It's more than appropriate that, just as I started this post, John Adams' musical tribute to the victims of September 11, "On the Transmigration of Souls," began playing in my iTunes.
The tone of my previous post notwithstanding, I have a mix of feelings about the killing of bin Laden. I'm not alone in this; Aaron over at Zunguzungu sums them up well.
I would much prefer that Obama continue to find more peaceful means to demonstrate his presidential bona fides, and that his political and policy opponents see those means as valid. I'm not at all happy that this event has justified or vindicated, in the minds of some, the use of torture to obtain intelligence. It in fact appears to be the case that torture didn't produce the information that set this operation into motion (more here--and, as final proof, here's Donald Rumsfeld saying torture didn't yield this information--on Newsmax, no less). Still--just as Aaron and others have noted--do we really want to codify actions of this sort as justice? As exempla of American values?
I admit to being an optimist, though, especially where this president is concerned. Maybe this event's extreme nature will give Obama some future leverage in debates concerning how to prosecute terrorism cases: He can point to this event in his arguments with the chest-thumpers that he's no wimp but that, by the same token, we neither can nor should go tearing around the world shooting bad guys or, for that matter, jail all of them indefinitely without trials (preferably civilian ones). He's not afraid of going after these people, he can now say; why are all of you so willing to act from a position adopted out of fear? That's right: call them cowards. Point to the facts that our civilian trials, for all their coddling of the accused via acknowledging their rights, have thus far been far more successful in convicting and imprisoning terrorists than the allegedly less-coddling military courts have, and that we already have convicted terrorists in prisons in this country, not one of whom has even tried to escape. Etc., etc.
Maybe, in other words, as many have suggested, Obama can finally begin to get us out of this defensive, cowering crouch we've been in for the past 10 years.
I for one would really like to stretch my legs a bit. Maybe you don't know it yet--it's hard to remember, after so long, what that would feel like--but you probably would, too.
Case in point regarding this: If one's political news had been supplied by online media, especially in the past couple of weeks, you'd think all the White House has been worrying about was Donald Trump (and/or the severity of his skewering of Trump at the Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday) . . . or, for that matter, worrying about the press's coverage of all this.
Well.
Approve of our president or not, I would hope that the one charge against him that we can finally put to rest is that the man is unserious. It's insulting at best to think that. Disagreement with him does not necessarily equal incompetence on his part, and certainly not his illegitimacy as the leader of this nation. And given that the operation against bin Laden was going on during that same correspondents' dinner, this passage from the President's speech has an especially potent kick to it:
[I]n an episode of Celebrity Apprentice -- (laughter) -- at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf. (Laughter.) You fired Gary Busey. (Laughter.) And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.
(Italics mine.)
Today is a good day, though, no matter one's politics. It was an extraordinary operation conducted with what appears to be the passive-aggressive assistance of the nation within whose boundaries it took place. A whole lot of folks, not all of them presently in office, deserve a whole lot of credit for persevering and pulling this off. Sorry, though, h8ters: Given our internet's dog-mapping ways, Obama's going to get, probably, more credit than he deserves . . . which in this instance, frankly, is about time.
The FULL video, in case anyone's interested. There's also this, via Talking Points Memo's story: "Quick note: There is, as you can see, an edit in the middle of the speech. An NAACP spokesman tells me that, according to the local chapter, that's when the tape was switched in the recording. What's missing, he said, is a line about Sherrod being offered tobacco."
Well, okay: not politics per se but how it gets "reported" and discussed in these de-centralized, 24/7 news cycle, pick-the-source-of-information-that-most-often-affirms-your-already-established-belief-system days of ours. It is clear, now, that what happened to Shirley Sherrod yesterday--not Andrew Breitbart's release of an out-of-context two-minute edit of a 43-minute speech whose subject is the exact opposite of what he and others alleged it was about, the subsequent real-time back-and-forth on the news about it, and certainly not her dismissal from her position in the USDA without allowing her (and others) to defend herself--should never have happened, either to her or to any person. When even Glenn Beck, that consummate dot-connector, says an injustice was done to Sherrod, it's pretty clear what will happen today regarding her reinstatement. Well: what should happen.
(Yes: I do support this president and most of his administration's policies. But I hope those who keep reading won't miss the frustration I have been feeling these days toward the Obama administration--not to mention the larger frustration everyone should feel toward the way Congress, because of the deliberate choice of Republicans to not be honest brokers in legislating, is (not) working.)
But it did, and why it did will be the subject of many and various discussions headed in many different directions. Indeed, this story would work well as a case study in the (to my mind) now-vexed relationship between noisy activists whose sole agenda is not policy but ends-justifies-the-means "winning," their surrogates in the media and, increasingly, in the elected branch of government, and this particular version of the executive branch, who, any intellectually-honest person no matter his/her politics would agree, has studiously avoided the appearance of any sort of institutionalized favoritism toward African-Americans.
So much so, in fact, that that is surely what drove Tom Vilsack's decision to force Sherrod out. That leads me to the first big lesson yesterday's events taught me: that the Obama administration's actions, on the matter of race at least, have in effect been shaped not by policy but by the afore-mentioned folks out there so driven by animus toward this president that they do not hesitate whenever possible to invent a pattern of institutionalized reverse-racism. Preternaturally-optimistic person that I am, it's my fervent hope that this episode will serve to discredit the Andrew Breitbarts of the world and make the markets for his, um, journalism a bit more skeptical in their consumption and propagation of it. But that's beside the point, really. This administration's hamartia has been, almost from the get-go, an overabundance of caution. The legislative manifestations of that are driven by politics--in both the House and the Senate, there are enough skittish lawmakers that Obama has felt it necessary, rightly or wrongly, to scale back proposals to better assure their votes--this started with the stimulus package and continued (especially) with health care and is at present the case with climate legislation. But the result, despite what some would have us believe, has on the whole not been overreach but underreach, to the point that, despite a 9.5% unemployment rate, we won't see a full-blown jobs bill this session because of fear about deficit spending. "Good policy is good politics," Obama has said, and I happen to agree with that. But too many senators and representatives instead act as though good politics is half-assed legislation (if we absolutely must). Meanwhile, in the case of Shirley Sherrod, it was clearly administrative overcaution that caused Vilsack to overreact. Today will be embarrassing, and it should be, as things are a) set aright and b) the dawning realization sets in that because of that overcaution they no longer act out of the courage of their convictions but out of a desire to placate people who have made it abundantly clear that they cannot and will not be placated.
