The cynicism of Bush's press secretary

From PoliticalWire.com, 11/24/08:

Quote of the Day

"I'll give you eight months." -- White House press secretary Dana Perino, quoted by the Washington Post, on how long the "glowing press" will continue for President-elect Obama.

Comment by Tribunus Plebis:

There is as much cynicism and arrogance as ignorance in this remark by Dana Perino, for these reasons. First, she clearly believes that negative media coverage received by a president is at some point automatic, rather than based on a president's performance. To the extent it's automatic, that means her boss, W., got negative media through no fault of his own. (She'd obviously like to believe that, since her daily veneration of her boss seems to be coming from an alternate universe in which he has not in fact botched most aspects of his presidency.) Second, it's presumptuous if not arrogant for her to assume that Obama's ability to govern in a way that doesn't trigger the usual inside-the-Beltway attacks is no greater than any other politician -- she is essentially devaluing his ability to do better than the norm. Third, given the multiple crises facing the nation, and the consequent greater unpredictability of events, she has utterly no idea what might condition media coverage of Obama (other than his own performance) in eight months' time. So her remark, like most everything else from the Bush White House in the past eight years, was simultaneously glib, dismissive and simply wrong.

Enough About the "Team of Rivals"

The pundits and mainstream media have overworked the "Team of Rivals" meme -- that President-elect Obama might like to copy Lincoln's inclusion in his Cabinet of his former political rivals. This idea comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin's book of that name, which Obama reportedly liked, although the book is not a reason to copy the idea -- it was overwritten, repetitious, and chock full of irrelevant details (e.g. about Mary Todd Lincoln's shopping sprees and the soirees of Salmon Chase's daughter). Moreover, the book's theme -- that Lincoln recruited his former opponents as his advisors -- was first noticed when he did it 148 years ago; it's not some blinding new historical insight.

The reality is that there are huge differences between 1860 and 2008 that limit the relevance of this analogy. First, in 1860, the political class (Governors, Senators, nationally experienced politicians) was far smaller than it is today. The professional talent pool available to Lincoln (a man of towering intelligence, who wanted to be challenged by his colleagues) was by today's standards very modest -- and half of it had just seceded to form the confederacy. Lincoln would have been foolish to overlook his rivals if they were talented, as was clearly the case with Seward. But today enormously talented potential Cabinet secretaries are ten times more numerous.

Second, the U.S. was plunging into a nation-rending internal conflict of unknown duration in 1860: Lincoln had to show that he was doing everything to unite diverse points of view within the remaining Union, if he expected to prevail in that conflict. Today our problems are severe but they are not similarly existential. Given the diverse, direct and instantaneous ways that a president can communicate with the nation, beyond having his statements and actions reported in newspapers (as was the case in 1860), a president doesn't need to use the composition of his Cabinet to show us that we can't allow our divisions to obstruct the effort to solve our problems.

Third, as ambitious politicians, Lincoln's Cabinet secretaries' rivalry with each other was as intense as their previous rivalry with him. Except within the precincts of his own heart, and occasionally with intimates, Lincoln was a man of preternatural serenity, unconcerned about back-stairs criticism from subordinates or their dislike of one another. He simply overlooked his Cabinet's animosities, so long as he could milk from them individually the kind of intelligence and productivity that managing a government in the middle of a civil war required. But today we live in a media-saturated age in which politicians have vast retinues of followers and flunkies who happily feed internal back-biting to an army of reporters and commentators. If Lincoln and his Cabinet had been subjected to this kind of scrutiny, their internal rivalries would have distracted the Union and possibly torn apart his administration's effectiveness.

In addition, because political rivals are politicians, that means they are generalists, usually without great specific expertise. Today the complexity of financial, industrial, environmental and international-security challenges require reservoirs of knowledge that elected politicians simply do not have time to acquire. The Cabinet room should have that knowledge inside the room, not sitting in offices back in the departments.

If one of President-elect Obama's former rivals for the presidential nomination is a superb choice on the merits to head a particular Cabinet department, he or she should be appointed. But not because assembling a "team of rivals" is good for its own sake.

The nation's real calling

Read the core of Vice President Dick Cheney's video endorsement today of John McCain:

"John is a man who understands the danger facing America. He's a man who has looked into the face of evil and not flinched. He's a man who's comfortable with responsibility and has been since he joined the armed forces at the age of 17....the time is now to make him commander-in-chief."

