Barack Obama And The Lost Art Of Broad Empathy

How did Barack Obama manage to win over “traditional values” voters? Or, at least, enough of them to carry states like Indiana?

A few theories, not mutually exclusive:

• Obama was incredibly charismatic, which made people predisposed to liking him, sight unseen. Even people with, let’s say, strong unconscious bias against black people identified him as “one of the good ones.” This is what Joe Biden alluded to so clumsily in 2008, when he told the New York Observer, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man.”

• Obama was right from the outset, where most Democrats and all Republicans were wrong, on the central issue of the day: The war in Iraq was stupid.

• Obama was obviously more culturally progressive than just about anyone in Republican politics (cf. abortion) but did not front-run public opinion on most cultural issues, particularly pertaining to race, sexuality, and the nuclear family.

This is what made the Jeremiah Wright controversy such a threat to his political viability, and why he delivered a famous speech on race at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia in March 2008. But it’s also why he had to get dragged (or acted like he had to get dragged) into supporting same-sex marriage. He ran for president, and for much of his re-election campaign, as an opponent of same-sex marriage.

He invited Rick Warren, an avowed opponent of LGBT equality, to deliver the opening prayer at his first inauguration.

This was vexing to those of us who already understood “marriage is between one man and one woman” as an assertion right-wingers coined to draw mainstream support for discrimination against gay and lesbian couples.

Obama said it, too! How could he do that?! And how could it not run afoul of gay and lesbian voters, to say nothing of LGBT advocacy groups?

The answer, I think, is: That’s not all he said.

Here’s a representative comment, offered as an answer to a question from Jake Tapper. “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I also think that same-sex partners should be able to visit each other in hospitals, they should be able to transfer property, they should be able to get the same federal rights and benefits that are conferred onto married couples. And so, you know, as president, my job is to make sure that the federal government is not discriminating and that we maintain the federal government’s historic role in not meddling with what states are doing when it comes to marriage law. That’s what I’ll do as president.”

Or, here, just watch:

Charismatic as Obama was, though, I recall thinking this was all terribly inauthentic. (Turns out I was right.) I did not believe, even as an impressionable young person, that Obama sincerely opposed same-sex marriage. Perception is subjective, but he did not seem to be giving voice to his conscience. He seemed rather to be sheltering on the safe side of public opinion. This was frustrating—even to me, as a heterosexual person whose dignity wasn’t being treated as a political chit. But in a weird way, it was also reassuring: Better someone who’ll let the wind carry him than a regressive ideologue who’ll stand his ground. And maybe better someone whose heart is in the right place—who cares about all people—but who’ll fake traditionalism as a hedge against losing an election to someone who’d set back progress on all fronts.

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This is all relevant in today’s discourse, as Democrats find themselves whipsawed between public demands for “authentic” politicians, and public opinion on certain cultural issues, where progressive Americans and activists are well to the left of median.

Many of them experience cognitive dissonance, and, thus, appear inauthentic, when discourse alights on issues like race preferences, or language inclusivity, or (in edge cases) trans rights. Wherever their hearts lie, most of them can’t land the politics.

The latter is probably GOP’s preferred wedge issue. If 18 years ago, Republicans shrieked “one man, one woman” to place Democrats in a bind, today they shout “girl’s sports!” They say a variety of other, nastier things, too. But youth sports is the issue they cooked up in a lab to wrong foot Democrats. When they treat trans people as mentally ill or inherently violent, their cruelty is evident; but when they say “boys shouldn’t be allowed to play on girl’s sports teams,” they at least appear—in text if not intent—to be standing up for one set of children over another, on the basis of fairness.

In truth, they don’t care about children’s sports, or women’s sports, or even the main, professional, male-dominated sports, unless they’re useful for tribal recruitment. They care about political cudgels. Their views on NFL football and NBA basketball bounce around depending upon whether star players are obedient or free-thinking, or whether owners are willing to discipline players who speak out of turn. Athletic excellence is beside the point.