That leads me to the second big realization: that the desire to see the Obama administration fail, no matter the cost to the governance of this nation, has become institutionalized on the right to the point that Republicans and their conservative supporters who argue that such a strategy is, at best, misguided (and at worst, unconscionable within the context of having legitimate and healthy debates about policy) are losing primary elections or are literally shouted down (as here). To be sure, back in the day there were folks on "my side" who held a fair amount of enmity toward the Bush administration, but I would argue that did not result in the spectacle of, say, Democrats serving on bi-partisan committees to write bills, keep insisting that further changes to those bills be made and see those changes made, only to refuse then even to vote the bill out of committee (that, in a nutshell, is the history of the Max Baucus "Gang of Six" committee that wrote the Senate version of the healthcare bill). This sort of thing is not statesmanship or governance but winning the day, a creation of our multi-voiced media, itself divided by partisan alliances or by the desire to not appear partisan.
And that leads me to my third and last big realization. From the days of the 2008 primaries, one of the things I admired most about Obama's campaign was its very clear focus on the long-term, the bigger picture. They seemed to understand that, times being what they have become, what seems significant in the moment would, a few weeks or months down the road seem considerably less so--if, indeed, it was remembered by anyone at all. Given that one of my criticisms of the previous administration was its apparent inability to think through any scenario, foreign or domestic, past the horizon of the next election, I looked forward to an Obama administration that was more interested in genuine governance--something that by its very nature is long term--and to sincere debates with conservatives who also were interested in genuine governance. With some profound caveats, I have to say that at its best the Obama administration has satisfied my expectations on this score--this despite Republican recalcitrance and a loud progressive element disappointed (and sometimes angry) with its half-loaves. But the events of the past two days show that, in the interest of maintaining an optics of colorblindness (obviously a laudatory interest), the administration is susceptible to making snap judgments at the expense of careful assessing of facts (not to mention, of course, the grave human cost to Shirley Sherrod). It is angering to see an administration rightly angry about charges from some that it plays a racialized politics make the decision it did, and as quickly as it did--out of fear--what else to call it?--that hesitancy in acting would be read as its being party to a racialized politics.
I want to be a long-term optimist in all this. This event, coming as it does in the immediate wake of the recent re-litigating (led by FOX News) of the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case (which, just to repeat, the Bush Administration's own Department of Justice had dismissed as being unfounded), the back-and-forth between the Tea Party and the NAACP, and the on-going debate in New York over the building of a Muslim community center two blocks away from Ground Zero, has the potential to lead to several greater goods: in addition to wanting and hoping to see Andrew Breitbart's reputation as Right-Wing Truth-Bringer electronically drawn and quartered--in particular by those who have been invested in that reputation, I hope that the more vocal elements of those who don't approve of the Obama administration be more loyal in their opposition--that they be a bit more thoughtful about what is at the root of their (and others') criticisms of the administration. Debates over economic policy will reveal tensions over what to do (if anything) about the rapidly-widening gap between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy in this country. That's fine, and inevitable. But there are some in this country, some of them quite prominent, willing to more-or-less explicitly frame economic debates in terms of race, as, for example, Rush Limbaugh's arguing that health care reform is a disguised system of reparations. Especially in a very difficult time, such accusations are not just wrong on the merits, they are obscene and unconscionable. I would hope that the Sherrod case causes GOP candidates and officials who, through their words or their silence, have acquiesced in this rhetoric in hopes of getting elected to look past November and acknowledge that this will come to no good end for anyone, no matter his or her politics: MSNBC and FOX and folks out in the blogosphere will just set up competing electronic guillotines and, increasingly, our politics will be reduced to seeing who can best disguise their pandering so as to earn votes and money (and not necessarily in that order) while we all drown in simple-minded rhetoric often based not on facts but unproven assertions and badly disguised as serious discussion about exceedingly complex and important issues--that they will look at all this and say, For our sake as a nation and the ideals we say we stand for, this must change. But I also hope that Democrats and their supporters will also face all this and not be cowed by it but rebut it, to not just label their opposition as racists and call it good. It's precisely that sort of indiscriminate tarring (or, alternately, ignoring it in the belief that people are decent and smart enough to see through it and dismiss it) that has gotten us to this point. It must stop, no matter our politics.
Someone--actually, LOTS of someones--needs to say, simply and directly, that what happened to Shirley Sherrod yesterday was wrong all the way around, that the polite term for anyone of whatever politics who cannot or will not acknowledge that does not exist, and that that person should be kept as far on the fringes of civil society as possible. But I also have to say that having to say that, necessary as it is, exhausts me. And saddens, and angers me.
There is indeed much to be afraid of--no question. But a politics of fear and of fear-mongering, no matter what the object of that fear or who engages in it, is no way to face these dangers. It's a dangerous amalgam of cynicism and fear; as though some want us to keep seeing the Twin Towers fall in some infinite loop in our collective imagination. Well. If it's okay with y'all, I'd prefer not to think that we're behaving as though our entire nation--the people and its elected representatives--are suffering from PTSD. Why, you'll flinch at little things like seeing some trash lying in the street or hearing a car backfiring. You could be hospitalized for that, if the symptoms get bad enough.
