A new era

If you've noticed an eerie connection between the end of election season and a precipitous loss of steam on "Obama for Jesus," you weren't the only one.

I confess that when I heard Sarah Palin's voice on the radio about a week ago I detected an odd but potent sense of nostalgia for those precious months of edge-of-your-seat political entertainment. The curtain truly closed on a unique era on November 4. Even I did not realize how stark of a disruption the election of Barack Obama would be to my blogging fodder and I have since roamed, with no luck, in aimless search for greener pastures.

The nation, I think, has settled in to the reality that Barack Obama will be president of the United States. As George Bush crafts his reflections on the last eight years and offers his unqualified support to the president-elect, a steady murmur seems to arise from a nation that can collectively appreciate the historical significance of a black family moving into the White House. With the histrionics of election-season resigned to cloudy memory, we enter a brief period of the political cycle that is perhaps the best of times for America: the peaceful transfer of power.

"Obama for Jesus" began back in September in response to two phenomena that I perceived worthy of commentary: the excessively enthusiastic support, that seemed to border on "worship," so many leftists gave to Obama and the stubborn, ignorant rejection of Obama by so many on the Christian right. The reality of "Obama" surely lay somewhere in the middle: he was not a messiah but he did represent more authentically Christian values than did his opponents. Now, of course, "Obama for Jesus" will have to enter a new era.

During the previous era, I tried to wrestle with the idea that when Jesus began his movement the Jews were largely hoping for a messiah in the mold of a Davidic king that would reinstate the power and glory of Israel. Jesus came instead as a "lamb" creating something of an "upside-down Kingdom," promoting grassroots, non-violent resistance of power rather than violent overthrow or seizure of power. Could it be that Obama's followers too would experience the confusion of a messiah that refused to seize political power? And was that in fact (against all our basic hopes) what we needed from Obama? Here in the A.D. 2000's there are, after all, a lot more followers of Christ than of Caesar. Son of God or not, Barack Obama was for many people their hope of restoring the greatness of America from the top down and, given his grassroots upstart, drawing the parallel with Jesus was irresistible.

Though loathe to admit it on the blog-o-sphere for purposes of satire, I view Obama as a normal man...well, an extraordinary, normal man. And on Tuesday this extraordinary, normal man will become our president for a four-year term. Here at my home-base in Oregon we have a modest claim of connection to the man who will enter the country's highest office: the connection, Oregon State University basketball coach Craig Robinson. Craig is the brother of Michelle (Robinson) Obama. I watched Robinson coach from about 20 rows behind the OSU bench on Thursday and his resemblance to Michelle is quite obvious. In interviews he admits that yeah it’s cool to have a brother-in-law that’s...well, how do you put it: a brother-in-law that’s (the president, the first black president, the restorer of hope to America, the epitome of cool, the Man) all of the above...but he’s here to coach basketball.

For an Obama supporter like myself, the proximity to Craig Robinson highlights my perception of Obama as a real, normal person, with a real family, grounded firmly in the historical realities of our country, whose rise to power I can see as a series of natural human steps, aided by the common sense of rational citizens like myself.
I cannot demonize him like I am sometimes tempted to do with people of great power: he is the brother-in-law of the basketball coach.

More than a normal person, Barack Obama is our normal person (the person of us that pulled our hair out for eight years while their normal person ran the country). George Bush was to me a stubborn moron who promoted and acted on an utterly fallible ideology of America’s relationship to the world. To others, however, he was their candidate who they knew as a state governor, whose rise to power they shepherded, in whose ideology they shared common understanding, and in whose actions they shared responsibility. There came a time in the course of Bush’s presidency when I washed my hands of the whole thing: I hadn’t voted for him, I had marched in protest of the war, it was not my mess to fix. One forgets though that the president is a person facing tremendous pressure and tremendously difficult decisions, where simple answers do not usually abound. It is a peculiar luxury to be the person who didn’t vote for an unpopular president.

The New Yorker recently published an article about Van Jones, a black man who works with inner-city youth (mostly African-Americans) promoting a self-sufficiency and environmental sustainability. The article quotes him speaking to a group of teenagers saying, “I love Barack Obama. I'd pay money just to shine the brother's shoes. But I'll tell you this...One man is not gonna save us. I don't care who that man is. He's not going to save us. And, in fact, if you want to be real about this-can y'all take it? I'm going to be real with y'all. Not only is Barack Obama not going to be able to save you-you are going to have to save Barack Obama."

My hope is that the first era of “Obama for Jesus” will stand as a humorous memorial to the unique perspectives on the left and right that characterized the dramatic and historic election season of 2008. In the new era I will (hopefully) comment on Obama's presidency from the perspective of someone with an ideological stake in its success, someone who can't wash his hands of it when things go wrong, and with eye towards what it might mean, not for Obama to save us, but for us to save him.

God bless America
(and everyone else too).