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January 12, 2008
Clinton v Obama: The Identity Tightrope
From the start of their campaigns, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been walking shaky political tightropes, high wire acts never before tried in modern presidential elections. Since New Hampshire, both are on the verge of a netless fall.
Clinton and Obama are what we might call “Identity-Transcending” candidates. That is, both owe their electoral credibility to the fact that they exist both in and out of a politically charged social identity. Hillary is an extremely competent politician and legislator; but what distinguishes her from other competent senators like Chris Dodd and Joe Biden is that her election, in and of itself, would do as much to advance gender equality as any well crafted policy initiative. Obama is an electrifying orator and imminently wise political visionary; however, if he were not African American whose election would be a dramatic repudiation of our racist past, he would “merely” be a rising star in the Democratic Party. He’d surely be on everybody’s short list for VP—but not a contender for the top spot.
But in the twenty-first century, identity is not enough. Taken alone, in fact, it’s the kiss of death. Presidential candidates like Hillary and Obama must simultaneously represent their identities and convincingly transcend them. Both must implicitly ask voters to keep identity in their peripheral vision because for both, it is a wholly legitimate rationale for their candidacies. At the same time, both must avoid being reduced to those identities: typecast as the woman or Black candidate. That’s the road to the political ghetto where Pat Schroeder and Jesse Jackson live.
This is the tightrope that Obama walked effortlessly—and Hillary wobbled across—until New Hampshire. From the start Obama spoke soaringly, and vaguely, about hope and yes “we” can, without ever specifying whose hopes were in play or who “we” referred to. Under the rules of poetic ambiguity he could speak both of and to African Americans, and everybody else as well, without contradiction. Hillary played a less artful game: stressing the transcendent side of her candidacy while leaving it up to (women) voters to remember the significance of her gender. In Iowa, most women just forgot. But in New Hampshire, Hillary inadvertently reminded them—with a little help from the press. The result was a vote inflected more by gender than race and Hillary won. Still, no harm done—at least until somebody feels the need to hit a few nails on their heads.
Unfortunately it looks like friends and observers of both camps are now flirting with the identity game. Claims that Obama’s loss in New Hampshire was masked by racism can only reduce him to the “Black candidate.” Even though, as John B. Judis shows, this is a misinterpretation.) Ditto for the willful misinterpretation of President Clinton’s remarks about the Obama “fairy tale”—his phrase for Obama’s antiwar position that Obama supporters have asserted was a characterization of their entire candidacy. Just as ham handedly, Hillary’s argument that the great white patron, Lyndon Johnson, was more responsible for the voting rights act than the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr. may inflame the defensive instincts of the Black community (surely not her intention) and thus reinforce the notion that Obama is the Black candidate, but it will also reinforce the idea that she is the gendered antithesis. That is, it helps make her the “feminist” candidate. For proof that this is a danger, just ask yourself when last heard Pat Buchanan defending women. But that’s exactly what he did on Hardball, arguing that the claim that Obama’s victory was a product of racism is an insult to women and Hillary’s hard work.
When it comes down to it, I believe that both Hillary and Obama are capable of beating any of the Republicans in the field today. By the same token, any one of them could easily beat the “feminist” candidate, or the “Black” candidate.
Posted by stevemack at January 12, 2008 02:04 PM
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