Obama is Not a Movement

Obamanism is the term coined by the media to describe the feverish excitement many Obama supporters are experiencing in this primary elections. Many are calling it a movement to reawaken the dormant electorate. I found this piece written by political scientist Benjamin Barber in his blog, which attempts to diffuse the misrepresentation.

Movements outlast candidates and candidacies. Their leaders generally don’t even run for office — think Martin Luther King, Hugo Chavez, Benjamin Spock, and Betty Friedan; or Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Candidates may become attached to or embody a cause, but the cause comes first and the candidate is never himself (herself) the cause, any more than working to elect the candidate is the movement. Movements do not start in a candidacy or end in an election.

When Senator Obama calls for your engagement in the political and civic process, do you really think he means only as long as it’s about voting for him? About voting at all? If there is a movement attached to his cause, beyond making him the nominee, it is a movement to call on citizens to reassume the responsibilities and obligations of citizenship. To understand that the quality of our democracy depends less on the quality of leadership than the quality of citizenship

http://blog.civworld.org/

Obama is not a movement. He is only a candidate trying to get elected.