Rousseau and Obama

“Barack Obama presented himself early in the 2008 campaign as the man-of-the-earth candidate; the politician able and eager to speak to — and listen to — all sides.” –Bill Bishop in “The Big Sort,” (Houghton Mifflin Co. 2011). The American electorate had not fallen for a candidate as they did for Barack Obama, in a long time.

Benjamin Storey, assistant professor of political science at Furman University, wrote recently about the psychic phenomena of “admiration,” the capacity to be awed and moved by human beings we find impressive. Prof. Storey believes admiration is central to political life. Journal of Politics Vol. 73, No. 3 July 2011 Pp. 735-747. [This is an “academic” article but useful].

However, to Rousseau there was no such thing as a rational admiration:  “Society always romanticizes something, and idolaters of wealth, enlightenment, or power are no more immune to this passion than are the fanatical followers of prophets.”

Howard Univ. professor Brian Gilmore discussed Barack Obama as the new “American Rousseau” at Thurgood Marshall School of Law in 2009 in the first year of his presidency. Prof. Gilmore’s presentation was called American Rousseau: Barack Obama and the Social Contract. I attended this speech.

The Social Contract, is complex, yet systematic; outlining how a government exists in such a way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens, keeping in mind the balance between the supreme authority of the state and the rights of individual citizens. It is a social compact that protects society against factions and gross differences in wealth and privilege among its members. I will not try to delve deeply into that document, but Gilmore discussed it in the context of the Barack Obama movement of 2008.

With the election about a year away, these professors caused me to think about questions involving the President in light of the life and philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778):

Q: Is Barack Obama the idol of a generation, a new American Rousseau?

Q:  Did the 2008 presidential election illustrate political “messianism” in the electorate?

[at this point, Rousseau would have us ask the question: In our social and political lives, it is not whether we have heroes, but what kind of heroes we have?]

Q:  What kind of hero is Barack Obama?

From reading about Rousseau, I think Barack Obama’s presidency was born out of a romantic nationalism in which the special appeal of charismatic leadership dominated over rational analysis. This can be called admiration over observation.

Republican democracy requires that people pay attention and participate in public affairs. The intention of this post about Barack Obama is to allege that the electorate was blinded by the celebrity and charisma of his candidacy, not willing to thoroughly analyze his prior experience and record. 

My thought is that “admiration” for Barack Obama as the first legitimate presidential candidate-of-color contributed greatly to campaign success. Additionally, the mantra of hope and change became almost messianic for those swept up in this movement.

Rousseau understood the power of admiration for good or for evil, in fact he paints the tension between the “natural and the civil state” as great, but also sad:

“Fanaticism, although sanguinary and cruel, is nevertheless a grand and strong passion which elevates the heart of man, makes him despise death, and gives him a prodigious energy that need only be better directed to produce the most sublime virtues.” Rousseau believed that power and strength are an essential quality of those who can arouse it in others.

As a romanticist, Rousseau’s influence was profound.

“In human terms [a Romantic] prefers the unique individual to the average person, the free creative genius to the prudent person of good sense, the particular community or nation to humanity at large. Mentally, the Romantics prefer feeling to thought, more specifically emotion to calculation; imagination to literal common sense, intuition to intellect.”(Quinton 1996). This definition reminds me of Barack Obama. 

In numerous areas (ex, Obamacare legislation, debt crisis), this president’s policies illustrate how a “romantic democracy” imbued with the ethos of power and strength, lacking transparency, can slowly evolve into a “totalitarian democracy” as the balance shifts toward the supreme authority of the state. The administration uses brute force, passive aggression, and even guilt to influence legislation, often imploring legislators to just “trust him,” and vote for a his version of a bill, despite timing or length of the legislation. I believe the president relies on the fact that because many “admire” him, few will oppose him.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s portrait hung above Karl Marx's writing desk, maybe because Rousseau said, “those not willing to free themselves from their attachments would be ‘forced to be free’.”

To answer some of the questions raised here, I would say that Barack Obama was given American Idol status without singing a note. The 2008 election was a short period of romantic democracy, even political messianism; Barack Obama was the kind of hero people were looking for: Democrat, desirable, dashing, different, diverse, detached, deft, dapper, defiant, dynamic, deep, and dedicated to hope and change. I am not sure if the love will last, however.

©Mark H. Pillsbury