The Obama phenomenon: It's the message, not the man

Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/24/08

John Tomasic is wrong when he says that "Obama mania, like Reagan love, has to do with faith in the person..." Although Barack Obama is a confident speaker, with as low a center of gravity and as calm a demeanor as any presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower, he could not be generating the response that he has, if he were merely a "rock star". Politics is different than entertainment, because it concerns reality -- the national reality, which most people believe is now as distressing as it has ever been in their lives. The mortgage debt crisis, the endless wars in the Middle East, the collapse of the value of the dollar, the failure of major parts of our national infrastructure, as wide a chasm between the rich and the poor as seen since before the Great Crash of 1929, and a titanic wave of anti-Americanism from Bolivia to Belgrade to Beirut: The alarms are going off on every side.

Only Barack Obama is offering a call to national action that is proportionate to the alarm that people feel. Both Clinton and McCain are walking advertisements for business as usual, and the majority is distinctly uneasy with that choice. This is not about personality, it is about the central message that Obama is delivering: You have to take back your government, we must unify our people, and we can overcome every one of these challenges – “yes, we can.” This primal desire to defy the size of the coming apparent general crisis, to rise to overcome these threats to the American promise, is what is manifested in the response to the clarion call for commitment and sacrifice that Obama is making. His eloquence is merely the means to the end of rallying and redefining patriotism, married not to war but to national renewal. We already knew that something of that scale would be needed. We only needed someone to summon it from us.

The major shifts we need...

Two major shifts are necessary in the governing ideas and actions of the United States, at home and abroad:

First, the national government is failing America. It no longer works for the American people. An increasingly corrupt and ineffective Congress and executive branch – which now only serve the interests of those who can buy access to policymakers through the political-campaign process – must be returned to the control of the people. That requires changes proportionate to the government’s corruption and ineffectuality: (a) each citizen must be given the right to vote for president (a right they do not now possess, according to the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore), to have that vote counted, and to have that vote counted equally (direct election of the president by national popular vote; abolition of the Electoral College); (b) all contributions for campaigns for national office (president and congress) must be limited to citizens – no organizations of any kind should be permitted to contribute money -- so that people, not interests, control Washington; (c) free broadcast air time must be given to all general-election candidates for national offices -- so that they need not spend inordinate time on fundraising rather than the people's work -- although that air time must consist solely of candidates themselves, not theatrically produced commercials; (d) a recountable paper trail must be established nationally for all electronic voting systems; and (e) concurrent presidential and House terms of four years should be created, with a four-term limit on House members and a three-term limit on members of the Senate, and a procedure for mid-term special-recall elections for the House and the President should be created.

Second, to restore America’s influence in the world, the money and resources that our government distributes all over the world must be provided to the people of countries that suffer from dictators, enormous inequalities, and massive violations of human rights, rather than this aid going to governments. Help must flow to nongovernmental organizations and indigenous groups working for the people’s rights, and all assistance to undemocratic governments must cease. Our assistance should focus on strengthening the democratic means by which people solve their own problems, not particular outcomes in terms of regimes or economies. We must help people develop the capacity to fight for and obtain their rights, develop their own societies, and govern themselves – not coerce or manipulate them, much less use violent force as a way to produce political outcomes that we want.

These changes amount to a simple proposition, which is the same at home and abroad: The United States will stand with people who are working to achieve their rights and freedom – and it will help strengthen their capacity to have a “fair start in the race of life”, in the words of Abraham Lincoln.

The limits of military force in national security

Military force abroad can only secure what a domestic and international political environment can tolerate. The United States is reviled today around the world because it started a war of choice (not demonstrably related to the terror threat to its own homeland) that was a total fiasco for several years, opening the door to chaos and killing over a hundred thousand Iraqis in the process -- and, not so incidentally, costing the American people a trillion dollars by some estimates.