There is little rationale offered for electing McCain other than his supposed experience of looking "into the face of evil." Cheney is declaring that McCain shares his view, that bellicose confrontation with unnamed enemies is the chief role of the president. It is in fact a worldview which, when implemented with continuous use of military force, becomes self-fulfilling. Today the United States has more enemies in the world than at any time in its history, and Mr. Cheney -- through his decisive influence on George W. Bush -- bears much of the responsibility.

It may be helpful at this moment to remember some words from the Christian tradition, which is usually invoked by fearful conservatives to justify belligerent American actions in the world. In Chronicles, God does not urge his people to look into the face of evil, he says "seek my face, and turn from your wicked ways, then...I will heal your land." [emphasis added] St. Paul insisted: "Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good...See that no one renders evil for evil, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men."

There is also this cautionary passage in Ecclesiastes: "There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, the sort of error which proceeds from the ruler. Folly is set in great dignity...He who digs a pit may fall into it; and whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake." Indeed, throughout the entire Bible, most references to evil have nothing to do with battling or warring against it, but are injunctions to avoid practicing it yourself, promising that those who do justice, will receive justice.

Isaiah is the prophet who coined this memorable line: "Refuse the evil, and choose the good." Let me apply that to November 4: Let us refuse those who talk constantly of evil while ignoring the failures of their own actions. Let's choose those who say we can do better, who know that good will come to us only as we do the good work -- here and abroad -- that is our true calling as a people.

The rail-splitter in 2008...

Today The New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for President. The editorial was thorough, workmanlike and unequivocal. But of equal interest today is the editorial in which The New York Times endorsed Abraham Lincoln for President in 1860. Without seeing any of the eventual greatness in the man, the editorial was a bit condescending in tone – but summed up its appreciation of Lincoln by describing, tongue-in-cheek, the habits of mind of a “rail splitter” (which is how Lincoln’s campaigners described him, referring to one of his first jobs as a young man). The Times said this about the man from Illinois:

“Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the hot and angry passions of the heart…It teaches a man to strike heavy blows, and to plant them just where they are needed – but he learns, also, to deal them only when they are needed. A skillful professor of this science will not be likely to go around splitting things in general – putting a wedge into every crack he sees and driving it home merely for the love of the thing. He has an eye to utility. It is only when things have fallen into decay a little – when the fences are down and the cattle and swine wandering into forbidden territory, rooting up useful crops and doing more harm in a day than a careful farmer can remedy in a week, that he splits rails to repair the breach and fence in the troublesome brutes.” It would have been hard to give a clearer assessment of how Lincoln actually governed in the ensuing years, navigating the country through the worst crisis of its history.

Today The New York Times said that “leading America forward will require…sober judgment and a cool, steady hand. Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance.” In contrast, during the week last month when the Congress at first rejected the financial crisis bail-out package and John McCain suspended his campaign and rushed to Washington, USA Today editorialized: “The Republican candidate's erratic performance this week was far from reassuring.”

But fortunately there is a rail-splitter available again…

What the Election Has Come Down To...

If we take seriously the language of presidential candidates and their running mates, then what the outcome of this election has come down to -- according to John McCain -- is whether a majority of white Americans in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Missouri is prepared to believe his campaign's insinuations that Barack Obama is (a) a terrorist, or at least the friend of terrorists, (b) a "socialist", (c) a racist, because he hasn't disavowed his friend Rep. John Lewis's criticism of racist language used by people who go to McCain and Palin rallies, and (d) a Muslim. None of these claims and insinuations are true, although the first three are subtly or directly interwoven into McCain's and especially Palin's remarks at campaign rallies, as well as illustrated in sinister, shadowy television ads. That some of their supporters have absorbed and begun to regurgitate these lines is readily apparent: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/10/note-to-palin-crowd-your-roots-
are.html

That video was broadcast worldwide on Al Jazeera, and it's a perfect example of what Colin Powell was talking about on "Meet the Press" last Sunday: That the words and images of some Americans' prejudice against Muslims and people of color are "killing us" around the world -- meaning that a big chunk of our political discourse is reinforcing the image of America as a mean-spirited, religiously antagonistic and racially bigoted nation of people which has, by the way, dumped the world into an economic crisis caused by our egregiously leveraged credit practices.

