I don’t have a problem with Obama’s moving to the center as an overall strategy in the general election. His job once elected will be to govern from the center, and he has to obtain the confidence of those who live there if he will have any effectiveness once elected. But I think it’s legitimate to criticize his specific tactics in trying to win the center. And I think we have to define more clearly what it means to govern from the center.
I don’t look at myself as a member of the progressive community or the netroots community. I have concerns that overlap with their concerns, but more fundamentally I’m looking for someone for whom the concept the “common good” means something, and who has good judgment and a flexible problem solving approach. Pols who fit that criteria are more likely to be found in the Democratic party, but not all Democrats fit that criteria.
So I look at myself rather as normal American who has been paying attention to how the Republicans and their collaborators in the Democratic Party have flagrantly and irresponsibly used bad judgment, inflexible thinking, and a K-Street-driven disregard for the common good to run this this country off the tracks. I just want somebody with the public spiritedness, good sense, and competency to get things back on track. And “back on track” means a sensible, subsidiarist New Deal style social democracy.
And so from where I stand seeing clearly what’s in front of one’s nose is not a matter of left/right/center perception. It’s just a question of looking at this train wreck and calling it a train wreck. Conservatives with good sense see it as clearly as liberals with good sense. And so it starts there: calling it what it is–and then we can argue about how to go about the cleanup. But no sane, responsible person could possibly vote to keep in office those who are responsible for creating this mess, and the people who are responsible are the Hard Right which has dominated Republican Party since Reagan.
It’s not partisan to say so; it would be obvious to any sane clear-sighted observer, liberal or conservative, who had some time to study the situation. That’s why so many principled conservatives are supporting Obama despite his liberal voting record. The problems we confront transcend the liberal/conservative divide, and anybody with a shred of common sense understands that. And because that’s true, governing from the center has to be redefined in terms of the competency and public spiritedness required to clean up the mess and get things back on track.
This group currently in power has dominated the political sphere for the last thirty years, and it could not have done a better job of screwing things up. That they have any credibility whatsoever is astonishing and can only explained as a matter of convention or habit. There are always two sides to an issue, right? So therefore we have to take the Right seriously no matter how deeply discredited its policies and incompetent its management. Any sane, objective person who is not influenced by the media frame and who knew the history of the last seven years, would look at McCain and say: How can you even think for a minute that this guy and the party he represents deserves to be taken seriously, much less be elected? Are you people insane? And yet McCain despite his own ignorance and confusion, despite his flip-flopping and pandering to the Right, and despite the abysmal record of his party is portrayed in the media as if he was a serious candidate. He’s just not.
Recent polling suggests that most Americans are ahead of the media in their understanding about what’s at stake here, but this left/right/center media frame is unhelpful for sorting things out. So this brings me around to the point I want to make about Obama and the center. Media political reality is dominated by a left/right/center frame that has very little to do with real reality. In real reality there is a trainwreck and the only political issues worth talking about are how to clean it up and get things moving again.
In real reality the Right and its party offer no credible cleanup strategy, so that leaves only one choice, which is the Democrats. Fortunately, the Dems are putting up a presidential candidate who has the competency and public spiritedness that might actually work to get us back on track. Unfortunately many Democrats are co-responsible for creating the mess, and the new president has to work with them. In media reality bi-partisanship means Dems caving to the Republicans. Bi-partisanship in this sense is the problem, not the solution. Any center defined by this idea of bi-partisanship is a media-promoted delusion.
In real reality, as contrasted with media reality, it’s not about left/right/center; it’s about incompetent and corrupt vs. competent and public spirited. A new president Obama will have to deal with reality as he finds it, and he will find a congress that is filled by both Republicans and Democrats who work bi-partisanly more in the first group than the second. That’s the more fundamental political reality–the Beltway culture for which competency and public spiritedness are empty concepts. That mentality is the real bi-partisan enemy that Obama will have to confront–and he knows it. That’s why he says it’s not just about changing bad policy, but about changing the mentality that created the policy. He gets it, and in my judgment, Hillary didn’t get it. But getting it and doing something about it are two different things; it remains to be seen whether he will even try to do anything about it.
