Don't pigeon-hole me, please...
Feb. 23rd, 2008 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAs I mentioned in previous posts, I've been reading The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama lately. Surprisingly good. Didn't expect to enjoy reading it, honestly. These types of books usually either put me to sleep or aggravate me. But this one is fairly engaging and manages to put into words many of the things I've been thinking about the US, our current political climate, our past history, and what needs to be done for quite some time.
These two paragraphs taken directly from the prologue - pretty much summarize my own political philosophy:
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs- including my own - on non-believers.
(He goes on to add and this clearly isn't my own view entirely, since I'm not a black man, but I still see it as universal: "Furthermore I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives." I think this is true of all of us.
Hillary Clinton cannot help but view the American Experience through the eyes of a priveleged white woman who married well and had to deal with a husband who cheated on her, yet also became governor then president, who had a father that never approved of her and she could never quite achieve enough to win his approval, and is a mother with a daughter who was thrust into the public eye in her teenage years. Nor can John MCcain help but to view the view the American Experience through the eyes of a white man from a middle class family, who went to war, was a prisoner in Vietnam, tortured, served as a military leader, and spent a good portion of his life in Arizona, has to my knowledge never been without money, never been without a job, and never suffered the loss of a home and has seen the world change in ways the others haven't - since he is 71. Nor can I help but look at the American Experience as a white woman, who has spent most of her life hunting a job, struggled with unemployment, worked with the poor, worked with the abused, lived in rural environments, suburban, and urban ones, and does not have children or a husband, so must make it on her own. Yet has been lucky enough to be blessed with kind and considerate parents who have given me the knowledge and forbearance to avoid slipping into debt or unhealthy life choices. We can't help how we see the world completely - so much of it is predetermined for us by things beyond our control - such as genetics, luck, who we happen to meet on the way, and which place we happen to live in. )
But that is not all that I am. He states. I also think that my party, (Democrate), can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers. I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.
Later in the book - he makes a point of showing how complex people are. That people can not be put in boxes. That we are more alike than we think. That for all our differences, we really do share the same values and basically want the same things - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - the ability to find a good job, have a family, spend time with our family, have a home, food, shelter, health, clean air and clean water.
Here's what he says about President Richard Nixon - which I didn't know and my father recently told me a couple of days before. He's discussing how politics in the post WWII years was far less ideological than it is today and uses Nixon as an example of that. Stating how Nixon did not always play to the demands of conservative majority of his party. Nixon's Southern strategy, his challenge to court-ordered busing and the appeal to the silent majority, paid immediate electoral dividends. But his governing philosophy never congealed into a firm ideology- it was Nixon, after all, who initiated the first federal affirmative action programs and signed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into law.
I love how he describes how voters responded to Ronald Reagan, more importantly why they did. This I agree with - having lived during those years and having had many friends who were devout Reagan followers. Here's what he says about Reagan's appeal: It was the same appeal that the military bases back in Hawaii had always held for me as a young boy, with their tidy streets and well-oiled machinery, the crisp uniforms and crisper salutes. It was related to the pleasure I still get from watching a well-played baseball game, or my wife gets from watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reagan spoke to America's longing for order, our need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism, and faith.
That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties, while unions were busted and the income for average working stiffs flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he'd written for them - a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.
He states that after Reagan - the lines between Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, would be drawn in more sharply ideological terms. And how some of the Republican leaders who followed him weren't entirely comfortable with the direction it had taken. Both Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush appeared uncomfortable with it. But the younger generation - Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed - were true believers.
Think about it - how many of our issues have now become 0 sum equations? Or - "either/or"?
You are either with us, or against us? No longer was economic policy a matter of weighing trade-offs between competing goals of productivity and distributional justice, of growing the pie and slicing the pie. You were for either tax cuts or tax hikes, small government or big government. No longer was environmental policy a matter of balancing sound stewardship of our natural resources with the demands of a modern economy; you either supported unchecked development, drilling, strip-mining, and the like, or you supported stifling bureaucracy and red tape that choked off growth. In politics, if not in policy, simplicity was a virtue.
Obama discusses how Clinton attempted to pull things back towards the center, but failed partly due the power base that Gingrich, Rove, Norquist and the like were able to consolidate and institutionalize - the conservative movement. They brought state-of-the-art technology to the task of mobilizing their base, and centralized power in the House of Representatives in order to enhance party discipline
But...
they understood the threat Clinton posed to their vision of a long-term conservative majority, which helps explain the vehemence with which they went after him. It also explains why they invested so much time attacking Clinton's morality, for if Clinton's policies were hardly radical, his biography (the draft letter saga, the marijuana puffing, the Ivy League intellectualism, the professional wife who didn't bake cookies, and most of all the sex) proved perfect grist for the conservative base. With enough repetition, a looseness with the facts, and the ultimately undeniable evidence of the President's own personal laspes, Clinton could be made to embody the very traits of sixities liberalism that had helped spur the conservatie movement in the first place. Clinton may have fought that movement to a draw, but the movement would come out stronger for it - and in George W. Bush's first term that movement would take over the US government.
He admits that the explanation above is too neat. And states in the next paragraphs that there were other things happening, other forces at work as well. Still, when I think about what that old Washington hand told me that night, when I ponder the work of a George Kennan or a George Marshall, when I read the speeches of a Bobby Kennedy or an Everett Dirksen, I can't help feeling that the politics of today suffers from a case of arrested development. For these men, the issues America faced were never abstract and hence never simple. War might be hell and still the right thing to do. (He's talking about WWII here by the way) Economies could collaspe despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard all their lives and still lose everything.
What he is critical of in our political system right now is "absolutism".
