Dennis Perrin: Will To Power

For pure shits and giggles, this post by Dennis Perrin on the Samantha Power affair is not to be missed. It's also pretty much all that needs to be said.

A New Low

I happened upon this clip of Obama last night handling a ridiculous question from Tim Russert about Louis Farrakhan declaring his support for Obama. (In case you missed it, watch it before reading on.) I have always thought that Tim Russert is a mediocre journalist, but this was a new low for him, and for the campaign as a whole. On top of which, Hillary couldn't help herself, opportunistically invoking 'principle' ('I stand on principle and reject people who make anti-semitic remarks') when it was transparent that she was trying to score a few cheap points. Clinton wouldn't know a principle if it slapped her halfway across the country. Any reader of this blog knows how I feel about Obama, but in this case he was not the problem. The base problem here was the obscene (and irrelevant) choice presented between Obama 'denouncing' Farrakhan and 'rejecting' him. It's not just that these idiotic and superficial games over symbolic politics gets in the way of a serious discussion of actual political issues (ie, what exactly do they think should happen in the Middle East - essentially no difference between them.) In this particular case, it was also about banishing a segment of the population from the public sphere. Obama's response was about as appropriate as can be. He didn't look for Farrakhan's support, but isn't going to tell Farrakhan to hold his tongue like a parent instructing a child. Russert, Clinton and whoever takes the thought police position of 'rejection' isn't just trying to embarrass Obama, but attempting to remove a voice from the public sphere, as if that removal did anything to contest the views expressed therein.

Moreover, in this particular case, Clinton and Russert are perpetuating a kind of symbolic identity politics that only exacerbates differences amongst groups by making appearances matter far more than they should. Everyone could read between the lines and see what Clinton , by jumping on Russert's question, was trying to do here. She wanted to make it impossible for Obama to give the reasonable response, which would not offend Blacks, while still appealing beyond the Black commnity. She was forcing a difference and defensiveness where division did not need to be. One has to believe that any Black person, regardless of whether supportive of Farrakhan or not, watching the debate must have felt on the defensive, and felt resentment for such an opportunistic attempt to create differences where there aren't any. I felt that way, and I'm not even Black. This episode also suggests to me that Clinton has failed to understand why Obama is winning. In the middle of opportunistically seizing on these little moments, Clinton reveals that she offers nothing in the way of overcoming the petty and superficial differences that have dominated American politics. At the end of the day, that seems to be what matters most to people, and why Obama comes out looking good. After all, people know they aren't going to get real change - neither Obama nor Clinton represent anything truly new or different. So voters ratchet down their expectations, and least want lack of substance to come with less empty partisanship.

One more thing. I don't like or agree with much anything Farrakhan has said - but that's also how I feel about Clinton and Obama. If offensiveness and 'dangerousness of views' were the criteria for whose support we should reject, I can think of a far far longer and more important list than a few marginal players in African-American politics.*

*An addition to the original version of this post: In terms of active, ongoing discrimination (a term severely under-stating the actual situation in the Middle East), on wonders why walling the entire Palestinian population in, so that to get basic supplies like food and medicine they literally have to break down those walls, doesn't warrant at least five minutes, to the ten that Farrakhan got. Not that there is any difference between Clinton and Obama on that subject. But apparently the distinction without a difference between 'reject' and 'denounce' is more important than what actually goes on.

Neither Plagiarism Nor Hope

As is typical of this election race, reportage about a particular event, like Clinton's famous pre-New Hampshire breakdown, or the most recent furore over Obama's plagiarized' stump speech, has covered everything but the interesting part. For those who missed it, Obama recently defended himself from Hillary's accusation that he is all words no substance by more or less reiterating a few lines from a speech by Obama's friend, Massachussetts Governor Patrick Duvall. As ABC reports

In 2006 Patrick gave a speech quoting famous phrases: "'We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,' … just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' Just words. … 'I have a dream' … just words,'" he said, switching effortlessly from FDR to JFK to MLK.

On Saturday in Wisconsin, Obama said, "Don't tell me words don't matter. … 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words. Just speeches."

