastes can skew much younger: from basketball and the Fugees to The Godfather and ESPN SportsCenter, according to his Facebook page.

His hopeful message resonated with a generation raised amid political cynicism, brought on largely by George W. Bush’s unpopular presidency in the United States and guarded minority governments here.

“He didn’t talk down to us,” says Rahaf Harfoush, a 24-year-old Torontonian who moved to Chicago for two months to volunteer with Mr. Obama’s new-media team. “He’s one of the very first politicians I’ve taken note of who spoke directly to us with policies like putting the lobbying database online and making himself and government more accessible online.”

In Chicago, Ms. Harfoush worked across from Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who directed the new-media campaign.

The social-networking guru helped launch My.BarackObama.com, a digital staging ground for ad-hoc rallies, volunteer opportunities, phone bank requests and other campaign events.

“You really felt like you were connected to a movement of people driven by the same goals,” says Ms. Harfoush, who cried 40 feet away from Mr. Obama when he delivered his victory speech. “He gave us the tools and said, ‘You be the change you want to see.’ He came to where we were - on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter - and said, ‘Here, you call the shots.’ “

Mr. Caley has already brought the skills he learned on the Obama campaign to Canada. During the federal election he worked for Stéphane Dion’s UBC ground campaign, sending out numerous text messages and Facebook updates. Liberal support in the area increased from 30 to 50 per cent, according to Mr. Caley, who is supporting Bob Rae in the upcoming Liberal leadership race.

Others Canadian youths are waiting for a more inspiring candidate to come calling.

“Canadian politics are so dull, so boring,” Ms. Harfoush says. “If a candidate comes along who’s willing to invite our generation into the process, I’ll get behind them.”

But is there a best-before date on this youthful fervour?

“This is really a permanent generational sea change,” said David Madland, director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress. Mr. Madland predicts that Generation Y, which is nearly as large as the baby-boom generation, will form a huge block of voters who favour liberal policies, such as universal health care and high education spending, for decades to come.

But that view could overlook the fickle nature of under-30 voters, some say.

“This is not a generation of enduring loyalty,” said Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University. “They have quicksilver loyalties compared to their parents. At some point, there’ll be a confrontation between hope and government.”

Posted in Press, Quoted, US Presidential Campaign | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

New Book: The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction By Gil Troy

November 10, 2008 by giltroy

A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)

by Gil Troy (Author)
Now Available for Pre-Order from Amazon.com
  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
“They called it the Reagan revolution,” Ronald Reagan noted in his Farewell Address. “Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.”
Nearly two decades after that 1989 speech, debate continues to rage over just how revolutionary those Reagan years were. The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction identifies and tackles some of the controversies and historical mysteries that continue to swirl around Reagan and his legacy, while providing an illuminating look at some of the era’s defining personalities, ideas, and accomplishments. Gil Troy, a well-known historian who is a frequent commentator on contemporary politics, sheds much light on the phenomenon known as the Reagan Revolution, situating the reception of Reagan’s actions within the contemporary liberal and conservative political scene. While most conservatives refuse to countenance any criticism of their hero, an articulate minority laments that he did not go far enough. And while some liberals continue to mourn just how far he went in changing America, others continue to mock him as a disengaged, do-nothing dunce. Nevertheless, as Troy shows, two and a half decades after Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, his legacy continues to shape American politics, diplomacy, culture, and economics. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush modeled much of their presidential leadership styles on Reagan’s example, while many of the debates of the ’80s about the budget, tax cutting, defense-spending, and American values still rage.
Love him or hate him, Ronald Reagan remains the most influential president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and one of the most controversial. This marvelous book places the Reagan Revolution in the broader context of postwar politics, highlighting the legacies of these years on subsequent presidents and on American life today.

About the Author

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC. A frequent media commentator, his writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, the New York Times Book Review, the National Post, and other publications. He is the author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

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Gil Troy’s Leading From the Center Now on Amazon.com’s Kindle

November 10, 2008 by giltroy

Leading from the Center

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Leading from the Center (Kindle Edition)

by Gil Troy (Author)

Print List Price $27.50
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Gil Troy on “‘Entitled’ students expect grades for effort, attendance: Study”

November 10, 2008 by giltroy

Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service, Monday, November 10, 2008

Most university students believe that if they’re “trying hard,” a professor should reconsider their grade.