The final round of campaign rhetoric on which Senator McCain and Governor Palin are now embarked is rife with these images and themes of race, violence and radicalism. They are attempting to win an election based on making less well-educated, undecided white voters afraid of a black man who is a former University of Chicago constitutional law professor distrusted by the left-wing of his own party because it suspects he is too moderate. Inasmuch as many privileged political pundits who have known McCain well for many years say that he is a swell guy who would never really think these odious things about an opponent, then the intellectual premise of his campaign, at its 11th hour, is based on hypocrisy and cynicism. His strategy has come down to pandering to the worst residual forms of intolerance in order to try to eke out a plurality in a handful of socially conservative states that, in a close election, might theoretically be enough to give him a victory in the Electoral College -- an antiquated, undemocratic mechanism for electing a president -- although most pollsters now expect that Barack Obama will win a substantial popular vote victory. If this were to occur, the world would see that the United States had elected a president based not on "the better angels of our nature" but instead on our worst instincts. It would have every right to dismiss our pretensions to promote civil society and democratic principles elsewhere in the world.

We are better than that.

McCain and Palin call Obama's ideas "socialist"

The intellectual progenitor of most modern socialist parties was Karl Marx, whose philosophy was broad, ramshackle but ruthless. You could plow through thousands of pages of his writings without finding a single idea for government that would work in 21st century America or be happily embraced by many Democrats. But you don't have to do that research, to prove that Barack Obama isn't a socialist. Strip away all the ornate antechambers and upper stories of Marx's ideological palace -- which when imposed on modern nations always leads to their decline -- and you find one elemental, insistent idea: The state should own the means of production, all of them. Meaning that except for Korean laundries and unlicensed plumbers, the state should own every damn productive unit in the economy. No American presidential candidate has ever subscribed to that idea, least of all the unexcitable, distinctly unradical Barack Obama. So the McCain-Palin flaming steak of rhetoric about Obama being a socialist is just another piece of Flying Wallendas exaggeration. It's a lie if they know what socialism actually is, and if they don't, then it's clear they're at the stage of the campaign where they will say anything that might generate a headline which two or three voters will actually believe, while simultaneously driving their "base" absolutely hysterical with fear and hatred. That won't only create a long hang-over for the conservative faithful. In an age of political polarization and partisan animosities, it's irresponsible.

The perversity of the McCain-Palin attacks on Obama

Whether intentional or unintentional, there's a perverse psychology behind the false allegations about Barack Obama made in recent days by John McCain and Sarah Palin, in public speeches as well as television ads. They've accused Obama of friendship with a terrorist, on the basis of his having been present at a few fundraisers and foundation board meetings with William Ayers, who'd been in the domestic revolutionary group Weathermen almost 40 years ago but is now a respected member of the Chicago educational community. In return, McCain-Palin supporters at rallies have shouted "kill him" (meaning Obama) and have expressed fear about Obama being a Muslim (which he is not). Considered together and in the context of American history, the content of McCain's sinister-looking ads and Palin's exaggerated remarks in fact are tantamount to an incitement to hatred, and potentially an incitement to violence.

Claiming that Obama is "not who he claims to be" cues many fundamentalist Christians to believe that Obama is a Muslim (since many of them already believe that Muslims are barbaric). Insinuating to entirely white audiences that Obama's identity is ambiguous ("Who is he really?") can easily tap racial uneasiness from those who harbor such feelings. Claiming that Obama consorted with a terrorist amalgamates what has already been encouraged -- fear of a black presidential candidate -- with many white Americans' long-standing bias or resentment toward blacks generally, and combines that with fear of terrorists. This in turn blends the historically toxic prejudice against African-Americans with the new fear and loathing of foreign enemies like Osama bin Laden.

Similar combinations of false beliefs, when summoned by self-serving, unprincipled politicians before in American history, have led to social upheaval, riots and killing. However indirectly, by encouraging people to sip this lethal cocktail of prejudice and fear, the McCain campaign is resorting to a depraved kind of political rhetoric that has never before been used in modern presidential campaigns by any major party. They are bringing the radical, twisted fringe of American political conflict into the center of their language and are thereby polluting our public debate and disgracing themselves.