Monday, June 09, 2008
Obama the Apple Macbook Pro
I am often, notably by Frank, taken to task for my 'support' for Obama so I feel I ought to make myself clear. I don't support Obama, I have never in my life supported any politician and, in any case, support is pretty meaningless coming from a Brit. As I explained, perhaps too briefly, ideological passion is death in politics, as is hero-worship. The reason I hope Obama wins - a more passive posture than support - is that he opens up a space. The Republicans haven't been conservatives for 30 or 40 years; the Democrats have been lost in self-destruction and the machine and identity politics of the Clintons. I don't know whether Obama will be a good president or not but I am sure he would be better than the hapless McCain and certainly far better than the appalling 'Mark Antony' Clinton, both of whom are choking on rhetoric of their own devising. In McCain's case I'm not even sure it can be classed as rhetoric. They are also both untrustworthy - as Peggy Noonan pointed out, you can be sure McCain and Hillary would lie in office, you can't be sure Obama would. The bigger point for me is they have no style and style in the widest sense is important. Hillary is a Windows laptop - all sorts of uncoordinated functions - and Obama is an Apple - many functions which, somehow, seem to the same function. Hillary tailored her method to her audiences and pulled any trick that came into her head. One is constantly aware, while watching her, of the calibrations of her manner, as one is aware of the clunking workings of a Windows computer. Obama seems to be one manner, whatever the situation. His delivery varies, but it is, essentially, all of a piece. He is neither of the debauched right nor the machine left, he is something else, something unlike any politician I can remember - though Reagan and Thatcher come close. But he is of the left - in American terms at least - and that, cyclically, is how it must be. He opens a space that is thus far uninhabited. He may well be destroyed by the rabid neocon thugs. But I hope not and so does everybody I know.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Reagan, and I can see the link you find there with Obama - both relaxed and easy performers on the stump, even allowing for Ronnie's mangled syntax, but both with that ring-of-truth that seems, and probably is, utterly natural, and the better for it. I can never think of Mrs T without hearing that hectoring tone, and the not-for-turning soundbites.
ReplyDeleteMahlerman
I love the analogy, though I can't help but feel that Obama often gets praised by people who don't know what he's about; much like Apple Macs are often talked up by people who don't use them.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, to both of them, McCain is a weary old 1973 typewriter who can’t stop going on about his ribbons.
Speaking of computers and Obama... He visited the editors of our newspaper a couple of months ago and then graciously came through the newsroom shaking hands and having photos taken with anyone who asked. A supremely charming man. However, he did point out to our owner/publisher that he was appalled at how ancient our computers were. Damn straight, that. And guess what? When the movie "Marley and Me" (starring Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston) comes out, you'll get to see our newsroom. They didn't have to do anything to change that "look of the '90s," 'cause that's the look we have. Early '90s.....
ReplyDeleteIt's often the case that the sanest choice, politically, is for the least worst candidate. The political process, the funding required for serious campaigning, etc., seems to filter out the people one would trust or even half-trust in office. Of the rest, i think you have to just try to steer clear of the obvious sociopaths, and be reconciled to the inevitable corruption & incompetence of whoever wins, but knowing they're still the least worst of the lot.
ReplyDeletei don't actually know anything about politics, but i'm bored at work so here's my two cents.
The Mac metaphor works, but don't push it too far. Windows is a far greater technical achievement--because it works on all those different hardware configurations, and it really does power the planet's desktops. I am a computer scientist weaned on the Unix-like O/S that Mac O/S`is based on, and spent most of my life spitting at the evil empire, but ...
ReplyDeleteThat said the metaphor does work stylistically. I just associate Obama with substance in a way that I don't the others. That is why I find the metaphor treacherous.
Nice idea, though Steve Jobs has always maintained that Apple is not in the IT business. Apple sells dreams and life styles. Whereas a President has to be tough and guileful enough to deal with a lot of "rabid ... thugs" around the world.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it matters, though. Any society that taxes the poor fairly heavily and the rich lightly (and offers them innumerable loopholes too) is doomed to bitter enmity and dissent, I'd guess. Britain has this problem as well (thank you, Tony) and I expect quite a few other countries do. It's not good news: such divisions strip national leaders of legitimacy and respect.
We're actually not all that far apart, Bryan, except that we already know that Obama will lie with the best of them. Unless we are actually to believe that practically everyone he has hung with was "not the [fill in name here] I knew." I don't think anybody doubts that he did indeed tell the Canadian representative not to take his trade pronouncements seriously. Like Elbery, I vote for the least worst candidate (the only thing I tend to admire about politicians is the intestinal fortitude they must have to endure the sheer awfulness of campaigning). Noonan, like many other "true-blue conservatives," object to McCain because he has never been ideologically pure enough for them. But I think that any man who could turn down being freed from a prisoner-of-war camp - and one that made Abu Ghraib look like summer camp - because others had been there longer than he and should be released first ... well, I think he has the character needed to be president. I see no sign of character in Obama whatever. Only opportunism and ego, combining to make for some of the most grandiose pronouncements I have ever heard come out of a politician's mouth. Also, voting against the candidate of ignorant youth, Gramscian academics, and the idle rich is just the sort of thing I like to do.