One-third say that if they attend most of the classes for a course, they deserve at least a B, while almost one-quarter “think poorly” of professors who don’t reply to e-mails the same day they’re sent.

Those are among the revelations in a newly published study examining students’ sense of academic entitlement, or the mentality that enrolling in post-secondary education is akin to shopping in a store where the customer is always right.

Students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, exploit others and shirk hard work, the study found.

Jana Chytilova/Ottawa Citizen

The paper describes academic entitlement as “expectations of high marks for modest effort and demanding attitudes toward teachers.”

It’s a hot topic - and source of much frustration - among instructors, says author Ellen Greenberger, a research professor of psychology and social behaviour at the University of California-Irvine.

“I would have trembled with fear before I suggested to some of my revered teachers that I wanted them to give me a higher grade,” she says, chuckling about how attitudes have changed.

Greenberger’s study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, exploit others, shirk hard work and display “narcissistic orientation.”

She found virtually no connection between self-entitled attitudes and grades, meaning it’s not just weak students trying to wheedle better marks out of their profs, and those who do so aren’t reaping the benefits on their transcripts.

“It certainly suggests that these attitudes and behaviours aren’t producing the desired effect,” she says. “It’s just making teachers crazy.”

Greenberg was surprised that parenting appears to have little influence in shaping self-entitled students, with one key exception: students who say their parents often compare their achievements to siblings, cousins or friends are more likely to engage in these behaviours.

It may be that young people who are pushed to keep up with the Joneses develop a shaky sense of self-esteem and use academic entitlement as a “coping strategy” to get good grades by any means necessary, she says.

The study, which surveyed two groups of approximately 400 undergraduates aged 18 to 25, is published in the November issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Technology may encourage some of this demanding student behaviour because e-mail is quick, provides easy access to professors and opens the door to a less formal and respectful tone, Greenberger says.

“In-person communication obliges you to look the person in the eye as you’re about to say, ‘You really ought to give me a B because I came to most of the classes.’” she says. “Try saying that face-to-face.”

However, professors may well be guilty of the same impertinence in e-mails to their students, she says.

Gil Troy, a history professor at McGill University who has witnessed this behaviour in his own students, blames it largely on the self-esteem movement that ties evaluation of work with personal judgment.

“If I give a student a B or a B-minus or a C - God forbid - I have to explain to them because they haven’t learned it in elementary school that I’m not evaluating their personality and I’m not even evaluating work they intended to do; I’m evaluating the work they submitted and it’s not personal,” he says.

He sees the roots of this in own children’s elementary school, where spelling is sometimes not corrected for fear of squelching students’ creativity and walls are adorned with grammatically incorrect work.

The “consumer revolution” has also convinced some students that universities and professors are service providers, Troy says. Both he and Greenberger believe anonymous student course evaluations have fuelled this and left some professors capitulating to student pressure because evaluations can be tied to tenure and advancement.

“It’s kind of like, ‘OK, you’ve done your grading of my work, now I’m going to grade you,’” Gil says. “And it’s often grading you as a performer.”

FACTBOX:

The study asked approximately 400 undergraduates aged 18 to 25 whether they agreed with these statements:

If I have explained to my professor that I am trying hard, I think he/she should give me some consideration with respect to my course grade - 66.2 per cent agree

If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course - 40.7 per cent

If I have attended most of the classes for a course, I deserve at least a grade of B - 34.1 per cent

Teachers often give me lower grades than I deserve on paper assignments - 31.5 per cent

Professors who won’t let me take my exams at another time because of my personal plans (e.g. a vacation) are too strict - 29.9 per cent

A professor should be willing to lend me his/her course notes if I ask for them - 24.8 per cent

I would think poorly of a professor who didn’t respond the same day to an e-mail I sent - 23.5 per cent

Professors have no right to be annoyed with me if I tend to come late to class or tend to leave early - 16.8 per cent

A professor should not be annoyed with me if I receive an important call during class - 16.5 per cent

A professor should be willing to meet with me at a time that works best for me, even if inconvenient for the professor - 11.2 per cent.

