The Wake

Illustration by Anders Carlson

Homer Simpson once said, “There’s as right way to do things, a wrong way, and the Max Power way.” The Max Power way entails the wrong way, but faster and we are sitting in the middle of the quintessential Max Power election. The media is saying nothing repeatedly over an 8-hour news cycle. While this is partly due to a fascination with new technology, it is largely confusion about off-the-wall election year rhetoric. Huckabee would destroy the country with values while simultaneously loving us all to death with big, “liberal” Christian government. Ron Paul is concurrently too liberal for the GOP and a gun-toting Klansman. Hillary Clinton is totally unelectable, yet “100% of women will vote for her, hijacking the election, on a womanly, group thinking basis.”

Still, you can imagine my surprise when Barack Obama came out with favorable words for the late Ronald Reagan. Not only this, but by his own words wished to invoke a Reagan-esque quality in his electorate. Create “Obama Republicans,” and so forth. Does Obama have the rugged musk, strong chin, or impending senility to fill Reagan’s shoes? No, thank god, but he is taking the lead in an analogous revolution, the foot soldiers of which are deeply influenced by public discourse and popular culture. Young people appear to be willing to turn out for Obama, as they were for Reagan decades ago. Obama is 14 years younger than Hillary Clinton and this disparity speaks volumes, as it is a quantum leap in generational experience. This may be the beginning of the end for baby boomers as the ruling generation. Obama is a new breed of candidate who’s power is derived from his oratory ability, intelligence and outsider status, rather than his voting record.

Perception is everything, of course. Weaknesses became strengths in Reagan’s GOP, by which I mean fiscal responsibility and national defense. Obama has played his cards in a way that diverts flak for drugs, senate voting, and “being black and a secret Muslim.” He is already assuming properties of our wonderful Teflon President. It’s brilliant and no doubt calculated, but is it sustainable?

How can Obama capture the “TOTALLY AWESOME, GUYZ!” response from twentysomethings? Obama needs to attract young people by giving them something of absurdist substance. To make apathetic voters vote, you must become more than just a man. You must become a ridiculous internet fad.

If we look at precedent there are but a few who have reached these rarefied heights: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Jesus Christ, to name a few. Of more recent figures, Reagan is enshrined while Nixon and Carter are ridiculed. In Geore Bush’s case, Godwin’s Law is often invoked. I guess any publicity is good publicity, even if you’re being compared to Hitler (at least you’re not “unremembered”, right?). In the middle is a seething morass of Presidents and historical figures with no accepted perception. No one makes fun of Woodrow Wilson or Calvin Coolidge, since there’s no machine to rage against.

Obama’s support is mainstream and ubiquitous on campus, but to edify that, the campaign will have to sell its dignity down the river and give in to internet kitsch. Ron Paul’s power, the 5% “rEVOLution”, is derived from the political awakening of a sizable group of libertarians and Obama’s new coalition will have to do something similar.

Alas, politics is a wishy-washy, hideous “science” of subjective opinion-forming, and the internet has amplified that. Memes are born, and dead in a matter of hours. Romney’s infamous whispered prompt rests heavily on my soul and will until something new pushes it aside. Give it about 15 hours. Attacks are vague, ill-informed, plastered on Digg and Reddit and quickly forgotten.

Mike Huckabee, so far, is the only candidate to be endorsed by a washed-up, played-out internet meme - Chuck Norris. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t let this fact cloud his message enough and people genuinely freaked out in a reactionary sense. Obama has enormous throngs of people our age willing to help the campaign. If college kids can define Obama in the same over-macho, ridiculously-fawning terms applied to Chuck Norris and every modern GOP candidate, the Republicans will have nothing. Ironically, moderation in discourse is an enormous Democratic weakness. The GOP deals exclusively in absolutes. Everything lies on a polar spectrum from terrible to amazing, or “Jimmy Carter” to “Ronald Reagan.” This corresponds to the echo chamber effect which political blogs produce. When content can be filtered easily and sources are hard to tack down, competing groups are like ships passing in the night.

Democrats need not define themselves as the yin to Republican yang. To run an effective party you need group thinking and memo repeating, which is building on the left. It’s cynical to desire a homogeneous party line or perception, but the Democrats constitute an enormous coalition of viewpoints. Reagan founded the current Republican party similarly. He realized that in order to regain power and move away from the party of Nixon, there would have to be substantial electioneering. Will Obama supporters take on the rosy-colored glasses like the “foot soldiers in the Reagan Revolution?” Obviously, it remains to be seen. We just need to redefine “foot soldier,” and plaster it on an image of a cat with a robe and wizard hat.