You might do something really crazy if you're not careful.
Words are of vital importance. Knowing who says or writes them is of vital importance. So also is/are the context(s) within which they are spoken or written--"context" here meaning not just the other words that surround them but also the larger historical circumstances under which they are spoken; if we do not know them, we cannot, in the fullest sense of the word, read anything. Before someone complains that I'm about to head into a kind of Derridian relativism here, I'll just say this by way of a preemptive strike: I believe there are absolute truths to be discovered and affirmed; I also believe they are few and hard to find and, once found, talked about. That which is absolutely true is that which stands up to repeated examinations of its iterations in various texts and contexts. It is that to which people find themselves returning, ever returning.
Here's an example of what I mean by the importance of texts and contexts. My teaching mentor back in my MA days once wrote the following on the board in his Freshman Comp class: "Who said, 'A little rebellion now and then is a good thing'? A) Axl Rose; B) Thomas Jefferson; C) Vladimir Lenin." The correct answer, most of us know, is "B", but my teacher's larger point was to impress on the class that the mouth in whom we put words will shape our attitudes regarding those words because we're not assessing solely the words themselves. Words have meaning for their users and their hearers and readers only because of the circumstances under which they are spoken.
"Coolidge," you are saying. Okay. Over at Atlantic Avenue, Amy responds to President Obama's upcoming September 8th address to public school kids (which, just to be clear, schools can opt in or out of as they see fit) with this post in which she imagines Calvin Coolidge offering a response to that address. It's clever and well-written, which I find true of just about everything Amy posts. (Full disclosure: Amy and I do not agree on politics, but I believe that she debates in good faith and so genuinely respect her and her opinions; indeed, if I didn't, I wouldn't be writing this post.) What follows is what Amy describes as a preview of Coolidge's address: a collection of actual quotes from Coolidge. Amy's collection appears in full here:
• Duty is not collective; it is personal.
• The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
• Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.
• Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
• The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.
• There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.
• Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
• Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.
• Some principles are so constant and so obvious that we do not need to change them, but we need rather to observe them.
• One with the law is a majority.
• Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
• If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.
• The words of a President have enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.
• To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
• Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking after your country.
• The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.
• You can't know too much, but you can say too much.
Another full disclosure: I don't know a whole lot about Coolidge or his presidency. But so I am honest enough to admit that future reading might change some of what follows. On the other hand, my essential ignorance of Coolidge, I'd argue, is a legitimate thing to bring to the task of reading these quotes. They are, after all, removed from their contexts: I have no idea where or how Amy (or her source(s)) found them, but she presents them here as being worthy of our approval devoid of those contexts. That's not something I can fault too much, seeing as I and everyone reading this does this sort of thing--not, I hasten to add, with the intention of tricking the reader, but as a sort of semaphoric conveying to the reader how we think about certain things. The other reason I can't fault what Amy does here is that, considered here as she presents them, I find myself in greater or lesser agreement with just about every item here--as, I suspect, just about everyone else, independent of their politics, would. The vast, vast majority of Americans express admiration for our Constitution. Personal responsibility is indeed a virtue, most all would say. Industry, thrift, and self-control indeed build character--no question.
So what's the problem? you ask. Well, maybe the problem is with me: Amy's list was not completely devoid of context--she supplied the dates of Coolidge's presidency, 1923-1929--and so as I read this list, I kept matching up Coolidge's words with the events of those years and, perhaps not so surprisingly, the decade after, as I understand them. Thus, as I read the list I kept finding myself saying some variation of "Yeah, but . . . " No matter the virtues inherent in Coolidge's words, it's clearly true that not all businesspeople and investors of his day were acting in accordance with them--and the combination of that fact and the Coolidge administration's desire to hew to these principles even if Wall Street was not was clearly, at the very least, a contributing factor in causing the Great Depression. Knowing this, then, makes some of these quotes seem, shall we say, a bit ominous.
None of this is to say that Coolidge is necessarily wrong for saying these things or that Amy is wrong for admiring them--as I say above, when considered in the abstract there is much wisdom in these statements. It is to say, though, that these work better for us as individuals in guiding our behavior than they do as principles by which to govern a nation filled with people who use their wealth to engage in behavior that, though legal (in the sense of "unregulated"), is less than virtuous, or salutary for the very markets and economy in which they participate and on whose health we all depend.
There's another context I'd like to address quickly: As I mention above, Amy wrote this post in part to critique President Obama's address to public school kids next week. It's fair to ask whether such a thing is appropriate for a President to do; speaking for myself, I say it's appropriate for any President to espouse the importance of education, but (agreeing with Amy here) I'd like to think that's a self-evident truth. Even so, it does no one any harm to state the obvious. At any rate, other conservative types I have read who have been critical of Obama's address have said something along the lines of, "I can't remember another President doing this sort of thing; at the very least, then, we should be suspicious of Obama's doing this."
The kindest thing I can think to say by way of rebuttal is that these folks have short memories:
In 1988, then-President Reagan spoke to students nationwide via C-SPAN telecast. Among other things, he talked about his positions on political issues of the day. Three years later, then-President Bush addressed school kids in a speech broadcast live to school classrooms nationwide. Among other things, he promoted his own administration's education policies. [More details on this here.]
President Obama wants to deliver a message to students next week emphasizing hard work, encouraging young people to do their best in school. The temper tantrum the right is throwing in response only helps reinforce how far gone 21st-century conservatives really are.
[snip]
I can appreciate there's a question of whether the Department of Education erred in the wording of one sentence in the supplementary materials. It's reasonable to think officials should have been more cautious.
But that's not what this is about. The administration not only edited the supplementary materials, but has offered to make the text of the address available in advance, just so everyone can see how innocuous it is. It's made no difference. Conservatives don't want school kids to hear a message from their president. Those who claim superiority on American patriotism have decided to throw yet another tantrum over the idea that the president of the United States might encourage young people to do well in schools.