I caught a similar attitude in the debate and it was the one small difference I see between Barack Obama and Clinton. Very slight one - since the two basically agree on everything. But Obama seems more willing to listen to the people he doesn't agree with. He is the only candidate currently running who is willing to talk to Cuba and actually listen to them. And that more than anything else - appeals to me as a voter. I'm tired of the negative rhetoric.
He states that theoretically the Republican Party may have produced its own Clinton, a center-right leader who built on Clinton's fiscal conservatism while moving more aggressively to revamp a creaky federal bureaucracy and experiment with market-or faith based solutions to social policy. (They may or may not have that candidate in Sen. John McCain - that is if the right-wing conservatives in that party will allow it. Haven't to date).
But these Republicans are not the ones who have driven the debate over the past six years. Instead of the compassionate conservatism that George Bush promised in his 2000 campaign, what has characterized the ideological core of today's GOP is absolutism, not conservatism. There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology of no taxes, no regulation, no safety net - indeed, no government beyond what's required to protect private property and provide for national defense.
There's the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained traction on the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into something much broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America's dominant faith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, of the words of Thomas Jefferson.
And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those who claim power in the name of the majority - a disdain for those institutional checks (the courts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, or the traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march towards New Jerusalem.
He's similarly critical of the other side of the fence by the way.
Of course, there are those within the Democratic Party who tend towards similar zealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of a Rove or a DeLay, the power to take over the party, fill it with loyalists, and enshrine some of their more radical ideas into law. The prevalence of regional, ethinic, and economic differences within the party, the electorial map and the structure of the Senate, the need to rais money from economic elites to finance elections - all these things tend to prevent those Democrats in office from straying too far from the center. In fact, I know very few elected Democrats who neatly fit the liberal caricature; the last I checked, John Kerry believes in maintaining the superiority of the US military, Hillary Clinton believes in the virtues of capitalism, and just about every member of the Congressional Black Caucus believes Jesus Christ died for his or her sins.
Instead, we Democrats are just well, confused... (He discusses Old school Democrats who talk about the New Deal, the one's pursuing the more centrist approach here.)
Mainly though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction.
Yep, when you have one extreem - the other side tends to focus its time and attention reacting to it.
In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forefeit moral language that would help infuse our policies with larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courst to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandle. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics.
This I also noticed during the Hillary/Obama debate. Hillary was at times strident and went for hardball, while Obama was calm and seemed to want to tackle the issues.
The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes something like this : The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach.
I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodocy and the sheer predictablity of our current debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challengs we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in 'either/or' thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace socialized medicine.
It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off politics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate - or one that esily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate - works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government.
I saw this in the Obama/Clinto debate as well - particularly in regards to our current President. Clinton went after Bush personally, calling him names, while Obama took a different approach - an approach quite similar to the one he does in this book - where he states in his second Chapter:
After discussing how he is a steady and occassionally fierce critic of Bush Administration policies - specifically Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, the lack of a meaningful health care agenda, serious energy policy, or a strategy for making America more competitive, he states: So Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I don't consider George Bush a bad man, and that I assume he and members of his Administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.
He doesn't say it because he is seduced by the trappings of power - he sees his invites to the White House for what they are and is fairly pragmatic and realistic about it. He even states: whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I'm reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences - a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.
It is to say that after all the trappings of office - the titles, the staff, the security details - are stripped away, I find the President and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. No matter how wrong-headed I might consider their policies to be - and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies - I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share.
Compare these statements to the derogatory ones Hillary made regarding Bush during this week's debate, and you begin to see a difference. I'm not saying I disagree with those statements, but I do agree with Obama's stance - that this wrong way to go. Demonization doesn't work.
Obama says that he is under no illusion "that the task of building a working majority will be easy. But it's what must do, precisely because the task of solving America's problems will be hard. It will require tough choices, and it will require sacrifice. Unless political leaders are open to new ideas and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy policy or tame the deficit. We won't have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism without resorting to isolationism or eroding civil liberties. We won't have a mandate to overhaul America's broken health-care system. and we won't have the broad political support or the effective strategies needed to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of poverty."
In 2005 - he responded to a blog attacking Democrats for voting for Chief Justice John Roberts, who he had voted against. He was supporting and defending them. Stating much the same argument he poses above. And got the predictable range of responses.
And he wonders if maybe the critics are right, that there's no escaping the great political divide and maybe most of us have given up seeing it as little more than a spectator sport.
But - he believes - that this isn't true. That there are people out there like himself. ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way - in their own lives, at least - to make peace with their neighbors and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just tired of the drug dealers in fron of those buildings as he is of the bakers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children they did bring into the world.
I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
I find myself nodding along with Obama. I work with people who do not necessarily agree on the issues, but we share the same basic values. Several of them may have voted for Bush. Several believe the Iraq War was right. But I like them and they like me.
To be honest, I never really liked Hillary Clinton and not for the reasons you might think. Yes, I've been struggling with which one to go with. Hillary has proven herself to be a decisive and strong Senator, who has been able to build coalitions within the Senate from both sides of the political fence. But, she seems angry to me, and overly defensive. Also strident. (Partly the results of being a woman in a predominately male profession and patriarchial society, I know, I've been there myself.) She doesn't appear to like to listen. And her agenda, which granted is not a bad one, seems to come first. I'm also not crazy about the fact that she has so much baggage.The father she could never get approval from, the charismatic husband who won the white house for eight years, and is hard to ignore. (I liked Bill Clinton by the way and voted for him both times, I'd vote for him again. I don't regret that. And I still think of the four presidents we've had in the last 20 years, he's the best and history will demonstrate that.)But, I'm not sure I want a President whose husband or spouse or father was President before them. I don't want to hear people say - oh, Bill, is running things. Do you realize that there are people who have never know a US Presidency that wasn't headed by a Bush or a Clinton? We have had a Bush or a Clinton in office since 1989. And look where it has taken us? Look where we are today? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of the Bush/Clinton show. I want to turn the channel already. Hillary's comments about Bush and Bush's comments about Clinton are starting to sound redundant. We've heard them all before. And worse? They are divisive. They are not bringing us together. And as Lincoln stated ages ago, a house divided against itself cannot stand. The last election was worrisome in how it divided the US into red states and blue states. I think Obama is right - in order to solve these issues, we need to learn how to get past our differences, stop pigeon-holing one another, and find a common ground. It is the only way we can combat terrorism, strengthen the economy, and save the environment.
