Obama's handlers, like Clinton's before him, know how to work a crowd.
Obama stalks across the international stage like he has been elected. It may well get him a stint in the Oval Office.
Yeah populism.
Look, there are lots of legitimate reasons to hate Bush. There are lots of legit reasons for denying the office to McCain. There may even be legitimate reasons for voting for Obama, but that other people like him shouldn't be one of them.
Populism hasn't served the world well.
I don't think there is any inherent defect in Obama that makes him dangerous. He isn't Hitler or Mao or Lenin. However, Populism brings such evil into the mainstream, it siphons off the energy of institutions, and betrays the spirit of the people. The end result is disenchantment, bad law, and economic loss.
The thing is that populism also is a sure-fire way to get into office.
Looking back at the Primary, it seems clear that Obama's handlers correctly identified a strategy to beat an experienced opponent... if neck and neck, act like you have already won and the people will assume that it is a done deal. It worked against Hillary.
Hillary was ahead in delegates and had a motivated base. There were plenty of delegates to go and a fight on the floor would probably have seated her as the nominee.
Obama wins. Why? Because he pretends to have already won. He stalks the country, having meetings with high-level persons about policies influenced by a SEATED president.
It worked and he is doing it again.
Obama and McCain are neck-and-neck. McCain is unquestionably the more experienced candidate. What do Obama's handlers do? They send him to meet with world leaders to discuss policies influenced by a SEATED president.
The thing is, if Obama was other than a stuffed shirt... If he had a scintilla of actual experience, maybe this wouldn't be pure populism. If he had the actual experience to be President and his opponent didn't trump him in every regard, such a trip might provide insight into his capacity to manage foreign affairs. Sadly, he has none of those skills and the trip does nothing but show that those of us who are influenced most by reputation and image like him.
Look, I've made no bones about my intentions. I am going to vote for McCain.
I don't think of myself as "smarter" than other people. I recognized that many Obama supporters have greater education and greater mental faculties than I do. However, intelligence is often betrayed by the desire to fit in, to do what everyone else does, to accept, without challenge, the assertions of others if those assertions are spoken loudly enough and resonate with our desires.
Johnson may have been hated and God knows the crowds gathered to oust him, but it was his legislative savvy, his connections to representatives, governors, and senators that allowed the Civil Rights Acts to go through. It was his commanding sense of duty that sent troops to enforce Congressional action.
Obama hasn't the stones for the latter and hasn't the skill, experience, or connections for the former.
FDR had the connections and competency in administration to push through legislation that he believed would help the US recover from the Depression. He had the will to coax America into WWII. I would not have favored his policies, had I been around back then, but FDR's skills at being a president are undeniable.
Obama has no experience on which to base an opinion as to whether he could command as FDR did. There is no reason to believe that he is another FDR.
Obama is more similar to JFK or Clinton than any President that I would have followed. Like JFK, he can stir up the crowds. And, I suspect, like JFK, it will end there... with a stirred-up population and no policy or determination to do anything about it. Like JFK, Obama will find that there is a huge difference between conceptualizing a "better world" and doing anything to get us there.
Like Clinton, he will find that it is a lot more satisfying to make big speeches than to attend to the day-in-and-day-out functions of an Administration. And, like Clinton, I suspect that an Obama Administration will be rudderless and corrupt. He will likely be the unknowing chief of a scandal-plagued tribe.
We had better bar-code the linens in the White House and catalog the silverware before another populist president takes office and fills it with children playing presidential staff.
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You'll feel better when you get your rainbow-colored unicorn that poops universal health care, and pees unleaded. Popular word is they'll be delivered on Jan. 21.
(Wait...is my cynicism and lack of faith in politicians showing again?)
When you have a really large complex system, introducing changes into the system more likely than not will f**k it up. That's something I learned in my first life as a not very successful scientist. Well, the other thing about a large complex system is that it is usually resilient. It would get back to where it suppose to be give it long enough time.
I guess that's beauty of the US system -- it oscillates between bad and quite good. It never gets really really bad, but it also never gets to be really really good. Let's celebrate the perpetual mediocracy.
