The Banality of Hype

by Niranjan Ramakrishnan

March 7, 2008

Don't deride hope, says Senator Barack Obama to his critics. Not one good thing ever came about without it.

by Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Someone forgot to apprise Winston Churchill of this profoundity. Why else would the doddering old fool have said to his countrymen, "I can offer you nothing except blood, toil, tears, and sweat..." when he could have used some brilliant obamination, "For too long in Europe, we have been playing the politics of division -- German against Frenchman, Frenchman against Briton, Briton against Spaniard. It is time, uh, to bring these differences to an end. Yes! We! Can!"

They must have omitted to tell Gandhi too. "English and French histories are replete with references to men continuing their pursuit of the right irrespective of the amount of suffering involved", noted the Mahatma. "Why should we expect to write our history differently?"

"...movements are built... because of what is invested by the people"

Nor was Martin Luther King Jr. kept in the loop, evidently. Without benefit of Mr. Obama's wisdom, he would utter these rash words, "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle."

The disappointment of many in Barack Obama is not that he is calling on people's hopes, but that he is demeaning them by calling on little more. Imagine if he had used his political stardom to get a million people to surround the Capitol in protest when the Senate was sanctifying illegal wiretapping!

To paraphrase MLK's most famous line, great leaders are distinguished not by the pithiness of their phrases, but by their demands on their followers.

For movements are built not because some individual is elected, but because of what is invested by the people. As an example of a brilliant success in electoral terms but a complete washout in the matter of planting political roots, one need look no farther than Bill Clinton. The "Best Politician of His Generation" had his greatest putative achievement -- the balanced budget -- undone within a year of his leaving office.

Mahatma Gandhi was both a gentleman and a gentle man, but he had no illusions that anything worthwhile could be gained without fighting, or without enormous sacrifice. Great leaders bring people together, of course, but they do so in a larger cause, confronting injustice and struggling against it.

Mr. Obama says all the great movements of the past were built on the hopes of people. This is a truism which conveniently omits, nay, insults, the far more abiding truth -- that they were watered by the struggles and sacrifices of those same men and women.

If leadership were only a matter of extolling the virtues of getting along together, Mr. Obama, how would you tell a Martin Luther King from a Rodney King?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com. An earlier version of this article was earlier published on The Oregonian Online Opinion website.

Comments on this Article

Earl [Portland, OR. Mar 19, 2008 12:03:17 AM]
Obama is not perfect, but as Voltaire said, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Time to double-down on our bets, and go with hope. Our country is replete with action - it's running out our ears. The trouble is, it's not action based on hope, but instead, other, less wholesome drivers. Fear and greed got us into Iraq, where hope might have spared us that catastrophe. Hope is a healthy motivator, and a prerequisite to the positive action we seek. Without hope, people will retreat to their comfort zones, in the all-too-common belief that any other action is futile. Hope also has the advantage that it is a straightforward message, and it resonates. The modern attention span is feeble, and eyes would glaze over should Obama fill his speeches or debates with detailed concrete proposals. In 2016, there would still be jokes circulating over whatever Obama's equivalent to "Lockbox" would be. Further, railing against "hope" does not paint a would-be opponent in a positive light. Obama currently has two opponents to be concerned about right now - one within his party, and one waiting on-deck. Any gaffes could be fatal. For example, to address one of your points, in a perfect world, Obama could use his popularity to rally the people to protest the US government illegally spying on its own citizens. In the real world, such an activist approach would almost surely cost him the Presidency, and any other issues that Obama sought to work on from the Oval Office would be sacrificed. No, I think hope is the right message - we definitely need it, and the message is sticking, despite efforts to distract from it.