“Dumb it Down” Barack

Late on the first Tuesday evening of June, I sat in the middle of my living room two feet away from my television with my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, tucking them into my chest. I leaned forward with the anticipation of a 5-year-old child, anxiously awaiting the theme song to their favorite cartoon. But, unlike the fictional characters with whom I expected to spend my Saturday morning television time with as a child, on the night of June 3, I waited patiently to see a real figure who, before this year, had yet to materialize into the realm of reality. I waited to hear the acceptance speech from the first African-American to win the presidential nomination of a major party.

While this history-making accomplishment was enough reason for any American to be glued to the television that night, most of my anticipation centered around an eagerness to listen to the first presidential candidate in my short voting tenure who is refreshingly articulate, exceptionally candid and unapologetically intelligent. As Obama concluded yet another eloquent oration to the resounding applause of thousands of supporters, my mind began to entertain a notion that had become increasingly prevalent as the Democratic primary began to fully develop and Obama’s bid for the party’s nomination became less of an ambitious senator’s aspiration and more of a reality.

Is Barack Obama too intellectual to win the presidency?

The first time that I began to accept this suggestion as a viable obstacle for Obama’s presidential campaign came after I heard Senator Obama address one of our country’s most socially dividing topics in the most directly honest and intellectual manner as any politician has addressed an issue since President John F. Kennedy’s speech on his religion. Responding to the criticism of his relationship with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his affiliation with Wright’s Chicago-based Trinity Baptist Church, Obama stated:

“…Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing and clapping and screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.”

– NPR.org, March 18, 2008

Instead of dancing around the often-sensitive issue of race in America, he confronted it squarely as a topic that deserves attention and demands discussion. Obama delivered this speech in an insightful and articulate manner instead of sacrificing the importance of his topic or the soundness of his reason for the sake of diluting his diction to society’s increasingly lower expectations of political speech. Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech intrigued me, yet I found myself more interested in the media’s response. While praising him for his candidness, media analysts began to question the intellectual level of his rhetoric, arguing that his speech may be far over the average listener’s head. Both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain have used the “too elite” argument in an attempt to alienate voters from Obama. Senator Clinton argued Obama was “out of touch” with average Americans. The McCain camp claimed Obama represents a “liberal, cultural elite,” and is out of step with real American values.

I am baffled by the success of this tactic of labeling the Democratic presidential nominee as an intellectual elite who is not in touch with the average American and who is not the type of person with whom you can relax and toss back a beer. Both Al Gore and John Kerry saw their intellectual advantage completely overshadowed by George W. Bush’s amicable “good-old-boy” appeal. I simply believed that after eight years of Bush’s increasingly gross incompetence and his perplexing inarticulacy that this strategy of “dumbing down” the presidency would simply crumble at its core.

Yet, I find myself marveling at the fact that this tactic may have some success against another Democratic presidential nominee. And, I am particularly intrigued by the seemingly ironic use of this argument against the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party. In its general usage, the term “elite” typically refers to a group of people who are in a socially superior part of society and by virtue of their position or education, possess power or influence. For a long period in the United States’ history, African-Americans were not privy to the social status or education that would garner them the label of “elite.” While African-Americans, as well as many other minorities can now more appropriately be associated with elitism, I believe the suggestion that Obama is any more elite than that of his opponents is an invalid implication.

Obama’s background more closely resembles the American dream than Clinton or McCain. He came from a modest background and through hard work and natural talent, graduated from two of the country’s most prestigious colleges (Columbia University and Harvard Law School) before finally working his way to the United States Senate. Given this, I am left with the inference that Obama is mostly categorized as “elite” by the media and his opponents based on the fact that he addresses the American people with a conspicuously high level of intelligence and consequently talks over voters’ heads. As a voter, I am insulted by the suggestion that a candidate who is not ashamed to flex his mental muscles when addressing me is equivalent to elitism. I am weary of candidates playing down their intelligence in order to make themselves appear as “common folk.” I applaud Obama for displaying his mental fortitude and challenging voters to dust the cobwebs off their brains as well.

Obama preaches a message of “change.” I truly hope that one of the changes that our society and the media makes in the months preceding the 2008 presidential election is a shift from equating scholarly political thought with elitism. I hope that we will begin to value a candidate’s display of their intellect as evidence that they possess a trait commensurate with the aptitude that is necessary to handle the demands of being the highest elected official in this country. And most of all, I hope that Obama does not “dumb down” a single word.