© Canwest News Service 2008

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Gil Troy on Michelle Obama as First Lady

November 9, 2008 by giltroy

Devoted, smart and forcefully clear about her role, Michelle Obama could be the most successful first lady in decades

Sarah Wildman, guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008

As Washington preps for a transition team, there is one person of whom there is no doubt. Throughout the raucous American election season, Michelle Obama – Barack’s professed “best friend” and “partner” in his journey – has been both completely present, a tireless fighter and campaigner, and yet, at the same time extremely, forcefully clear about the role she wants to play in this administration.

If her campaigning strategy is any indication, we may be in store for one of the most successful first ladies in decades, one who uses this terrible and amazing office to the fullest extent of its abilities, without losing herself in its twisted mores.

She learned her lesson early – after the blow up over her purported anti-Americanism – a twisting of the words that she had never been more “proud” to be an American – Michelle Obama toed the party line. She kept her public face perfect, from her fashion choices (smartly, and quietly, wearing low-dollar off-the-rack frocks for big ticket events, like her appearance on the View and on late night television), to her carefully worded cheerleading for her husband – announcing she would not comment on his choice of vice-president, for example, in a pointed nod to more activist first ladies before her, saying she was actually pleased it wasn’t her place, nor her desire, to be a part of such thing.

As she wrote for the Times today (a piece that originally ran in some form before the outcome of Tuesday’s vote was decided, in US News &World Report), “mom” is the title she holds most dear. In that message to Americans and the rest of the world, this ultra-educated (Princeton, Harvard) careerist, super mom laid the ground work for what her tenure as first lady will look like. She will be the guardian, first and foremost, of her own family. (These are the youngest kids in that stately mansion in decades – Chelsea was a bit older, Amy Carter was eight, but the comparison people will surely make most will be the Kennedy kids).

But woe to those who interpret that to mean she will go quietly into that good night, tucking the kids into bed as Barack handles the matters of state. No. If these early statements are a good indication, she will extrapolate her family guardian role into one that positions her to be a champion for mothers and families across America – and perhaps, at some point, around the world. She’s already made an outreach to military families, noting their struggles, and in so doing she helps smooth over any anxieties military families might have about this anti-war president understanding their needs.

But such a multi-faceted message that seems, at face value, so simple, exposes just how difficult this job really is. Having not yet picked out the drapes for the private quarters, or – much more importantly – decided which school her children will attend upon arrival in Washington (a dicey, potentially politically explosive decision in and of itself given the Clinton’s bashing for sending Chelsea to the tony Sidwell Friends school rather than a DC public school), Michelle Obama is already being criticised – for the dress she wore on election night – and wooed: Vogue, reportedly wants her for the cover. The role of the first lady is an uncomfortable one.

In the post-feminist era, a first lady has come to be expected to be all things to all people – smart and well educated, but also satisfied with her ceremonial position and encouraged not to speak up. Laura Bush pulled the role back to one that was far quieter than her predecessor, Hillary Clinton, even as she gave gravitas to her once-wild husband. But while feminists might have cheered Hillary’s role as adviser, there was always something terribly uncomfortable about her unelected position, a sense of dissatisfaction and condescension that swirled around her from the marriage itself, to her snappish retort that she wouldn’t be a “Tammy Wynette” that was simply standing by her man, or a woman who baked cookies all day.

Back in July Gil Troy, author of, most recently Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents told me: “The problem of the first lady is that there are all these unspoken assumptions and unmarked landmines, and if you start feeling too empowered as a modern voice and deviate from the script, you risk landing on political-cultural landmines.”

You have to go all the way back to Lady Bird Johnson to find a first lady that was happy in her position, who used the office to advance environmentalism for the first time in America, who braved a whistle-stop tour of the roiling, racist southern states alone when her husband feared to. And yet even Lady Bird had to tolerate the infidelities of her husband.