If we believe that represents a viable way to produce rights and democracy, notwithstanding the world's rejection of the method, then we are out of step with what George Washington called on Americans to have: "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Americans do not have their freedom solely because they have military power, as if they lived in a fortress. We have our freedom primarily because our values, our diplomacy, our commerce, and our culture have largely created the kind of global society --developing now for a generation -- in which we can and must necessarily live, at peace, in the future. If we use our military power in a way that makes the rest of the world disregard all those other things that we offer to the world, and distrust us because we shoot first and ask questions later, we will indeed be in constant peril.

Speeches Matter

Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/14/2008

Because the pursuit and exercise of power, rather than leading people, is the great motivation for the Clintons, everything in a campaign is simply a means to that end for them. Speaking with the people -- proposing a vision as well as priorities for action -- is not an end in itself for the Clintons. But in a democracy, the exchange of ideas and the formation of an understanding between those who would lead and those who provide the legitimacy of electing them is the entire point of having a government based on popular consent rather than on appropriated power. To be a citizen (and not only a leader) said the philosopher John Rawls, you have "a duty of civility to appeal to public reason." Otherwise you cannot persuade people to follow you. Barack Obama understands and personifies that duty. Hillary Clinton doesn't appear to comprehend it. She tries to manipulate us with constantly changing slogans in order to conjure up the image of someone we can supposedly trust. Her latest one-word slogan is "solutions" rather than speeches, as if "solutions" can somehow be defined without words. Another tall skinny man from Illinois, having served only a few years in the Congress, gave a single speech in New York City in 1860, which propelled him to the presidency. One of the sponsors of that event wrote to him later and said "very long will your speech be remembered in this city." He said the speech "was so weaved and linked with truth" that it "convinced" people -- it captured and solidified their consent to that leader's vision and argument. The leader was Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama is following in his footsteps.

posted 02/14/2008 at 21:07:04

The Obama music video

Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/3/2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

I got home tonight and came across this strange and riveting music video -- it made the tears well up, and I've been watching presidential elections since 1960 and thought nothing could do that anymore. This video represents the way a new political generation is feeling about Obama's candidacy. This isn't artificial, it is real in the hearts of those who are drawn to who he is and what he represents. Even people who are apolitical, who haven't followed the Bush disasters in all their fine print feel on some level, I believe, that something has gone terribly wrong with how we are governed. But many people's grave misgivings have been largely suppressed, or are inarticulate. Yet people yearn now for some proportionate catharsis, in a democratic way. Hillary Clinton, much less John McCain, are ambassadors from the past, and they can't give it.

Enter Barack Obama, who embodies it. He's a categorical discontinuity with the past. Just electing him would cross a watershed line in our politics. No party establishment has embraced him. He hasn't punched his ticket and lined up the usual suspects behind him. Nobody owns him, and nobody owes him. Obama says: It's your country, it's your government, and so it's your power. Use it. Do it now. Yes, you can.

There has been no major American political figure who has been able to summon people's hope like this since Franklin Roosevelt. We cannot miss this opportunity. There is the potential here, through this man's candidacy, for not only a victory and a mandate of historic size, but also for a new relationship between the people and their government. That's what is summoning us...

posted 02/03/2008 at 01:31:40

Obama v. Clinton on Television

Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/1/2008

Setting aside the substance of the most recent debate for a moment -- and both candidates' batting average was high in that regard -- let's think about the subjective subtext or impression that each candidate left. Hillary took visible control of the stage, of the camera, and also of CNN's Wolf Blitzer from the outset, projecting and thrusting herself at the audience as much as simply talking to them. And talk she did -- often giving long, interminable answers, riffing from one wonkish point to the next, as if the debate were a policy circus and she were one of the Flying Walendas. Meanwhile Barack just sat there, dignified, composed, still, as if he were a highly intelligent Buddhist monk. When he answered questions, he answered them -- he got to the point. His body language was quietly coiled. If you were taking in only the words they dispensed, it sounded like he was losing the debate -- until Iraq. But was it really Iraq that turned the tide for him? Or was it the fact that his entire manner was just wearing better as the debate progressed, that his evident comfort in his own skin, and simple directness in fielding questions, made you feel as if he didn't need to throw his stuff at us in order to be who he is, and to be, in a word, fitted for the role of president? Mrs. Clinton was auditioning for our favor, vamping it up. Obama was simply having a conversation with us. And that eventually is what makes voters most comfortable with a candidate. If he wins, this will be a reason why.