My Fellow Posters, Commentariat, and Casual Readers,
The author of the post upon which I am commenting is among the smartest people I have ever known, and is capable of admirably thoughtful and insightful analyses. GV’s perspective is very much different from my own, and I have long enjoyed discussions that were sometimes collaborations and sometimes sparring matches. GV has my continued respect, admiration, and friendship. When GV typed this post and clicked on the button to publish it to the blog, however, GV was clearly upset, angry, and wound-up to the breaking point. GV decries “the desire to fit in, to accept, without challenge, the assertions of others…” I have too much respect for GV, and too much trust the resiliency of our friendship, to not respond to the assertions made.
This post begins by poisoning the well. Senator Obama is characterized as a creature of his “handlers”, a mere pawn, rather than as an actor in his own right. The choice of language reinforces the tactic, describing Senator Obama as one who doesn’t “stride”, “stand”, or even just “walk” across the world stage, but rather as one who “stalks”.
Then we see a classic straw man argument unveiled when Obama is characterized as unelected. However, this is not the situation. Senator Obama is not a New Jersey restaurateur. He is a duly elected representative of the American people who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committees. The same charge that “he stalks across the international stage like he has been elected” can fairly be leveled against Senator McCain, as well. Senator McCain is a United States Senator and presidential candidate who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportations Committees, and has travelled to Columbia, Venezuela, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, France and Britain (meeting with those countries presidents, foreign ministers, and other cabinet officials, as well as reportedly engaging in campaign fundraising in at least one of those countries). This is selective perception.
“Yeah populism.” OK, I know this is supposed to be said in a sarcastic tone of voice, but what the heck does populism have to do with a sitting U.S. Senator or even candidate for the U.S. Presidency travelling abroad?
“There are a lot of legitimate reasons for denying the office [of President of the United States] to [Senator]McCain. There may even be legitimate reasons for voting for Obama, but that other people like him shouldn’t be one of them.” Frankly, I am confused here. Who is arguing that I should vote for Obama merely because other people like him? This is another straw man.
Then the flat statement is made the populism hasn’t served the world well. This is a statement without meaning, because we don’t know what GV means by populism. (Am I to take it that populism is the act of voting for a candidate because other people like him? That is more usually referred to as the bandwagon effect, but it would be an odd definition of populism for GV to adopt, because, if, so, then the same charge could be leveled against McCain’s camp.) There are just about as many definitions of populism as there are people using the term. GV uses the term “populism” or “populist” six times in the body of the post, but it is never clear what it means in this context. GV is begging the question.
GV assures us Senator Obama isn’t dangerous, and he certainly isn’t any Hitler, Mao, or Lenin, but his “populism” “brings such evil into the mainstream”. Lets take a look at that claim. Hitler’s Nazis were never a legitimately elected majority, and Hitler seized control with the aid of German president von Hindenburg who had a distaste for pluralistic democracy and wanted to engineer a totalitarian state. Mao seized control, at the barrel of a gun, of a mainland China splintered into multiple competing warlordships, a recently collapsed Japanese puppet state, and European colonies. And Lenin happily resorted to armed insurrection whenever it suited his purposes, whether against the hereditary monarchy, popularly elected governments, or fellow revolutionaries. Yes, each of those three bloody-minded dictators made facile appeals to the populaces they sought to dominate, but I am at an utter loss on how to draw a legitimate connection between their rise to power and Senator Obama’s campaign for the U.S. Presidency.
GV states that a brokered Democratic Party primary would have probably have resulted in the nomination of Senator Clinton, but that is unprovable speculation, because Senator Obama has already won the majority of the popular vote and of the delegates. And, it is true that there were plenty of delegates to go…until there weren’t. Senator Clinton did not throw in the towel until it was mathematically impossible for her to win.