This is what American politics has come to in 2009.
Skepticism of government is a virtue--no question. But surely even fair-minded folks who didn't vote for Obama can see that what's going on here far transcends skepticism. Their disappointment and/or anger over the results of the 2008 election have so blinded them that they have great difficulty remembering the previous eight years, or can only see Ronald Reagan when illuminated by his "Government is the problem" halo, or, most perversely of all, simply refuse to accept the possibility that Obama and his administration and supporters, misguided or mistaken though they may be, genuinely have the best interests and values of the nation--as they understand those interests and values--at heart . . . and that those interests are ones all of us would understand as "American" in nature: that they are governing in good faith and will listen to reasoned and reasonable objections, in other words. I mean, much as I disagreed with the Bush administration, I believed it governed in good faith. Well, okay: I wanted to believe that of them. If I were a Freudian, I'd argue that much of that disappointment and anger is actually a projecting of their feelings about the GOP's abject failure to govern either responsibly (my complaint) or in accordance with its own stated policies regarding fiscal responsibility (the base's complaint). But whatever the case, it's absurd, not to mention dangerous, to behave as though Obama's acts as President so completely run counter to those of previous presidents that their precedents--the context of the office of President--become erased in the resulting critique of his presidency. It's also foolish to ignore another context when wondering, as some do, about the extent to which the Obama administration's actions in the marketplace are some sort of dictatorial consolidation of power: the fact that our nation's economy was and remains in very dire straits--the market, having self-regulated us into this pretty state, lacked the ability to self-regulate us out of it--and, most economists across the political spectrum agreed, only the government was big enough to get us out of those straits or at least make them less dire. Yes: we can quibble about particulars, not all of which I'm all that thrilled about. But the government has taken extraordinary actions because the times required such actions, and immediately. Celebrations of self-reliance and economic sobriety, no matter who's doing the celebrating, weren't sufficient in Coolidge's time, and they weren't and aren't now.
I have some ideas as to why Obama is being criticized by some on the right in the way that he is, but that will have to wait for a while yet. But in the meantime I'd like to direct those curious about what I have to say to this one-sentence statement and really ponder it.
UPDATE (April 21): Perhaps things aren't quite so bleak on this front after all. But the letter's argument seems no less true to me.
Below the fold (to spare the uninterested) is the text of a letter I have sent to the White House in response to the news that the Obama administration will not seek to prosecute the writers of the Bush administration's "torture memos."
I feel compelled to express my dismay in the strongest possible terms that the current administration will not seek to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the ordering, writing and implementation of the so-called torture memos. It is a matter of national and international law and treaty that the United States, at the highest levels of the Executive Branch, was in deliberate violation of the law as a result of the production of these memos. Moreover, I understand that this administration, in its refusal to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these memos, is ALSO in violation of those same national and international laws and treaties.
These facts transcend politics and, despite the understandable desire to avoid a protracted and painful examination of these matter, it is not at all clear to me how this decision aids the United States in restoring its standing in the world as a nation that abides by the rule of law--which no one is supposed to be above . Not only did the Bush administration seriously compromise our nation's moral standing as an advocate of human rights with its adoption of torture as a legally-sanctioned and -rationalized option, this decision by the current administration essentially tells the world that, despite its public statements declaring outrage and repugnance with regard to these memos and what was done in their name, they do not merit more than these verbals slaps on the wrist. This can only have the effect of rendering torture the very thing its proponents strongly imply: that its use is a matter of policy and thus permitted according to the whim of whoever happens to be President, rather than a crime against human dignity and decency of the most odious sort as, again, declared in numerous domestic and international codes and to which our nation is a signatory and has in the past insisted that other nations be judged by. The application of law thus becomes arbitrary, at best; at worst, not investigating and prosecuting clear, undisputed laws is the worst sort of precedent for the Executive Branch--that branch of the government tasked with ENFORCING THE LAW--to be setting.
We are better than this. This--the actions of both the previous administration and the current one (it is extremely difficult not to see this administration's decision not to prosecute as anything other than tacitly aiding and abetting the actions of the previous one; hence this administration becomes complicit with the actions of the past one)--runs completely counter to our nation's history, from before the time the United States was even a nation, in fact, given General George Washington's directive to his soldiers to treat British prisoners humanely. I did not loudly and proudly support Mr. Obama's candidacy because I entertained any possibility that an Obama administration would make a decision like this. But I say that not out of partisan ire directed at the Bush administration but out of a love and admiration and respect for our nation's hard-won reputation in the world as an advocate of the principles of human rights and the rule of law. That reputation suffered serious damage under the previous administration, and I'm very sorry to say that I simply cannot see how this decision in any way begins to repair that damage. I daresay that, as far as I can tell, it may only make that damage worse.
I do not like this. Or, for that matter, the previous affirmations of the State Secrets privilege for a program whose existence everyone is aware of and, thus, what's to endanger? Especially when what's at issue is whether sworn officers of the courts--specifically, judges--can look at evidence to determine whether the plaintiff has a case.
Given the undeniable fact that the previous administration's Department of Justice left the present administration's DOJ with several big fat legal Gordian Knots to unpick (that, I might add, should never have been tied to begin with), I still hold out hopes that Obama's folks are erring on the side of caution until they can figure out the scale of the messes and then proceed as they would prefer--something like what we've seen with the handling of the financial crisis. It's still very early in this administration, after all. But as more than a few people are pointing out, it was precisely the Bush administration's indiscriminate use of the State Secrets privilege that candidate Obama used as part of his critique of that administration's intrusions on civil liberties. Absent some sort of thorough--and constitutionally-satisfactory--rationale for what's going on from the Department of Justice, I confess to some queasiness about these decisions.