posted 02/01/2008 at 01:09:10

The Obama-Clinton Race in Microcosm

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/30/2008

George Lakoff is right. For proof, consider these core statements about Edwards' withdrawal by Clinton and Obama:

Clinton: "Sen. Edwards is a friend of mine, he was a colleague in the Senate, and I have the highest regard for him, and I"m really admiring of what he has done to make sure that poverty was on the agenda here in America. He encouraged all of us in his passion and advocacy, and I hope he will continue that work because it is really important that we stay focused on what we"re going to do to help people. You know, I"m out here talking about making the economy work for everybody. And it needs to work for the middle class, working people, it needs to give a life line to poor people like we did in the 1990s, so in any way that I can be part of this effort to try to target poverty I am going to be."

Obama: "John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn"t popular to do or covered in the news. At a time when our politics is too focused on who"s up and who"s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters " the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this " that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may end today, the cause of their lives endures for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America."

Clinton referred to herself eight times in four sentences. Obama talked about Edwards and what he represented. This is the Clinton v. Obama choice in microcosm. Her candidacy is about herself. His candidacy is about the country.

posted 01/30/2008 at 22:03:16

Empire and Terrorism

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/29/2008

Gary Hart is absolutely right. The Bush-McCain policy of squatting in Iraq with permanent military bases has the look and effect of maintaining an American empire in a part of the world that has resented our presence since the moment Iraq was invaded and began to disintegrate. What he doesn't mention is that Bush and McCain justify this policy by claiming that the threat and occasional use of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in that region is necessary to quell Islamist terrorism, which would otherwise kill Americans in their beds. But if military garrisons and attacks are the only or most visible means of curbing terrorism, they will -- as they did in Iraq -- inflame the very danger they are supposed to douse. An entirely new strategy -- to pull out the political and social roots of terrorism, and not merely whack the weeds of radical fighters who spring up in opposition to U.S. forces -- is desperately needed. Which is why a totally fresh perspective is desperately needed in the White House.

posted 01/29/2008 at 23:04:37

The Cold War and the Legacy of President Kennedy

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/27/2008

Steve Clemons says that John F. Kennedy was "a hard core Cold War hawk" who "approved the invasion of other nations and approved of regime change as a tool of American foreign policy." This is a serious distortion of American history and a slur on the full record of the Kennedy presidency. Within months of taking office, President Kennedy -- despite his doubts -- allowed the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba mounted by Cuban emigres to receive U.S. air support. Its failure taught him the perils of American military involvement in "regime change." He would never have attempted the kind of pre-emptive full-scale military attack on another country that Bush performed in Iraq. And as for being a "Cold War hawk," if that were true, President Kennedy could never have called for negotiations on a nuclear arms test ban with the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, and in the same speech, call for a new era of "world law." That speech was delivered 45 years ago at American University, where tomorrow Edward and Caroline Kennedy will endorse and embrace Senator Barack Obama. They know the Kennedy legacy better than anyone. We should trust their judgment.

posted 01/27/2008 at 23:47:19

The Clinton Campaign and Negative Politics

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/14/2008

The Clinton campaign's strategy this week seems clear: to try to tarnish Barack Obama's integrity by using surrogates to regurgitate innuendos about his past, and to use Bill to throw out a constant flurry of invented "how dare he?" political charges, to goad the Obama campaign into constant rounds of he-said-she-said political recriminations. If he takes the bait, it would only divert him from mobilizing the full reach of his potential support, which dwarfs anything she could ever muster.

