The Left just wants to have fun

It's impossible to see the spectacle of the French socialists and not to be reminded of the Democratic primaries and to realize that the Left likes to tear itself apart just for the fun of it. Usually, an implosion is avoided when it finds either what it believes to be a charismatic leader or when it is able to rally against a cause, in recent years it was against Bush and the Iraq war for the American left. What I have realized in recent years is that in the Western Democracies, leftist leaders  to get elected have to be charismatic and willing to present a somewhat conservative image to reassure voters that they are adults who can make tough and unpopular decisions in a dangerous world. If there is one thing that Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin, Romano Prodi, Gerhard Schröder, José Luis Zapatero, Gordon Brown, and finally Obama have in common is that they all talked explicitly or implicitly being part of a new left that was aware of the mistakes of its previous leaders and that admired some things about the right or the center. In order words, leftist leaders who have great ambitions are always aware that they are part of a group that has trouble with discipline because it confuses it with austerity and that  is willing too often to self-destruct because it views unrevolutionary and unaesthetic change as unacceptable and immoral.The genius of Obama was that he understood the importance of aesthetics to the left and its need to fall in love with somebody who would be their own Ronald Reagan (since the crisis, the left is asking Obama to be the new FDR). Obama is an uncanny mixture of Olivier Besancenot and Nicolas Sarkozy on steroids with a cunning understanding that politics is about flexibility and the ability to be ubiquitous and marketable. It is for that reason for  that it is so incredibly difficult for me to believe in the changes he wants Americans to believe in.