Hillary's supporters accused Obama of plagiarism, and since then the media has dutifully reported the ongoing spat. But reporting the mutual accusations misses the point. In politics plagiarism is not a problem, and in some sense is a necessary virtue. Unity, solidarity, and joint pursuit of cause means that more than one person will say the same thing. They should say the same thing if they jointly believe in it!

The problem in Obama's case is a congenital lack of originality and the way in which he empties past slogans of their meaning. Obama has been campaigning off the reflected glory of 'hope' mantras for a while, making 'Yes We Can'/'Si Se Puede' a chant since he became a viable candidate. But the only thing left of the words of FDR, JFK, MLK or Cesar Chavez are the mere words themselves, and their lingering aura, rather than the politics to which they refer. This is why they are useful to Obama. I have already described the disanalogy between Obama and MLK so let me illustrate my point with a different slogan.

'Yes We Can' used to be the expression of a politics of a solidarity amongst the working class, and later immigrant labor, that was combined with an intense, militant, dare we say partisan, attitude towards politics. This militant partisanship is precisely the kind of thing Obama wants to nullify. Obama rejects that one even has to take sides in politics. So when Obama claims that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' 'I have a dream' and 'yes we can' are more than 'just words' he is wrong...now. They once summarized and helped produced the solidarity of an actual political movement - be it civil rights struggle, class politics, or the fight for independence. These words once referred to political substance; they were slogans in the good sense. Now they really are just empty words, referring nothing more to the glossy hopes of an electoral movement revolving around a single personality, unable to generate a politics beyond himself.

Confessions of a Snarky Politico

A friend of mine has a great post answering the question “Daniel, you are a leftie, why aren’t you voting for Barack Obama?”

Obama: Not a Black President?

It might seem a bit unfair to beat up on the underdog, as he rolls into Super-Duper Tuesday, especially as I might be mistaken for a Hilary supporter. So let me make this clear: I dislike Hilary just as much, I simply have less to say about her. Also, most of my friends are Obama supporters, and so I know the various arguments made for him better. Moreover, he gets invested with high hopes in a way, for better or for worse, Hilary does not. I think those high hopes are misplaced.

One common theme in left-liberal support, especially amongst my friends, for Obama is that he would be the first (truly) Black president. In a recent panel discussion, Cornel West fairly and clearly explained why this is just not so. The whole commentary is worth watching, but it boiled down to the argument that the criteria for assessing a president, or anyone else, has to be political, not symbolic: "What kind of courage have you manifested in the stances that you have?." The truth of Toni Morrison's otherwise irritating and endlessly reprduced proclamation that Bill Clinton was the first Black President is that being a 'Black politician' is not something one can be born into, and depends upon one's social position and political stances, rather than mere skin color. In fact, Obama has taken no risks for Blacks as a candidate, and indeed the offending incident that spurred West's criticism was Obama's decision not to participate the "State of Black America" forum.

The point is not just that Obama counts on Black support while never making any distinctive, risky appeals to them. It is that he seems to behave as if there simply is no serious, fundamental problem worthy of conflict and chance-taking in the first place. A comparison with Martin Luther King Jr. clarifies the point. Both Obama and King are seen as Black political figures who nonetheless managed to appeal to segments of white public opinion. They are therefore sometimes seens as 'unifiers' in the horrible lingo of American punditry. However, the difference(s) are more important than the similarities. Obama's message of unity is one totally opposed to the idea of fundamental or serious conflict. This has played well to those who quite fairly feel that much of the partisanship on Capitol Hill is empty and meaninglessly spiteful. However, he has taken his message of pragmatic unity, of let's all just get along and work things out, and turned it into an approach to all political problems. King, on the other hand, saw no problem with combining the idea of unity with a politics of conflict. To somewhat crudely summarize the relevant part of his politics, he recognized that society was already divided, and that his antagonists were the source of this division. It was only through his movement, which stood in conflict with the source of division, that some kind of unity could be achieved - that blacks and whites could live in harmony. His politics and rhetoric was at times militant, and became increasingly so as he realized just how deep the inequalities in American society were, and how intransigent certain elements - at the top no less than the bottom - were. If a kind of social harmony was the aim of politics, it was not the means. And he recognized the necessity of polarization and ideological confrontation. Obama admits of no such divisions, and rejects the necessity of serious disagreement, even militant conflict, in politics.