As David Bender suggests, this would work in capturing the nomination only at the cost of irretrievably dividing the party. I know a number of die-hard Democrats who prefer Obama without previously having felt any disregard for Clinton, who are now disgusted with the disingenuous and self-absorbed nature of her behavior in this campaign. Not only is there an effective ceiling on her general-election support due to the antagonism (perhaps undeserved) that most Republicans feel toward her, there is a brand-new disdain that many liberal Democrats are now developing toward the tactics and the discourse that the Clintons are deploying in their drive to discredit their chief rival. Unless she is either defeated decisively in major states on February 5, or substantially modifies her strategy of slamming Obama with distorted claims about him, she could dissolve the chances of a Democratic victory in November.

The Clintons seem to think they can win only by playing old-fashioned, ends-justify-the-means politics. That should make clearer to Obama his only available strategy: ignore them, make more robust the vision of the America he wants to lead, and mobilize with a passion the new, younger voters who have seen in him the promise of a new political future for this country.

posted 01/14/2008 at 23:05:03

Obama, Edwards and Changing the System

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/10/2008

As he usually does, Paul Loeb has focused on a fundamental truth: A substantial majority of Democratic caucus and primary voters thus far are rejecting the traditional politics of the Washington power game, represented by Hillary Clinton, in favor of two candidates -- Barack Obama and John Edwards -- who champion the power of the people to accomplish decisive change in our corrupt and broken political system.

As Obama has explicitly said, this change will not occur unless the equivalent of a massive popular movement embraces a candidate who is determined to change the way that we are governed at the national level, giving that candidate a clear mandate to do so. And as Edwards has said, we will have to fight for that change -- not cross our fingers and hope that another anointed favorite of the party establishment will manage to win an election and then govern differently.

The only Democratic party presidential victories in the past 40 years were achieved by two candidates who were underdogs with no Washington experience when they first ran, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. What gives anyone any reason to believe that Hillary Clinton is more interested or able to serve this explosive, popular demand for fundamental change in the way Washington works, than her rivals? Has she said anything that would convince us that this would be her passion? She desperately wants the job, but does she just as desperately want to change the system? There is no evidence of that. Consequently, as an admirer thus far of John Edwards, I won't hesitate to vote for Barack Obama if I believe that, of the two of them, he has the best chance of being nominated, by the time the schedule of primary elections reaches my state.

[Update: I did vote for Barack Obama, on February 12.]

posted 01/10/2008 at 21:22:05

Hillary Clinton's Comment on Dr. Martin Luther King

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/8/2008

Today Hillary Clinton implied that Barack Obama overrated the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, saying that "Dr. King"s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act...It took a president to get it done." This is actually as serious a distortion of recent American history as any presidential candidate has uttered in the memory of this writer, who lived through and vividly remembers those events. Had there been no civil rights movement, no demonstrations and boycotts and protests -- driving up the cost of segregation and destroying the legitimacy of legalized racial subordination in America -- the conscience of the nation and the nationwide demand for change would never have supplied President Johnson with the political support he needed to drive through civil rights legislation.

The real history of that movement fully supports Senator Obama's reason for citing it: The people who powered that movement forward, who marched and were beaten and marched again, were the decisive force for change. Had they not acted, had they not put their lives on the line, and had they not won the hearts and minds of most Americans, no president would have been able to win congressional approval of such significant changes in our laws, helping to assure equal rights for all Americans. Senator Clinton either did not know what she was talking about, or, what is more likely, instinctively overemphasized what politicians in Washington can do to execute change. As Senator Obama has said, if the people do not rise up and demand change, presidents and politicians are not likely to embrace it.

posted 01/08/2008 at 19:47:08

'Trench Warfare' in the Democratic Presidential Race

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/6/2008

In Tom Edsall's superb account of the furious re-strategizing going on in the Clinton campaign, he cites the remark of a Clinton operative, who said that with extended primary warfare against Obama, Hillary will be able to prove that "there is not even a second level to Obama, there is no depth." The problem with that assumption is that it defies reason. It makes no sense that a president of the Harvard Law Review who has had a meteoric rise in politics would not have "even a second level." However fast it may have unfolded, Obama's record is not one that you put together with a smile and a speech.

