OBAMA-NATION?

Can the most exciting Presidential candidate in decades survive the name game and the great American gut check?

What’s in a name? It’s a question soon to be on every American’s mind. If Senator Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee for President, the Republican machine (and a fair number of Dixiecrats) will make sure “the liberal media” pumps their concern into the collective consciousness like Bovine Growth Hormone into a dairy cow’s ass.

The issue – that "this glorious WASP nation" of ours could potentially elect Barack Obama as their Commander in Chief. His name, you’ll notice if you say it aloud, is out of sorts with the warm, white bread sounds of pronouncing John Adams, Zack Taylor, Grover Cleveland, or the rest of the previous forty-three men who’ve held the position (save perhaps for Rutherford Hayes, who wasn’t much of a President but could have been an top-selling soul singer had he a better manager).

Barack Obama is, paradoxically, the dream candidate for both parties. He represents the best in Democratic ideals and the worst in Republican xenophobia. Most Democrats (the long-stigmatized party of dreamers) embrace Obama’s ideas, common sense, and a hope for the future expressed with his trademark charm and charisma. But a man whose surname rhymes with Osama, with Hussein his middle name, is the kind of Democratic candidate that makes Young Republicans stain their sheets. For the Right-Wing slander jocks, it could hardly be easier. Type the word “Obama” in Microsoft Word and let spell check make the connection for you. The man’s very name is synonymous with the “War on Terror, ” though I’ll argue that most Americans’ objections to it will have less to do with the heretofore short-lived “War on Terror” than this country’s congenital War on Color.

If Obama’s “Christian name” were George W. Bush, George W. Carver, Alan Keyes, or even Montel Williams, the name game would be a helluva lot tougher to play. But the name Barack Obama is what it is. And in a society where racism is still quietly accepted while outwardly frowned upon, we will not judge a man by the color of his skin or by the content of his character. Instead, we’ll judge the name his mother gave him, and that oughta be close enough to the way things used to be to keep this country’s top job comfortably pale faced for at least another decade or two.

In this so-called “change” election, Obama’s candidacy will inevitably force us to address the malignant tumor of racism that still festers below America’s lily-white skin. Other than a few unfortunate exchanges with Hillary Clinton in the past week, the Obama team has done an admirable job of de-emphasizing race in his campaign. This is the proper tack. After all, if he doesn’t make an issue of it, how can anyone else? The fact remains, if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, he will represent a change not only of policy but also of presence. The message to America (and, if he wins the election, the entire world) is that the country now is no longer the country of our forefathers. But not everybody will breathe a sigh of relief at hearing that message. Let’s talk turkey…America wants change, but maybe not that much change.

If the sound of “President Obama” makes you queasy, you can rest assured that there will be an old white guy on the Republican ticket awaiting your vote. The best part is that he’ll be talking the change-talk too, so you can pat your “progressive” self on the back even as you sell your country down the river. If you’re truly looking for change, you cannot find it in the Republican Party. Mitt Romney has the change capital of a wooden nickel and John McCain’s ideas are about as fresh as a Mercury dime. Both men certainly look more like the Presidents we’ve had in the past, and McCain has the name game advantage of sounding like he could have been elected in any era after the Draft Riots. But let’s say for the sake of argument that it ends up being Obama vs. Romney in the general. Will America really choose a man named Mitt over a man named Barack simply because Mitt sounds whiter? I wish I knew the answer, but only time will tell.

It’s hard to believe that a candidate with the talent and potential of Senator Obama could possibly be reduced to defending his name against a wave of pundits, pols, and proselytizers. But this is politics - a corrupt, immoral, and juvenile profession that most resembles the social structure of high school. Name-calling, arm-twisting, and bullying are rules rather than the exception. What is truly exceptional is that the name game hasn’t been played on a larger scale already.

My advice to the Obama campaign, castrate all attackers with the same dismissive tone you effectively used early on to combat the race question. Refuse to allow the name game a central role in this all-important Presidential election. Because if you choose to play, you only stand to lose.