I don't know if electing Obama President of the US is the answer. But of the candidates, he appears to me at least to be the least divisive, to be the one most open to new ideas, and to listening, who is not stuck in old rhetoric.
Scanning the voting records - I see interesting trends. Clinton seems to care the most about children, healthcare, and is fairly conservative when it comes to economy, environment and war. Obama is the most interested in environmental policy, economic issues regarding the poor, and civil rights/human rights issues, he doesn't appear to have a strong stance on the other issues to date. Although he has supported health care and education. McCain is strongest on defense, anti-terrorism, and tax-related issues.
One of my difficulties with McCain is age - I don't want another 70 year old in the Presidency, been there done that. The other difficulty is he is catering to the conservative movement, and I don't trust that. We need to move away from the right and left and back to the center. I also don't trust McCain very much - again because of his voting record and how it contradicts some of what he says he believes. I'm half convinced that McCain will only continue the policies Bush, Reagan, and Bush Sr have pushed, the policies that have resulted in an escalating deficit and not one but now two bad recessions. I've learned that tax cuts for the wealthy do not work - and that allowing corporations to do whatever they damn well please hurts all of us. Experience in the work place has taught me that.
Clinton...sigh, I want to like her. But. I have not agreed with some of the things she's done. Her vote regarding Iraq, bugged me. Her insistence on concentrating on certain issues over other ones, often at their detriment. She is not the diplomat that her husband is, and while she has been able to win over people who hated her husband, while in the Senate, I don't see her winning over foreign diginitaries. She comes across as bit Hawkish at times. I'm struggling with it, because I know of the three - she has demonstrated an ability to create coalitions inside the Senate. McCain hasn't been able to push as much through as Clinton. Although, from what I've read on the internet sites, none of them have done that great a job in that department.
Obama is admittedly a risk. What we know about him is based on his four years in the Senate, years in the Illinois Senate, his two books, debates, and speechs. That's not a lot. He's the youngest of the three - at 46, he's barely six years older than me. He's well-educated, a law degree from Harvard, a degree from Columbia. He's well-traveled. And is the only candidate who lived abroad, if we ignore McCain's time in the military in Vietman. Obama spent a good portion of his childhood in Indonesia - a relatively poor country. He's also from an interracial marriage, black and white heritage. And he has a funny name that sounds a bit too much like Osama Bin Ladan. Yet, of all the candidates running, including the ones who dropped out, he's the only one who appears to see the need for a new and less negative direction, a need to build a coalition between both sides. To stop screaming at each other. He seems interested in listening first and talking later. And I like that. I crave that in an elected official. In this case, I'm beginning to wonder if what America needs is a different type of politician? And I honestly don't know if he is as different as he seems.
He may disappoint me. Clinton did. As did Jimmy Carter. And as JFK did my parents. So it would not be the first time. He may as my brother predicts get killed in office, but I doubt it. At any rate, I find myself trusting him more than the other two, who are not unknown entities. I know that Hillary will disappoint me, as she has in NY. I know what she will do and what she won't do. I know I won't like MCcain, but will like him better than Bush. I know that from the last eight to ten years.
Right now? I'm leaning towards Obama. But this isn't over yet, so who knows, I may change my mind. I've changed it once already, at the beginning, a week before the primaries, I was pro-Hillary. I was going to vote for her. But I started listening to her, listening to the country , and listening to Obama, and well changed my mind.
These two paragraphs taken directly from the prologue - pretty much summarize my own political philosophy:
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs- including my own - on non-believers.
(He goes on to add and this clearly isn't my own view entirely, since I'm not a black man, but I still see it as universal: "Furthermore I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives." I think this is true of all of us.
Hillary Clinton cannot help but view the American Experience through the eyes of a priveleged white woman who married well and had to deal with a husband who cheated on her, yet also became governor then president, who had a father that never approved of her and she could never quite achieve enough to win his approval, and is a mother with a daughter who was thrust into the public eye in her teenage years. Nor can John MCcain help but to view the view the American Experience through the eyes of a white man from a middle class family, who went to war, was a prisoner in Vietnam, tortured, served as a military leader, and spent a good portion of his life in Arizona, has to my knowledge never been without money, never been without a job, and never suffered the loss of a home and has seen the world change in ways the others haven't - since he is 71. Nor can I help but look at the American Experience as a white woman, who has spent most of her life hunting a job, struggled with unemployment, worked with the poor, worked with the abused, lived in rural environments, suburban, and urban ones, and does not have children or a husband, so must make it on her own. Yet has been lucky enough to be blessed with kind and considerate parents who have given me the knowledge and forbearance to avoid slipping into debt or unhealthy life choices. We can't help how we see the world completely - so much of it is predetermined for us by things beyond our control - such as genetics, luck, who we happen to meet on the way, and which place we happen to live in. )
But that is not all that I am. He states. I also think that my party, (Democrate), can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers. I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.
Later in the book - he makes a point of showing how complex people are. That people can not be put in boxes. That we are more alike than we think. That for all our differences, we really do share the same values and basically want the same things - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - the ability to find a good job, have a family, spend time with our family, have a home, food, shelter, health, clean air and clean water.