I signed up for a whole lot of stuff when I signed up with Obama, some of it with a fair amount of assurance, some on faith. One of those things I signed up for was that he, with his background in constitutional law, would restore a respect for civil liberties that had had been sorely lacking in the Bush administration. Thursday's actions don't square with what I signed up for.
UPDATE: Here is a Department of Justice statement, issued this morning, regarding yesterday's case.
Fresh off his stint as a war correspondent in Gaza, Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.
When GOP congressional aides gather Tuesday morning for a meeting of the Conservative Working Group, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher – more commonly known as Joe the Plumber — will be their featured guest. This group is an organization of conservative Capitol Hill staffers who meet regularly to chart GOP strategy for the week.
[snip]
“In case you weren’t planning to attend CWG tomorrow morning, you might want to reconsider because Joe the Plumber will be joining us!” Kimberly Wallner, an aide to South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, wrote in a message to her e-mail list this afternoon. [emphases added]
Politico tries to write this up with a straight face but can't quite manage it (note the initial introductory clause, for example, which also happened, courtesy of Pajamas Media). And, really, what serious person could?
Others will make considerable comedic hay out of this; but really, it's so easy to do it, why bother? I'll just make this observation, though, by way of a re-reading of Ms. Wallner's pitch for the meeting: The liberal-leaning blogs I read, when not taking pot-shots at the Republicans' all-around unhelpfulness and ineptitude regarding the Congress's and Senate's debates on the stimulus package, would welcome serious suggestions from the GOP. But to argue, as some Republicans in Congress did, that the stimulus package is far too big yet singling out considerably less than 1% of items in the package for specific criticism is not serious. It's weird: there's a much more constructive debate in the liberal blogosphere over this thing--they're even making some conservative-leaning arguments and have duly noted that the bill that passed the House of Representatives contains more tax cuts than were originally in the proposal because it is true, generally-speaking, that tax cuts will stimulate the economy more in the short term than investments in infrastructure. At the risk of overgeneralizing things, though, conservatives seem content to label the entire thing as socialism and wash their hands of it--we're going to hell in a handbasket, but it'll be the Democrats' fault, by God. (But--nota bene, CWG et al.--if this thing works, that too will be the Democrats' fault: how can one legitimately claim credit for something one has voted against, no matter how much it might reflect one's own thinking?)
So, with a "strategy" like that, what's to plan? Why show up? I feel Ms. Wallner's pain ("In case you weren't planning to attend . . . "). I'm not sure, though, that bringing in Joe the Plumber will add any new wrinkles to the debate, no matter how many warm bodies his presence adds to the room. After all, if public opinion is any indication, Joe's opposition to the stimulus package is out of step with precisely the constituency--the American people--the GOP has mythologized him to be the standard-bearer of. Yet, even in the wake of the 2006 and 2008 elections, the party looks out over the political landscape and sees, and hears, only itself. Hence, you betcha (to borrow another current GOP standard-bearer's phrase) "you might want to reconsider."
I'm entirely serious when I say I'm tired of alternately laughing at and shaking my head in despair over what the Republican Party has devolved into. I want to see Democrats and progressives have true, substantive arguments with it over matters of policy. Otherwise, the only argument left is the extent to which we collectively should take at all seriously much of anything conservatives have to say about this crisis in which we find ourselves. To those of us not rabidly partisan, that would be a sad argument to have.
Along these lines: Reread this Mark Schmitt piece from December of 2007 in light of the Congressional debates over the stimulus package, especially the final three paragraphs. It's hard to overstate just how prescient that piece looks now.
More substantive blogging to come, but this got my attention this morning:
Part of the running discussion between my colleague and me that I alluded to here was that my colleague had recently been hearing discussions of the "Is Obama black enough?" meme that appeared shortly after Obama announced his candidacy. While I cannot pretend to speak for any African-Americans or out of the experience of growing up black in this country, I can say that a) I understand what gives rise to such questions; and b) those questions (still) strike me as just a wee bit denigrating of both Obama and, I have to say, the people (blacks as well as whites) asking them: Purity Tests are not a healthy direction for discussions of the politics of race.
By Richard Crowson, just-departed editorial cartoonist of the Wichita Eagle. Image found here (via Douglas and Main).
This image makes me smile, and I would like to believe that Lincoln, who personally was not as enlightened on matters of race as his public image would suggest, would have been amenable to sharing a fist-bump with our new President. If Obama's approval ratings are any indication, many many people who didn't vote for him back in November are fist-bumping him in their own ways, too--if only because he's the President and, given what lies ahead for us as a nation, those of us who love our country should wish any President well. Heck: Despite my personal feelings about the previous administration, occasionally aired here, I certainly didn't want Bush or his administration to fail and take no personal pleasure in thinking that he did. That would be as perverse a way to think as it is for Rush Limbaugh to publicly state he wants Obama's presidency to fail (I won't link; it's easy enough to find on the 'Nets). As I understand Limbaugh's remarks, he's speaking out of the context of his being a member of the Disloyal Opposition, rather than a racist one. But still. And, to be sure, there are some (few, but still too many) who cannot abide by the White House's being occupied by this or any African-American.
The above is a sad affirmation of something I kind of sort of alluded to here: that seeing Obama become a President is, without a doubt, a tremendous moment in our long and painful history that has been so utterly shaped, at every level, by the question of race. But rather than think that our work is done as a nation, it's more accurate to think of this as a gesture in the right direction toward finishing that work . . . all the while remembering that that work, given our ideals, will never be completely done.
