"Yes, We Can!"

Obama’s slogan: uplifting, resonating, slick

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/yes.htm
2/4/08

Back in 1967, the garbagemen (nobody called them sanitation engineers back then) of Memphis, Tennessee went on strike, primarily for safer working conditions. Several had met gruesome deaths in the past year or so, and it hadn’t escaped the notice of the nearly all-black workers that garbagemen in other areas who were lighter skinned had safer, more-up-to-date equipment, a much better safety record, and such things as pensions and medical coverage.

So they went on strike, not for more money, but for the simple human right to earn a living without getting killed by cheap, shoddy equipment furnished by cheap, shoddy employers. Someone among them came up with an electrifying slogan to put on their strike placards: “I Am a Man.” The phrase resonated, not just with black Americans, but with any person who had honor and a sense of fair play. It attracted the attention of Martin Luther King, Junior, and led eventually to his ill-fated trip to Memphis in the spring of 1968.

Few political slogans in these times of mass media are very effective, and most turn into jokes in short order. In 1968, Democrats delighted in sending visibly pregnant women to Nixon’s campaign rallies wearing “Nixon’s the One!” ribbons. Even the slogans that weren’t bad could get turned around. Goldwater ran on “In your heart, you know he’s right” and Democrats, in a wicked riposte that did more damage to Goldwater’s “warmonger” image than even the Daisy commercial, chanted, “In your heart, you know he might.”

Bill Clinton’s 1992 slogan, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” probably would have gone the way of hundreds of political slogans nobody can remember, but there was that Fleetwood Mac song, which they played loudly and raucously, at rallies everywhere in America. By the end of the campaign, Republicans (and, no doubt, Bill Clinton, who must have heard it 3,000 times) cringed at the thought of it.

It wasn’t the first time song and slogan went together (1936, “Happy Days are Here Again”) but it was the first in modern times to work well. Most campaign songs are impossibly lame, and sound like they were written by someone who couldn’t believe the twenties would ever end and that barbershop quartets were America’s greatest contribution to modern music.

There’s a video on You Tube that takes all these elements and transcends them.  Even if you don’t like Barack Obama, you owe it to yourself to watch this four-minute video. It’s a masterpiece of campaign theater.

“Yes We Can” is a perfect slogan for a time when Americans are utterly fed up with the defeatism and tired ideologies of the GOP. Americans are tired of hearing endless excuses for why they can’t get good medical care, or why jobs are so menial and pay so poorly. They’re tired of hearing that we’ll be at war forever with shadowy figures who hate America implacably because, in large measure, America has gone out of its way to be hateful in their part of the world. It evokes a sense that the problems can be solved, and it won’t be by shoveling ever vaster amounts of money to the military and the corporations, but by the American people themselves. People don’t want to hear that getting cleaner and more efficient cars and industry means that the American economic engine, that poor, wee, timorous shivering beastie, will curl up its little toes, squeak once, and die. They’re tired of Homeland Security, that oppressive Gulag-in-waiting with the chilling, unAmerican name, and its leader, who looks like the heavy from every bad movie about German POW camps. People are tired of hearing they need to sacrifice their freedom because someone might threaten the people who are taking away their freedom.

Does Barack Obama stand behind all the implied promises of that video? I don’t know, and until he’s president, chances are he doesn’t, either. But he understands where the political hunger of the voters lies, and has promised the 21st century equivalent of a chicken in every pot.

I’ve heard much about Obama since he shot to stardom at the 2004 convention. Some, like the smears from the right about how he’s secretly a extremist Moslem, are easy to dismiss. Similarly, so are the paeans comparing him variously to John, Bobby, or Martin. Other things can’t be dismissed so easily. He has the enthusiastic and whole-hearted support of many sophisticated political people who defied the might of the Clintons and whose credentials as patriots and progressives are beyond question. But then, I can’t dismiss the concerns of a journalist, shared in confidence, that the Obama he interviewed on several occasions, and who he had been predisposed to like, was, in the journalist’s eyes, disturbingly cold and calculating, a Michael Chertoff glower behind the sunny Bobby Kennedy grin. This is from a real journalist, and not a worthless blow-dried television moron.

So I watched the video in much the same way that I watch Barack Obama: with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. The video, like the candidate, is both appealing and slick. Can Barack the man possibly live up to the promises implied in the video? Will he even try?

It’s easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm listening to the man’s speeches. He has a wonderful cadence and a gift for flights of oratory rare in these days of mumbling Dixie resentment and twangy, idiotic sentence fragments from the colander-in-chief.

But the trick is to READ Obama’s speeches, away from the music and balloons and cheers, in a quiet room and in a mellow light.

Do they hold up?

They do.

It’s impossible to get the true measure of a man in the campaign. George W. was seen as a moderate who would unite Americans. FDR and JFK were both seen as amicable flyweights. Truman and Lincoln were seen as placeholders. Jefferson was thought to be potentially a great president because of his background, and was a disappointment. As often as not, the perception of the man running for office turns out to be 100% wrong. Sometimes that’s actually a good thing. In hindsight, we applaud the voters who sought only an easy, safe answer for having the courage and wisdom to elect Lincoln or FDR.

Nor is populism a bad thing. Indeed, a land “of the people, by the people, and for the people” should have a healthy stock of populists at hand. Even the corrupt ones, like Huey Long, end up doing more good than harm. And if you MUST have a corrupt bastard in office, better it be YOUR corrupt bastard instead of someone else’s. We’ve tried someone else’s bastard for the past seven years, and look where we are.

After being told for seven years, “No you can’t”, we have a man who has come along and says, “Yes, we Can!” And people are listening. They HEAR that!

Because he’s right. We can.

And we must.

 

Note:  One of my correspondents, who was among those who urged me to view the "Yes We Can!" video, had this to say after reading this piece:  "I wish you had given proper due to the author of that slogan  "Si Se Puede!", needed a translation for the evening news when Cesar Chavez and his workers chanted it down the dusty roads along the San Joacquin Valley. It created the UFW and made selective eating a moral endeavor."

Credit where it is due.  I'm happy to add that Sr. Chavez still inspires people to this day.