But the claim that Obama is all bling and no beef is also disproved by the fervent support that he has from his home base, the Chicago political community, spanning all racial and ideological types. From Hyde Park liberals to the sons of old ward-heelers, Obama seems to have won their ardor. If there's one crowd who wouldn't waste their time and money on someone with "no depth," it's Chicagoans.

As for the supposed parallel with the Mondale-Hart ten-rounder in 1984, Mondale was able to battle back because he had raised far more money than Hart had before the latter's break-through. He pummeled Hart with negative ads in post-New Hampshire states before Hart could bounce back. But this time, the outsider agent of change will have at least as much money as the candidate anointed by the party establishment.

The Clinton campaign is fantasizing if they think that a long harsh campaign will spoil the people's honeymoon with Barack Obama. It's more likely to prompt the belief that Hillary Clinton is tarnishing the party's presumptive nominee in order to cling to her own fading chances.

posted 01/06/2008 at 22:55:16

Obama - Idealism and Passion

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/4/2008

Gary Hart is right to suggest that Barack Obama is reviving the language of idealism in American politics, but it won't be sufficient to get him elected. Reaching for the rafters with soaring rhetoric is fine for some occasions, but effective candidates also have to develop a practical conversation with the American people.

The reason Huckabee won in Iowa on the Republican side is that he knows how to talk with people as if he were having coffee with them. In this context it's useful to ask why John Edwards still got 30% in Iowa, even after turning himself into a one-dimensional cartoon of anger at corporate America. It's because the animation of his language exhibits real passion for the rights and lives of ordinary people who feel sidelined by the system.

There is little equivalent sense of identifying with ordinary people coming from Obama, who sounded last night as if he were on Mount Olympus, conferring with the gods of history. Fine, for the peroration of his convention acceptance speech. But democracy is practical as well as aspirational politics. It's about divining the urgent concerns of the moment, as people feel them in the day-to-day text of their lives, and giving voice to those aspirations in terms that people believe represent a practical way forward. We are talking here about the depth psychology of moving a majority to mass action, of how you create a mandate for a wholly new direction for government. Such a majority cannot be mobilized unless it feels that the would-be leader whose words are inspiring also understands the hard realities of living which the existing system has produced and that he knows how to change that system. Obama hasn't made that sale yet. Let us hope he can.

posted 01/04/2008 at 13:10:01

Populism and Presidential Politics

Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/2/2008

The presidential candidate who has given greatest voice to the energy behind the populist "uprising" that David Sirota sees is John Edwards. Yet whenever Edwards speaks about the bias of the political system against the interests of working Americans, he is attacked by Republican pundits for waging "class warfare."

The very use of that term is a pejorative dismissal by Republicans of any attempt to talk about the egregious inequality of rewards for those who participate in the American system. Our society rewards some people very handsomely -- such as mortgage bankers and software inventors -- but often keeps others who are arguably just as critical to our future, such as young teachers and nurses, on not much more than a subsistence level. As glaring as these inequalities are, Edwards' argument actually has little to do with economic or social outcomes. His chief point is that the system in Washington is stacked against anyone who cannot pay handsomely for access to government decisionmakers, and so the allocation of public resources disproportionately favors those who can buy that access. Two examples: New Orleans is ignored by most Republicans who simultaneously hand obscene contracts to Halliburton and Blackwater for a failed reconstruction of Iraq, and the regulation of coal mines is underfunded as miners are trapped in accidents at a higher rate. This is not a simplistic "class war" argument, it merely borrows from the reality of the front pages of the past seven years.

Edwards and others like him are not reincarnations of William Jennings Bryan. They more closely resemble Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election. The latter were passionate reformers, on behalf of righting the imbalance between public interests on the one hand and entrenched privileged interests on the other hand, in influencing the conduct of government. This is an argument about the fairness of how we are governed, not the fairness of the distribution of wealth, however skewed that may also be. And that argument -- about the fairness of the political system -- is the real potential power behind any 2008 "populist uprising."

posted 01/02/2008 at 00:51:38

Hillary Clinton as a Polarizing Figure

Comment on The Huffington Post, 12/19/2007

It should be obvious now that, for whatever reason, Hillary Clinton is the most polarizing figure in the Democratic Party, both internally and in relation to the other party. Her own actions have in great part made this so: her legendary defensiveness toward critics, her campaign's howitzer-firing at opponents, or the usual impenetrable bubble around the person herself (though this is a common phenomenon with mega-celebrities). Not only has this made it difficult for ordinary voters to appraise the substance as distinct from the image of Mrs. Clinton as a candidate, it has made it virtually impossible for the media to do so.

