Bob Carr’s one-sided view of Obama

In the Sun-Herald today, former NSW Premier Bob Carr retells the case for choosing Senator Hillary Clinton over Senator Obama namely she is white with a nice white sounding name:

The brutal truth is that Obama’s was not the ideal biography for someone seeking to vault over three centuries of race prejudice. There’s the Arabic name: Barack Hussein Obama. And the stubborn ignorance that has Americans insisting he is a Muslim. There are the 20 years spent in the congregation of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Above all, the absence of executive experience.

Well, Hillary doesn’t really have executive experience unless being First Lady or a failed attempt at health care reform counts. The rest of this ‘brutal truth’ paragraph is really just straight out of the republican party’s talking points.

This ‘brutal truth’ nonsense has always been popular with the ‘pragmatists’ of the NSW right of the ALP as a way of explaining that politics is not about achieving change but about getting there and staying there. It’s also a sort of insider putdown of the politically naive.

Carr’s argument also rests in part on the so-called Bradley effect which is controversial to say the least but well-used by well-meaning people who want to argue for a white candidate without seeming racist. Carr gives no hint of this controversy:

We’ve all been educated in the Bradley effect – namely, that a percentage of white voters will tell pollsters they intend to vote for a black candidate but in the privacy of the voting booths do the opposite.

Even if the Bradley effect does or did exist, it is probably the case that Obama’s capacity to inspire non-traditional voters will more than offset it. Secondly, we have the positive effect that the endorsement of another African-American, General Colin Powell, has had on Obama’s appeal with independent voters. Nor, should we forget that we live in the age of Oprah, who has enormous appeal with middle-class white women, and whose endorsement of Obama helped him at the start of the primary race.

Carr completely ignores the flipside of the Obama candidacy; his very ‘difference’ in name, colour and background has helped the Democrats raise enormous amounts of money, recruit huge numbers of volunteers, generate enthusiasm, encourage many more people to register, and if the record levels of early voting is a guide, to actually vote.

Carr correctly identifies the economic crisis as a turning point in this campaign but he completely misses the initially positive but ultimately disastrous impact of the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin, On both these ‘tests’, McCain demonstrated that he has a tendency to be erratic and flaky under pressure.

Carr’s acknowledgment of the importance of Obama’s performance in the debates is understated, to say the least:

To be fair, it was Obama’s coolness under fire that seemed to clinch the deal, especially in the three debates in which he held his own and pressed every advantage.

In fact, the polls suggest that Obama won each of the three debates by a decisive margin (example).

If, when, Obama wins this election it won’t be because he is African-American, and it won’t be in spite of the fact that he is African-American. He will win because he is a brilliant politician who has run a masterful campaign capable of inspiring millions of people (’yes we can’), especially younger people who just don’t care about race, and at the same time look far more ‘presidential’ (cool and unflappable under pressure) than the far more experienced Senator McCain and the slightly more experienced Senator Clinton.

Nevertheless, as Spike Lee said some months ago, the day elects a black President is the day the world changes:

Lee predicted Obama would be elected in November. “When that happens, it will change everything. … You’ll have to measure time by `Before Obama’ and `After Obama,’” Lee said during the panel. “It’s an exciting time to be alive now.”

Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson made the same point earlier this week in his endorsement of Obama:

If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America’s claim to be the last, best hope of Earth.

Which is somewhat more powerful and compelling than Carr’s own rather limp conclusion:

Economic suffering may overtake the last redoubts of race prejudice. And some Americans – in spite of themselves – may do something to make their friends cheer.