Here's what he says about President Richard Nixon - which I didn't know and my father recently told me a couple of days before. He's discussing how politics in the post WWII years was far less ideological than it is today and uses Nixon as an example of that. Stating how Nixon did not always play to the demands of conservative majority of his party. Nixon's Southern strategy, his challenge to court-ordered busing and the appeal to the silent majority, paid immediate electoral dividends. But his governing philosophy never congealed into a firm ideology- it was Nixon, after all, who initiated the first federal affirmative action programs and signed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into law.
I love how he describes how voters responded to Ronald Reagan, more importantly why they did. This I agree with - having lived during those years and having had many friends who were devout Reagan followers. Here's what he says about Reagan's appeal: It was the same appeal that the military bases back in Hawaii had always held for me as a young boy, with their tidy streets and well-oiled machinery, the crisp uniforms and crisper salutes. It was related to the pleasure I still get from watching a well-played baseball game, or my wife gets from watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reagan spoke to America's longing for order, our need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism, and faith.
That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties, while unions were busted and the income for average working stiffs flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he'd written for them - a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.
He states that after Reagan - the lines between Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, would be drawn in more sharply ideological terms. And how some of the Republican leaders who followed him weren't entirely comfortable with the direction it had taken. Both Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush appeared uncomfortable with it. But the younger generation - Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed - were true believers.
Think about it - how many of our issues have now become 0 sum equations? Or - "either/or"?
You are either with us, or against us? No longer was economic policy a matter of weighing trade-offs between competing goals of productivity and distributional justice, of growing the pie and slicing the pie. You were for either tax cuts or tax hikes, small government or big government. No longer was environmental policy a matter of balancing sound stewardship of our natural resources with the demands of a modern economy; you either supported unchecked development, drilling, strip-mining, and the like, or you supported stifling bureaucracy and red tape that choked off growth. In politics, if not in policy, simplicity was a virtue.
Obama discusses how Clinton attempted to pull things back towards the center, but failed partly due the power base that Gingrich, Rove, Norquist and the like were able to consolidate and institutionalize - the conservative movement. They brought state-of-the-art technology to the task of mobilizing their base, and centralized power in the House of Representatives in order to enhance party discipline
But...
they understood the threat Clinton posed to their vision of a long-term conservative majority, which helps explain the vehemence with which they went after him. It also explains why they invested so much time attacking Clinton's morality, for if Clinton's policies were hardly radical, his biography (the draft letter saga, the marijuana puffing, the Ivy League intellectualism, the professional wife who didn't bake cookies, and most of all the sex) proved perfect grist for the conservative base. With enough repetition, a looseness with the facts, and the ultimately undeniable evidence of the President's own personal laspes, Clinton could be made to embody the very traits of sixities liberalism that had helped spur the conservatie movement in the first place. Clinton may have fought that movement to a draw, but the movement would come out stronger for it - and in George W. Bush's first term that movement would take over the US government.
He admits that the explanation above is too neat. And states in the next paragraphs that there were other things happening, other forces at work as well. Still, when I think about what that old Washington hand told me that night, when I ponder the work of a George Kennan or a George Marshall, when I read the speeches of a Bobby Kennedy or an Everett Dirksen, I can't help feeling that the politics of today suffers from a case of arrested development. For these men, the issues America faced were never abstract and hence never simple. War might be hell and still the right thing to do. (He's talking about WWII here by the way) Economies could collaspe despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard all their lives and still lose everything.
What he is critical of in our political system right now is "absolutism".
I caught a similar attitude in the debate and it was the one small difference I see between Barack Obama and Clinton. Very slight one - since the two basically agree on everything. But Obama seems more willing to listen to the people he doesn't agree with. He is the only candidate currently running who is willing to talk to Cuba and actually listen to them. And that more than anything else - appeals to me as a voter. I'm tired of the negative rhetoric.
He states that theoretically the Republican Party may have produced its own Clinton, a center-right leader who built on Clinton's fiscal conservatism while moving more aggressively to revamp a creaky federal bureaucracy and experiment with market-or faith based solutions to social policy. (They may or may not have that candidate in Sen. John McCain - that is if the right-wing conservatives in that party will allow it. Haven't to date).
But these Republicans are not the ones who have driven the debate over the past six years. Instead of the compassionate conservatism that George Bush promised in his 2000 campaign, what has characterized the ideological core of today's GOP is absolutism, not conservatism. There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology of no taxes, no regulation, no safety net - indeed, no government beyond what's required to protect private property and provide for national defense.
There's the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained traction on the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into something much broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America's dominant faith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, of the words of Thomas Jefferson.
And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those who claim power in the name of the majority - a disdain for those institutional checks (the courts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, or the traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march towards New Jerusalem.
He's similarly critical of the other side of the fence by the way.
Of course, there are those within the Democratic Party who tend towards similar zealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of a Rove or a DeLay, the power to take over the party, fill it with loyalists, and enshrine some of their more radical ideas into law. The prevalence of regional, ethinic, and economic differences within the party, the electorial map and the structure of the Senate, the need to rais money from economic elites to finance elections - all these things tend to prevent those Democrats in office from straying too far from the center. In fact, I know very few elected Democrats who neatly fit the liberal caricature; the last I checked, John Kerry believes in maintaining the superiority of the US military, Hillary Clinton believes in the virtues of capitalism, and just about every member of the Congressional Black Caucus believes Jesus Christ died for his or her sins.
Instead, we Democrats are just well, confused... (He discusses Old school Democrats who talk about the New Deal, the one's pursuing the more centrist approach here.)
Mainly though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction.
Yep, when you have one extreem - the other side tends to focus its time and attention reacting to it.
In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forefeit moral language that would help infuse our policies with larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courst to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandle. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics.
