Photo from official Obama campaign Web site

Dear Senator Obama:

Yesterday I posted an open letter to your chief opponent, Senator Clinton, outlining the reasons why I could not in good conscience cast my vote for her in the primary election.  Today, I post a similar letter to you.

As I noted in my letter to Senator Clinton, should you be the Democratic Party’s nominee, I will indeed vote for you.  At the moment, however, that is not the question:  The question is why, among the Democratic candidates for the most powerful office on earth, I should cast my primary vote for you and not for one of your opponents.  I have concluded that, at the moment, I cannot.

You and I actually have met, although you won’t remember it.  It was some six or seven years ago, when you were still in the Illinois Statehouse, at a conference in the Midwest.  A long-time friend and colleague who had volunteered for your campaign pulled me aside and said, "There’s someone I want you to meet.  He’s a real up-and-comer in Illinois, and I really want you to meet him.  I really think this guy might be our first black president."

When he introduced us, I immediately thought, "He’s right."  One of the first things I noticed was that, like your opponent’s husband, you had that indefinable IT:  that utterly natural gift for politics that allowed you to work a room efficiently and effectively, while still making every single person in it feel like the only one in the room - and the only one on your radar - as you spoke to him or her.  I felt it even as I recognized it for what it was.  It’s charisma, yes, but it’s something more.

During the conference itself, I was impressed still further to hear you speak.  You made a couple of statements that, while not remotely radical, still evinced a willingness to take on certain powerful interests that were represented by those in attendance.  But the truly striking aspect of your presentation had nothing to do with what you said, but rather, with the audience’s reaction to it.  As you spoke in that deep, mellifluous voice (what an acquaintance calls a "radio-announcer’s voice," harking back to radio’s Golden Era), I watched a visible, audible wave ripple through and settle over the entire room.  Every heart - male and female - went pitty-pat; they hung on your every word.  Afterward, most couldn’t tell me what you had said; they were so taken with your oratory that the substance (or lack thereof) was utterly irrelevant to them.

And this concerns me deeply.  Because if the last eight years have shown us anything at all, they have shown us the clear virtues of substance.

Don’t get me wrong; I do not count myself in the camp that believes you to be all style and no substance.  I know there’s plenty of substance there.  I have no doubts whatsoever about the depth of your intelligence and your ability to master policy issues.  And I do think - particularly in the era of the 24-hour news cycle, driven almost wholly by media-created and -inflated sound bites - that charisma, oratorical skills, and an ability to inspire people have become essential for those who seek our highest office.  But what concerns me is that your campaign is driven largely by these skill sets, and not by a serious contemplation of our greatest policy challenges, nor a realistic view of how to solve them.

First, the analogy that will undoubtedly provoke shrieks of outrage:  In the years leading up to World War II, many of Germany’s shrewdest, most intelligent leaders and scholars noted a phenomenon that none had ever experienced before.  In attending speeches given by a previously-unknown ex-con named Adolf Hitler, they found themselves utterly transported by his oratorical gifts.  They left his speeches feeling inspired, able to accomplish anything.  But then, when someone asked what Hitler had actually said - not the rah-rah feel-good parts, but the actual substance - they couldn’t remember anything.  These were not stupid people; they were not naive or unworldly.  They were accustomed to separating the wheat from the chaff.  And they were truly shocked to discover that they were, at a visceral level, following blindly a man who delivered a steady diet of nothing but chaff.

Before anyone invokes Godwin’s Law, let me be clear:  I am in no way comparing you to Hitler.  The comparison that I am making is between the self-described reactions of those self-aware, cosmopolitan Germans of the 1930s and the decidely un-self-aware reactions of too many people who count themselves Obama acolytes.  It is disturbing to me that we teeter at the most dangerous precipice in our nation’s history, and I am told repeatedly by the supporters [see comments at link] of one of the two leading Democratic candidates that the substance "doesn’t matter" - that "what matters is that he’ll bring this country together."

Well, no.

We are long past the era when bipartisanship for its own sake can be counted a virtue, and paeans to some nebulous "unity" leave me cold.  The job you seek is much more difficult than that - and it should be.  The Founders were well aware of the dangers of factionalism, but they were equally aware of the dangers of the tyranny of the majority, and they put their faith in the virtues of competing interests.  We face a turning point in our nation’s history:  one that could herald our rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of eight years of criminal activity and moral obscenity, but one that could just as easily see the demise not only of our status as superpower but of the American experiment in its entirety.  As we face down a grindingly difficult list of tasks small and great to raise America from the pit into which she has been thrown by those whose interests and priorities run directly counter to mine and hundreds of millions of other Americans, appeals to unity and bipartisanship ring distinctly hollow.

I have also been gravely disappointed in some of the tactical choices you have made in your campaign.  Individually, no one of them is fatal; taken together, they seem to form a picture of a dangerous tendency to cherry-pick issues and frame them in a way that will be palatable to the mind-set of those on the other side of the aisle.