Over the past two days, I have been having a running conversation about all this with a friend of mine out at the Air Force base where I teach. She was a fervent Hillary supporter during the primaries who, though thrilled at Obama's victory, still would love to see a woman President (full disclosure: as would I). In the course of our talking about how, still, our nation's collective attitudes about race are, pardon the pun, not so black-and-white as some would have us believe, I was reminded of something that happened to me while I was still living in Mobile back in the '90s. Lots of details have faded: when it was, why I happened to be looking out the front window of the house to begin with, how many people there were, etc. What matters more is what I do remember. First of all, the setting: It was early evening and cold by Mobile standards. For whatever reason, I looked out the front window, and there was an old station wagon parked in front of the house, its hood up. I could see a man standing in front of the car, and there was enough light from our porch to reveal that he was black.
I went out to offer tools, to give him a jump, to offer him the phone to call someone if things reached that point. There were at least five other people in the car--I remember two women and two small children. I greeted them as well; they smiled, cautiously, at me. I don't remember now what exactly this man, perhaps in his 50s or 60s, said he thought was the matter with his car; what I do remember is what he kept telling me as I talked with him: something to the effect that he'd be leaving soon and, even more striking, kept apologizing for his car's breaking down right there in front of my house. He was polite in his responses to me but resistant to my offers of help. That was okay of course; we Men don't want to accept help too early in the game, no matter how much it might be in our better interest to accept--I'm a skilled player of that game, too, even in the face of ample past instances of bone-headed results arising from playing the game too far past the point of no return. But what I couldn't make sense of was his apparent need to apologize for what was happening. Why apologize to a total stranger for one's car's breaking down in front of that stranger's house? It's not his fault, after all.
It wasn't until the man had made it politely clear to me that he didn't want to accept my help and I turned to go back inside to report to P., my then-wife, that it struck me: What this man was saying to me had nothing to do with the particulars of what was being said that night but with a long, long cultural memory of innumerable events much like this one that he assumed I was also remembering--black folks shouldn't be in mostly-white parts of town after dark. They run the risk of verbal and even physical hostility from the residents, spending a night in jail or, in Mobile, worse: only about 10 years before, a black man was hanged downtown by some white men as part of a Klan ritual. Never mind what I was saying; in a real sense, that man wasn't listening to me at all but to that cultural memory. The script for the evening was written before I was even aware this family's car was out there. It's a frustrating thing: on the one hand, that memory interfered with his hearing, really hearing, my offers of help; but on the other hand, who could blame him for not hearing? He was mistaken, and yet he was not.
Some time passed--I don't remember how much. I'd look out the window every once in a while to see what was happening. There the car sat, and there the man kept trying to get it to run. Finally, P. said that at the very least we could offer the use of the phone again and invite the other folks inside for coffee and hot chocolate. So she and I went out to talk with them. This time the man accepted the offer of the phone and the kids, though not the women, came inside to get warmed up. The kids had hot chocolate. The man reached a relation of his; he arrived; and they all rode home with him, leaving the station wagon there. I stopped looking out the window then. The next morning, the car was gone.
What to say about all this, really? The existence of that cultural memory and the fact that, despite our post-Emancipation, post Brown v. Board of Education, post-Civil Rights Acts and, later, a post-Obama Administration-future world that we live in, that memory will be with us for a while yet--that's an inarguable Fact. I'd like to think that our gestures toward that family that night participated in a tiny way toward helping ease that memory on its way out the door, as do I hope that my two daughters' strong friendships with African-American kids will do the same. But it's going to take a while: this year marks the 390th anniversary of the arrival of 20 Africans to the English colony at Jamestown; if you grant that "America" includes the Spanish and Portuguese colonies as well, tack on about 100 more years: Bartolomé de las Casas is rightly lauded throughout Latin America for winning for indigenous populations legal protection from enslavement; however, it was also he who proposed the importation of Africans as a solution for the colonies' labor needs. And does it need to be said? Perhaps so: Some whites feel the need to cling to this very same memory.
That's a lot of memory to overcome, on both sides. But in the long list of Good Fights, this one is up near the top. Obama's victory is an important part of that Good Fight but not by any means the final one.
UPDATE: This has indeed really happened. We really are at a moment that transcends politics or even, really, who hold what position of power--or what color his skin is. Even "historic" feels like a diminishing:
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate. Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true.
This really is an instance when the words of our ideals as a nation are made manifest. Obama's not the Messiah, no; really, what Obama's won is the right to try--we know nothing beyond that. But if those ideals have any actual meaning, if we're not just saying that we're all equal because that's the thing we Americans are supposed to say, it's difficult to avoid borrowing scriptural-sounding language. Not because of who he is, but because of who we say we are.
ONE LAST THING: A reprise of something I posted back in October, Joe Henry's beautifully-poignant and yet -affirming "Our Song." Listen to this again, keeping in mind what we saw today. "If it's His Will, the worst might still/Make me a better man."
These posts, when read within the context of Coates' commentaries on Affirmative Action a while back, make Coates' essential point about Affirmative Action: that it's in essence a cosmetic sop that appears to right historic wrongs with as little cost to The System as possible; it doesn't fix the educational and economic poverty needed to be fixed so as to raise all the boats in the harbor. In its essence, AA isn't intended to make impossible the ascendancy of the economically-disenfranchised into good jobs, much less positions of power, but neither does it make that more possible.
Obama's emergence is the exception that proves Coates' argument about AA. Those cheered by or outraged by where Obama is (and anyone who paid close attention during the primaries know that plenty of Democrats as well as Republicans, blacks as well as whites, fall on both sides of that divide, too) both understand that, even though they may not realize they understand it.
Win or lose, Obama's story is not an AA success story. It's an American success story. Read any behind-the-scene story about his on-the-ground operations during the primaries or the elections, and you'll be stunned. I'm not especially happy that in his Chicago days he has associated with some of the people that he has; but, as has also often been pointed out, the fact that those people are in positions of power now despite their pasts is an indictment on all who have allowed them to acquire their power and positions in the first place--and that goes for lots of conservative Republicans, too. In any even, those people have nothing to do with this campaign. Obama has earned this, by outworking else, by not buying into narratives of inevitability (not just Hillary Clinton's version of that narrative, either). There's simply no other conclusion, and--honest political disagreements aside--whoever says otherwise is ignorant or blind.