This I also noticed during the Hillary/Obama debate. Hillary was at times strident and went for hardball, while Obama was calm and seemed to want to tackle the issues.
The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes something like this : The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach.
I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodocy and the sheer predictablity of our current debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challengs we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in 'either/or' thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace socialized medicine.
It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off politics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate - or one that esily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate - works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government.
I saw this in the Obama/Clinto debate as well - particularly in regards to our current President. Clinton went after Bush personally, calling him names, while Obama took a different approach - an approach quite similar to the one he does in this book - where he states in his second Chapter:
After discussing how he is a steady and occassionally fierce critic of Bush Administration policies - specifically Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, the lack of a meaningful health care agenda, serious energy policy, or a strategy for making America more competitive, he states: So Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I don't consider George Bush a bad man, and that I assume he and members of his Administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.
He doesn't say it because he is seduced by the trappings of power - he sees his invites to the White House for what they are and is fairly pragmatic and realistic about it. He even states: whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I'm reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences - a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.
It is to say that after all the trappings of office - the titles, the staff, the security details - are stripped away, I find the President and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. No matter how wrong-headed I might consider their policies to be - and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies - I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share.
Compare these statements to the derogatory ones Hillary made regarding Bush during this week's debate, and you begin to see a difference. I'm not saying I disagree with those statements, but I do agree with Obama's stance - that this wrong way to go. Demonization doesn't work.
Obama says that he is under no illusion "that the task of building a working majority will be easy. But it's what must do, precisely because the task of solving America's problems will be hard. It will require tough choices, and it will require sacrifice. Unless political leaders are open to new ideas and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy policy or tame the deficit. We won't have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism without resorting to isolationism or eroding civil liberties. We won't have a mandate to overhaul America's broken health-care system. and we won't have the broad political support or the effective strategies needed to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of poverty."
In 2005 - he responded to a blog attacking Democrats for voting for Chief Justice John Roberts, who he had voted against. He was supporting and defending them. Stating much the same argument he poses above. And got the predictable range of responses.
And he wonders if maybe the critics are right, that there's no escaping the great political divide and maybe most of us have given up seeing it as little more than a spectator sport.
But - he believes - that this isn't true. That there are people out there like himself. ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way - in their own lives, at least - to make peace with their neighbors and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just tired of the drug dealers in fron of those buildings as he is of the bakers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children they did bring into the world.
I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
I find myself nodding along with Obama. I work with people who do not necessarily agree on the issues, but we share the same basic values. Several of them may have voted for Bush. Several believe the Iraq War was right. But I like them and they like me.
To be honest, I never really liked Hillary Clinton and not for the reasons you might think. Yes, I've been struggling with which one to go with. Hillary has proven herself to be a decisive and strong Senator, who has been able to build coalitions within the Senate from both sides of the political fence. But, she seems angry to me, and overly defensive. Also strident. (Partly the results of being a woman in a predominately male profession and patriarchial society, I know, I've been there myself.) She doesn't appear to like to listen. And her agenda, which granted is not a bad one, seems to come first. I'm also not crazy about the fact that she has so much baggage.The father she could never get approval from, the charismatic husband who won the white house for eight years, and is hard to ignore. (I liked Bill Clinton by the way and voted for him both times, I'd vote for him again. I don't regret that. And I still think of the four presidents we've had in the last 20 years, he's the best and history will demonstrate that.)But, I'm not sure I want a President whose husband or spouse or father was President before them. I don't want to hear people say - oh, Bill, is running things. Do you realize that there are people who have never know a US Presidency that wasn't headed by a Bush or a Clinton? We have had a Bush or a Clinton in office since 1989. And look where it has taken us? Look where we are today? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of the Bush/Clinton show. I want to turn the channel already. Hillary's comments about Bush and Bush's comments about Clinton are starting to sound redundant. We've heard them all before. And worse? They are divisive. They are not bringing us together. And as Lincoln stated ages ago, a house divided against itself cannot stand. The last election was worrisome in how it divided the US into red states and blue states. I think Obama is right - in order to solve these issues, we need to learn how to get past our differences, stop pigeon-holing one another, and find a common ground. It is the only way we can combat terrorism, strengthen the economy, and save the environment.
I don't know if electing Obama President of the US is the answer. But of the candidates, he appears to me at least to be the least divisive, to be the one most open to new ideas, and to listening, who is not stuck in old rhetoric.
Scanning the voting records - I see interesting trends. Clinton seems to care the most about children, healthcare, and is fairly conservative when it comes to economy, environment and war. Obama is the most interested in environmental policy, economic issues regarding the poor, and civil rights/human rights issues, he doesn't appear to have a strong stance on the other issues to date. Although he has supported health care and education. McCain is strongest on defense, anti-terrorism, and tax-related issues.
One of my difficulties with McCain is age - I don't want another 70 year old in the Presidency, been there done that. The other difficulty is he is catering to the conservative movement, and I don't trust that. We need to move away from the right and left and back to the center. I also don't trust McCain very much - again because of his voting record and how it contradicts some of what he says he believes. I'm half convinced that McCain will only continue the policies Bush, Reagan, and Bush Sr have pushed, the policies that have resulted in an escalating deficit and not one but now two bad recessions. I've learned that tax cuts for the wealthy do not work - and that allowing corporations to do whatever they damn well please hurts all of us. Experience in the work place has taught me that.
Clinton...sigh, I want to like her. But. I have not agreed with some of the things she's done. Her vote regarding Iraq, bugged me. Her insistence on concentrating on certain issues over other ones, often at their detriment. She is not the diplomat that her husband is, and while she has been able to win over people who hated her husband, while in the Senate, I don't see her winning over foreign diginitaries. She comes across as bit Hawkish at times. I'm struggling with it, because I know of the three - she has demonstrated an ability to create coalitions inside the Senate. McCain hasn't been able to push as much through as Clinton. Although, from what I've read on the internet sites, none of them have done that great a job in that department.
