Obama '08?

Well, you have an impenetrable argument. You are unimpressed with the substance you've seen of Obama's policy proposals, but you see "read his book" as a tired ploy, not to be taken seriously. So, have you skimmed through his website?

I just skimmed his website. Lots of what he wants too do like all the other politicians but no how he will change things. Just more worthless retoric like Bush.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/washington/01adviser.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=2dd9f640dbc14c3f&ex=1333080000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

nimhh

There are various ways one can think about this "lack of substance" complaint.

First, and not to be forgotten, is that this is the predictable first line of attack against anyone who demonstrates unusual charismatic appeal..."He's an empty suit." It was used against Kennedy and against Bill Clinton. It is the primary means of turning (or attempting to turn) that strength, that charisma or looks or broad appeal, against the candidate.

Second, because it is a sound-bite-sized simplicity, the modern media structure will inevitably take it to bosom - and that becomes even more predictable where that media structure has become so enamored of matters relating to celebrity. Evidence the media's overwhelming concentration on Edwards' looks and his wife's cancer. Politics as an Oprah show. Pathos and sexuality, please. But specifics of medicaid reform or immigration? "No thankyou!" advertisers will declare.

Running a campaign and winning an election MUST confront these realities.

But more important, at least it is to my mind, is the point that Dowd and many others have alluded to. Right now, the US (for its own sake and for the sake of the world) needs meta BEFORE policy.

An address to poverty, for example, must be preceded by some reinvigorated and sincere sense of compassionate community and brotherhood, national and even more broadly than that.

You appreciate, I'm sure, that Obama has the intellect necessary to fill this post. I expect too that you appreciate how his cabinet will likely be populated with a personnel pool of no small talent.

If policy wonk was the real thing right now, then you'd probably have to sign on to Hilary's campaign.

What is your argument here? That anyone unwilling to read a book by Obama is unwilling to find out about the substance of his proposals? That it is unfair to expect Obama to get the substance of his proposals across through other means/media, because he's already written a book?

Because only these two parts of logic would make my argument "impenetrable", way I see it. Anyone who'd agree with me that both pieces of 'logic' are bunk would notice that my argument is not "impenetrable" at all. All that it needs for current critics of Obama's lack of substance on the issues to be persuaded is for him to come up with, and convey, said substance through the regular means and media that all the other candidates use to show off theirs.

I mean, we're not having some abstract discussion here, despite what you seem to claim here. People go to a forum on health care and find that while Edwards and Hillary have concrete plans, Obama remained stuck in abstractions. Someone tells him that when he goes to his website, all he could find concretely about health care proposals is something about AIDS. I read an article in the New York Times reporting about the three candidates' addresses to the firefighters' conventions, and see Hillary and Edwards quoted as listing a set of concrete proposals on issues that firefighters face now that they would work to get through, whereas Obama is only quoted as saying something abstract about how important the firefighters' union is. Little things like that. Pile on a succession of such little things and you get the conclusion that Obama's got a lot to catch up with when it comes to concrete issues, rather than the process of politics itself.

Not to mention that in the quote from Soz I brought that you just ignored, even she says that his book doesnt actually have much in the ways of concrete policy proposals, and sketches more his general views about what the problems are and about the ways he would go about making policy.

So what is your argument here exactly?

Blatham, no offense - and this reply refers to a succession of similar posts of yours over time rather (or as well as) just this one - but sometimes I get really tired of the way you basically respond to any personal observations of what I (or anyone) have remarked about a liberal candidate that's less than good with a general argument that basically, "of course thats how the media system or Republican machine will portray it".

No, Blatham, I am not just mouthing some media meme that I am haplessly regurgitating, I am very well able to make and formulate my own observations, thank you very much. It's really a bit insulting to respond to people's individual observations or criticisms about any leftwing politician or program point or whatever with, basically, "well of course thats what they want you to think". Do you really think we're so guileless that whenever we come up with a criticism, it must just be some regurgitation of a meme?

It's sometimes like your automatic reaction to any criticism of the left is to discount it as having been informed by malicious or illegitimate memes - as if there arent plenty of times when one can come up with wholly legitimate criticisms, even of one's own side's politicians. We've been through this with the Pelosi/Murtha/Harman thing, where you also kept coming back with "well of course the machine is going to report negatively about Pelosi in these ways", only to in the end come back, graciously enough, with an admission that, OK, in this case there was actually a "there" there - she did actually seem to have gone off on the wrong track.

How can there be such resistance to acknowledge these things, even in the most glaring cases? The wall you have built to elaborately shield off, basically, any criticism of anyone on the left by analysing it through the prism of how "thats of course how the media / the Republicans will have formulated it to you" seems - however worthy these analyses of media mechanisms and conservative machinations are in themselves - to be getting seriously in the way of one's own ability of critical self-reflection, one's own readiness to recognize and analyse actual fault on one's own side. Yes, of course the media and the conservative political machine work in the ways that you variously, astutely, analyse them to do. But this is getting a way too convenient catch-all response to any criticism you see even fellow leftists making against your preferred politicians.

