A New Politics? Or A New Pandering?
By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, March 28, 2008
So, am I the first psychiatrist you've seen about this problem?
Well, I'll just say you're the first who doesn't exist.
Your chart here shows chronic punditry, with episodes of prognostication. Looks like you had a hard year last year.
In 2007, I made two contrarian calls. First, don't write off John McCain. Second, write off Barack Obama. My average was 50 percent, which is as well as a lot of people did last year.
It's also as well as the average chimpanzee did. Is that why you're depressed?
No, it's these doubts, this hesitation. About Obama. A man I respect. Admire. I want to fall for him, love him as so many others do. But ... I can't. I try, but I can't.
Ah. This is not so uncommon. Obama Resistance Complex. You have Barack blockage. You are afraid to love, to commit.
No, no. Some of my conservative friends think that Obamamania is a messianic cult. I don't. I understand the enthusiasm. I can't remember when I've seen a politician with as much promise. He is eloquent, charismatic, cool under fire. He's the best kind of intellectual: super-smart but not patronizing. He has taken political risks to show moral leadership. Who else would have stood at Martin Luther King's pulpit and condemned homophobia and anti-Semitism in the black community?
And wouldn't it be something to have a black president! Think of the bloody chapters in American history a President Obama could close. I want to believe. I go home, shut my eyes, and say, "Yes I can!"
But I can't.
Take a breath. Here, blow your nose. Now, try to tell me why you think you have these issues. Let it out.
Well, for a while it was the experience factor. Since when is the presidency an entry-level job? That was why it took me so long to take him seriously. Surely eight years in the Illinois Legislature and four in the U.S. Senate -- four not exceptionally distinguished years, by the way -- don't qualify anyone to be president of the United States. I told people, "He's too green. He'll make mistakes. And he won't know how to recover from them."
But over the course of 2007, I watched as he went from strength to strength, outperforming competitors who were much more seasoned. I began to think he was a natural. The Jeremiah Wright affair could have cratered his campaign. Obama's damage control may not have been perfect, but he managed to regain control of the conversation, which is hard to do when you're up against "God damn America!"
Yet still I hesitate. I'm like the Democratic electorate, who twice brought Obama to the edge of victory but then balked at giving him the prize.
Why?
I wonder if he understands that politics isn't a pillow fight and isn't supposed to be. He and his supporters complain so much about the mean, nasty Clintons. What I've heard from Sen. Clinton isn't the politics of personal destruction; it's legitimate criticism and contrasts. His readiness to be president is a major issue, so why shouldn't she question it? It's her duty, in fact. When I hear his supporters gripe about how roughly the Evil Clinton Machine is treating him, I hear an attempt to stigmatize the kind of robust give-and-take that politics is all about. It makes me wonder if Obama will crumple, as John Kerry did in 2004, when the full force of the Republican attack machine hits him.
Lord knows, the public is right to want a change from the bullying hyperpartisanship of Bush-era Republicanism. I'm not saying that Obama should take the low road. But I'm old enough to remember the last time the voters got tired of divisiveness and went shopping for a politician with a purifying personality. We don't need another Jimmy Carter.
Carter, humph. Have you considered that Obama might be a JFK? Kennedy, like Carter, was elected more for his personality than his platform, but he worked out well.
Maybe. I'd feel more confident if the folks at the Democratic Leadership Council didn't have a point. I can't think of a single major issue on which Obama has bucked the orthodoxy of his party's liberal base. His persona reaches out to the middle, but his policies look like old liberal wine in a new bottle.
In 1992, Bill Clinton used his campaign to move his party toward the center. He ran on law and order, saying he'd put 100,000 more cops on the streets. He called for ending welfare as we know it, a proposal that shocked his party's Left. He favored the North American Free Trade Agreement. A candidate can specialize in rhetoric, but a president will need to offer policies. How can President Obama reach across party lines if he's elected on a mandate to stay safely within liberal Democrats' comfort zone?
Now, that's not fair. Partly thanks to Bill Clinton, the Democrats have already moved toward the center, and partly thanks to President Bush, the center has moved toward the Democrats. The party is pretty close to where the country is right now, so why should Obama break with the base? Just to prove his manhood to pundits? In any case, the time to expect crossover policies would be after he gets the nomination, not before.
Right, right. Maybe he'll break out of the box. But if I could just see some sign, any sign, of ideological independence ...
You're suspicious.
Well, I suppose so. I want change as much as the next guy, but "We are the change" doesn't cut it. After three years in the Senate, Obama must know that Washington is a dense ecology of entrenched programs and bureaucracies and client groups, not one of which can be waved aside with blandishments about change. He must know that politicians follow inspiration 10 days a year and incentives the other 355, and that putting a new face in the Oval Office won't change those incentives after the honeymoon is over.
So what's his plan? I consulted The Audacity of Hope, his political book, and found it full of rhetoric such as "what's needed is a broad majority of Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill -- who are re-engaged in the project of national renewal" and "we need a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build upon those shared understandings," etc., etc. But how will he actually bring about this political transformation as president? He warns that it won't be easy. He says it will require "tough choices" and "courage." OK, but WHAT'S THE PLAN? "This isn't to say I know exactly how to do it," he writes. "I don't." Oh. I'm not sure if this is disarming modesty or outrageous chutzpah.
I don't think Obama is cynical, although he may be naive. I think he believes that once in a while a new kind of politician, with a new kind of mandate from a new kind of electorate, can set a new tone and direction. He's right, up to a point. Ronald Reagan showed in 1981 what a strong mandate from a changed electorate could accomplish, though only for a year or so.
But there's also a kind of pandering in what Obama is doing. A few years ago, a pair of political scientists, John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, looked at evidence from surveys and focus groups and drew some fairly startling conclusions. Most Americans, they found, think there are easy, straightforward solutions out there that everyone would agree on if only biased special interests and self-serving politicians would get out of the way. They want to be governed by ENSIDs: empathetic non-self-interested decision makers.
This is pure fantasy, of course. But indulging it is Obama's stock-in-trade. In today's Washington, the only way to get sustainable bipartisanship -- bipartisanship over a period of years, not weeks -- is with divided government, which Obama and a Democratic Congress obviously can't provide. True, Hillary Rodham Clinton can't provide that either. He might be better than she at working across party lines (although in the Senate she has been quite good at it, arguably better than he -- and John McCain has been best of all). But to promise "a new kind of politics" borders on chicanery.
Why be so jaded about prospects for change? You're assuming business as usual. Obama might change business as usual. That's the point. If the Democrats win large enough majorities, it's a whole new ball game in Washington.
You know, sometimes I wonder if that isn't many Obama supporters' real hope: Use post-partisan rhetoric to win a big partisan majority and then roll over the Republicans. It's the Democratic version of what Reagan did and Bush tried to do. It might work, but a new kind of politics it isn't.
You're a serious case. You may need electroshock. Are you sure you really want to change? You're not just using me as a cheap literary device to keep people reading to the end?
Only if it works.
and the ofay behind it.