Michelle Obama is the perfect modern hybrid. Smart, beautiful, fiercely devoted to her children and her husband, her very presence adds to the sense of class and dignity this campaign – and this administration – has projected from the outset. And the one quality we hear about her again and again? She’s real. It’s a quality that’s perhaps the most difficult to maintain in this job, and the one that will keep her most sane.

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Gil Troy on the Obama Election Win and the Obama Presidency Transition

November 5, 2008 by giltroy

Barack Obama’s ease in beating John McCain should not obscure the magnitude of this achievement. A one-term Senator who just a few years ago described himself as a skinny guy with a funny name, his election as President of the United States demonstrates tremendous political talent, an American generosity of spirit that is rarely recognized these days, especially abroad, and that necessary ingredient in all greatness – good luck.

 

The long, $4.3 billion campaign has been quite a ride. When the primary candidates began debating in the spring of 2007, most pundits predicted a general campaign battle between the New York titans, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani – remember them? At the time, waking up at 3 A.M. was more associated with running to the john than proving you could run your country, as a Clinton commercial argued. Joe the Plumber was that guy who took too long to answer your calls and charged you too much, not John McCain’s ideal expression of the people’s voice. And the meltdown most people  worried about came from overstimulated and under-supervised children not over-leveraged and under-regulated markets. Back then, the most famous Barak in the world was Ehud , Israel ’s defense minister, and many Democrats revered John McCain as a non-partisan, decent, bridge-building senator.

           

Barack Obama’s emergence from a cast of talented, experienced, Democrats, including the formidable Hillary Clinton, reflected remarkable discipline and eloquence. Throughout the seemingly interminable campaign he rarely made a mistake and never seemed to panic. This cool was in marked contrast to the disorganized, amateurish efforts of two, far more experienced, chief rivals, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. But beyond simply being calm, cool and collected, Obama’s “Yes We Can” unity vision tapped a wellspring of enthusiasm among demoralized Democrats, often alienated young voters and his core constituency, African-Americans. To those lamenting Obama’s victory, I prescribe a simple Rx: watch his 2004 Democratic Convention speech or the will.I.am 2008 “Yes We Can” video. It is hard to view either without being wowed by Obama’s compelling, healing, nationalist vision.

 

Obama’s victory also reflects America’s transformation from a divided, racist country as recently as the 1960s, and a much more magnanimous, equal, open country today. The greatest concern about Obama from the start was not that he was black, but that he was too green – inexperienced. In choosing Obama in such numbers Americans showed that most judged him not as a black man but as the best man for the job.

 

Sealing the deal for Obama was tremendous luck. He was blessed by Hillary Clinton’s incompetent campaign along with John McCain’s erratic search for a strategy. And America ’s misfortune was Obama’s good fortune – when the markets tanked in September, Obama’s campaign soared.

 

In the classic Robert Redford movie, “The Candidate,” a young, good-looking, come-from-nowhere reformer upsets an older, more experienced pol. The movie ends with the question now facing Barack Obama, as the euphoria of the election dissipates and   America ’s sobering economic, military, diplomatic, and social challenges intensify: “what do we do now?”

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The Obama-McCain “Return Night” Reconciliation: Lasting Hope or Fleeting Moment?

November 5, 2008 by giltroy

By Gil Troy, HNN, 11-5-08

On Thursday, in Georgetown, Delaware, the losing and winning candidates from the various contests around that state will assemble for Return Day. In a ritual tracing its roots to 1791, voters and politicians will hear the official electoral returns and make nice, no matter how bitter their campaigns may have been. In addition to parading together down the main street in antique automobiles, the rivals will bury a ceremonial tomahawk, quite literally burying the hatchet. Late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain mounted their own version of this reconciliation ritual, offering a magnificent display of the grace, civility, and patriotism that could heal America, even during these painful times.

While rituals help us navigate life’s highs and lows, often elevating our actions, they also risk imprisoning us in rote behaviors. Concession speeches and victory speeches are usually mechanical, more formulaic than transcendent, because everyone knows that the speech-maker is play-acting. Few losers or winners are as gracious as their election night speeches suggest.

