Why Barack Obama is a Republican–and Why That’s Good for Democrats

America’s first black president, Barack Obama, may secretly be a tried and true Republican. And this could be excellent news for Democrats.

The American political landscape has been turned upside down in the past half century. The party that was depicted as blue in Nixon’s day is red. Fiscal conservatives are today’s democrats, and interventionists are now neo-conservative Republicans. While we’ve grown accustomed to the recent line drawn in the sand and have few doubts about where we stand today, we may have forgotten where we came from. Our cultural roots, as it were.

But Barack Obama hasn’t.

All the subtle shifts that were occuring at alarming speed were, in my opinion, cemented in one seminal moment: the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Calling in every possible political favor he was owed, Lyndon Johnson flipped the rules to the game on their head: while many southern democrats remained in the party, every seriously racist states’ rights nut-case fled the democratic party for safe harbor on the other side, and "the other side"–today’s modern Republicans–have had to cater to them and dance for them ever since.

So when you hear Sarah Palin abjure, "I’m a Federalist to the extent that I support states’ rights to make a decision," you may have gotten a  rare inside glimpse–because of the hasty coaching by her handlers–at the insane footwork republicans have to pull off to keep the meanest in their two camps happy (or, actually unhappy, which makes them happy). If she couldn’t keep up with it, it’s because they are more seriously divided than you could ever imagine in your wildest dreams. A republican ideology that could simultaneously save Africa  from the ravages of AIDS while also cynically turn its back on blacks and poor in New Orleans would be hard for any Alaskan mom to pitch.

While at Harvard, Barack Obama spent formative time with members of the Federalist Society, learning the rich history of that group and what they’ve stood for over the years. Yes, Republicans, of which I count myself (believe it or not). I suspect he gained a keen appreciation of federal power, both restrained as well as determined as shaped in the halls of civil debate and set into motion by conviction. Historically, Republicans had always favored a tempered but firm approach to many social conflicts in our history. Whether it manifested in Abraham Lincoln’s determined intent to crush the evils of slavery, or an earlier Daniel Webster–who (along with a Republican supreme court) fervently opposed the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee and other Indian nations as a result of states’ rights extremists and their push for the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in the name of Dahlonega’s gold rush–these greedy speculators, squatters, and thieves, mean as curs, who were traditional "democrats" and morally and ethically on the wrong side of every major issue in America, made it natural to want to become a republican.

(You can be sure that Andrew Jackson was no Republican but nearly a dictator as he violated the Supreme Court’s will as he ordered the systematic murder of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek, clearly a crime against humanity even by that day’s questionable standards.)

Obama has a sense of flow. He never looks better than when he is in motion. Look at the way he walks, his social intercourse, his subtle use of language, his ability to finesse circumstances in a way that makes stalemate disolve in front of him. He is certainly not a static, doltish corporate man like his predecessor who was saddled with the limitations of business-speak ideology (recall Bush’s "intelligence is a product" which, of course, in this economy, only a couple years after he said it, can’t be a comforting thing if you can’t afford "the product") that hasn’t even been fully formulated in the past fifty years and looks, already, as bad as my high school homecoming photos.  Bush’s neoconservatism is dated and dying, going the way of guys high heals and bell bottoms.

Obama, on the other hand, has obviously cracked a history book a time or two and knows why Daniel Webster would be so meticulous with stewardship of oratory discipline and its attendant words: because it’s the only way to know, with dead certainty, the difference between states’ rights and tribal nations’ rights, by knowing what a right isn’t. These are important distinctions to have in order to establish a reference in history to make sure we don’t fuck it all up, over and over again.

I’m sure Obama senses tectonic boundaries of history–because he has studied them and appreciates their creeping and instoppable, carving progress. His mixed race has heightened his sensitivity to perenial sacrifice. This is a black guy who knows just how slowly, yet inexorably, his personal opportunities were shaped by those before him (he has said so) and exactly what small things he can do to advance its progress now to improve tomorrow’s possibilities.

This man is yesteryear’s republican, a Lincolnaire republican, a considerable force, and democrats should be mighty thankful.