The Education of Obama - Both the Times and the Post have stories today about Obama "sharpening" his attack against Senator Clinton. My view on this is this tougher rhetoric is long overdue from the Democratic frontrunner, for politics is both about making your own case while effectively indicting your opponent. One of our great strenghts in the 1992 Clinton campaign was our ability to indict President Bush without sounding too partisan and mean spirited. To win in the fall Obama will have to make a powerful and very public indictment of Senator McCain and the failed government of this era. In no way does this cut against his "bringing everyone together" narrative, and simply another tool in his tool box he must develop if he is to win, and to govern.
As I wrote recently I still think Senator Obama should have used the "bitter" flap as he did the Jeremiah Wright controversy. He should have taken the opportunity to give a major speech about the struggle of every day people, demonstrating he both understands how the lack of an adequate government response to globalization is making it harder for people to get ahead, and that he has a comprehensive plan to do something about it. His economic argument is still too political, too focused on attacking Senator Clinton over her NAFTA position than on offering a compelling argument on how he intends to raise the standard of living of all Americans. The inability of the Obama campaign to organize themselves around the struggle of the middle class has been, and continues to be, one of the great strategic weaknesses of this year's remarkable campaign.
For more on this read John Heilemann's excellent new essay in New York Magazine which features some commentary from the head of our globalization initiative, Rob Shapiro.
Not a big fan of McSame - Some of the early arguments coming from the Democratic/ progressive side attempt to make McCain into Bush. But I think this approach is bound to fail. McCain is his own man. He isn't George Bush. They may have worked together to bring about this disasterous conservative era. They have similar beliefs. But McCain isn't Bush. He has a powerful and compelling personal narrative. His take on Iraq is different. His economic plan is different. His position on immigration is different. It is time for those who have opposed Bush to let go of him as a man, and begin making the indictment against his beliefs, his government and the mess he and his team - with McCain's help - have left us. The country has written Bush off, and is turning the page. It is time for the progressive movement to do the same.
To that end I think the new DNC Ad is a good one. It takes McCain's own words and ties them to the performance of the conservative economic strategy now embraced by the Arizona Senator. An editorial in the Post today further disembles the inanity of McCain's emerging economic arguments, providing much more new material for those of us who have opposed the bankrupt and failed economic approach of the modern conservatives.
For more on McCain be sure to read yesterday's frontpage WaPo story on McCain's temperment, something that has been a constant discussion item here in DC chattering classes since the campaign began.
McCain and Immigration - Our very own Andres Ramirez has an excellent new post reminding everyone that during the heat of his primary battle John McCain abandonned his own immigration reform bill, and now repdudiates it on the campaign trail. It is an extraordinary example of McCain's maturation in recent years from virtuous outsider to hollowed-out, craven pol, willing to say and do anything to get elected.
S. Rosenberg's Call For Another Major Speech From Obama
Hello, I'm an ordained Presbyterian minister of psychotherapy and published writer. You are the first person, other than me, that I've seen who is suggesting that Obama has to make a major speech to make him electable enough to win against McCain and to decisively defeat Clinton.
I have some ideas about what should be in the speech. I disagree that he needs to impress on people his specific plans for the middle class. To me, the most critical weakness is his unconvincing response to the attacks against him, the attack against him for being out of touch is just one of several that have an impact he could relieve without having to do the politician's song and dance about what they're going to do, which is a big yawn. Put differently, his opponents are undermining his credibility just enough to make a significant difference. That's the problem that, when solved, will put him over the top.
Here's a prospective speech:
Senator Clinton represented many reasonable Americans when she said that I should have left Rev. Wright's church. I've tried to explain my side, saying that he was like a crazy uncle, somebody I cared about because he did many good, wholesome, non-radical things for me and the community. I also argued that he had the backing of the national and international United Church of Christ, which is predominantly white. He also ministered to President Clinton when Clinton was in trouble. But Senator Clinton and many other decent people still questioned my association with Rev. Wright. She said that she would have left the church.
Now other charges have been made against me, one for being effete, out of touch with many Americans and another for being associated with a militant, violent radical, Mr. Ayers. I responded to these charges as I did to the accusations against me for being associated with Rev. Wright. I argued the facts. I called these accusations "negative" and "gotcha" politics. Many people agreed with my responses to these criticisms. Some did not. I believe I did nothing wrong and that I am entirely sincere and genuine in what I've said to the public about what I believe and what I want to do as president. But because some reasonable people, like Senator Clinton, still believe that I did, I've had to think more deeply about these charges. Here's what I figured out.
