An Obama Hangover. Already?

That’s the question of the week. Ross, Matt, Peter, and Ezra weigh in. I’ll take Ezra’s closing thoughts as my jumping-off point:

Obama’s empathy is of a more cerebral variety — he understands your ideas, gets the theory behind your mistrust of government, is familiar with concerns about the breakdown of the American family, etc. This may end up serving him well, as the universe of “actual policymakers,” though small, is the universe of folks who pass your bills, and so a connection with them can’t hurt. And Obama’s rhetorical gifts — which are more aspirational and inspirational than they are empathetic — have certainly stood him in good stead thus far. So it may all be fine. But insofar as most Americans aren’t very policy oriented, that’s going to hurt, rather than help, with Obama’s trick.

There are reflections here of what Peggy Noonan has reported on President Bush: all the soaring rhetoric and sweeping intentions in the world can’t wipe away the nagging sensation that a fella’s not one of us, that he hasn’t experienced what we do daily and he never will. It’s this realization, I think, that kicks in what Peter identifies as “more or less inevitably […] a letdown.” Yes, it’s always a disappointment when we realize that the inertia and mass of The System is enough to grind down any new Administration in what seems like a matter of months. But that’s when a successful President sits down, looks us in the eye, and says Yes, folks, it’s always a disappointment when we realize…. But!– What’s the but? It’s all in the we. This is what made Reagan a conservative hero instead of a guy who couldn’t seal the deal on rolling back Big Government.

Yet to recall this dynamic is to remind us that the empathy deficit isn’t Obama’s alone. In fact, it’s well known that Hillary Clinton’s hoof-handed attempts at empathy are among the worst in Washington. And John McCain’s substitute for empathy is National Greatness Patriotism — a poor wholesale substitute, if you’ll let me put it this way, for the retail emotionalism that Americans think they want and want to think they’ve seen. Even the way in which McCain embodies his substitute for empathy makes for about as much disconnect as honor: America’s got more prisoners of mortgages than prisoners of war. It’s not so much that McCain’s honorable service is of no relevance to his ability to run, or even just lead, the country. It’s that his experience is of no relevance to empathy.

None of which is to say that McCain — or Clinton, for that matter — ‘doesn’t care’ about regular Americans. The point is broader. If Obama’s getting heat now for ‘mere inspiration’, those on the firing line have got to supply an answer to the question of whether he’s still better than the alternative. And I don’t mean in a normative sense, although that’s important, too. I mean can he get the votes. If empathy matters as much our talking heads seem to agree that it does, we’d expect to see Clinton and McCain suffer accordingly. Yet large numbers of Democrats insist on voting for Clinton, even as she spirals into caricature and brittleness. And Republicans have grown fully resigned to a McCain candidacy (despite Ron Paul’s relatively big showing in Pennsylvania).

The pattern in politics has been the use of empathy as the pledge that pulls a presidency through its apologies. We may now face a time when our emotional longings have encountered a realization that not just inspiration but empathy itself is useless if nothing much in government changes. You don’t need to be terribly policy-oriented to understand that policy is completely @#!$^*ed. That might cut against Obama, insofar as empathy steps in where inspirational tricks fall short, but the only level at which it may doom him, as far as I can tell, is the one where his opponents settle into a purely negative campaign mode. Obama does a very poor job of converting attacks on himself into attacks on America. This is one of his more redeeming qualities, precisely because it rejects the use of empathy as a crass political tool. But it also has led at least some of us to experience preemptive disappointment, one of our best cultural tools in an age teeming with the most unreliable, fleeting, impermanent and contingent of empathies.