Happily, both Barack Obama and John McCain rose to the occasion, ending the drawn-out, often bitter 2008 campaign on a high note. McCain conceded with the grace and non-partisanship for which he had been famous – and which often seemed MIA during his campaign. Hopefully, he will honor his constructive vow to support the president-elect. McCain could be an essential ally in the Senate, and could help a President Obama lead from the center, as he needs to do. In America, we lack the institution of the leader of the opposition. All too often, losing nominees vanish from the scene. Neither Al Gore nor John Kerry offered the kind of national and party leadership they should have following their respective losses, considering how many millions of people supported them. Although he is not the Senate majority leader, John McCain could play Lyndon Johnson to Obama’s Dwight Eisenhower, replicating the best aspects of that cross-the-aisle senator-president relationship that produced bipartisan triumphs in the late 1950s, including launching NASA.

For his part, Obama’s speech was masterful. Although it started a tad grandiose, as he associated his personal triumph with America’s redemption, the rest sparkled. Understanding the daunting challenges ahead, he called, Franklin D. Roosevelt-style, for a spirit of community and self-sacrifice. Acknowledging the more than 48 million voters who voted against him, he reached out to his opponents. And, distancing himself from the Bush Administration, Obama also appealed to the good people around the world listening in – while warning America’s foes not to underestimate him. As an added bonus for historians, his story about Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106-year-old African American woman who voted for him, offered a wonderful trip-tych of twentieth century history, punctuated by the supposedly “timeless” but actually quite contemporary and Obamian credo “Yes We Can.”

Many of us who study the presidency, are suckers for charismatic leaders singing a compelling, optimistic song. The office’s unique mix of king and prime minister makes generating hope part of the skill set for a successful presidency. The hope that a Franklin Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan brought to the American people boosted the country’s sense of well-being as well as each leader’s popular and historical standing. We need an arm-twister-in-chief to get things done, and a cheerleader in chief to make us feel good about our country and ourselves.

The outpouring of emotion when Obama clinched his victory was thrilling. Little more than a decade ago, when O.J. Simpson was found innocent of two murders, cameras recorded cheering blacks and morose whites, emphasizing a split-screen America. On this Return Night, the cameras showed blacks and whites crying together, laughing together, celebrating together, hoping together, in a tableau of healing.

You would need a heart of stone not to be moved by watching the joy that swept America – but you need a head of straw not to worry about just how Obama will succeed. His calls for unity will only last if he understands that he must govern in the same expansive and moderate spirit his speech stirred.

Hope is like a balloon, able to entrance and elevate but also easily over-inflated or easily destroyed by just the right pin prick. Politics itself is an odd mix of noble aspirations with ruthless ambition, high-minded ideals with thuggish tactics. Placing too much hope on any one mortal invites disappointment. Sixteen years ago, a young, charismatic candidate came, quite literally, from a place called Hope. Within weeks of his election, Bill Clinton had frittered away much of the positive emotion surrounding his candidacy, primarily by backpedaling on the gays in the military issue, which stemmed from an off-the-cuff Andrea Mitchell question he should have dodged. Amid the other great challenges Barack Obama faces is the danger of disappointing the millions who have placed so much faith in him.

Still, all these worries vanished on Election Night, albeit temporarily. In the classy way McCain and Obama buried the hatchet, the goals of Return Day were achieved, the rivals unleashed the spirit of patriotic and bipartisan healing. May it prove contagious – and lasting.

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An historic election: Echoes of the ’60s and ’70s in yesterday’s choice of Obama

November 5, 2008 by giltroy

An historic election

Echoes of the ’60s and ’70s in yesterday’s choice of Obama

By Gil Troy, Montreal Gazette, November 5, 2008

The campaign might seem like a cakewalk compared with governing. CREDIT: CHRIS HONDROS, GETTY IMAGES

A voter fills out ballot at poll in Columbus, Ohio yesterday: The campaign might seem like a cakewalk compared with governing.

Campaigns are social stress tests. U.S. presidential campaigns are regularly scheduled exercises highlighting the country’s social, cultural and political strengths and weaknesses. This year’s campaign - to the world’s sorrow - also demonstrated devastating economic weaknesses. Still, campaigns also breed optimism, as candidates invite their fellow citizens to remember the past and assess the present, then invest one mortal with the future dreams of 300 million people.