One might say the race issue no longer requires the kinds of militancy it did in the past. That might be true. Or at least, it might be true that the race issue can't be resolved as purely a race issue. Regardless, these are the kinds of issues that at the very least should be raised, and on which a Black president would at least be willing to take a stand, rather than gloss over and keep at a distance. Any group can tell when they are being used yet kept at an arms length. Obama is a Black presidential candidate in precisely that sense - only insofar as it helps him win votes, but never to the extent that it might be dangerous.

The Visionary Minimalist?

Over at TNR, Cass Sunstein has a very good article about Obama. I say very good because it helps prove a point I have been making to my pro-Obama friends that Obama is actually pretty conservative. Sunstein’s general argument is that Obama is a minimalist when it comes to thinking about constitutional issues, or really issues of fundamental importance to us all. Minimalists “gravitate toward the least controversial grounds” for deciding cases and reject “sweeping theories about equality and the Constitution's commander-in-chief clause.” Whatever the merits or demerits this attitude has as a theory of how to be a Supreme Court Justice, when translated into the attitudes of a political leader, it’s a recipe for middle-of-the-road pragmatism that is the opposite of real change. I think phrases like the following are perfect examples:

“Like all minimalists, Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning, and accommodation--a belief directly reflected in many of his policies.”

This is a true statement only if real change means not very much change at all. What Obama does is piggyback on the word change’s radical connotation, while giving it a conservative denotation. It sounds good, but it’s really just a middle path. What Sunstein writes on Obama’s economics is another good example of this Janus-faced change. Sunstein likes that Obama thinks Dems need to think about the problems minimum wage poses to employers, while also likes that Obama prefers the Earned Income Tax Credit. But the EITC is far less useful, and more bureaucratically complex, than the minimum wage. It is also as tokenistic as anti-poverty efforts get.

“Obama's promise of change is credible in part because of his brand of minimalism.”

This makes no sense. If your first step is to reject big transformative ideas, the idea of conflict in politics, and taking a side; in other words, if what makes you a minimalist is first affirming the fundamental soundness of the status quo; then what kind of change is really possible within those boundaries? This is barely even reformism.

The only merit to Obama is a kind of rejection of the culture wars, which is really there across the board in the Dems. But really, what’s most interesting about him is that he manages to make it all about change and personality, when his politics is fundamentally managerial and technocratic. After all, if there are no real, substantive divides, and the point is to get beyond empty partisan battles to a politics of consensus, what is politics about? It becomes about intelligently administering those programs everybody ostensibly agrees about. Obama’s role is just to get everybody on board with these programs, whatever they may be, and cast anyone who objects as an uncooperative radical, hard-headed fundamentalist, out of step with the common sense. Who wants that kind of change?

It’s a very good article, actually, because it shows just how conservative Obama is. I think phrases like this are perfect examples:

“Like all minimalists, Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning, and accommodation--a belief directly reflected in many of his policies.”

This is a true statement only if real change means not very much change at all. Obama is doing to the word change what advertising does to the word revolution. Ride on the back of his radical connotation, while giving it a conservative denotation. The stuff on Obama’s economics is another good example. The EITC is a canard, the minimum wage actually useful to labor.

“Obama's promise of change is credible in part because of his brand of minimalism.”

Of course, this makes no sense. If your first step is to reject big transformative ideas, the idea of conflict in politics, and taking a side; in other words, if what makes you a minimalist is first affirming the fundamental soundness of the status quo; then what kind of change is really possible within those boundaries? This is barely even reformism.

The only merit to Obama is a kind of rejection of the culture wars, which is really there across the board in the Dems. But really, what’s most interesting about him is that he manages to make it all about change and personality, when his politics is fundamentally managerial and technocratic. After all, if there are no real, substantive divides, and the point is to get beyond empty partisan battles to a politics of consensus, what is politics about? Intelligently administering those programs everybody ostensibly agrees about. Obama’s role is just to get everybody on board with these programs, whatever they may be, and cast anyone who objects as an uncooperative radical, hard-headed fundamentalist, out of step with the common sense. Who the hell wants that?