Dartblog

With the curtain about to descend, Cole Porter, master of popular theater, never once had the orchestra descend to a lower minor and dribble out the big finish in the bassoons. Roughly likewise, Senator Barack Obama, the vessel, has won this election according to script.

But he did not take many with him. All that is left are the overjoyed acolytes of his personage. They’re cheering in a Chicago park, savoring their victory. They deserve it, mostly, although they had unprecedented support from newsmen and newswomen whose painted faces invariably went doughy when it came time to report on The One, and screwed up threateningly in front of Sarah Palin and John McCain. It was an embarrassing performance, alternative sources of information are leaching in, and the days of authoritative television news are numbered.

As I type, as results come in, the popular vote stands as follows: OBAMA: 19,713,637 and MCCAIN: 19,416,839. It’ll pull out a bit toward Obama as the night goes on. But one thing is certain: tonight saw nothing like a landslide, nothing like a “realignment” (a meaningless phrase). It saw the Democrat turn a few key states to his column as compared to four years ago. All told, Barack Obama will get just about as many votes as George W. Bush did in 2004.

It was, reasonably considered, a weak showing from a man who had on his side an opposing incumbency with approval ratings astride the crust of the Earth, an unpopular war, and economic throes which, although ultimately not very severe, were acute to a degree seen only twice (or so) in a century. 2008 was a fortuitous climate, and Barack Obama pulled out a marginal victory.

And just how did he do it? Dissembly, in the main. Barack Obama created a wide perception that his policies are pretty much equal to the actual positions of John McCain, even while insisting—convincingly if falsely—that John McCain’s policies are those of President Bush. This is not to tar the president-elect as a liar; only to say that his own convictions did not carry him into office, and could not have.

A couple of swing states swung the other way this time. How much farther can the blue spread? Not much at all, I should think. In non-election years, when academics evaluate the disposition of the polity, it runs roughly 60% conservative. That number doesn’t change much. Modern liberalism, in the most perfect of storms, is incapable of achieving a landslide—even when it holds itself out as not-that-liberal.

The performance of the American people is really rather a beautiful thing. Weaker republics have been crushed because in dire times they turned decisively to the state, which yoked a performing minority to an underperforming majority till everyone gave up and someone declared himself king, setting the circle revolving anew.

Thank God, this election was not that. It was take-a-gamble, trow-da-bums-out, feel-good-about-your-vote, make-history, &c. This election was about this election, not about the country. Barack Obama with his absurd theatrics made it so. He’ll suffer by that in the next four years, because the suasion of one’s personality does not last long against serious opposition. (I’m talking here of, say, Vladimir Putin, who since he possess an army will prove slightly fiercer an opponent than Hillary Clinton.)

Some middle aged correspondents observe that this is the very height of modern liberalism. For adults (not the children, not the retired), this is the high water mark for Democrats, with the party achieving effective control of all three branches of government. This was the year that, if America was to become Europe, it’d have done so. The stock market has been talking lately of capitulation. It has happened in the Dow; it has not happened in the electorate, and it won’t. The red that is left is close to permanent; and the purple is in the vale before the next hill.

So the pitching devotees assembled in Chicago, where a mafia-like machine spat out Obamas by the hundreds thirty years ago, will probably find that the vessel will not take precisely the shape their liquids wanted, and that this very acutely silly election has not produced change at all, but little more than an ejaculation—maybe even a healthy one—that was a long time in coming.

For the moment, we can appreciate a genuinely cartoonish moment. Some time soon, the president-elect is finally going to have to reveal what he meant all this time by “change.” He’ll either have no answer—or his answer is going to disappoint the happy, doting, lovably dopey moderates who voted him into office. If small-government, pro-growth, free-market, family-first, personal-responsibility conservatives can get their house in order, 2012 is a golden haze on the meadow. Wait, that’s Rodgers and Hammerstein.

You see? The American song goes on. Meanwhile, let’s wish the next President good luck.