Obama is admittedly a risk. What we know about him is based on his four years in the Senate, years in the Illinois Senate, his two books, debates, and speechs. That's not a lot. He's the youngest of the three - at 46, he's barely six years older than me. He's well-educated, a law degree from Harvard, a degree from Columbia. He's well-traveled. And is the only candidate who lived abroad, if we ignore McCain's time in the military in Vietman. Obama spent a good portion of his childhood in Indonesia - a relatively poor country. He's also from an interracial marriage, black and white heritage. And he has a funny name that sounds a bit too much like Osama Bin Ladan. Yet, of all the candidates running, including the ones who dropped out, he's the only one who appears to see the need for a new and less negative direction, a need to build a coalition between both sides. To stop screaming at each other. He seems interested in listening first and talking later. And I like that. I crave that in an elected official. In this case, I'm beginning to wonder if what America needs is a different type of politician? And I honestly don't know if he is as different as he seems.
He may disappoint me. Clinton did. As did Jimmy Carter. And as JFK did my parents. So it would not be the first time. He may as my brother predicts get killed in office, but I doubt it. At any rate, I find myself trusting him more than the other two, who are not unknown entities. I know that Hillary will disappoint me, as she has in NY. I know what she will do and what she won't do. I know I won't like MCcain, but will like him better than Bush. I know that from the last eight to ten years.
Right now? I'm leaning towards Obama. But this isn't over yet, so who knows, I may change my mind. I've changed it once already, at the beginning, a week before the primaries, I was pro-Hillary. I was going to vote for her. But I started listening to her, listening to the country , and listening to Obama, and well changed my mind.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 11:38 pm (UTC)I'm so tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. Or the negative campaign tatics. Obama resisted using these tatics in Illinois and won by a huge majority, surprising many people at the time. And he appears to be resisting the urge now.
Also of all the candidates, Obama seems to be the least angry, this includes John Edwards who has since dropped out and Mitt Romney. He doesn't have a chip on his shoulder. Nor does he appear to have something to prove. He just wants to bring us together, to solve some serious issues.
It's the first time in a very long time, I've seen a candidate who wanted to do that.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 11:50 pm (UTC)Yes - isn't it great? For the first time in our nation's history we have a black man and a woman running for President, who could potentially become President. Not a third party candidate like the Rev. Jess Jackson. Or a potential vice president. Or even a brief run for office like Elizabeth Dole. But a front-runner, who could win the general election. That's historic. Plus, it doesn't seem to matter that much to the electorate. Most of us aren't voting for them because he is black or she is a woman, we don't care, we are basing our decision on what they can do for our country on how they might lead us. We are treating them the same way we would treat a white man, such as John McCain or John Edwards. I never really expected to see this in my lifetime, especially after the last eight years. It gives me so much hope and makes me so proud that I have.
I also voted for Obama - in my state's primary, for much the same reasons you did. It was a difficult decision, and I agonized over it, because on paper Hillary has the experience, but what it came down to was I think he can take us in a direction that may not have occurred to Clinton or McCain or anyone else. Also you are right - he's not alone in this. A president does not govern by himself, our founding fathers made certain of that. He has advisors. A cabinet. A congress. A senate. The judicial system. The Pentagon. The FBI. The CIA. A good President picks good advisors, not yes-men, people who will challenge him. I believe Obama will do just that, I'm not so sure any more that the other two can or will.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 02:16 am (UTC)He may be too good to be true, but I don't want to be so cynical as to just assume that that is the case.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 03:19 am (UTC)The more I read his book, the more positive I feel. It doesn't sound like rhetoric, there is substantive thought behind it. He is also hitting on something that I've seen more than one television drama or film grappling with - and it is this:
"our democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect: if liberals at least acknowledged that the recreational hunter feels the same way about his gun as they feel about their library books, and if conservatives recognized that most women feel as protective of the right to reproductive freedom as evangelicals do of their right to worship."
In BSG, Lost, Buffy, Angel, Medium, most of the reality shows, and House - the conflict arises from the inability to listen. To respect someone else's point of view. Even if it may not agree with ours. He seems to get that.
Also, when I was talking to my mother about this over the phone - I said, this is the first time in a long time that I've seen a candidate that was not carrying the baggage of the 1960s and 1940s and 1950s on his shoulders. He's not a Baby Boomer. He's not part of that group. I think that may be one of the many reasons so many younger voters have gotten excited. He's not parternal or maternal, instead he is a colleague and a partner. It's a different dynamic - if that makes any sense.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 04:24 am (UTC)The listening thing is HUGE, it is a rare quality. I am certainly aware that there are many topics where my mind is closed and I can barely be civil on the subject (I couldn't even join Buffy websites where members would bash Spike! LOL). But I really admire that quality in other people: the ability to not be defensive about one's own position, but instead to be open to all opinions. I think it is pretty rare.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 06:01 am (UTC)I remember several years back stating in fit of pique to a bunch of friends at lunch, that sometimes I wished we all agreed on everything, life would be so much simpler. They responded - "how boring that would be. To be yes'ed to death. To have the same opinions. You'd never be challenged. You'd never learn something different. And do you really want to be surrounded by people who look, talk and think like you? All the time?"
Of course not. Or I wouldn't live in NYC. ;-)
Tonight I read four posts that were negative on Obama, one that was positive on McCain, one positive on Clinton, and all without question failed to address what I stated in my post above, all proved my points. They were divisive. They were all about acrimony and how different everyone is, and intent on putting people down. Two were written by journalists, a few were responses, and a couple were about the campaign itself and not about the candidates at all. But none, without question, held a shimmer of hope, they all made me want to crawl in my bed and pull the covers over my head and sleep forever.