A quick observation on a moment from last night's debate:
I'm not interested here in arguing that my guy won or the other guy lost; my interest is more a matter of philosophy than of politics.
What follows is an excerpt from Hilzoy's live-blogging of the debate. I'm not being facetious when I say that I no longer recognize the terms liberal and conservative as used today when I compare them to how they were used back in the dark ages of the '70s (when [full disclosure] I grew up in a Texas household so Republican that we weren't entirely sure Nixon should have resigned). But one formulation from those days remains in place today: conservatives say they want smaller government in favor of more personal responsibility; liberals see government as a mechanism for improving people's lives and righting inequities of, it seems, every sort.
That's what made this bit so striking to me. Hilzoy does a pretty good unvarnished paraphrase of its contents (I watched the debate, too). The parenthetical comment is Hilzoy's:
9:30: Qu [sic]: What sacrifices will you ask of Americans? McCain: we will have to examine programs and cut some. I have cut defense spending. I will examine earmarks. I will freeze spending, except for vets, defense, "and some other vital programs." (I wonder which?)
9:33: Obama: after 9/11, the country was willing to come together. But we were never called to service. Energy: we will all need to think about how we use energy. We need more production, but we can also start thinking, as individuals, about our choices. And government can help make sure that you can weatherize your home, etc. Also: young people especially want to serve; we should provide opportunities, so that our troops are not the only ones who do this.
One addition to this summary: Hilzoy did leave out a small but not insignificant part of Obama's response, when he mentioned that Bush, in the days immediately after 9/11, encouraged Americans to go shopping--Obama said that that didn't square with his (Obama's) understanding of sacrifice. But what strikes me is that McCain frames "sacrifice" here in terms of what government will have to give up. Unless I'm just overlooking it in my recollection, he says nothing about what citizens should/must be asked to do along these lines--which is, as I understood it, the thrust of the question.
Obama, though, does address that thrust--and indeed could have said more. As one example, some conservative folks made hay of Joe Biden's statement last week that paying taxes was "patriotic." It struck them as absurd. But consider that the present wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the first since we've had an income tax that our taxes have not gone up so as to help pay for its cost. Some have made the argument that if the War on Terror is indeed the danger of the magnitude the government claims it is, why aren't we all being asked to contribute more than the surrendering of our civil liberties (sorry--couldn't resist) to this cause? That lack of a call to service and sacrifice to face this danger struck struck these observers as being, at best, inconsistent: Well? Should we citizens be doing more, or not?
At any rate, it strikes me that Obama's response is actually the more "conservative" one, with its calls for accountability and service from citizens as well as government in a time of what we are told is a collective need, if by "conservative" one sees as a part of its meaning a valuing of tradition. This country does indeed have a long tradition of asking its people to sacrifice in those times of collective need. Where is the Scary Black-Radical (Straw)man in that response? Far from being some sort of Muslim-controlled Manchurian Candidate sent to destroy our nation, Obama's response to the woman's question is an honoring and affirmation of that long tradition. Embedded in McCain's response, it seems to me, is the default setting that it's government's job to take care of everything that needs taking care of but, by golly, it just may have to do a bit less for a while. But y'all just go on about your business now like nothing's wrong, as best you can.
Sure: I'm stating McCain's position here pejoratively. But on the other hand, speaking for myself, I can't help but see in Obama's response an appeal to something fundamentally American, something that the "conservatives" of the Bush administration and, now, the "conservative" John McCain, for whatever reason, have set aside at a very time in our history that we most could use it.
Oh, yeah: speaking of Scary Black-Radical (Straw)men: will you just look at this latest viral smear of Obama? Don't turn away--really, really look at it: The only way we can become equal as a people to the ideals we say we embody as a nation is by looking at something like this and calling it what it is to its face.
It's sad, isn't it, the depths to which some people will stoop and muck about in the sewers of their own obsessions and then foist them on us.
Well? Are you outraged or terrified yet by this exposure of our nation's reptilian brain? No? Well, there's more where this came from.
More silliness: Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle, which is sort of the antithesis of Chuck Norris Facts . . . hmm . . . given that Chuck Norris has endorsed Mike Huckabee, is Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle an implicit diss of the man about whom it is said, "Most people know that Descarte [sic] said, 'I think, therefore I am.' What most people don't know is that that quote continues, '...afraid of Chuck Norris.'"? An in-your-face dollop of niceness aimed at the man under whose beard is another fist?
First things first: Fellow Wichita blogger (and political science prof) Russell Arben Fox's comments on Obama's visit and on his candidacy generally are here. Russell was kind enough to link to yesterday's post even though I hadn't said anything, so thanks to him for that.
I refer the curious to some posts I wrote on Obama's post-race politics, here and here.
I look like "an ordinary American," according to the Obama campaign worker who selected me and a co-worker of mine to sit on the stage behind Obama as he spoke; as I oh-so vainly pointed out in the previous post, that's this blog's author seated in the lower row, second from the left; my co-worker is the woman with the bright-red hair on the same row. Seeing as I had doubts that I'd even get in the building at all, the fact that I ended sitting on the dais, even if only as window-dressing, is something I'm still having a bit of difficulty processing.
Below the fold, you'll find some travelogue-y material and some discussion of what Obama had to say. Something to keep in mind: I quite literally did not see this event as, even, the vast majority of the people in the gymnasium did, which made for a strange dynamic as far as I'm concerned. I'll explain that later. Just about every let-me-tell-you-about-the-Obama-rally post I've ever read says something about the crowds this man draws, and this one will be no different.
