WASHINGTON — Tom Wolfe, the eminent novelist and sociologist,
has a theory that explains what the Democrats are doing to
themselves and on November 4 will do to the country. What they are
doing is bringing to the presidency in time of war and financial
crisis, a total novice. That would be Senator Barack H. Obama. Oh
yes, and his running mate is Senator Joe Biden, a total
airhead.
Recently, in stentorian solemnity, this airhead declared to a
bemused audience of Democrats that at the time of the 1929 stock
market crash the president of the United States was “Franklin
Roosevelt,” who addressed the financial peril straight away by
getting “on the television.” This is the same clown who we are told
tapped a reporter on the chest, saying “you need to work on your
pecs.” I assume the reporter was male. Though the Democrats insist
Governor Sarah Palin is a boob, she has yet to equal Senator
Biden’s buffoonery.
At any rate, of the two candidates on the Democratic ticket,
airhead Biden is the most politically experienced. His presidential
running mate attained public office only 11 years ago, after being
elected to the Illinois senate. There his achievements were
exiguous. Possibly it is churlish of me to repeat what careful
readers already know about state senator Obama, but here are the
essentials. In Springfield, Senator Obama voted straight Chicago
machine and he voted “present” 130 times. He took no chances and
left no mark. He was not the candidate that he claims to be today,
the champion of “reform” and “change.” Though we now know the
Prophet Obama as a ceaseless moral ham, he has since his days as an
Ivy Leaguer no unique civic, intellectual, or moral achievements to
his credit other than two best-sellers, a recent political
potboiler and an autobiography that abounds with self-centered
indignant passages that his campaign hopes will rarely catch the
public eye.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Democrats’
presidential candidate never became a national figure until 2005,
when he became a United States senator. Moreover, in the United
States Senate he has been no more significant than he was in the
Illinois senate, possibly because he is not a particularly strong
personality. Or it could be that he did not have time for the U.S.
Senate. Within weeks of his arrival there his aides were in Iowa
testing the waters for a presidential campaign. He has been running
for the presidency for most of the past three years.
Comparing his political experience to that of the Republican
candidates, Senator John McCain and Governor Palin, Senator Obama’s
experience most closely approximates that of Governor Palin, whom
the media adjudges unprepared to be president. Neither is
comparable to Senator McCain’s experience. Yet Governor Palin’s
political career began with a city council seat in 1992. She was
elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996. That would be one year
before Senator Obama entered the Illinois senate. All told, the
Republican vice-presidential candidate has served government in an
executive capacity for eight years, two as governor. The Democratic
presidential candidate has never held an executive office. Still,
the Democrats disdain Palin and exalt the novice Obama.
Here is where Tom Wolfe comes in. In his most recent novel, I am
Charlotte Simmons, and elsewhere, Wolfe has propounded his theory
of “Championism,” to wit: people suffering the “real emotions” of
“exultation” or “depression” over the fate of those they deem their
champions. At its most absurd, Championism takes hold of sports
fans who identify passionately with athletes they hardly know and
— truth be told — would probably not want to know. Wolfe mentions
in particular professional athletes, say New York Yankees, who
might not even live in New York. The fans attribute all manner of
diableries to their team’s opponents and stupendous virtues to
their own stars.
Wolfe believes that it is perfectly normal for people to take
sides on an issue even when they know very little about the issue
and have absolutely no involvement in it. On the matter of
politics, both Democrats and Republicans usually have years
invested in hollering for their party. Some have sent in financial
contributions. Some have sported their party’s buttons and bumper
stickers. Thus the political supporters’ emotions run even higher
than those of sports fans. Nonetheless, their emotions might be
equally absurd. Time and again political messiahs have been exposed
to be frauds and a danger to the commonweal.
In the case of the Prophet Obama, it is apparent that he has
almost no experience governing anything. Are Democrats going to
vote for such a novice in time of war and financial crisis? If they
do and he spends the next few years learning on the job, the
Democratic Party could end up in the wilderness for a long
time.
