The illusion of change

Newsweek has an article about the possibility of change and gives one explanation for why senior citizens have been one of the last groups to buy into the whole Obama excitement.

Many voters did believe in Obama's message, enough to propel him into a dead heat with Clinton on Super Tuesday. People of all kinds, but especially the young and upwardly mobile and African-Americans, have thronged to rallies. Others, however, have been unmoved. Some, particularly older, white, women voters—the kind who turn out in large numbers in Democratic primaries—look at Obama and see someone who appears vaguely alien. They are less interested in ringing calls for change than specific promises to provide health care or child care. Some are just plain skeptical that Obama can deliver change.

They know that presidential candidates have been promising to change the nation's capital as long as they can remember. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower swept to power promising to clean up the mess created by Harry Truman. Eight years later, in his speech accepting the Democratic Party nomination, John F. Kennedy made essentially the same promise to transform Eisenhower's Washington. "Dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America," he said. "It's time for a change." Jimmy Carter promised to sweep Washington clean after Nixon-Ford; Ronald Reagan promised to fix things after Jimmy Carter … and so it has gone in almost every election cycle before and since.

Voters are almost invariably disappointed by candidates promising to straighten out the mess in Washington. Presidents come and go; lobbyists and special-interest groups, it seems, are forever. That doesn't mean, of course, that the presidency is somehow inconsequential or that change does not happen. It's just that the change rarely has much to do with campaign promises, and everything to do with unexpected events, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11.

That explains perhaps why the young are so eager to sign up for the whole Obama fantasy of change. They're too young and too ignorant of history to realize that change just doesn't happen no matter how attractive the politician arguing for change seems to be. And Obama is raising expectaions that are bound to be disappointed.

Running for president of the Harvard Law Review during a period of jousting over political correctness in the early '90s, he managed to convince members of every faction that he agreed with them, according to a 2007 New York Times profile. Such crowd-pleasing can unjustifiably raise expectations. If Obama is elected president of the United States in November, he will disappoint some of his more-ecstatic believers if he doesn't achieve world peace and end hunger in the first 100 days.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. I didn't buy it when Mitt Romney told us he would be able to clean up the mess in Washington any more than I buy Obama's telling us that we're the change we have been waiting for.