Has Obama Lost His Audacity?

By Marc Giorgi 

This commentary is not meant to bash Barack Obama or demonize him for being a mainstream presidential candidate. What this is, rather, is one voter’s thought process as he tries to ponder who to cast his once-every-four-years vote for come November. I only hope to have a better understanding of this candidate, and never to vote for the lesser of two evils again.

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In 2004, at the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama titled his keynote address, The Audacity to Hope, after a phrase taken from a sermon by his good friend and pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  In this sermon, Rev. Wright stresses the audacity, the nerve, to continue to hope when living in a world of greed and famine, of apartheid and apathy; essentially a quiet hell.  Obama so loved this phrase that he titled his 2006 campaign-igniting book by the same phrase.  At the time, this was an inspiring idea and an inspiring man to rally around.

While George W. Bush was bullying the post-9/11 world with his bumbling speeches and clandestine crusade through the Middle East, I had The Audacity to Hope in my hands, and was yearning for a young, revolutionary leader.  Obama captivated me and much of the “progressive” American public with his fluid speeches and strong demeanor.  In those orations, he advocated the conference table rather than the bullet as the primary means of conducting foreign policy, for the unity between Americans to work out their differences, and to take back the “dream” that was once America.  And to top it off, he was multi-racial; the perfect symbol for the American populace.  He would be a stark physical difference from what the “leader of the free world” has always been, an old, white man.

All of these emotions that I experienced gradually diminished when I started to read between the lines.  I started to think about the change I wanted, the change I thought the world needed, and the change Barack Obama was representing; the change he seemed to be offering with his campaign. I was hoping for a complete revolution of the system that has produced wars, famine, genocide, racism, depression, and global warming, just to name a few.  To me, however, he was merely talking about a slight variation, a tweak to the system.  

Barack Obama’s “audacity to hope” is a campaign slogan with an all too familiar bottom line and far too much empty rhetoric.  He talks of America, both past and present, as if it were a beautiful beacon of participatory democracy that just needs a change in leadership, and the “dream” would be revived from its nightmare.

Mumia Abu-Jamal may have articulated this point best by stating in his column, The Outsider’s Road Within, “When Obama speaks (especially in his post-primary incarnation) one hears a profound nationalism.  He has spoken in the past of an American history that many of us know has never actually existed. It has forced him to denounce a man he once knew, admired and respected (here I speak, of course, of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright) for making whites uncomfortable by speaking ugly truths about American history at home and abroad.”  Truths that the “American dream”, for many U.S. citizens, was never something they could aspire for, and, in actuality, was built on the bones of Native Americans and the backs of African slaves, that the government does not spread democracies around the world, but supports dictatorships and perpetual wars, that the government does not bring hope to diverse regions of the world, but only despair and a sense of worthlessness.

All this leaves me to wonder, has Barack Obama lost his audacity somewhere on the campaign trail, or did he ever have it to begin with.  He now talks of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright as one who, “[presented] a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for.”

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Now, audacity means boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restrictions.  This, however, is not the Barack Obama I am seeing on the campaign trail. Nor is this the Obama I have seen perched in his Senate seat.  His speeches and actions scream status-quo, no matter how fluid the deliver is. 

Barack Obama has voted for the (slightly) revised Patriot Act, which is still a violation of his constituents’ constitutional rights.  What is worse is that since he was a civil rights lawyer, he knows that it is an infringement, and still voted for it.

Recently, he has voted for the FISA bill, which allows the government to wiretap international phone calls, including those that American citizens make, and gives telecommunication companies retroactive immunity; basically stripping the American people of their right to privacy and their right to pursue legal action against companies which broke the law.

He has consistently said he wants to end the misguided wars of the Bush regime, and yet he votes to fund them every time Bush asks for more taxpayer money to continue them indefinitely.  Along the same lines, he has never said that he would end the wars and bring the troops home.  Obama’s plan is a simple “redeployment” of the fight/occupation from being mainly an Iraqi one to an Afghani one.  And, maybe even Iran if they do not obey the empire.

He has said in order for there to be a successful, long-term peace between Palestine and Israel, it would have to be the result of some “soul-searching” on the Palestinian side.  This goes against his early understanding and sympathy for the Palestinians’ struggle and despair at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force and the powerful pro-Israel U.S. lobby, AIPAC.  He now stands firmly behind the long-standing U.S. government policy that Israel should use every means, especially the billions in aid and military weaponry the U.S. has provided them, necessary to “protect” itself.

In the “U.S.’s Backyard”, he has sided with Colombia, an extreme human rights abuser, when its military disregarded Ecuador’s sovereignty and lead a strike inside Ecuador’s jungle.  The strike killed some top leaders of the FARC-EP, a powerful people’s army which has been one side of a 40-year civil war with the Colombian government, along with four Mexican civilians.  He defended Colombia by stating that they have the right to defend themselves. 

The list goes on and on…

Could these stances on some prominent issues simply be Barack Obama saying the things he needs to in order to be elected, like so many of his supporters have said about their candidate?  Maybe, but I’m not buying it.  Perhaps he is not the guy his campaign managers have led the electorate to believe he is.  From this voter’s viewpoint, this is the exact reason Barack Obama has not followed up his early promise to take the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, up on his challenge of having numerous town hall debates before the three corporate network “debates” scheduled for the fall.  He appears scared of taking a dip in the poles when the public hears him echo John “Hundred Years War” McCain’s positions on the issues voters have been hoping for a genuine change from.