ReplyDeleteI should have pointed out where I agree, namely, about the Republicans and conservatism. The Republicans were always either conservative in the worst sense of the word - stodgy and backward - or else to whatever extent it was politically expedient. The Democrats have simply been demagoguing identity politics and class resentment. Nobody has the balls to say that government ought not to be the first resort for solving any problem, but rather the last resort. Nobody is willing to acknowledge that everyone who is running for anything is seeking power. And nobody seems to realize that we ought be very stingy about giving power to anybody.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that Obama was the only candidate with a positive message looking towards the future, but that he dropped that message when he had to fight for the nomination rather than glide towards it. As I expect he will probably be the next President of the United States (or the next George McGovern), I hope he returns to that message and not the Carteresque malaise mongering that he fell into and which plays so well with the activist base.
ReplyDeleteMeant to add: WRT being a Macbook Pro, I believe the evidence thus far suggests he resembles a Macbook Air foreign policy-wise. Not necessarily a good thing, IMO (as a user of one).
ReplyDeleteFrank, your point about McCain's POW experience is well taken. That *is* a sign of integrity, character. To see just how unpleasant such camps were, see "Rescue Dawn," with Christian Bale. Very good, chilling movie about some American & North Vietnamese POWs in a Cambodian camp -- based on a memoir, not fiction.
ReplyDeleteStyle???? Open up a space??? This is why aesthetes should not be allowed to vote. All Obama has is style. Contrary to Chris, there is no substance there. There is no there there. There are plenty of policy proscriptions, a veritable laundry list of platitudes and statements of goodness.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that he is honest about is this notion that he transcends race. He is not black or white. He is a chameleon. He takes on the color of what is convenient to him at the time. When inner city radical activism was convenient to him he embraced Rev Wright. When the stage got bigger than inner city Chicago he shed that color for another.
Don't put too much faith in those policy prescriptions, for they will change with the winds. He truly is the candidate of change. He will change with the minutest shift of the political winds. He is everything and nothing. He truly is Rorschach man.
Bryan, Obama doesn't have to lie, because nothing he says has any meaning. It is just vapor. You can't pin it down, you can't parse it.
Besides, any politician who won't lie for the common good isn't worth the fiat money he's paid with. We wanted honesty in government once, and we elected Jimmy Carter, that pious, humorless toothache of a man and naive infant babe among the wolves of the world.
Don't give in to the seduction. You will hate yourself in the morning.
Hi Bryan,
ReplyDeleteI like what Randy says above, with comparisons to McGovern and Carter. Obama is taking the nomination like they did. My fear is that he will get elected like Carter did, that there is enough bandwagon support for him.
Obama does not have the crisp vision of JFK. I don't get that he has a team of smarties energetic for truly positive change like JFK. What he has are Kennedys speaking for him in public events, shaping his campaign versus forming with nuts and bolts ideal aspects of his policy.
The space Obama opens up is thus far uninhabited, because it is a nebula in outer space. Because his campaign is more the bandwagon kind that elected Carter, it is feeding on the need of an electorate to project onto this nebulous liberalism the reason inevitable things will occur as they will occur. When troops start leaving Iraq, as they would under Bush, McCain, or Obama, we will all be able to say it is a good thing, because Obama did it, and not a Republican.
At this point in time, the most important part of Obama's bandwagon to fame, is the bandwagon to defame Bush. There is no "mandate" nor minds changing. We are all set. We know our lines. We have been practicing Bush bashing for years. All we have neurotically needed is someone to be our anti-Dublya.
Whether Obama would or would not make a good president is altogether immaterial to this. He is being propped up by a mass neurosis.
Yours,
Rus
As to Windoze working on "all those different hardware configurations", Gnu/Linux works on even more. I suspect Obama is more comparable to ubuntu than either Apple or M$.
ReplyDeleteSyle does matter, and Obama is a CLASS ACT!
Interesting post. Not quite sure I agree that "ideological passion is death in politics" though. Without ideology there is nothing no difference between the parties, which leads to an even more apathic electorate and a race to the centre (right) which in turn means that only a certain way of looking at things exists....not good in a democracy!!
ReplyDeletethe presidency should be abolished. it is an unnecessary part of the U.S. constitution.
ReplyDeleteWhy did Webb direct us to this soggy piece? Coming from Rustbelt UK I take a different view of BHO. Obama's candidacy fits in snugly with an American comedian's characterising of Hyde Park, Obama's Chicago patch - it goes like this:
ReplyDelete"Black and white, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, against the Poor."
ed, at last, commonsense, linux (and Ubuntu in particular) is the most elegant OS in existence,) if you are prepared to work at it, and it doesn't need seriously overpriced hardware to function, the only world class product coming out of the Apple stable is their 30 inch cinema display. While it is true that the automotive design worlds weapon of choice is Apple this is as much to do with form rather than function, playing with one in airport lounges is, it seems, the equivalent to cruising the high street in a 9ff Porsche T3. So Obama / Apple is a good choice, Ubuntu would be Winston Churchill.
ReplyDeleteBryan, as you pointed out, both Clinton and McCain appear more untrustworthy then Obama, but maybe more to the point, Obama brings back a glimmer of hope. Hope of what, one might ask. Which leads to the Q why do so many hate America? They don't, they hate that the American Dream held like a beacon on a dark night, promised for so long has been taken away. JFK, M-L King, "freedom" having been hijacked as justification for removing the same, yesterday's "commies" now today's "terrorists"; when tested America failed - failed to uphold the moral high ground, failed to uphold the values and principal on which such a great country was founded. She has been hijacked over the last 30 years by the few, failed to lead by good example, failed to honour agreements whether they be trade or just good faith. "American Interests" have become symbolic of what's good for America is bad for everyone else. Assassinations, torture, tyranny support. Maybe, just maybe, Obama can bring back the hope, bring back the dream America once gave of doing the right thing......
ReplyDelete