IMO: I Just Gotta Say – Is Obama Mayor Carcetti?

Here at Grownheadz HQ, we have been going back and looking at past seasons of The Wire. I’m not getting into a big post about how great the show was, either you saw and loved it, or watched it and got bored. LadyT had a few choice words about her love for the program.

The point of our discussion today is this: . Is Obama just Mayor Carcetti and the US just a big coast-to-coast Baltimore?

Tom Carcetti is a white guy who runs for mayor of Baltimore, and because it’s a TV show he actually wins in the majority black city. Throughout his campaign, he calls out the incumbent mayor on all sorts of misdeeds, broken promises, and ethical lapses.

Carcetti is not just your typical politician; massive ego aside, he really wants to make things better for the citizens of Baltimore. He has all these big plans, makes a lot of promises, and gets everybody in the city (well, at least the police department) believing that change has finally come. They even start proclaiming that’s it’s a “New Day” (sound familiar?).

Once in office, Carcetti learns the enormity of the city’s problems and has to make harsh decisions, some more for his political career than in the best interests of the city. As the season proceeds we see how the system rebels against change. Carcetti makes deals that are the political thing to do (all part of the game, ya know) but not the RIGHT thing to do.

Furthermore, all those pledges he made have to be reprioritized because of the circumstances at hand. The next thing you know, people are talking about broken promises and his own ethical lapses. If you didn’t know, everything comes full circle in world of The Wire.

When he started his run for president, even his lawyer’s cynicism couldn’t have prepared President Obama for just how utterly F***D things would be right now. Remember coming up, how your moms told you that you’d have to be twice as smart to be considered half as good? Obama will have to be the best president ever just to be considered a success.

A friend and I joked that once Obama started getting the really real lowdown on what was going on, his opinion on things might change. He might be sitting with Michele right now saying, “Damn! If this report is right, we really might have to bomb Iran.”

There was a telling scene on the Wire when Carcetti’s main right hand man is chatting at the bar with his counterpart from the prior administration. He relates how he watched his boss, a man he believed in, refuse needed funds for city schools in order to avoid looking weak in a future gubernatorial bid. His counterpoint, with the wisdom that only comes from experience, replied “Sooner or later, they all disappoint.”

The fact is, at some point in the next four years this moment will come for Obama. It’s inevitable: the day will come that a hard choice will have to be made which will pit the fortunes of many black folks against those of a larger number of whites, and our living black and shining prince will turn his face from us.

I just hope when that day comes, he and we can hang on to some thread of the hope we all felt on his journey to the White House. I hope the end for once does justify the means. I hope he proves to be a better man than Carcetti.

Tagged as: baltimore, I just gotta say, IMO, Michelle Obama, obama, the wire, tpm carcetti