by Micah Tillman

Leadership is putting things to a vote. Jumping on the bandwagon. Doing what everyone else is.

Right?

After all the derision of Bush for his "cowboy diplomacy" and "unilateralism," what do people mean when they say that Barack Obama will make America a leader in the world again?

On Wednesday, the Jamaica Observer's editors took up the refrain in their piece, "With Obama, America Could Lead Once Again." They wrote:

The prosecution of an unjustified war with Iraq has continued to leave the international community with a bad taste in the mouth.
. . .
America now stands on the threshold of a new era when it can once again assume the moral leadership of the world . . . .

Are they saying that doing what the rest of the world already thinks is right, and what the rest of the world is already doing (namely, not invading or occupying Iraq) is moral leadership? When I was a kid we called that, "caving to peer pressure" or "going with the flow."

Or are they saying America can't morally lead the world unless "it" (whatever it is) follows the world's (whatever it is) moral opinions?

Contrast the general view of Obama as bringing leadership with Jeffrey Lord's "LBJ's List and the Conservative Challenge" from Tuesday. Responding to Obama's most bizarre claims yet, Lord wrote:

You mean all those LBJ Great Society programs didn't provide care for the sick, secure good jobs for the jobless and take care of the environment?

He lists many of the Great Society programs for which LBJ took credit, and says:

Is it any wonder that the ghost of LBJ is fuming? All of this and more, oh so much more, and suddenly here comes this Obama guy insisting that only by electing him can America "begin" to "provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless" and cite the Obama-era as the time "our planet began to heal..."
Begin? What was all of this LBJ stuff costing Americans into the trillions? Democrats as skin-flint right-wingers?

And after citing examples of the "failure of LBJ-style liberalism," which he says "is writ large, for all the world to see," Lord writes, "the answer of Senator Obama is -- more! More! More! MORE!"

Furthermore, isn't what Obama is asking the American people to accept on the economy, health care, and environmentalism what the Europeans, Canadians, Russians, and Chinese (minus the environmentalism in the last case . . .) are already doing — or already failed at doing? (Remember the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?)

How is jumping on the bandwagon leadership? Is it leadership because once "we" join the club, "we" will be able to do it better, take it to the next level, succeed where others have failed? What was it people used to say about Bush? . . . Oh, right. He was "arrogant."

Bringing America "up" to the Euro-Asian-Canadian level isn't world leadership. It may be leadership of America, but it's not leadership of the world. And given the fact that the tendency of American government has long been toward socialism, toward the universal acceptance of the "Government-Me Identity" and "Government Is My Only Organ" Myths (see also O'Sullivan's Law), it's not very dramatic leadership.

And following the line of historical progression isn't really "change," either.

It's not that any of Obama's plans for America (or the world's plans for Obama) are wrong. I think they are, but that's beside the point. The problem is that the rhetoric, the reasoning which is supposed to lead us to Obama, doesn't work.

Obama won't make America a leader in the world. He wants to make America a world follower.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with that; it's just the rhetoric doesn't reveal the reality.

And Obama won't give us change within America. He wants to give us an even fuller actualization of the progressive ideal which has been on the march here in the States for decades (even through Bush's "compassionate conservatism" [see Michael Gerson on Jesus and Libertarians] and Huckabee's extension thereof).

Again, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that; it just makes the rhetoric hard to swallow.

Part of the reason for all this confusion over what constitutes leadership is due to the fact that most candidates don't know the difference between Lords, Saviors, and Messiahs. But the other part of it has to do with trying to look tough while being reasonable/compassionate. Obama wants to try to talk like a Conservative and a Progressive at once. But it doesn't work.

And the reason for the confusion over what constitutes real change has to do with a lack of historical perspective. Progressives, are, in the main, future-focused. The one historical context to which most of them pay a significant amount of attention has to do with ethnicity. On economic, military, criminal, and (other) social issues, however, a future focus can allow the lessons of the past slip away.

So, in sum, Obama and all his supporters everywhere are wrong about everything. But fair's fair, so please correct me if I'm wrong; it's nice to be just like everyone else now and again.

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and curator of the WEeding Awards.