Thursday, June 26, 2008
Audacity, Hope, Etc. (Chapter 1)
Chapter 1 - Republicans and Democrats
The chapter starts with a commentary on how divided we are as a country, and how we should work toward being more unified. I find this to be one of the more condescending liberal arguments – we are divided, and that’s bad, so the rest of you folks should get with the program and start agreeing with us. This is a country with a hugely varied population, urban vs rural, religious vs secular, etc, with different priorities, different values, different problems, and different preferred methods of solving those problems. The argument that uniformity and agreement are either necessary or automatically good is fundamentally flawed. Couple that with the assertion that the only good agreement is agreement with the progressive author, and you’ve got a not-very-subtle brow-beating in an attempt to enforce conformity to the author’s will. As long as there is tacit acceptance by one political party that progressive ideology is the way to get things done, there will be opposition, and attempts to guilt that opposition into conformity are pointless, condescending, and rude.
He reminds me of a modern-day FDR, a charismatic leader that offers to swoop in and save a populace in crisis. The problem is, Obama’s crisis is largely manufactured. In the 1930’s, even though the Depression was largely self-inflicted, with double-digit unemployment, massive bank failures, and a huge decline in GDP, the crisis was real. Today, with low unemployment and a sluggish but growing economy, most of the “problems” Obama points out stem from selfishness and wealth envy. (Example: we can’t afford all of the health care we want, so we want to socialize it and have someone else pay for it.) A politician who’s support comes from solving problems like that no longer has real moral authority, he just appeals to the most banal elements of society, those with an axe to grind, or those who think society should be reformed in some progressive image. Like FDR, I see Obama as somewhere between a useful fool and a malevolent force, with the distinction unknowable and dependent on their intentions. However, in Obama’s case, he doesn’t even have a real crisis to solve, just a populace that has become convinced that it’s “rights” include expensive things for cheap or free.
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Much of the first chapter appears to me mostly a “why can’t we all just get along like they used to in the good old days” lament. Poor naive Obama walks into rough and tumble Springfield (later Washington as well), and discovers that politicians are mean to each other. That’s some glaring historical ignorance right there.
He mentions the good old days of the post-WWII years, when “American politics ... was far less ideological – and the meaning of party affiliation far more amorphous – than it is today.” Everyone got along then, it was a time of “serious men doing serious work”. I find this a fascinating way to look at the era. In the post-WWII era, conservatism was in the background, beaten near to death by the combination of the New Dealers and Eisenhower. Eisenhower went so far as to famously declared that the New Deal programs were here to stay, and that anyone that seriously opposed them was a fool. Of course there was unity, both sides had found the progressive mantra to their liking. Of course politics and politicians were more peaceful, everyone was reading from the same liberal playbook.
This is the sort of unity that Obama wants, a unity where conservatism is dead and meaningful opposition does not exist. The only reason we can’t have those days back is
that the mean old conservatives won’t roll over and play dead like they used to. He’ll have to excuse me, but I’m not going anywhere.
According to Obama, sharply divisive politics started with Reagan, took a break with GHWB and Dole, and then came back with a vengeance under Gingrich and Rove. These folks
are “true believers”, making compromise impossible with their ideological checklists and ostracization of those who were not sufficiently pure. Of course, the hero of all of this is Bill
Clinton, who tried to “transcend this ideological deadlock”, recognizing that the categories liberal and conservative “were inadequate to address the problems we faced”. I don’t seem to remember it working out that way, exactly. Something about socialized healthcare, a rout in 94, and Clinton changing his tune to maintain his popularity after that.
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And then there was the small matter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: the shocking efficiency with which a few well-placed ads and the chants of conservative media could transform a decorated Vietnam was hero into a weak-kneed appeaser.
I don’t know which is worse – the implication that Kerry is a war hero, or the implication that he is not a weak-kneed appeaser. It is clear from the way he brushes off everything the Swiftboaters said that the author is a true-believer, writing for true-believer readers. This is the narrative, that the conservative media unfairly sunk upright and wholesome Kerry, and he’s sticking to it.
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All of which may explain why, as disturbed as I might have been by Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, as unconvinced as I might have been by his John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote, and his gratuitous assaults on the poor, I understood his appeal.
Gratuitous assaults on the poor? I LOL’ed.
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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 and alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of Thomas Jefferson. And there is the absolute belief in the authority of the 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 toward the New Jerusalem.
Wow. A slow inexorable march toward the New Jerusalem. And this guy claims to have traveled around the heartland and, you know, talked to people?
He’s got one heck of a broad brush, and he’s not afraid to use it.
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Instead, we Democrats are just, well, confused. There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from the liberal interest groups.
I LOL’ed again. Isn’t he the one with the near perfect rating from liberal interest groups?
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If Obama is supposed to be a uniter, why does this book follow so closely to the standard DailyKos narrative of recent history? The language, the narrative, the assumptions, it all reads like it was ripped from some liberal blog. It is painfully clear that this guy is not actually interested in being a uniter, given his disdain for this opposition, he just wants to browbeat people into agreement.
Raise your hand if you are surprised.
Anyone?
Comments
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Uh, he was involved in university and Chicago politics and can’t understand why everybody just can’t get along?
toad | 6/27/2008 08:03 AM CDT -
classic delusions of a man who has never done a minutes constructive work in his ebtire life .... as you noted ... he’s drank deeply from the DailyKos Koolaid.
pete in Midland | 6/27/2008 11:47 AM CDT
