Campaign Desk
David Brooks, Meme-Maker
Is Obama too slippery for his own good?
By Megan Garber Tue 5 Aug 2008 05:22 PMA few weeks ago, David Brooks tested his meme-making abilities with a column that portrayed Barack Obama as a conflicted soul: Dr. Barack and Mr. Obama. Dr. Barack is cerebral and thoughtful, Brooks wrote; Mr. Obama is calculating and, in every sense, political. The candidate himself is a tense combination of the two.
I predicted that Brooks’s formulation would stick, that the Obama-As-Yin-Yang meme would catch on to form a central framework for Obama’s personal narrative. I was wrong.
Brooks’s dichotomy, as a full-blown meme, hasn’t (yet) caught on. But, today, the columnist is back with a related, and also potentially meme-making, column, this one portraying Obama as a “sojourner,” a wanderer—and as someone, therefore, who is eternally and intrinsically removed from his surroundings. “Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better?” Brooks asks, anything but rhetorically, citing polls that show Obama almost tied with McCain, despite the relative unpopularity, this year, of the GOP.
His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they’re wary and uncertain.
And the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner. He opened his book “Dreams From My Father” with a quotation from Chronicles: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.”
There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.
Brooks goes on to build a case—not necessarily a compelling one, as Lester Feder argues today—for Obama’s peripatetic outsider-ness: his childhood spent in Hawaii and Indonesia. (“He absorbed things from those diverse places but was not fully of them.”) His bicoastal college career. His few years as a community organizer in Chicago (he “left before he could be truly effective”). His short time in the Illinois state legislature (“he was famously bored by the institution and used it as a stepping stone to higher things”).
There’s a refrain in this: Obama as “in, not of.” By habit and perhaps by nature, he has one foot in—and one foot out, Brooks suggests—of most every place he goes, and most everything he does. He is yin and yang in one, a study of opposites incarnate. There’s a suggestion, here, not just of a person who is constantly moving, but also of a person who—in, not of—can’t commit. And a person whose coolness can easily become calculation, whose political ambitions can easily trump passion.
He was in Trinity United Church of Christ, but not of it, not sharing the liberation theology that energized Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is in the United States Senate, but not of it. He has not had the time nor the inclination to throw himself into Senate mores, or really get to know more than a handful of his colleagues. His Democratic supporters there speak of him fondly, but vaguely.
And so it goes. He is a liberal, but not fully liberal. He has sometimes opposed the Chicago political establishment, but is also part of it. He spoke at a rally against the Iraq war, while distancing himself from many antiwar activists.
This would seem, all in all, a fairly round condemnation of the presumptive Democratic nominee: non-committal, calculating, other. While emotional engagement can be, of course, a liability for a candidate (see “Scream, Dean”), automaton-like coolness is perhaps even more of one. And there are few things worse for a politician to be, in Americans’ eyes, than calculating. While Brooks mentions the positive side of Obama’s in/out dichotomy—“his fantastic powers of observation,” “his skills as a writer and thinker,” and the fact “that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in Obama’s eyes”—the column’s overall taste is somewhat bitter. It paints a picture of someone defined by, in the largest sense, his otherness.
But Brooks’s column, particularly when combined with his previous attempt at meme-making, is revelatory—and not merely in what it says, but also in what it suggests. Brooks implies something of a void in the coverage of Obama’s campaign thus far: namely, the fact that the press has yet to determine the Official Obama Narrative. McCain has had his for years: the GOP’s nominee presumptive is, of course, the Maverick. Everything written or said about McCain, to a large extent, spins around that narrative axis—and will generally, whether in the service of confirmation or refutation, somehow relate to it. While that, of course, isn’t all to the good—the domination of the Maverick narrative in McCain’s coverage is reductive and in many ways misleading— it at least lends logic to the coverage of McCain’s campaign, establishing a kind of ideo-centric cosmology in which discrete narratives relate, fairly reliably, back to the Prime Mover of the McMaverick meme.
Obama—being both new on the scene and, as Brooks points out, simply harder to pin down—has no such narrative. He is, press-wise, an open book to McCain’s closed one, a collection of scattered ideas to McCain’s established brand. Which leads to something of a rhetorical free-for-all in Obama’s media coverage, a kind of grasping-at-straws on the part of the press as its members try, and generally fail, to establish a narrative that will not only stick, but also dissolve and disseminate into the most powerful meme-monger of all: Conventional Wisdom. So—though McCain gets his share of silly narratives (Computer neophyte! Grumpy!)—Obama gets the vast majority of campaign ’08’s let’s-just-call-them-fanciful portrayals. (He’s too skinny! He’s too girly! He’s too effete! He’s too arrogant! Et cetera.)
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Michael Powell
Wed 6 Aug 2008 10:36 AMRe: Meme. Please block. That has to be one of the more appalling words to have tumbled down the pseudo intellectual chutes in a long while.
