I'm Tired of Being Cool -- Understanding My Love Affair With Barack Obama

By Michael Bader, AlterNet. Posted March 6, 2008.

I love Barack Obama. I love to listen to him talk. His victory speeches after Iowa and South Carolina gave me chills. I haven't felt that way about a politician since I worked for Bobby Kennedy in 1968. I haven't felt that way about someone's oratory since hearing Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I found myself thinking: "If they try to steal his nomination at the convention, I'm flying to Denver to demonstrate." I haven't felt that way in decades either. I should have felt that way when they stole the election from Gore in 2000, but I didn't. And I don't even think Obama's positions are that great. He's weak on health care, panders on Israel, and usually sounds like the type of mainstream liberal that I hate. I don't care, though. He speaks to my heart and I feel inspired and moved by his emphasis on community, meaning, and responsibility.

But I'm aware of something else, too. I'm a bit embarrassed by loving Obama -- unless, of course, I couch my support in hard-nosed political calculations, e.g. he's better equipped to beat McCain, he can bring people into the political process and energize our movement, or he can create a political space where progressives can organize. But these are objective calculations and analyses about others and don't reflect my emotional identification with and response to Obama. These latter feelings make me uncomfortable. I feel like one of the herd. I think I'll be viewed as naïve. I worry that my progressive friends will see me as hero-worshiping and, for some reason, that seems immature and slightly neurotic. And all of this is in addition to being bombarded with media coverage frequently raising critiques of Obama as superficial and his followers so smitten they swoon like girls getting their first look at the Beatles.

I became curious about this embarrassment I felt. If one of my patients in psychotherapy evinced such discomfort, I would assume that it has some deeper, probably unconscious, source. What's the source of my discomfort adoring Barack Obama?

When I was young, my father used to make fun of our neighbors. Their crime was that they seemed to spend a lot of time together on the weekends. To my father -- and, consequently, to the rest of our family -- this was pretty ridiculous. Why would a family want to hang around together? My father certainly didn't; he was an alcoholic who was disconnected from his family. He was a man who lived in his head and never expressed longing or love for others. I grew up prone to feeling embarrassed about my own and others' needs for family intimacy. Uncomfortable with open-hearted expressions of love, I became clever and sarcastic and felt a private disdain for those who were too open about it. I became cynical.

It's easy to see here that my cynicism was a defense, one with which psychotherapists are very familiar. As a child, when one's desire or need for something is rejected, one develops the unconscious belief that he or she is not supposed to desire or need it. The reality of its absence is not only normal, but moral. It's not just that we normalize the emotional reality of our childhoods -- we make "what is" into "what's supposed to be." For example, in my case, it wasn't just that familial love and pleasure wasn't normal; it was that my incipient desire for it was wrong and ridiculous.

Because, of course, I didn't give up my desire altogether. Like everyone else, love was something that I wanted and needed. What happened was that my need and desire for it became dangerous. It violated an unconscious prohibition. It threatened me with being ridiculed or shamed. Safety -- psychic safety -- was to be found in cynicism.

The same dynamics were true when it came to hero-worship. It's normal for kids to want and need to idealize their parents. As we grow up, we never completely give up this need and, in fact, we often put our idealizations to good use in seeking out mentors, coaches, and teachers. In my case, I tried my damnedest to safely idealize my father but his detachment and rejection made that impossible. I grew up not only prone to be disappointed with male authorities but to feel embarrassed by my wish to admire one. It didn't seem cool. One shouldn't be taken with fame, right? It's a bit demeaning. Ultimately, I became cynical about that, too. If I was with a famous person I'd try to either ignore him or her or interact in a way that didn't reflect a shred of awe or admiration. It was important to seem cool.

Except cool in the present political context really means cynical. Cool means that we're not in love with Obama; we just think he's a strong candidate. Cool means that we're not like my childhood neighbors who love to connect with one another; we're just excited by the fact that Obama is bringing disenchanted voters back into the system on election day. Cool means that we don't ourselves relate to him as a rock star; we're just impressed that he can generate that type of enthusiasm in others. Masquerading behind a veneer of "objectivity," television commentators have their own version of cool; they discuss the "Obama phenomenon" and never admit that they, themselves, might be moved. They accept the frame of "form vs. content," "poetry vs. prose," "words over actions," and weigh in to announce that one or the other is winning in the presidential horserace. Listen sometime to George Stephanopolous's roundtable with burned-out talking heads like Cokie Roberts, George Will, and E.J. Dionne, and one is drenched with their cynicism. The subtext is always: "we're not a part of this phenomenon ... we're wry, amused, and objective analysts of it ... we've seen it all ... we're not ever that impressed with anyone ... " These folks are cool, that's for sure. And no one is cooler than David Brooks of the N.Y. Times who obviously fell in love with Obama initially but then felt compelled recently to write an article mocking the revival-tent antics of the Obamamaniacs.

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