No, I think Edwards is the wonk of the three, and he's a hell of a lot closer to my political views than Hillary is too.

And yes, I know that to most voters, its not about "policy wonk", its about "character" or "charisma", or at best, "vision". F*ck that. Like we havent seen what choices guided by those principles have led us/you to. Al Gore had the better proposals, but Bush had the "character". John Kerry had a list of policy plans, but Bush had an overarching "vision" that we could trust all the details to be guided by. Same with Reagan being elected twice. I say that the focus of the US elections on character and vision rather than program is one of the main flaws, and I, being conditioned by the continental European political system, will vote for program and platform over character or vision any time.

In Holland, at every elections there are a bunch of sites, the most popular called Kieswijzer, that will guide you through a 30-question questionnaire with concrete policy points. When it comes to the issue of immigration, do you prefer solution a), b), c), or d). Or: when it comes to the national health insurance, do you prefer option a) a lot/a little, are you neutral, or do you prefer option b) a lot/a little. At the end, you get a ranking of the parties according to how much you agree with them. (Content is sometimes derived from the different party programs, which tend to be quite detailed, and sometimes delivered by the respective parties - or both).

An astounding 1 in 4 voters or so use these sites. Not everyone votes for the top result they get, of course, but most will roughly vote for one of the parties near the top. It's always worked for me - I always got the Green Left, every single time, until last time when I got the Socialists (when I'd already decided to switch my vote to them). Thats the system / context I come from. "Just read his book" wouldnt fly as alternative. I think it would be really cool to have something like that for US Presidential candidates, but from what checking their websites in various election times taught me, they just dont seem to want to commit themselves to positions/proposals that detailed, bar a few signature issues. I think thats a shame.

That's where the book becomes pertinent though. It's very clear from reading it that Obama is a wonk of the highest order. He didn't decide to run for president until after it was published; he needs time to let the wonkiness work, and to get to Edwards level when it comes to specific presidential-campaign-type policy statements. But he's quite the wonk, and I like that about him.

Obama's 90 minute conversation with citizens in Iowa and all the House Parties around the country on the 31st.

He talks at length, answering people's questions about his plans and policies on various topics ranging from health care, national debt, election reforms, education, energy alternatives, the war and many more.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hacwebcast/

Hillary married the Godfather of all wonks though. That's my kind of wonk, and he can wipe the floor with your wonk.


You bet policy wonk is the real thing. You have to be a wonk to change the country's direction for the better. And that's the only reason to care about the outcome of the election. Even if I granted you for the sake of the argument that propaganda campaigns will decide the election and wonk credentials won't, I'd still go with a wonk. If the choice was between an ignorant, crony, Republican manipulator and an ignorant, crony, Democratic manipulator, why care about the election anymore?

I think I get it. You don't believe Clinton or Obama will win. But betting against them would feel to you as if you were bringing bad karma unto them, and you don't want to do that. Does that sound about right?

I would also add that so far we have taken round of "read the book" on a particular issue -- healthcare. (Here is my question, and here is Sozobe presenting the book's answer.) This didn't work for me. The problem with a private system of health insurance is that it incites insurance companies to refuse coverage to sick people. Edwards describes this problem very clearly, and proposes specific measures to deal with it. Obama talks in uplifting words about the moral imperative of not leaving the sick and the poor behind. But his specifics of changing the system remain on the level of band aids where he should describe a surgical operation.

My personal impression in all that is that Obama feels uncomfortable about speaking ill of specific people and specific institutions. Speaking candidly about healthcare problems would force him to speak ill of health care companies, whom he doesn't want to make his enemies. It would force him to speak ill of an arch-American institution, private enterprise -- if only in this specific case. Finally, it would force him to speak ill of a lot of well meaning politicians who ended up transforming the healthcare sector into a discriminatory, impentetrable mess. Unlike other candidates in the race, Obama seems to shy away from that kind of conflict.

Summing up, this particular instance of "read the book" has increased my skepticism. It hasn't reduced it.

Hence my repeated yet apparently rejected (at least by Snood and Blatham) point that he has a lot to catch up with. (It's not like its an overly controversial or agressive point). Wait and see.

Though in addition, I'm also listening to Thomas re: the book. His take does confirm an impression I had already been forming.

I must amend my previous statement in the interest of accuracy. The uplifting generalities come from the "Healthcare" page on Obama's website. The measures that Sozobe's citation describes are bandaids. I mangled the two sources of Obama statements somewhat.

I call Obama's measures "bandaids" because they miss the painful but crucial point of adverse selection. Contrary to what Obama says, worker mobility is not the main problem with the current system. Insurance pool size is not its main problem either. If a healthcare plan fixed both of these, but still incited companies to screen for sick people to deny coverage, the system would improve but marginally. Hence my term "bandaids".

nimh

No offense taken. These aren't simple matters with obvious answers and there are various ways of considering them even where people's ideological leanings are similar. We know, if second or third hand, the vigor of debates that go on in government cabinets and political party heirarchies, for example.