In the book I'm reading, Obama states that we need to listen to each other, to tolerate and respect each others differences, even if they make us want to scream. People state this is just rhetoric, postering, much like JFK and Reagan's speechs were. We've become cynical - experience has taught us to be. We are afraid, I think, to hope.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 01:10 pm (UTC)It shows that he understand the process and knows how to bring people together in a way that Hillary hasn't tried.
Also he's had more than just two years in the Senate. He's also served in the state Senate (which is oddly similar) and as a community organizer.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 01:58 pm (UTC)But I have. Thanks for the reply, though. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 12:08 am (UTC)I owed you a better response. Did it quickly first thing this morning under a lot of stress at work. (Note to self wait until I get home.)
Anyhow...I've been thinking about the experience issue and had an interesting discussion with my father over the phone about it tonight. He's on the fence, he keeps jumping back and forth. Right now he's supporting Hillary. Last month, it was Obama.
I told him that people kept pounding the experience issue. He said that none of them had executive experience - except maybe Huckabee and Romney who were governors. Obama served several years in Illinois State Legislature and is on his third in the Senate.
Of McCain, Clinton and Obama - McCain has the most experience. (unless you count Clinton's as First Lady and I don't.)
I mentioned - but if you go by experience: Richardson, from New Mexico, had the most - he was one of the Democrat nominees who dropped out early.
Dad: That's right, the most experienced always tend to drop out early. The most experienced President, President James Buchanan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan) is also ironically considered the worste. He did everything - Attorney General, Judge, Senator, the list goes on. While one of our best President's, so good he even got a holiday on his birthday, Abraham Lincoln (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln), had only 18 months of education, was a lawyer, only served two years in Congress, and about 6 in the Illinois Senate. Of course this was before the information age, where people put experience and education above everything, including plain old fashioned street smarts. (Obama resembles Lincoln's experience - except for the lack of traditional education.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 02:53 am (UTC)Thanks for writing more and hey! it's your blog. I try to be mindful of that and not do the stompy-footed thing in other people's living rooms. ;)
We may have been talking at cross purposes, because what I was getting at wasn't so much the experience factor as asking what you felt Obama had been able to do since arriving in the Senate 3 yrs. ago to counter Republican intransigence. My feeling is, what has anyone been able to do without girding themselves for a long battle?! Pelosi said that after the results of the 2006 election when the Republicans were rebuked at the polls by the voters, that she and Sen. Reid were unprepared for the R.'s absolute unwillingness to compromise. Alas, the Republicans have had help from so-called Blue Dog Dems whose reply to Bush Administration commands to jump is to ask how high. (Glenn Greenwald has written some good things on this subject, especially in What "bipartisanship" in Washington means (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/30/bipartisanship/).)
So, what I'm questioning isn't so much about candidates, because obviously we've both thought about that part and ended up in different places, and FWIW I think BHO will be the nominee.
This is more about strategy. I just can't see the merit to a post-partisan strategy right now, or maybe ever. Philosophically, I'm not even sure that "unity" per se in a democracy is necessarily a good thing. Obviously if nothing can get done or if the country is in an undeclared state of civil war, that's not good. That's where persuasion, making a strong case, using the tools of the
sausage-makingpolitical process comes in. I see the US as suffering from a lack rather than surfeit of partisan options unlike parliamentary democracies where real coalitions are sometimes possible.There are huge differences in political thought in the US that can't be easily papered over. The Overton window has been shoved ever and ever rightwards during my lifetime to the point that Nixon could represent the liberal wing of today's Republican party. (And I remember the Nixon administration!)
Given the enormous dissatisfaction people have expressed with the last seven years of the Bush administration (seen his approval ratings?), I see this election season as a golden opportunity to make the case for more progressive values. Not necessarily saying "ha! Reagan fans been pwned!" but given that we've had nothing but right-wing policies for 7 years that have ended up having disastrous consequences (er, Katrina), this is an excellent time to make the case that there are other ways of solving political problems. When even long-time conservatives like Bruce Fein have made the case that Bush/Cheney have committed impeachable offenses, doesn't seem like anyone has to worry about mincing words. (John Edwards to my mind was doing an excellent, excellent job of delineating those values and contrasts, but alas he was put on ignore by the MSM [main stream media].) the rest follows
part 2
Date: 2008-02-28 02:56 am (UTC)When one side is extreme, aiming for a central point between the two strikes me as relativism. Faith in Buffy had a point in saying "because it's wrong." But there's also a strategic downside to this in that you run the very real risk of alienating your own political base that year after year votes, contributes and does GOTV. Reagan, like FDR, was a successful politician because he knew it was essential to unify your own base and divide or peel off from the opposition. This is where I'm running up against serious reservations about BHO's strategy. Appealing to independents and moderate Republicans is great when possible but *not* at the expense of dividing your own party.
Some huge huge class and generational fissures have opened up within the Democratic party this primary season, and it's been off-putting to read screeds at major political blogs by people who should know better, crapping on the portions of the party who are not part of Obama's demographic. If boomers (especially older women), or blue collar workers (including Reagan Dems who've come back) or even Latinos start feeling iced out of the party, that isn't happy news for electability either at the top of the ticket or in Senate & Congressional races.
During 2004 and in doing some GOTV, I kept hearing a couple comments that really highlighted the Dems' electability problems. One was "not knowing what they stood for" (ouch!) and that came mostly from disaffected Republicans who could handle having issue disagreements as long as they felt a Dem had the courage of his/her convictions. The other was the reaction of "there's no difference between the 2 parties" which seems to indicate that pointing out very real distinctions would be welcome. I have a bad feeling that the same thing could happen all over again.
