[R-G] Hamid Dabashi on Why Mousavi Couldn't Be an Iranian Obama

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

A little over ten days ago, Hamid Dabashi was saying that "Mir-Hossein
Mousavi has the make up of an Iranian Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther
King Jr. in him" (at
<http://www.hamiddabashi.com/election-june-2009-a.html>).  Now he says
Mousavi "sorely lacked" an Iranian "David Axelrod or David Plouffe."
:-0
Yoshie

<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/953/op121.htm>
People power
The Iranian elections show that the people's democratic will can no
longer be held in, writes Hamid Dabashi

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The next loser was Mousavi's poorly run presidential campaign --
ill-advised, ill-prepared, sentimental, full of necessary colour
symbolism but lacking substance, a clearly articulated platform,
economic detail, political programming or an attempt to reach out to a
wider spectrum of his constituency. His campaign was too elitist, tied
in its visual paraphernalia to a northern Tehran sensibility and
lacking appeal across an oil-based economy. His delay in entering the
race, his to-ing and fro-ing with Mohamed Khatami, suggested poor
preparation, as did his debate with Ahmadinejad. While Ahmadinejad had
come with charts and graphs and dossiers, flaunting his lumpen
demeanour, thinking himself "a man of the people", Mousavi had nothing
except his gentility to offer. He rambled along, read from written
statements in a barely audible voice, ran out of things to say before
his time was over. The problem with the Iranian democratic movement is
not that it is unable to produce an Obama -- if he is the model.
Mousavi could have very well been an Iranian Obama. The problem is
there was no David Axelrod or David Plouffe, what the Mousavi campaign
desperately needed and sorely lacked. A band of self-indulgent Muslim
yuppies surround him with not an idea of how to reach his multiple
constituencies.