The claim is made, however, that Senator Obama won merely because he “pretends” to have already won. Apparently, that is the only way Senator Obama could have bested a Senator Clinton who had an early lead in delegates and had a motivated base. Might I suggest that that it is possible—and far more likely—that Senator Obama won because he had a better strategy than Senator Clinton, because he ran a better campaign than Senator Clinton, because he raised more money from a much broader base than Senator Clinton, because he had fewer “negative” than Senator Clinton, because he didn’t have former President Clinton campaigning for him, and because he won more votes than Senator Clinton. Senator McCain is also vulnerable to the charge that he wins because “he pretends” to win. After the Potomac Primaries, Senator McCain claimed that it was mathematically impossible for Huckabee to win and changing the focus of his campaign away from the Governor and toward his potential Democratic opponents, even though Governor Huckabee was still in a position to keep McCain from gaining an absolute majority and thereby forcing a brokered convention. But the media fell for Senator McCain’s pretending, and began describing him as the presumptive nominee. Again, we have selective perception.
The argument can easily be made that Governor Huckabee would have won a brokered convention, since he was widely considered a true conservative, would have forced Senator McCain’s campaign into bankruptcy, and would have rallied deeper grass roots support. However, that argument is unprovable speculation, since Senator McCain did indeed win the primary outright, whether or not it was because he had pretended to have already won.
And again, Senator Obama is stalking about “having meetings with high-level persons about policies influenced by a SEATED president.” I gather that there is something somehow, ah, wrong about a U.S. Senator and presidential candidate doing this. It had never before occurred to me that policies “influenced” by the current President were off-topic. On his travels overseas—which, I note, preceded Senator Obama’s—Senator McCain did not eschew discussions of all policies that had bee influenced by President Bush. Well, maybe he did, since the Senator from Arizona had the foreign policy savvy to discuss our current relationship with a country that no longer exists, Czechoslovakia, and the status of an international border that has never existed, the Iraq/Pakistan border. I Challenge anyone to show me how the topics of our current relations with a non-existent country and of the state of affairs along a non-existent border could possibly fall into the category of policies influenced by a sitting President. (In fairness to Senator McCain, though he did manage to make himself legitimate fodder for late night comedians, he would not be the only smart person in the world who fumbled the names of people and places.)
“If he [Senator Obama] had a scintilla of actual experience, maybe this wouldn’t be pure populism.” If the difference between populism and non-populism is merely a scintilla of experience, then I have good news: Senator Obama is a sitting United States Senator; a former Illinois state senator, and an experience community activist with proven skills in coalition-building, and a person who has had the experience of living overseas.
GV decries the “desire to…accept, without challenge, the assertions of others if those assertions are spoken loudly enough and resonate with our desires.” Fair enough, if true. Can’t tell for sure though. Don’t know what those “assertions” are. Don’t know who—beyond the broad brush of “many Obama supporters”—these unchallenging acceptors are. In fact, a careful reading shows that that damning charge is never actually made against anyone. We are left to infer as much, or else assume a non sequitor. We are told that many Obama supporters are smarter and more educated than the GV (which is an unnecessary humility), but then a general statement follows that “intelligence is often betrayed by the desire to fit in…” One of those assertions be his statement that “in the end, it doesn't matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose, or how many government programs we launch - none of it will make any difference if we don't seize more responsibility in our own lives,” That that responsibility “starts with providing the guidance our children need, turning off the TV, and putting away the video games; attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, and setting a good example. It starts with teaching our daughters to never allow images on television to tell them what they are worth; and teaching our sons to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one. It starts by being good neighbors and good citizens who are willing to volunteer in our communities - and to help our synagogues and churches and community centers feed the hungry and care for the elderly. We all have to do our part to lift up this country.” GV’s failure to identify either those who betray their intelligence or the assertions that are the basis of the alleged betrayal makes the charge impossible to adequately address.
I’m puzzled by the insistence on foreign policy experience. Such experience is granted to few people, and very, very few of those people are the sort of political animals that run for president. Lincoln had no foreign policy experience when he had to prevent foreign intervention in the Civil War. Wilson had no foreign policy experience, except for a brief stint as an assistant secretary of the Navy, when he negotiated the shoals of the First World War. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policy experience was also limited to a stint as an assistant secretary of the Navy. Truman had only the foreign policy experience of any U.S. Senator, and gained none as Vice President, since Roosevelt kept him out of the loop. Johnson’s foreign policy experience was limited to his time in the Senate and WWII Navy service as decorated Lt. Cmdr. Ronald Reagan had no foreign policy experience at all that I know of before he assumed the Presidency.
