The Obama Factor: The Subconscious Resistance to Serial Politics.

Now I watched the Democratic Presidential debates, and have been most impressed by Hillary and her intellectual ability to cut through arguments based strictly on pathos. Although I cry at night knowing that Edwards’ mom worked in a mill, and that he is looking out for me with his $400 hair cuts, in the end, I have been affected by the “reality check” called for by Hillary. She gives facts. She gives specific examples of her ability to bring about change. She has illustrated that she is, in fact, the right man for the job in the critical analysis sense.

But have we learned nothing in the past 20 years? Let’s travel back to the Bush vs. Kerry debates in 2004. Remember little monkey Bush with his secret Karl Rove communication devise bulging through the back of his suit? Remember how Kerry dispatched him with a brutal barrage of logic and facts? Remember how in the end the country (not me or anyone I’m friends with) decided that Bush’s faith in his war would deliver us?

Well it has delivered us, perhaps finally in his last months in office, but not for the reasons that the thinking person may want to admit. Politics over the last 20 years has become a serial rerun. First there was Bush #1, then there was Clinton that then led to Bush #2 (and near apocalypse). Whether we know it or not, our support for Hillary will only lead to the impending doom of Jeb Bush, the dumber brother, inheriting the White House in 2016 to finish the job his big brother had started. While this logic is flawed it is subconscious and more powerful than any facts leading us to a leader who may, in fact, be able to take over on day one.

Let me put it another way; remember the first season of The A Team? You were ten years old. Mr. T would do that elbow/back-fist-to-the-chops-move before he’d grab the drug dealer and throw him through the fake-glass window? It was exciting for the first two seasons, but in the end there was a finite number of war wagons that could be manufactured with a blow torch and odds and ends before the whole thing became repetitive, and so we changed the channel.

The problem with Hillary isn’t with Hillary. It’s that we don’t have the stomach anymore for the old serials. People know that they want change, and that is right to some extent. I believe that this country may be so sick of what it’s become that we don’t need reminders of the past. Nostalgia is dead for us. The country doesn’t want another Rambo film. Our enemy’s isn’t Charlie anymore like in the 80’s serial action ejaculations (need I remind you of the Missing in Action trilogy with Chuck Norris?). We have lost faith in symmetry.

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