He is sticking with it, mostly. He claims that his logic, as articulated in his much-linked Journal piece from March, is sound, but we’ll have to wait for part two (of five) to find out where he went wrong. My guess? He’ll say that Obama managed to obscure his true self, whatever that is, better than Steele expected, which left him able to “bargain” his way into the presidency:
Race helps Mr. Obama in another way — it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America’s tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America’s redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?
Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans — black and white — Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America’s very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.
If he thinks race played more of a role than anti-incumbency fervor due to the financial crisis and a sterling organizational advantage, I think he’s kidding himself, but as I say we’ll have to wait for part two. Worth noting in context: This excerpt from yesterday’s Times piece on the campaign flagged by Byron York. The One, at least at the beginning of the campaign, sounds closer to Steele’s theory than I (and, presumably, most of his defenders) am. Click the image to watch.
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