The view from below

People’s everyday behavior reflects their view of the world and their own place in it, and there’s no larger laboratory for observing that than the 6 million-plus daily riders in the New York City subway system. Two examples in the last 12 hours showed me how contrasting inner universes can co-exist at close quarters.

Two young Caucasian women burst onto the uptown D express from Midtown to Harlem last night and settled in to converse, one sitting next to me and the other standing over her. Their decibel level suggested that they had not come straight from the office. Be that as it may, they were definitely two happy bipeds. They broadcast their personal and professional business affairs with the cozy assurance of those who are entirely at home wherever they go.

Then this morning I was spacing out sleepily on the downtown A when a Hispanic or African-American couple slipped in beside me. They chatted away non-stop but so softly that I couldn’t quite make out if they were speaking English or Spanish until he exited at Columbus Circle. Their exchange signaled profound privacy and careful discretion, an awareness that they were allotted a certain portion of intangible space and no more.

I don’t mean to make too much of race in this case because one could easily find the exact reverse examples any day of the week. But it got me to thinking about Obama’s strategy with the intransigent Republicans who responded to his olive branch and openness to hear opposing views with a resounding goose-egg of support in yesterday’s vote on the mega-stimulus.

Obama seems determined to bend over backwards to please the unrepentant creeps who bankrupted our country and enriched their friends at public expense, and it’s hard to swallow when you recall the way the Reaganomics revolution started out in 1981 by steamrolling all opposition and appealing contemptuously over the heads of the ‘tax-and-spend’ Congress to the masses. At first glance, Obama looks like a wimpier version of Clinton even though Obama’s solid majority gives him a greater mandate. (Bush II’s complete lack of one didn’t slow him down, either.)

But maybe Obama’s biracial life has given him an insight about the double standards that we live with unconsciously, how the underdog has to navigate treacherous waters to win a consensus. Maybe he grasps in ways that are still mysterious to many of us that an unthreatening and patient approach, accompanied by determination, is the only way to build and sustain a consensus if you are a mixed-race, urban liberal handling the small-town, white heartland.

In this speculative subway metaphor, the blithely confident white ladies represent the Republicans. Propelled into power, their default strategy would be to set out their expectations and wrestle dissidents onto the mat for a quick pin. They would expect to be heard, to be understood and to win.

Expectations for and from our guy are quite different. He has to speak softly, alarm no one and carefully seduce without looking too powerful or too sexy. The built-in negatives are so much greater that his tactical approach requires subtlety, patience, endless charm and the right dose of panache.

But he has an advantage too, which is a lifetime of knowing both worldviews, the perspective of the rulers and that of the ruled, from inside and from outside. If Obama isn’t just another triangulating closet conservative, it could be quite a performance.