Too bad though, that Obama, unlike President Johnson, doesn’t have the “stones” to enforce the law and lacks the savvy and connections to pass major civil rights legislation. This is a non sequitor. The ability to recreate the actions of a past President is not a measure of the current presidential candidate. Whether or not, in similar situations, Senator Obama would fail to rise to the occasion is pure speculation. He never had to order U.S. troops out, but then, neither did President Lincoln before he became president. As for the ability to build a coalition to achieve his goals, Senator Obama does indeed have experience there.
Next we see him compared to Franklin Roosevelt. Again, as with LBJ, we see the potential president compared to the accomplished president, and found wanting. We are told ‘[t]here is no reason to believe” Senator Obama could measure up… Really? None? None at all? Before he became President, Roosevelt had a reputation as an elitist and a dandy. Before LBJ became President, he was known as a southern democrat with a thorough command of Senate rule and power politics, but with little (if any) civil rights advocacy in his political background. Truman had a reputation as a stalwart Democratic Party man and the nemesis of war profiteers, but not as a national leader. Reagan was a former actor, union leader, and washed-up California politician. I am certain we could have found many of their pre-inauguration contemporaries who would have—in effect—said that candidate FDR could in no way measure up to President FDR, nor could Vice President LBJ ever measure up to President LBJ, et cetera, et cetera.
We are told, however, that Senator Obama is comparable to Presidents Kennedy and Clinton. If I am not mistaken, President Kennedy is criticized for being a great orator who was assassinated before he could follow up on his agenda. I just have no response for that one. President Clinton, on the other hand, is criticized for focusing on the grand gestures of leadership and being ignorant of the aimlessness and corruption of his administration: An administration that turned in the only surpluses my generation has ever seen; An administration that oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union and one of the greatest economic expansions in the post-war era; An administration that launched military strikes against Osama Bin Laden before anyone else took him seriously as a threat; An administration that acted decisively to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” of the Kosovars. Frankly, I don’t see why a man with a career as a successful grass-roots community organizer would be accused of ignoring the details. I know that Rush Limbaugh repeatedly accuses Senator Obama of being “the best at saying nothing”, but if you actually listen to the Senator’s speeches, you will hear enough specifics to form a substantive opinion about the Senator.
Finally, the post ends with an entirely scurrilous charge that the members of any Obama administration would literally plunder the White House of its linen and silver. This appears to be an allusion to the allegations, purportedly from anonymous Bush administration staffers, that the White House and Air Force One were looted and vandalized by the outgoing Clinton Administration Staff. The GAO investigated the rumors and found them to be unsubstantiated. So, the final charge is doubly scurrilous: impugning the reputations of both a potential and a past administration.
In conclusion, we have an angry post accusing Senator Obama of not playing fair and of waging a campaign that is a danger to the body politic. We have a post characterizing Senator Obama of being an utterly inexperienced, unwitting, ignorant dupe of his “handlers”, a stuffed shirt, and lacking the courage to make hard decisions, though without “any inherent defect in Obama that makes him dangerous.” We have a post that employs the strategies of poisoning the well, begging the question, setting up straw men, making selective perceptions, and using unsupported and vague assertions. What we don’t have is a substantive critique. We learn more about GV when he is in high dudgeon than we learn about Senator Obama.
I am not arguing for or against either major candidate. I am critiquing this post. Give me specific points, such as that he did not fire the low-level campaign staffers who posted anti-Catholic comments on their blogs, or his proposal for educational benefits modeled after the GI Bill but tied to significant non-military national service, or his health insurance plan that falls significantly short of universal coverage, or his call to cut tax breaks for U.S. companies that ship jobs overseas, etc. We don’t have to limit this to Senator Obama, either. GV tells us that “There are lots of legit reasons for denying the office [of President] to McCain.” I would love to hear a few of those reasons and have a chance to weigh them.
Of course, anyone reading this should keep in mind that this response is coming from a poster who responds to alleged violations of the ADA with a smartass sonnet and who claims in his biography to have been born on a Mars colony and raised by Civil War re-enactors.
Sincerely Yours,
Ipsit Dixit
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