I don’t care about his distancing himself from Muslims or about his opting out of public financing. I’m ok with his bringing some people on as advisers who might not be my choice. He has to work with the corrupt and incompetent, and that means he has to listen to them. But it works the other way, too. Obama’s task in the long run will be to make the corrupt and incompetent listen to him and to persuade them that it is in their interests to support his agenda. The corrupt and incompetent will always be with us, and he needs their support. So it will be very interesting to see who wins in the battle of influence. Will Obama have the greater influence on the corrupt and incompetent or will the corrupt and incompetent have the greater influence on him? That’s an open question, and the indicators from the last week or so have not been encouraging.
His supporting the FISA compromise was unnecessary and worrying for those of us who hope that Obama will influence more than be influenced. He can change his mind, but it’s unlikely because can’t appear that he’s caving to pressure from the left. Looks weak. But in fact he has caved to pressure from the corrupt and incompetent wing of his party, which may not look weak, but is in fact weak.
Obama’s promise and potential to change the mentality of incompetence and corruption was really the only reason to prefer him to Clinton. If he winds up a pol like Hillary, it won’t be the worst thing that could happen, or even that surprising, but it will be very disappointing for those of who thought he could be more.
SUNDAY UPDATE: Greenwald this morning makes the same point. I don’t believe that Obama really believes that this bill serves the
common good; he’s supporting it because it’s his calculation that it
serves his political interests. Some are arguing that his getting
elected serves the common good in a way that his getting defeated will
cancel, so this tactic insofar as it will help him get elected serves the common good. But if so, I question his political judgment. It misreads the political situation because it looks at it through a paint by numbers “can’t-look-too-liberal” Beltway lens, and in this sense fails the flexibility criterion. It’s disappointing enough that he isn’t supporting the bill for the right reasons, but even as a tactical maneuver it’s just wrong. Greenwald succinctly summarizes:
Beyond its obsolescence, this “move-to-the-center” cliché ignores the extraordinary political climate prevailing in this country, in which more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe the Government is fundamentally on the wrong track and the current President is one of the most unpopular in American history, if not the most unpopular. The very idea that Bush/Cheney policies are the “center,” or that one must move towards their approach in order to succeed, ignores the extreme shifts in public opinion generally regarding how our country has been governed over the last seven years.
One could argue that national security plays a larger role in presidential elections than in Congressional races, and that very well may be. But was John Kerry’s narrow 2004 loss to George Bush due to the perception that Kerry — who ran as fast as he could towards the mythical Center — was Soft on Terrorism? Or was it due to the understandable belief that his rush to the Center meant that he stood for nothing, that he was afraid of his own views — the real hallmark, the very definition, of weakness?
By the time of the 2004 election, huge numbers of Americans already turned against Bush’s position on the War and ceased trusting him even in the realm of National Security. Thus, the defining claim of Bush’s 2004 acceptance speech at the GOP Convention — the central distinction he drew between himself and Kerry — was not that his National Security views were right, but rather, was this:
This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism — and you know where I stand. . . . In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don’t agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.
Bush’s ability to project “Strength” came not from advocacy of specific policies, but from his claim to stand by his beliefs even when they were politically unpopular.
For that reason, isn’t the perception that Obama is abandoning his own core beliefs — or, worse, that he has none — a much greater political danger than a failure to move to the so-called “Center” by suddenly adopting Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies? As a result of Obama’s reversal on FISA, his very noticeable change in approach regarding Israel, his conspicuous embrace of the Scalia/Thomas view in recent Supreme Court cases, and a general shift in tone, a very strong media narrative is arising that Obama is abandoning his core beliefs for political gain. That narrative — that he’s afraid to stand by his own beliefs — appears far more likely to result in a perception that Obama is “Weak” than a refusal to embrace Bush/Cheney national security positions.
I don’t believe that Obama really believes that this bill serves the
common good; he’s supporting it because it’s his calculation that it
serves his political interests. Some are arguing that his getting
elected serves the common good in a way that his getting defeated will
cancel, so his moving to the center is a strategy designed to serve the
common good in that respect.
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