‘A curious relationship’: Barack Obama, the 1960s and the election of 2008
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 45; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0031322x.2011.563143
ISSN1461-7331
Autores Tópico(s)Academic Freedom and Politics
ResumoABSTRACT Ward explores the diverse ways in which memories, understandings and misunderstandings of the 1960s were mobilized during the 2008 election cycle. At the time, Barack Obama's campaign and triumph were hailed by many as marking a series of a decisive breaks with the past, notably with the culture wars and fiercely ideological political partisanship unleashed in the late 1960s. Others suggested that Obama represented a new kind of candidate who somehow transcended, or might even heal, the racial divisions in the United States, in a fanciful vogue for ‘post-racialism’ that Ward argues was also connected to popular conceptions of the 1960s and, in particular, to a misreading of the social philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. While some commentators stressed rupture and discontinuity with the past in interpreting Obama's victory, others—friend and foe alike—were keen to stress continuities with the past, often explicitly with a 1960s routinely, if simplistically, parsed into ‘good’ early and ‘bad’ later periods. ThusWard considers Obama's connections to the civil rights and black power movements, as well as to other 1960s organizing traditions, charismatic leaders and conceptions of federal government, arguing that the decade continues to offer an important, if ambiguous touchstone in contemporary American politics and social memory. Keywords: 1960s2008 US presidential electionBarack Obamapost-racialismracethe Sixties Acknowledgement The author wishes to thank Sam Hitchmough at Canterbury Christchurch University, Richard Hayes and the Irish Association for American Studies, and Kevern Verney, Inderjeet Parmar, Mark Ledwidge and the AHRC-funded Research Network on the Presidency of Barack Obama for opportunities to test some of the ideas in this article. Notes 1Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Random House 2006), 29. 2Gerard DeGroot, The 60s Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade (London: Macmillan 2008), 1–2. 3The Editors, ‘The Sixties and the 2008 presidential election’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 49. 4Klaus Fischer, America in White, Black, and Gray: A History of the Stormy 1960s (New York: Continuum 2006), 18; Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press 2001), 1; Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2006), 4; Mark Hamilton Lytle, America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2006); David Chalmers, And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1991); Douglas T. Miller, On Our Own: Americans in the Sixties (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath 1996). For more on historians’ efforts to parse the 1960s in temporal and thematic terms, see Brian Ward, ‘Introduction’, in Brian Ward (ed.), The 1960s: A Documentary Reader (Malden, MA and Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell 2010), 1–8. 5Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 29. 6Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 30. 7Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 29. 8Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 28. 9Barack Obama, interviewed on the Charlie Rose Show, broadcast PBS, 19 October 2006, available on the Charlie Rose website at www.charlierose.com/view/interview/171 (viewed 12 January 2011). 10Martin Luther King, ‘I have a dream’, Washington, D.C., 28 August 1963, in James M. Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: HarperCollins 1986), 217–20 (219). 11Heather Tobias Booth, ‘Yes we can—when we organize: 1968, 2008 and beyond’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 50. See also Tom Hayden, The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama (Boulder, CO: Paradigm 2008). 12Wesley Hogan, ‘Quiet work at great risk: the grassroots legacy’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 62. See also Dick Flacks, ‘Barack Obama and the organizing tradition’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 60. 13Booth, ‘Yes we can—when we organize’. 14William Chafe, ‘Rekindling the dream of community’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 53. 15Marc Ambinder, ‘Race over?’, The Atlantic, January/February 2009, 65; Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (New York: Simon and Schuster 2010), 43. 