For all the foolishness and frustrations of the two-year, $4.3-billion presidential quest, Americans should enter the 21/2-month transition to Inauguration Day proud of the peaceful, thorough, and open process that selected their next president.

In this campaign, tens of millions participated and shaped the historic outcome. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain coasted to their respective party’s nomination and the lead during the general campaign switched at least three times.

From the “invisible primary” seeing who could raise the most money that began after the 2006 mid-term congressional campaigns through the first votes cast in the Iowa caucus in January, 2008, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seemed liked the Democrats’ inevitable choice.

Simultaneously, John McCain’s quest for the Republican nomination faltered. Only once the voting started did Barack Obama soar. Only after he won the caucuses of the overwhelmingly white state of Iowa did most people start believing that this young, first-term senator, who often described himself as the skinny guy with the funny name, just might win it all.

In this rollicking, gruelling, unpredictable 2008 campaign marathon, America’s voters - and politicians - found themselves particularly shaped by the 1960s’ revolution as they judged, but also partially tried to replicate, the 1980s revolution.

Both nominees embody America’s tremendous progress since the 1960s. John McCain represents the sea-change in attitudes toward Vietnam veterans which he helped trigger. During the war, many returning soldiers felt neglected and rejected by the country they had served. McCain’s iconic role in U.S. culture, symbolizing patriotism, selflessness and sacrifice, helped heal many of that war’s national wounds.

Obama, who spent much of the campaign emphasizing how young he was during the 1960s, is a child of that decade, born in 1961. The civil-rights movement made his candidacy possible. Standing on the shoulders of the movement’s giants, Obama has gone farther and faster than most dared to hope. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s audacity was in dreaming that his children would be treated as equals by whites; even he did not believe Americans would consider a black president so soon. And despite Hillary Clinton’s loss, her campaign - along with Sarah Palin’s - advanced the women’s revolution of the 1960s to the upper reaches of national politics.

As the 1960s cast its shadow, the 1980s’ Reagan Revolution loomed large, too. When John McCain was not channeling Theodore Roosevelt, he invoked Ronald Reagan. Both Roosevelt and Reagan offered the muscular, nationalist, patriotic leadership that McCain admires.

Obama admires that leadership style, too. Interviewed in Nevada in January, Obama said Reagan had “changed the trajectory of America in a way that … Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” Responding to the inevitable Democratic - and Clintonesque - onslaught, Obama explained he was not embracing Reagan’s policies, just admiring Reagan as a “transformative leader.”

At his most powerful campaigning moments, Obama demonstrated a similar ambition and potential. Obama did not run to be a caretaker. Having matured during the Reagan Revolution, Obama wants to redefine liberalism as more community-oriented and more sensitive to tradition than the liberalism the 1960s produced; balancing rights and responsibilities, government power and individual prerogative.

Of course, the financial meltdown directly challenged the 1980s’ legacy. During the summer, the Soviet invasion of Georgia and the continuing worries about Iran and Iraq made pundits predict 2008 would be a foreign policy-oriented election. That assumption explains Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as a running mate. That hedge - and so many others - diminished in value with the stock market’s collapse.

Alas, despite the leadership opportunity the financial crisis provided for the candidates, neither rose to the occasion. Both remained cautious, simplistic demagogic on economic issues. That is what tends to happen during campaigns.

Today, America’s new president-elect has to start preparing to govern. The 11-week transition to Jan. 20 is a gift, an opportunity for a healing honeymoon but also a test. And come Inauguration Day, the economy must be revived, the Iraq mess must be fixed, the challenges of a potentially nuclear Iran must be faced, the continuing threat of Islamic terror must be countered. Perhaps most important, the U.S. people need reassuring and reuniting after the anger and alienation of the George W. Bush years.

This campaign showed that Americans hunger for change and inspiration. Inspiring while making hard decisions that might entail sacrifice is an Herculean task. In the inevitably rough days ahead, the new president might start yearning for the clarity and simplicity of the campaign trail, where oratory could substitute for policy and soundbites could trump substance, even if the accommodations were less plush than those the White House offers.

Gil Troy teaches history at McGill University.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

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