And while I'm having at pseudo-intellectualism, I dig the world-weariness with which this site dissects campaign coverage; God what a terrible sad slog it is to pick apart these "narratives". But, in fact, Brooks' piece was an honorable and intriguing attempt not to establish a "meme" God forbid, but to tease apart a genuinely intriguing character. Could I suggest an antidote to meme weariness? Pick up Gary Will's Nixon Agonistes or Mailer on the 1960 convention and realize that attempting, in an intelligent way, to find narratives, frames of understanding, is part of what journalism does, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes not.
Or, I suppose, one could sigh and sink back into the barcalounger and meme one's way to a nap ...
Megan Garber
Wed 6 Aug 2008 12:56 PMThanks for writing, Michael. I'm with you: I hate the word "meme." Seriously. Hate it. It's pretentious in the worst way (yep, in the psuedo-intellectualism you mention), besides being just plain annoying. I literally cringe each time I use it.
But use it I continue to do--for the simple reason that I have yet to find a better alternative. I find "meme," its pseudo-snobbery notwithstanding, really useful when it comes to discussing the media: it isn't just a synonym for "narrative" (which, truth be told, I'm not too fond of, either)--or, as you suggest, "frames of understanding"; it's more than that. It implies, specifically, the viral nature of those frames, the tendency for particularly sticky ideas to spread from person to person--and from news outlet to news outlet. Given that so many Americans, these days, are getting their news from the Web--the biggest, though certainly not the only, incubator of viral ideas--I think it's particularly important to distinguish between a simple narrative (which could be anything, of any size, and from anyone) and a meme (which suggests something that has gained traction and, therefore, cultural influence).
I've looked for another term to use instead of the M-word, one that would capture the same idea of viral-spread without the snob factor--but, alas, haven't found one. If you (or any of our readers) know of any term that would work, please do pass it along. You'd spare me a lot of muffled groans.
In the meantime, though: "meme" is the only word that would work, as far as I'm concerned, in the context of Brooks's column (which, by the way, I also found both "honorable"--as I find all his columns--and "intriguing"--as I find most). I was questioning why, specifically, Brooks's formulation of Obama-As-Wanderer, as interesting and informative as it was, probably won't make the leap from narrative to meme--in the same way that his previous formulation (Dr. Barack/Mr. Obama), which I also found interesting and informative, didn't ultimately catch on as a widespread framework. Why don't they, I wonder? Is it because Obama is simply too complex of a figure to be framed by a single, unifying idea? Is it because we simply don't know enough about him yet to determine what that idea would be? Is it because we in the media just haven't yet formulated the narrative that, McMaverick-like, can neatly encapsulate the candidate? I'm not sure. But I think those are interesting questions. (And, of course, I'd love to hear your thoughts on them.) But I also think, to discuss those questions fairly, it's entirely appropriate to employ the M-word. Even though, you know, cringe.
rougy
Wed 6 Aug 2008 03:39 PMDavid Brooks is a third-rate writer and the consumate propagandist. Only fools and felons would give anything he says the weight of validity.
Circusboy
Fri 8 Aug 2008 10:05 PMDavid Brooks is the last person you would ever see at an Applebee's salad bar.
TDC
Fri 8 Aug 2008 10:55 PMDavid Brooks is the last person you would ever see at an Applebee's salad bar.
F-ing A man! That and he's talking about the LEADER!
George Kuhn
Sun 10 Aug 2008 09:03 AMI've concluded that David Brooks is just doing his job - to convince middle brows that it's alright to vote Republican - any Republican. They're not all like Bush, etc, etc.
Not long ago, he made a convincing case that education (and lack thereof) was the most important issue for the country. He finished up by saying John McCain nor any Republican could talk sensibly educational policy. The only meaningful debate was going on in the Democratic party—and that Barack O'bama's does talk about it in his policy paper and agree with his own research. But he still hucksters for the pubbies. Somewhat contradictory and tortured. It's what you get when you owe your career to the late William F. Buckley, and find yourself unable to vote Democratic whether you agree with them are not about the issue you yourself have deemed the most important. Not cool. We need cool now. More than ever.
Circusboy
Sun 10 Aug 2008 01:09 PMI meant no disrespect mentioning Brooks' Applebee's comment, TDC. Brooks is a wonderful gaffe machine, perhaps the best built ever. Too bad he's part of the MSM. Dismiss his views, he's sure to infiltrate your finely honed independent thought.
Josh Nossiter
Mon 11 Aug 2008 07:15 PM"But, in fact, Brooks' piece was an honorable and intriguing attempt not to establish a "meme" God forbid, but to tease apart a genuinely intriguing character."
Oh please. The last time Bushman Brooks committed an honorable act was when he cried for his mother's teat. Even then he was probably faking it. Brooks can't smear Obama for being black because the NYT wouldn't print him. Instead he tries to slime Obama for being a permanent outsider, a self-interested cold hearted alien taking advantage where he can without giving anything back, passing through and burnishing his career or lining his pockets while remaining inhumanly indifferent to any but his own interests. Brooks the schnook might as well have called him "cosmopolitan." Sound familiar? This is indeed a well-worn narrative propagated by hate mongers from time immemorial. Obama as wandering Jew is Brooks theme. Ludicrous, anti-semitic, ahistorical, ignorant, vicious, imbecilic, perhaps. Honorable, no.