16Barack Obama, interviewed on the Charlie Rose Show. 18Mark Anthony Neal, quoted in Margaret Talev, ‘Soul of the Obama campaign is in the soundtrack’, 31 October 2008, available on the McClatchy Newspapers website at www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/31/55103/soul-of-the-obama-campaign-is.html (viewed 13 January 2011). Talev's syndicated column appeared under slightly different titles in several newspapers, including the Charlotte Observer on 3 November 2008. 17Chart accompanying Paul Harris, ‘Why America will not turn to the left’, Observer, 9 November 2008, 21; Alter, The Promise, 43; Ambinder, ‘Race over?’, 62–5; Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, ‘US election: how groups voted in 2008’, available at www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_08.html (viewed 8 February 2011). 19Stevie Wonder, quoted in ‘Stevie Wonder: “Barack Obama like JFK and Martin Luther King”’, New Musical Express (online), 5 June 2008, available at www.nme.com/news/stevie-wonder/37126 (viewed 13 January 2011). 20Richard Stengel, ‘Democracy's big day’, Time, 21 January 2009, 4. 21John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office 1962), 1–3. 22For a transcript of Obama's speech, see ‘Barack Obama's inaugural address’, 20 January 2009, available on the New York Times website at www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html (viewed 13 January 2011). 23For a full transcript of the event, see ‘Sens. Obama and Kennedy deliver remarks at a campaign event’, 28 January 2008, available on the Washington Post website at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/28/AR2008012801941.html (viewed 13 January 2011). See also Jeff Zeleny, ‘Senator Edward Kennedy endorses Barack Obama’, New York Times (online), 8 February 2008, available at www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/world/americas/28iht-28campaign.4.9555779.html (viewed 8 February 2011). 24‘Sens. Obama and Kennedy deliver remarks at a campaign event’. 25Andy Sullivan, ‘Kennedys, roaring crowds give Obama rally '60s feel’, Reuters, 28 January 2008, available online at www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2848690220080129 (viewed 13 January 2011). 26Mark Penn memo, quoted in David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (London: Picador 2010), 481. 27Anthony Painter, Barack Obama: The Movement for Change (London: Arcadia 2008), 52, 11. 28Leonard Pitts, Jr, ‘Unity, hope must conquer division, hate’, Miami Herald, 2 November 2008. 30Robert B. Reich, quoted in George Packer, ‘The choice’, New Yorker, 28 January 2008, 28. 29Hayden, The Long Sixties, 176, 178. 31David R. Colburn, ‘An undeniable appeal to youth, but …’, Orlando Sentinel, 30 January 2008, A19. 32Jon Keller, quoted in Seth Gitell, ‘Is Obama like King?’, New York Sun, 8 January 2008. 33Steven Lawson, ‘The first—and last?—black president’, Boston Globe, 9 November 2008, K2. 34John Dittmer, ‘The story that Fannie Lou started’, Boston Globe, 9 November 2008, K3. 35Julian Bond, interviewed in Brevy Cannon, ‘“A divide has been erased”’, Southern Exposure: A Journal of Politics and Culture, vol. 36, no. 3–4, Winter 2008/9, 9–11 (10). 36Raphael Warnock, quoted in Robert Winnett, ‘Barack Obama victory hailed as the realisation of Martin Luther King's dream’, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2008. Remnick, The Bridge. 38Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance [1995] (New York: Three Rivers Press 2004), 134. 37Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 29. 39Jerry Kellman, quoted in David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (New York: Amistad/HarperCollins 2007), 73. 40Jerry Kellman, quoted in Byron York, ‘The organizer’, National Review, 30 June 2008. 41Obama, Dreams from My Father, 134–5. 42Hillary Clinton, quoted in Anne E. Kornblut and Perry Bacon, Jr, ‘Clinton's King comment “ill-advised,” Obama says’, Washington Post, 14 January 2008, A1. 43James Clyburn, quoted in Richard Wolffe, Renegade: The Making of a President (New York: Crown 2009), 162. 44Ta-Nahisi Coates, ‘Richard Cohen reciting Clinton talking points’, 29 January 2008, blog on The Atlantic website at www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2008/01/richard-cohen-reciting-clinton-talking-points/5529 (viewed 25 January 2011). 45Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both quoted in Packer, ‘The choice’. 46For a transcript of Obama's speech, see ‘Remarks for Senator Barack Obama: Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’, Fort Wayne, IN, 4 April 2008, available online at www.barackobama.com/2008/04/04/remarks_for_senator_barack_oba_4.php (viewed 17 January 2011). For more on Obama's relationship to King and Abraham Lincoln, see Brian Ward, ‘“I want my dream back, I want my country back”: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and the romance of post-racial fictions in the 2008 election’, in John Dittmer and Danielle McGuire (eds), Bending towards Justice (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press forthcoming). 