Delete comment from: Boston 1775
Very much appreciate your bringing my piece on Obama's Constitution into such a thoughtful discussion of Obama on Hamilton, Jefferson, and the economy, and of our hopes and expectations of the candidate. And despite the starkness of the contradiction that I discern in Obama's view of the Constitution, I can't help but agree: the very fact that we, and others, are getting into a position to assess and criticize a cogent view of history taken by a presidential candidate is something to be at the very least grateful for.
What continues to strike me is the degree to which Obama's view of history insists on being the most comfortable, even complacent, imaginable, a situation I find ironic -- possibly in the tragic sense - given the disequilibrating role his candidacy supposedly intends to have on business as usual. "What else can he do?" would be the natural question, one I can't answer; it's not that I expect anything more from hi, or any candidate; I suspect the strategy is to position his ascending to the presidency as nothing less than the culmination of the greatest story ever told. (Not a bad strategy either.)
But given that he, more than any other candidate, relies on repeatedly framing his ideas and aspirations in triumphal historical terms, invoking the great goosebump moments from Lexington and Concord on, and given that some of us agree with him that we ought to look at history when wrestling with current issues from race to the economy, I think his historical ideas cry out for interrogation, not in order to assess his particular political viability but because they're important in themselves.
Obama's remarks about Hamilton and Jefferson epitomize, as you note, the consensus view, which may never have been summed up more deftly than this: "But despite their differences, there was one thing that Jefferson and Hamilton agreed on: that economic growth depended upon the talent and ingenuity of the American people; that in order to harness that talent, opportunity had to remain open to all; and that through education in particular, every American could climb the ladder of social and economic mobility and achieve the American dream. That description does, I'm afraid, leave both him and us back in sixth grade -- a sixth grade, at that, without much teaching going on. It's fanciful, at least regarding Hamilton (you were kind enough to link to my long Boston Review piece on this very issue some months ago), whose legacy has been claimed lately by everybody from Secretary Paulson to Robert Rubin. But more impotantly, it's overdetermined, therefore useless to helping address or communicate economic issues. The trouble with consensus history isn't that it's always necessarily wrong but that the need to discern consensus overrides the need to confront conflicts that, if they're not irreducible, can't be reduced by pretending they don't exist.
Maybe there's a way for Obama to add nuance and realism -- toughness? -- to his rosy renditions without losing his audience, and maybe there isn't. But as historians, we have to realize that whatever Obama will really do about the economy, say, simply can't -- we have to hope! -- be found in the simplistic view of history he has been incessantly promoting.
Mar 30, 2008, 6:01:00 PM
Posted to Barack Obama and the Founders