El Dorado is about 30 miles east of Wichita. I left town so as to arrive there about an hour early, thinking that would be plenty early--after all, the temperature was in the low 20s, the wind was blowing a steady 30 mph, and it was snowing besides . . . what sort of line would there be?
When I arrived, not only was all the school's paved parking already filled, but the 100 yard-wide grassy space between that parking and the main road was filled with parked cars, and the drive-in theatre across the street was also filling up quickly. The line already had several hundred people in it, almost all of them directly exposed to the snow and wind, and even as they started letting people into the gym the line continued to grow in length. The gym seats only 1500 people; I was told later that three other large spaces were opened up on campus to handle the overflow--perhaps another several hundred, maybe as many as another thousand. This thing effectively shut down the college for the day.
It was as diverse a crowd as you're likely to see at a political rally in south-central Kansas: white and black, young and old, rural folks and a slim majority from Wichita. Others were from considerably further away. Not everyone there, I know, considered themselves Obama's political fellow travellers; one of my colleagues, a Republican, told me she was there because of this event's historical significance and because she admired his candidacy; and I suspect some were there more out of curiosity or an attraction to the spectacle. My co-worker who ended up on the dais with me volunteered that she had wanted to support Hillary Clinton's candidacy because she is a woman but gradually became turned off precisely because, as it seemed to my co-worker, Clinton began in various ways to draw attention to the fact that she's a woman. Events in South Carolina didn't help her opinion of (either) Clinton.
We got inside, we were able to get seats closer to the podium than we were initially, and the next thing we knew, my co-worker and I were invited to sit on the dais. Underneath the podium was a small wooden box, about a foot square, clearly intended to be stood on by a speaker. Some of us began to joke that perhaps the candidate was vertically-challenged and only now, figuratively being behind the curtain as we were, did we know the Truth of Things. More fodder for Drudge and all that.
Another hour, and then Obama arrived. He's about 6' tall, in case you were wondering. And here's where things become a bit strange. I may have been dubbed an Ordinary American that day, but I literally didn't see Obama as most everyone else did. One of my colleagues asked me today if he is as charismatic in person as he is on television, and I said, "Well, seeing as all I saw for the duration of his speech was his backside, it's kinda hard for me to say." An extraordinary orator Obama may be, but his backside is, I'm sorry to say, rather lacking in its ability to radiate rhetorical splendor. A speech's effectiveness depends on delivery, too, not just content, and delivery incorporates body language as well as the particulars of spoken language. I'm going to assume, based on what I heard, that Obama looked his usual, supremely-comfortable self.
And the speech itself? In those earlier posts of mine that I linked to above, I've pretty much said much of what I would say here--that the man not only knows what he's doing, but he is not shy to say some politically-risky yet absolutely-correct things (depending on your politics, of course) in front of the sorts of audiences that would find these things politically risky. While I understand why some people tend to dismiss Obama's rhetoric as kumbaya-speak, I'd argue that I personally find it much more substantive than that: it's borne of his experience as a community organizer in Chicago and an Illinois state senator. His image of the "working majority" is something that, on a smaller scale, he has already accomplished. By running for President, Obama "just" wants to do these same things on a larger scale. Maybe I've read enough of his speeches to know this; maybe I've imbibed deeply and often of the particular Kool-aid this man serves up (it's pretty tasty, by the way); but I really do believe that when he says "we," he really means "we." We've become so accustomed to politicians promising what they can do for us that when Obama talks of what we can do for each other--a dynamic that ignores all those divides that others have exploited for their own gain--we keep looking for the catch.
Or, more kindly but still suspiciously, we look for some particulars, some substance. In the El Dorado speech (scroll down past Sebelius' endorsement to find Obama's text), Obama provided some: a few that I recall are income tax exemptions for retirees earning less than $50,000 per year, yearly increases in the minimum wage, tuition credits of $4000 per year for college students in return for a period of national service, opt-out savings plans for workers that both they and their employers would contribute to. As I listened, I was struck by how much his speech sounded a bit like a State of the Union address, with its laundry-list quality. Thus, this speech didn't have quite the lift that Obama's speeches are known for--but then again, consider the view I had: had I been in the audience where I could see his face, I might have felt that lift.
But I did get to shake his hand afterward. I thanked him for his candidacy as I did so.
I want this man to be our President, though there have been times when I've thought that winning his party's nomination will be the harder task. It really does seem as though the Republicans see more clearly than do Democrats just how dramatically Obama shifts the usual paradigms we have regarding politics and politicians--and here I am speaking of his politics and not his race. I have good friends who argue that Hillary does, too; to them I'd ask, with all due respect: setting aside her gender, what does she offer as a way out of the morass our national politics has mucked about in for (again, sorry, Clinton fans) the past 16 or more years now? That's not a knock against her; she offers experience, and that's a legitimate offering. In the past, I would have happily opted for voting for someone--man, woman, black or white or what have you--whose pitch is that s/he knows how the game is played and plays it well as it stands now. But of late I've come to the conclusion that the issue is better framed not by asking Who can more competently play the game as is, but Who wants to change how the game is played?
"Sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this."
I respect the opinions of my readers who have different politics, but I'd like them to consider that this
is bigger than politics. This is not just (political) history; this is affirmation of our deepest values as a people--something I had come to fear we might have started down the darkening, descending way to losing.
I can't tell you how happy I am to be living to see this--not as an Obama supporter or as a Democrat, but as a citizen of this country.
If anyone is interested, back in March when it seemed to me that people didn't "get," at a fundamental level, what Obama was/is about, I wrote a couple of longish posts about why I think Obama matters; those posts are here and here.
Okay: back to more posts on Winne-the-Pooh and such.
UPDATE (Saturday, January 5): Alas, some few are happy about the Iowa results for very different reasons.