Her intensity, and the angst of those who dread the prospect of her candidacy or return to the White House, make it extremely difficult for the public to come to any reasoned judgment about her. Democratic voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and the following primary states have a responsibility to take this into consideration, as they think about supporting her. Do they want this kind of candidate to be the nominee, who must try to lead the national debate about the country's future, when it is hard for her and the rest of us to get past the debate about her? Will the election then really be about the country, and the profound changes that it must face, or will it be about her?

posted 12/19/2007 at 14:01:08

Richard Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton's Course in Foreign Policy

Comment on The Huffington Post, 12/18/2007

It is well that Richard Holbrooke has resurfaced, because his status as one of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy advisors confirms the belief that she represents the ideas and priorities of the foreign policy establishment, of which he is a proud member.

Mr. Holbrooke argues that Mrs. Clinton would not make the mistakes of her allegedly less experienced husband when he took office, citing as an example the latter's supposed failure to "act earlier" in the case of Bosnia. But what exactly would Mr. Holbrooke suggest that Bill Clinton have done "earlier" on Bosnia? Should the U.S. have intervened militarily, in the midst of Slobodan Milosevic's bloody adventurism there? Unlike the 1999 bombing campaign, which punished Serbia for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, such intervention would have required American ground forces, possibly just as large as were used in Iraq. Would Americans have accepted the same costs in Bosnia that they ultimately rejected in Iraq, given that U.S. security was no more at stake in the Balkans than in Iraq? Or does Mr. Holbrooke mean that Mr. Clinton should have been more vigorous in his diplomacy? That war began in 1992, before Bill Clinton took office, and European diplomacy, NATO air strikes, and other efforts to suppress it began before Mr. Holbrooke joined the State Department in 1994. Just what does Mr. Holbrooke believe President Clinton could have done but did not do, and which he implies that his wife would do?

We particularly need to know if that action could entail the use of American forces in a theatre of war in which the U.S. has no security interests -- because that was the reality in the Balkans, and that is a presidential action which Americans today would likely not approve in 2009. And that is precisely the worry about Hillary Clinton, who not only voted for the Iraq war, but voted to brand a part of the Iranian military as a terrorist organization -- thereby handing to President Bush the arguable justification to use American military forces against Iran, in the name of fighting terrorism.

posted 12/18/2007 at 15:37:13

Human Rights and National Security

Comment on The Huffington Post, 11/25/2007

Jane Smiley's defense of the necessary primacy of human rights in American foreign policy is timely and indisputable. But she takes her argument too far when, in answering Tim Grieve's criticism of Bill Richardson (for saying that human rights are more important than national security), she calls national security meaningless and a mere form of "tribalism." Nuclear deterrence, which she says is obsolete, is in fact still quite active, inasmuch as Russian nuclear forces are most certainly aimed at American targets -- a fact we should not forget as Vladimir Putin more flagrantly violates his own people's human rights with every passing month and now regularly castigates the United States and its political system.

But the most germane point is that human rights and national security are not in a zero-sum relationship: The United States can and should defend and try to advance human rights by all nonviolent, noncoercive means at home and abroad. That will augment the tangible security of Americans. Yet the increased belligerence of the Russian government, the rising military power of China, and the capability of non-state terrorist groups to inflict mass casualties are real or potential threats to the security of Americans, and that reality is not mere "tribalism." There will continue to be the need for traditional military means of self-defense, even by a U.S. administration whose priorities are substantially transformed in the direction that Jane Smiley, and this writer, prefer.

posted 11/25/2007 at 17:18:15