You said in your last post to snood that he and I have not accepted that Obama may not be up to speed on policy matters, at least in contrast to others running. But that's not a claim I've made. I haven't read his book yet but it would be hard to imagine how, at his age and level of experience, he might have accumulated the practical familiarity with issues broadly and in depth which Edwards or Clinton or Biden or Dowd or Richardson will have, and thus the sophistication in policy initiatives.

I simply disagree with you on importances, some of which I see as uniquely acute in this time and this situation in the US.

Even if his experience and sophistication in policy is surely insufficient at present, I find no reason to assume that condition will prevail if he gains the post. I find much reason to assume that he will be as intellectually and constitutionally available for learning as anyone else running and better than many, if not most. By all acounts, from even those in the other camp, he is as careful and thoughtful a listener as they might wish for in a candidate. I don't consider that a "character" matter. I think it a behavioral matter and, in my mind, and one of only several really important characteristics of what I desire in a political leader.

Now, I acknowledge that you have me spotted as being out on thin ice when I argue that the 'meta' is presently more important than the meat and wonk of issues. It is, as you suggest, a valuation which can end up as a foxfyre/Bush romance, blind and with all the possible consequences of that. But sometimes it works out and sometimes, I think, it is entirely necessary. I'll point to Lincoln at Coopers Union. That Obama has such abilities to engender affection and trust, and that he has the ability to move young people, and that he is black, and that he has the perception (clear right from his speech at the dem convention) that the discourse in the US really must turn again towards the meta all count very heavily for me that he has the capacity to bring about fundamental change in the relationship between government and citizen in the US. That dynamic IS dangerous. But the man surely is not, I am convinced. So I'll argue for suffering the risk.

Re support for lefty folks...I understand I look guilty in this. I understand I might even be guilty in this. But I suspect that the modern US context presents me this way more than other contexts would. I haven't been, for example, a big fan of Liberal or further left parties in Canada for a couple of decades but that context doesn't come up here. Zbigniew Brzezinski has been pushing a recently published book where he argues that Bush Senior was a more competent President (in terms of international affairs) than was Clinton. That's not an argument I will reject, in its circumscribed scope. The fellow is a lot smarter than I am.

I've defended Hilary but my defense of her has been limited to my sincere lack of sharing yours (and many others') visceral dislike for her. I simply don't get it. At the same time, I'm fairly well informed as to the planned and executed campaign to produce exactly this set of notions about her in the publics' mind beginning in 92 and set in motion by Bill Kristol and others. So, perhaps that makes my mounted defences at least arguably reasonable.

And your mother wears army boots.

Nimh,
After consideration, I have to outright concede your point that Obama has a ways to go as far as gaining insight, detail and depth in his specific policy proposals.
It's such a benign and manifest point, in fact, that I had to look at my own motives for resisting it (it's so much easier to examine the motives of others).
I am biased for Obama. He is the first person of color who has impressed me as having the mettle to actually take on the office of president. He has impressed me that way from the first - and I am old enough that I have healthy skepticism about politicians. Perhaps in this bias I have seen more in his writings than would someone without such a positive bias, or someone with a negative one toward him. I know for a fact that I have read more about him than I have about any politician in my life. Certainly my opinion about Obama's ideas could gain sophistication as a result of a closer examination of those of his opponents on both sides of the aisle, and I hereby pledge to increase my efforts in that regard.
In the meantime, I trust I can be forgiven a bit of zealotry. I think he's a good, smart man who has a genuine desire to serve the greater good.

Wait wait I didn't even finish with the book, though, so I hope that's not taken as too much of a representation. It's not on the web, I got tired of typing, and Thomas said that he had ordered it and he was the one who asked so seemed like a waste of energy. I asked a while back if you'd gotten the book yet, Thomas -- have you?

I think it's far less about not wanting to offend people -- he's offended plenty in his political career so far -- than about wanting to get his ducks in a row before announcing anything. Wanting to research and get a GOOD proposal together, not something half-assed just to have something.

nimh, yes, the no-time-yet part is definitely valid and I think we agree there. You seemed to be implying that Obama wasn't particularly wonkish though -- I think he's an uber-wonk, and that the book helps demonstrate that.

Did my answer get lost in the fogs of cyberspace? Yes, I have the book, but it got delivered to my parents' house. I expect to read it when I visit my parents over the coming Easter weekend.

Oh, I missed it, sorry.

OK, great, I'm looking forward to your take.

Since it's become larger than the exchange between the two of us and since nimh has no intention of reading the book, I'll go ahead and transcribe the REST of that section (again, I've only typed a small portion of it) if I find time today.

Thanks! No need to copy anything verbatim by the way. I'll be happy to trust your summary if you write one.

Well, one reason I like Obama is that I find it really hard to summarize stuff he's written. I start to, then think there's one more important point, and then another, and by the time I've finished with what I think is important, it's the whole thing he wrote. (Not as elegantly though.)

That's just one more thing about how the book adds to my interest, it's nicely written. There's some stuff at the end about his family and then parenting in general that's fabulous.