47For a transcript of Obama's speech, see ‘Barack Obama's acceptance speech’, 28 August 2008, available on the New York Times website at www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/us/politics/28text-obama.html (viewed 17 January 2011). 49Calvin Trillin, Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme (New York: Random House 2008), 116. 48Nancy Gibbs, ‘The meaning of Obama's win: how he rewrote the book’, Time, 17 November 2008, 32–7 (32). 50‘And still we rise!’, Florida Courier, 7–13 November 2008, 1. 51‘From Dr. King to Barack Obama: one dream realized’, Time, 26 January 2009, 28–31. 52Carson Lange, ‘Martin we made it!’ (photograph), 4 November 2008 (copy in possession of author). 53Rev. Calvin Woods, quoted in Anton Antonowicz, ‘He did us all proud’, Daily Mirror, 21 January 2009, 6. 54Ralf Moran, quoted in Leonard Doyle, ‘The crowds: millions flood Washington to witness history’, Independent, 21 January 2009, 5. 57CBS/AP, ‘Post-racial USA? Not so fast’, CBS News, 15 November 2008, available at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/15/national/main4607062.shtml (viewed 17 January 2011). 55Sue Sturgis, ‘Report documents rise in U.S. hate groups’, Facing South: A New Voice for a Changing South (online), 18 March 2009, available at www.southernstudies.org/2009/03/report-documents-rise-in-us-hate-groups.html (viewed 17 January 2011). See also Mark Potok, ‘Racist attacks on Obama growing more heated’, Hatewatch (blog), 20 February 2008, available at www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/02/20 (viewed 17 January 2011). 56Michael Tuggle, quoted in Patrik Jonsson, ‘After Obama's win, white backlash festers in US’, Christian Science Monitor, 17 November 2008, 3. 58Martin Luther King, ‘The rising tide of racial consciousness’, 6 September 1960, in Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope, 145. 59King, ‘I have a dream’, 218. 60‘Remarks for Senator Barack Obama: Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’. 61See Peniel E. Joseph, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (New York: BasicCivitas 2010), 198. 62Washington Post Editors, ‘Clinton N.H. official warns Obama will be attacked on drug use’, 12 December 2007, blog on the Washington Post website at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2007/12/post-235.html (viewed 20 January 2011). 63John McCain, quoted in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House (London: Viking 2010), 302. 64Jim Rutenburg, ‘Obama campaign wages fight against conservative group's ads’, New York Times (online), 27 August 2008, available at www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/us/politics/28ayers.html (viewed 8 February 2011). See also Thomas J. Sugrue, ‘The end of the sixties: the meaning of the Obama victory’, Boston Globe, 9 November 2008, K2–3. 65Quoted in Jim Rutenberg, ‘Obama's personal ties are subject of program on Fox news channel’, New York Times, 7 October 2008, A21. 66Sarah Palin, 4 October 2008, quoted in ‘Palin hits Obama for “terrorist” connection’, CNN, 5 October 2008, available at http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/04/palin.obama/#cnnSTCVideo (viewed 20 January 2011). 67For more on the disinformation campaign against Obama, see Max Paul Friedman, ‘Simulacrobama: the mediated election of 2008’, Journal of American Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, 2009, 341–56 (351). See also the website Fight the Smears at www.fightthesmears.com (viewed 20 January 2011). 68Mark Steyn, ‘Post “post-racial candidate”’, National Review Online, 22 March 2008, available at www.nationalreview.com/articles/224002/post-post-racial-candidate/mark-steyn (viewed 25 January 2011). 69John Heilemann, ‘The color-coded campaign’, New York Magazine, 18 August 2008. See also Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers, The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press 2009). 70William Jelani Cobb, ‘Civil rights leaders aloof from Obama’, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 16 January 2008, quoted in Gwen Ifill, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama (New York: Doubleday 2009), 41. 71This is the central point of Joseph, Dark Days, Bright Nights. 72Barack Obama, ‘A more perfect union’, 18 March 2008, in Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise (New York: Three Rivers Press 2008), 215–32. 