Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 45 of
This Week’s Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since
March, 1997. It would be the issue of November 12.
Enjoy.
Barack Obama got halfway to a Clue this week by saying baby boomer Hillary Clinton can’t unite the country.
I say half a Clue because Obama was unable to articulate exactly what the problem is. Clinton was able to easily counter with all the good things about the 1960s, as though he were calling the 1960s the problem. Obama came a little closer to wisdom by then attacking the 1990s.
But the response to this is right out of 1984 — the year and not the book — "Where’s the Beef?"
Obama is, sad to say, lost without my book. My book? Well, when your subject heading of "political philosophy" approaches a gigabyte of space, I’d say there’s a book there.
The problem here isn’t the hippies, and it isn’t Clinton. It’s Nixon. Specifically the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, which the Clintons have been fighting since Nixon’s election, the struggle which (fair or not) defines their lives. From Hillary’s Alinsky thesis to Bill’s draft-dodging, from Hillary’s working with the Judiciary Committee during Watergate to Bill’s Third Way, they have built their lives creating an AntiThesis to the Nixon Thesis.
As with Eisenhower’s AntiThesis to the Roosevelt New Deal Thesis, the Clinton Third Way AntiThesis had a period of glory, called the 1990s, during which everything clicked. By moderating the Nixon Thesis, leaning against an opposition Congress, Bill Clinton achieved moderate policies which worked, both domestically and on the international stage. Then his Vice President was robbed much as Eisenhower’s had been — and it was the 1960 decision which is the real father of the 2000 Florida debacle, nothing else.
But, as with Obama’s own statements this week, this only gets you halfway to wisdom. Click below to to get the rest of the way there.
The second half of the journey begins when you understand the need for a New Thesis, and understand where that Thesis must come from, the myths and values which will define it for future generations.
So follow backward. The Nixon Thesis emerged from the myths and values of TV, and is still sustained by TV. The previous thesis, that of Franklin Roosevelt, emerged from the myths and values of radio and the movies. The one before that, that of Theodore Roosevelt, came along with the penny newspaper, the chains of Hearst and Pulitzer who were capable of creating wars out of whole cloth. And the one before that, the Lincoln Thesis? Books. Mass market books, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which brought the horrors of the South to the people of the North, and galvanized them into demanding action.
Is there a new medium today, one whose myths and values might define a new political Thesis? Yes. You’re soaking in it.
The Internet Thesis, on which I’ve doted here more than once, is based on the values which work in this medium. Transparency. Consensus. Openness. Connectivity. Standards. These are good values., positive values, values which make everyone a participant, and allow everyone to contribute.
These are also the values which work best in our business lives today, and the business of America, after all, is business. Open source is driven by these values. The Internet itself is defined by these values — if someone refuses to share they’re not an ISP. The wonders of WiFi are defined by these values.
There are also myths attached to these values. The early myths of the engineers, Texas Instruments and Intel. The later myths of the entrepreneurs, Microsoft and Apple and all the rest. The myths of the network’s creation — yes, thank you Al Gore. The myths of free standards — the World Wide Web, WiFi, and all the rest.
More important, these myths and values combine to give us a way to approach the problems which confront us today. The War Against Oil, the global fight to save the planet (well, let’s be honest, human life), the need for peace within and among nations, all can emerge organically through the use of this medium, based on these myths and values.
Hillary Clinton, being a creature of the old AntiThesis, can’t possibly define these values. She can only set us on a new course toward them. She can only give us rhetoric.
Barack Obama, being unattached to the old AntiThesis, can define these values, and embody these values, and govern according to those values.
It’s just as it was before, where Richard Nixon, a product of the old AntiThesis, set us rhetorically on a new course which it took Ronald Reagan to bring to glory.
So Barack Obama doesn’t have to win this year, although it might be better for the nation if he did. Because if he did win, it would be by embracing this message, by completing the circle, by moving from the question (why are we here) to the answer (where are we going).
Just as Ronald Reagan did.
So let Obama be Reagan. In 2020 he’ll be just 58, 12 years younger than Reagan was at his ascension.