I think I lost the end of my post, but that's quite enough outta me. ;)
Persuasion
Date: 2008-03-02 05:06 pm (UTC)Thanks for the clarification. That's very different than the experience argument - which is the one that Hillary is currently campaigning on and I think may backfire on her. If she goes up against McCain - it definitely will - since he arguably has a lot more experience than she does on the job. It is also a bit ironic - since many of our best presidents had no experience, and our worst ones had tons.
As to Obama...what strikes me as interesting about Obama - is that he has experience at the grass-roots level or community organizing. This is important. Why? Because it is all about persuasion and marketing. It really doesn't matter what you believe in or how you feel about something - if no one hears you or is willing to listen. You could have written the best book on the planet - but if you don't know how to market and sell it? No one will ever get the chance to read it. That was John Edwards problem in a nutshell - sure he had great ideas, but very few people paid attention to them. He's run for President twice now, and he still barely registers. He was unable to obtain the media's attention or for that matter a percentage of the public's. Half of a politician's job is marketing himself. Same is true with just about anything we do, like it or not, we have to SELL our message and not just to our opponent but to the people on our team. You can't rely on the media to do it for you. You have to do it. Obama - was an unknown, we never heard of him until 2005. I didn't know who he was until 2006 and friends started telling me about me. He got the media's attention very quickly - something Edwards still hasn't been able to do, after what eight years of trying?
Have you ever watched the tv show "The Apprentice"? Yeah, it's a reality show or what I like to call unscripted show. But it does demonstrate the importance of persuasion. On that show - the constestants have to sell their ideas and approaches on an assignment not just to their fellow team members (who are competing against them) but also to a client and to Donald Trump. What you watch is basically politics in a compact space.
In your posts above - you discuss Reagan and that he won based on the strength of his convictions. I disagree. You are overlooking something that is actually very important - Reagan was charismatic. He was a former actor, who at one point in time had been a democrat, and this may surprise you - personally he really wasn't as conservative as he came across. Nor did he really believe in half of the things that he promised. He was a "a pro-business" Republican not the "social conservative" that many thought of him as. And the second term? He had Altziemers. But the man was the consummate salesman, an actor - he could sell people snake oil and they'd buy it. For a while he was even called the "Teflon" President. He was that good at it. I saw him in person once - he could sell you anything. And I honestly doubt he cared what it was but he certainly knew how to make us believe he did - that's what an actor is good at. Bill Clinton was similar - he had charm. I've heard that even if you disliked Bill, you'd meet him in person and be instantly charmed by him - he made you feel like you were the most important person in the room.
In today's media saturated age - that's half the battle right there. LBJ - not the most likable man or president on the planet, but he was persuasive. He was able to get the votes he needed in the senate through all sorts of manipulative deals. LBJ had another means, that did not require charisma. (This is what Hillary Clinton may be relying on, and to an extent John McCain - LbJ's tatics. I don't know about Obama, to use those types of tatics, you sort of need a lot of experience in the Senate..Abraham Lincoln on the other hand managed to persuade people without that type of experience. So I'd have to say, unfortunately, there is no litmus test or formula that we can perform which will predict who can do this the most effectively. )
(TBC)
Re: Persuasion - bi-partisan/partisian
Date: 2008-03-02 05:09 pm (UTC)What Obama states is that's it's not an either/or - we can't have a world that is completely bi-partisan any more than we can have one that is completely partisan, it will always be a little bit of both. We will always disagree to some extent, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. What we want to avoid, however, is rule by one group entirely. I honestly don't believe most things are as black and white as people like to make it. So much is situational. Sure some murders are clearly evil - such as Charles Manson or Ted Bundy. But other's are well more muddy.
The Democrats who voted with the Republicans on those bills may have done so for reasons that the Salon writer hasn't picked up on. It's not about partisan or by-partisan or even for that matter about right and wrong. We haven't read the bills. We don't know the deals that were struck. Or for that matter why. Often a senate bill will have clauses in it that help an individual senator's state. Or it may even be a bill that that senator knows his constituents support. He is after all the voice of his district, first, not the voice of the party or even for that matter his "own" moral views. Sure the Sentator from Masschussetus might be for a bill that say requests less funding in defense, but the Sentator from Virgina - has a huge number of defense contractors in his state, and about 120,000 jobs depending on defense funding - so he's going to support funding in defense. To say he's wrong to do so, is painting the situation a bit too black and white, when it is anything but. "Because it's wrong..." is at times an incredibly ironic statement. Africa may not want a farm aid bill - helping US farm interests, but the Senator from Iowa does - because he's worried about jobs in Iowa, while President Bush is worried about people struggling to export their goods from Africa to the US.
One of the things you learn in law school is "persuasion". In litigation it is how you win a case. And in negotiation - it is how you convince the other party how to see your see your side, realize that doing this deal with you will in fact benefit him/her in the long run. Most of politics is deal making or negotiation and it does not happen on the senate floor, as Obama also points out in his book, but in back rooms and individual one on one sessions over coffee. When the sentators go into the room to vote, they've already made up their minds. It's what happens before that is important.
Has Obama demonstrated that he can do this? I think he has just in his current run for the White House. The fact that he is charming Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, is interesting. And he has a great deal of experience in community organizing (not an easy thing).Of the three candidates currently running - I think Obama may be the most charismatic and potentially the most persuasive.
But I don't know for certain. Right now, the Democratic Party is playing a risky game. The Republicans are laughing at them - just watched part of Meet The Press this morning. The fight between Obama and Clinton according to the polls appears to have split the party and provided McCain with fodder. But I'm not sure that's completely true. I also don't know what Obama would be like as President. I remain unconvinced that either McCain or Clinton will be any more persuasive. I don't know what the Senate will look like or which party will grab it. All of this is basically guess-work.