73Ronald Reagan, ‘A time for choosing’, televised nationwide address on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater, 27 October 1964, in Ronald Reagan, Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches (London: Hutchinson 1989), 25–36. 74Newt Gingrich, quoted in Maureen Dowd, ‘G.O.P.'s rising star pledges to right wrongs of left’, New York Times, 10 November 1994, A1. 75G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (New York: Penguin 2008), 100. For a judicious account of Johnson's domestic aims, achievements and failures, see John A. Andrew III, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 1998). 76David Jackson, ‘McCain sides with ban on affirmative action’, USA Today, 27 July 2008, available online at www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-27-mccain_N.htm (viewed 25 January 2011). 77Ward Connerly, quoted in Ifill, The Breakthrough, 49; Ward Connerly, ‘Senator Obama, you're no King’, National Review Online, 28 August 2008, available at www.nationalreview.com/articles/225461/senator-obama-youre-no-king/ward-connerly(viewed 25 January 2011). 78Shelby Steele, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited by Obama and Why He Can't Win (New York: Free Press 2008); Thomas Sowell, ‘The audacity of rhetoric’, Real Clear Politics (online), 25 March 2008, available at www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/post_25.html (viewed 20 January 2011). See also Shelby Steele, ‘Obama's post-racial promise’, Los Angeles Times, 5 November 2008. 79Steele, A Bound Man, 37. 80Sowell, ‘The audacity of rhetoric’. 81Jacqueline Jones, ‘For blacks, what won't change’, Boston Globe, 9 November 2008, K2–3. 84Gibbs, ‘The meaning of Obama's win: how he rewrote the book’, 34. 82Sugrue, ‘The end of the sixties’. 83Peter Beinart, ‘The new liberal order’, Time, 24 November 2008. 85Kevin Mattson, ‘Obama and the sixties’, The Sixties, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, 69. 86Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 25. 87‘The interview: person of the year Barack Obama’, Time, 29 December 2008, 52. 88Rush Limbaugh, quoted in Greg Lewis, ‘Rush on Obama admin.’, Media Matters for America (online), 8 January 2010, available at http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/2010/01/08 (viewed 24 January 2011). 89Paul Harris, ‘US midterms: Americans driven to the polls by fear in Halloween election’, Observer, 31 October 2010, 26. For a generally positive review of Obama's legislative record, see Alter, The Promise; and also Gary Younge, ‘Obama was never going to have the room to effect radical change’, Guardian, 25 October 2010, 31. For the right-wing funding of the Tea Party insurgency, see Jane Mayer, ‘Covert operations’, New Yorker, 30 August 2010; Frank Rich, ‘The billionaires bankrolling the Tea Party’, New York Times, 29 August 2010, WK8. 90Ari Berman, ‘Boot the blue dog Democrats’, New York Times, 24 October 2010, WK12. 91Paul Thornton, ‘Jim DeMint: the most undemocratic senator?’, Los Angeles Times (online), 28 September 2010, available at http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/09/jim-demint-the-most-undemocratic-senator.html (viewed 24 January 2011); Steven Guess, ‘Filibusters are strangling the Senate’, Guardian (online), 21 January 2010, available at www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/21/filibuster-senate (viewed 24 January 2011). 92John Boehner, quoted in the editorial ‘Election 2010’, New York Times, 3 November 2010, A26. 93Alter, The Promise, 42, 395–421, 431–4. 94Jonsson, ‘After Obama's win’; Chris Kromm, ‘The South and health reform’, Facing South: A New Voice for a Changing South (online), 22 March 2010, available at www.southernstudies.org/2010/03/the-south-and-health-reform.html (viewed 24 January 2011). 95Kromm, ‘The South and health reform’; Alter, The Promise, 433. 96See Sarah Netter, ‘Racism in Obama's America one year later’, ABC News, 27 January 2010, available at http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Obama/racism-obamas-america-year/story?id=9638178 (viewed 24 January 2011). 97Siddhartha Mahanta, ‘Glenn Beck's greatest racist hits’, Mother Jones (online), 26 August 2010, available at http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/08/beck-slavery-slavery-everywhere; The Glenn Beck Program, broadcast Premier Radio Networks, 1 October 2010, available at Media Matters for America (online) at http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010010026; Ben Adler, ‘The racial politics of Glenn Beck's march on Washington’, 26 August 2010, blog on the Newsweek website at www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/08/25/the-racial-politics-of-glenn-beck-s-march-on-washington.html (all viewed 24 January 2011).
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