The issue of nationalism in Obama’s campaign

The eminent Dale Carrico has offered a thoughtful discussion of Obama’s Presidential campaign. Dale provoked me to spill some scattered thoughts in the comments, which I’ll share again here. I find myself confused about the role of a nation-state in resisting pernicious forms of nationalism. (I’m not even sure which forms are or are not pernicious.)

Obama says he will restore national unity. Should we cheer? On one hand, I suppose the Presidency is unavoidably a nationalistic institution, and so we should be patient with the President’s nationalistic ideas. On the other hand, if Giles Gunn is right — if the nation-state is an extremely dangerous institution whose dangers demand that we look elsewhere for a sense of unity — then we end up in the awkward position of disagreeing with what seems like a good idea.

Reading Dale’s blog over the years, one gets the sense that the Union is, after all, best understood as being divided, in the same way that France was divided during the Revolution (but hopefully without the wasteful violence, etc). Democracy and oligarchy outline a permanent battle line of political difference. If this is true, then does it follow that Obama’s rhetoric is too conciliatory?

The other reason to be concerned about nationalism, of course, is its potential to harden national exceptionalism. It can slide off the tongue so easily: “We are united, and so we are great.” Or even more hazardously: “We are united, and so we can fight our enemies.” How much time should we spend worrying that a “unifying” Obama Presidency would exacerbate the American sense of exceptionalism?

Update: Dale has weighed in:

I definitely agree with you that this is a huge worry! I am very concerned that the “we” of Obama’s “Yes We Can!” seems to me far too much an American exceptionalist We.

Much has been rightly made of Parag Khanna’s article in last week’s NYT about the eclipse of American hegemony over the course of the Bush Presidency. America needs to assume its proper place as a more than usually rich and capable contributor to the solutions to the problems for which we are likewise more than usually responsible as Americans — problems like climate chaos, resource descent, wealth concentration and circumscription of common assets, weapons proliferation, global poverty and inequity, labor abuse, authoritative corruption, neglected disease, illiteracy, and so on.

This means supporting global environmental, labor law, nonproliferation, peace treaties and the planetary institutions to enforce them, working to democratize global governance that now exists as a functionally anti-democratic corporatist world state.

This means partnership rather than leadership, openness rather than control, assuming more responsibilities rather than demanding more privileges.

I get the distinct impression that many Obama supporters hear the embrace of such an alternative in his words. But I worry that they are hearing what they want to hear, rather than listening to what he is saying. Again, it’s not that anybody else is saying anything better, certainly Clinton is not, and so my worries on this score aren’t nudging me to prefer another candidate to Obama.

My reasons for supporting Obama remain the same, and my ambivalence remains as well. And of course I still fervently hope that Obama proves worthy of the energy he inspires in so many. We’ll see.