Take your comments on Social Security "reform":  Most reputable experts agree that they are wrong on the substance, and they seem designed to appeal directly to the Republican/conservative mindset.  But what is more troubling is the fact that you made them immediately after issuing your challenge to the media, announcing that you would be "aggressively" highlighting your differences with the Clinton campaign and with Senator Clinton’s record.  If that were the case, why pick Social Security "reform?"  Why pick a distinctly wonky issue that holds no immediate relevance for the vast majority of voters, rather than one that captures their attention and underscores truly fundamental differences between you?  Say, the AUMF for the Iraq war, or the passage of the misnamed U.S.A. Patriot Act?  I would have suggested Senator Clinton’s vote to declare Iran’s army a terrorist organization, but I understand why you might not want to bring that up, since you couldn’t be bothered to be present to cast your own vote.

And while we’re on the subject of the Iraq war, let’s address one issue head-on.  Yes, it’s true that the Clinton campaign has distorted some of your words on the matter.  But it’s also true that you have engaged in a bit of distortion yourself.  And let’s be clear:  It’s very easy to say, "I opposed the Iraq war from the start," when you did so from the safety of Illinois Statehouse.  But suppose you had been in the U.S. Senate at the time:  Would you really have stood with Russ Feingold and risk being labeled a traitor and a terrorist-lover?  Or would you have done as Senator Clinton did, and chosen the politically expedient route?  Your record of missing crucial votes, and failing to take a strong and principled stand on issues of constitutional enormity such as the first attempt at expanding FISA and granting sweeping immunity to telecoms, suggest to me that, had you been in Senator Clinton’s shoes in 2003, you might very well have voted exactly as she did.  Her vote was inexcusable, yes - but facile statements from someone not in anything approaching the same position at the time are a bit unconvincing.

I’m also troubled by your reference to Ronald Reagan as a catalyst for change, particularly coupled with your dismissal of Bill Clinton in the same context.  I understand your larger point:  Reagan sparked a conservative groundswell in American politics, giving us such [hollow, meaningless] phrases as "Reagan Revolution."  Clinton, on the other hand, gave us incremental change, without a sweeping, panoramic vista of a liberal political society. 

But such a distinction is fundamentally flawed and inherently unfair - and you know it. 

Reagan accomplished little on his own - his acolytes have turned his tenure into something it manifestly was not - and likewise accomplished little that was positive.  Clinton was hamstrung for virtually his entire term by a rabid Republican Congress and a Beltway and media establishment driven to see him fail - and, failing that, to force him to fail, by hook or by crook.  And yet, Bill Clinton, even after his recent missteps, remains a rock star.  I think most of America, at this point, would gladly give him a third term in office, were it possible to do so.

But you know all this.  So let’s be honest:  There was one reason, and one reason only, that you included him with Richard Nixon as an example of a president who did not "create change" - you did it as a slap at Hillary Clinton, because you were angry at her campaign’s questioning of your record.  It was petty.  It was childish.  And it was beneath you.

And that brings me to another aspect of your candidacy that disturbs me greatly.  Josh Marshall referred briefly to this the other day:  the notion among too many of your supporters - and, indeed, too many members of your campaign - seem to regard you as, in Josh’s words, "too precious a flower plant" to withstand the hurly-burly of democracy. 

And, yes, that’s what this is.  Democracy is messy, and often uncomfortable, and frequently even unpleasant, and anyone who is not prepared to deal head-on with those realities should not run for public office.  I don’t care how "inspirational" or "unifying" or, God forbid, "transcendent" a candidate is - I want to hear a full-throated airing of policy disagreements. 

In our party, we’ve acquiesced to this asinine narrative that any criticism of a fellow candidate is an "attack," and therefore beyond the pale. 

That’s crap.

Attacks on one another’s records - if presented honestly - are not only legitimate; they should be welcomed, indeed, encouraged by every voter.  Candidates need to underscore such policy differences so that we can winnow our options based on substantive consideration and make truly informed choices.  Criticism of one’s record or one’s policy views is part and parcel of our system, or at least it should be.  And if a candidate is not man or woman enough - and/or possesses a record or positions that are truly so shoddy - that s/he cannot withstand this basic scrutiny, then that candidate manifestly does not belong in elective politics.

This brings me to my final point:  Cut the talk of "transcendence."  I don’t want a transcendent candidate.  I want a candidate who is clear-eyed and focused on the dangerous challenges that face out nation.  And I want a candidate whose supporters back him or her precisely because they know exactly what that person’s positions are, and what that person will do as president - not because of some vague, amorphous sense that this person is somehow "above it all" and will magically return us to a Golden Era that never remotely existed. 

You’re a brilliant and talented person, with a great deal to offer your country.  Please get your feet back on the ground - and persuade your backers to do likewise - and give us real, concrete reasons to believe that you truly can take this nation where it needs to go.  And then voters like me, who have long dreamed of voting into office our first African American president, will pull that lever with your name on it not merely perfunctorily, but with enthusiasm and joy . . . and even hope.

Sincerely,

Lilith Devlin

[Ed. note:  Links to follow added.  Up next:  An open letter to John Edwards.]