All of these accusations have one thing in common. They really are guilt by association attacks, even the charge that I'm effete, out of touch. Of course, if you had been raised so poor that your mother had to get food stamps [?accuracy], you would think that it's ridiculous for anybody to think that I don't identify with people who are struggling financially. And if you had given up a super-high paying career as a lawyer to work for peanuts helping poor people in Chicago, you also would think that these charges just don't fit. And if you had been with me every step of the way in my ten year career as a member of the Illinois State Senate in which conservative republicans praised me for my honesty and fairness, you would think that the charges against me for being a radical were, well, sort of ridiculous. But some well-meaning people do think that these charges and the other ones do too. Why, despite the actual facts of my professional life, do some people still think I'm an effete radical who can't possibly represent the majority of Americans.
My answer is that even I have been duped by the hidden effect of the guilt by association accusation. It was pointed out to me that, in all the years that Senator Clinton was under attack for being associated with a criminal real estate developer [?check accuracy], no specific charge against her was ever even made, much less proved. Yet many people inwardly sensed that she must have done something wrong, because she was associated with someone who did. She was guilty by association. It is this tendency of people to assume that she must have committed real estate fraud and never even say that she did that eats at people. This is a very tricky phenomenon. The guilt by association tactic relies on the natural tendency of people to subliminally sense that the target of the accusation must be guilt of doing the same thing that the person with whom they're associated did.
Notice how nobody but the extremists has come out and said that I wanted to establish an African Colony in the US, or that I hate white people, or that I believe any of the ridiculous, radical things that Rev. Wright said. Likewise, no one but the extremists has said that I am a radical. And no one is arguing that, when I was a community organizer working for the benefit of blue collar workers and very poor people that I didn't understand and passionately feel for them and their plight. No one there said that I was condescending about their religion and their other life preferences. No one is going back to 2004 and my interview with Charlie Rose and claiming that I did anything but show a profound respect for the meaning and significance of hunting and other lifestyle choices. No one can actually make any of these charges stick, much less make the charges explicit. Once they do, the whole power of guilt by association fizzles out.
Of course, guilt by association charges have some merit in some cases. They are keyholes through which we pass into compelling evidence that the implicit charges are well founded. But the vast majority of those charges are false and unfounded, as we've learned many times in our history.
The attacks against me are working with some people the same way Joe McCarthy's attacks worked during the 1950s. He would stand up before America on TV with a blank piece of paper in his hand and say things like, "I have a list of names of known communists whom the accused were associated with." He didn't even have to have any names on the paper. That's how deceptive and invalid he was. He had become so successful at scaring Americans into believing that a bunch of progressive and patriotic Americans were radicals determined to undermine America. And the accused that did have associations with communist organizations, well, he didn't have to even claim that they wanted to undermine America by relying on subversive practices. That's how afraid America had become. We lost our grip on the very heart of our constitution, the belief in the rule of law, of evidence and proof. That's how much we succumbed to guilt by association tactics. Human beings are vulnerable to them. I am very sorry to say again that I was vulnerable to them; I couldn't see through them completely enough to help lead America away from them. But that's all changed.
Like some other leaders and commentators, I see that these tactics are a serious blight on America. I used to laugh them off, because I didn't fully realize how terrible they are. In the name of protecting us from being subverting us, they are subverting our democracy. They create in us false and often unstated impressions of each other, just as our racial prejudices on both sides do. So we get very distorted pictures of our candidates and can't vote based on accurate information. As long as we are vulnerable to guilt by association tactics, we will be in danger of allowing this subversive tactic to hijack our elections.
We've got to build up our immunity to this guilt by association malady from which we have suffered. Here's how I intend to lead us out of this malaise. Whenever anybody says that somebody else is guilt by association, we've got to demand of them that they make a specific charge, a charge that we actually believe something contrary to what we publicly say or that we've done something wrong. Then, we've got to demand that they come up with actual evidence. And if they have some kind of evidence that they passionately believe proves the charge, sort of like the Swift boat crews contentions against Kerry, then we should demand that a group of pulitzer prize winning reports/commentators along with representatives from every major newspaper interrogate the accused relentlessly until a consensus is achieved.
Most of the time, I believe, not even a specific charge will come forward, because, as is true in my case, none of the implied charges are anything but obviously ridiculous. The implicit charge that I am a radical is obviously absurd, because it can so easily be disproved by the records relating to my many years of public service. The implied charge that I am nothing but an effete academic flies in the face of my career choice upon graduating from Harvard and the details of my community organization work, much less how I was reared by my profoundly empathic mother. There's only people's gross misinterpretation of a single sentence I uttered in San Francisco. But that distortion of my words wouldn't have happened if I didn't have success as an academic at Columbia, Harvard, and Chicago. Were I a less educated man, no one would be distorting my words in San Francisco. Again, that whole bittergate mess was just guilt by association.
So let us resolve to hold to the fire the feet of anyone who makes a guilt by association charge against a political candidate. That way, we'll be able to stay focused on the details of our plans for America. Again, we desperately need to defeat guilt by association to preserve our democracy from subversion by reckless campaign managers, candidates, and pundits.
Post new comment