Hillary's Narrative versus Obama's Counter-Narrative

We’ve all heard about how history repeats itself. Unfortunately, to take advantage of the historical lessons of the past, one must have an extensive knowledge of the past and an ability to metaphorically apply those lessons forward, or we end up with repeated assessments making only comparisons to overused analogies ranging from the Civil Rights Movement (which are seen as good) to Hitler (which is obviously seen as bad). Today, we have a white woman running in the Democratic primary against an African-American male, but due to simplistic pundits we’re stuck with sophomoric analogies that aren’t really the true juxtaposition here. It’s not about gender or race. No, it’s much bigger than that. It’s about competing narratives: A great past versus an enlightened future. And to understand this, I’d like to take you on a little journey to an unexpected time and place in history: The Soviet Union in August of 1991.

Hard-line Soviet leaders had just deposed their president Mikhail Gorbachev and declared themselves the de facto rulers of the U.S.S.R. They promised a return to a time when things were sweeter in the Soviet Union, a time of patriotism and an abundance of food in the stores.

Out of obscurity emerged a wild card hero in the guise of a Russian President, Boris Yeltsin. We remember him mostly for climbing on top of a Soviet tank that had been sent to silence him, but to the Soviet Union at that time, he offered something much more powerful: A counter-narrative to the empire’s rosy picture of the past. He said the past wasn’t as great as these so-called rulers proclaimed, and that prosperity would come from moving forward, not backward. This invigorated the masses, which overthrew the coup, which lasted only 72 hours and eventually led to the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

This is the part where history repeats itself. Hillary Clinton is running on the narrative of a return to a brighter time, when Bill Clinton’s government ran the show. Barrack Obama argues for an enlightened future that is not going to be a return to the past. Both argue as did the coup perpetrators in the Soviet Union that the present is not where we want to be, that an alternative is needed. Therefore, Americans are left with a choice: Choose a return to a brighter past, or move forward to an enlightened future.

I’m not arguing that Hillary is like the hardliners of the Soviet Union and that Obama is the savior Yeltsin. No, that would be totally unfair to Hillary and oversimplify the intentions of Obama. It would also be erroneous in that comparing the events to the past does not mean that at the present we are better off with an enlightened future rather than a brightened past. I am not here to make that argument.

However, what studying this past does do is help frame the choice before the voters. Unfortunately, our pundits are doing a horrible job of just that, trying to turn the debate into something simplistic and stupid. Rather than stupidify the choice and making it about gender or race, the paradigm I offer puts the choice in a real perspective. Do you prefer a return to the past, believing things were better then and it would be nice to return to that time, or do you desire a journey to a potentially different future that may be better than what we have now? What direction people choose is not my purpose or goal; my goal is to create an atmosphere where more people are aware of what their choice will mean.

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