1. Having nothing original to add, let me say a few thing about the excellent recent posts. I agree with Ivan the K that being a schoolmarmish professor is not a good look for the president. It allows the Republicans to seem more manly as naughty students who just won’t behave.
2. I agree with Carl in the thread along these lines: I know Woodrow Wilson and Professor Obama is nowhere near the pay grade of Professor Wilson. Wilson was quite the professor who made a number of original and important contributions to American political science. Of course he was mostly wrong, but he was so more on the remedies he recommended than on problems and shortcomings that needed attention. And even our Ralph noted below that it might be true that the progressive impetus enhanced elite public spiritedness in our country. Certainly our president has not been displaying what Wilson called real presidential leadership; he’s hasn’t unified HIS party around his mandate and vision, and he’s pretty much let the interests that dominate Congress run amok. He certainly hasn’t been following a Wilsonian foreign policy; the younger President Bush was closer to doing that. So Obama can’t be said to have affirmed or denied Wilsonian progressivism in any disciplined or coherent sense. Wilson’s books were about stuff like Congress, the presidency, the State, and the Constitution; Obama’s books were about his own audacious and hopeful journey. I actually think Wilsonian progressivism is dead, as I explained before.
3. One reason among many that progressivism is toast is that even the current welfare state is demographicaly unsustainable. Health care costs really do have to be brought under control in a environment where more and more old people are going to be dependent on fewer and fewer young and productive ones. Neither party will tell the truth about the only approach that might work. Our employed-based health care system is unsustainable and actually undesirable in our relentlessly more mobile and disloyal economy. Devolution to government won’t control costs over the long run. Devolution to the individual in a subsidized and regulated way–and in a way the sensitizes consumers to actual costs–is the only plausible way to go. Neither party will say that, because a majority of the voters are happy enough with the current employer-based situation.
4. Our former law professor president is much more like the former law professor Bill Clinton than the distinguished professor of political science Woodrow Wilson. (Minus the sleazy amorality–we have to remember that our current president is a good family man and generally not tainted by personal corruption.) What made the brainy Clinton less ideological and generally a much more competent president was working with a Republican Congress. And I think the same might well happen for our current brainy president. Genuine health care reform has to be a compromise, but neither party is incentivized to work with the other now. The president and Democratic Congress will be hurt if a reform bill with no popular mandate is forced through right now. They’ll also be hurt if they look so impotent that can’t get anything passed at all. So even if the president suddenly got all bipartisany, the Republicans aren’t about to let him out of his real sticky situation. Let’s hope the Republicans don’t blow this seemingly golden opportunity to get Congress back. As good Americans, we have to hope that our president gains this opportunity better to display his talents and do a better job of leading us.
5. These are the times to talk up American exceptionalism against the sophisticates, porchers, Europeans, and such. Even Tocqueville thought from time to time that Americans were a mixture of insane materialistic ardor and religious madness. And that’s certainly what Europeans, our sophisticates, and even our porchers think now. But we have to talk up the sustainability of the life of the Evangelical (or orthodox) workaholic family man (or woman). This guy is charitable, productive, sensible, patriotic, and does his replacement duty to his species. Without him (and her), our birth rate approaches that of, say, the France that is fading away. And this guy never thought it was a good idea to elect a president who didn’t appreciate him for who he is.
6. Meanwhile, we have to admit that the life of the bourgeois bohemian is not only less than admirable but unsustainable over the long term. And that’s because bourgeois narcissism trumps bohemianism, not to mention the personal God and public spiritedness, at every turn. On this point, Dr. Pat Deneen and ME are in total agreement.
7. I also join Carl in thinking jwc would be a good president. Despite his polemical urges, he’s basically a uniter, not a divider.
February 28th, 2010 | 8:02 pm
Some thoughts,
1. I’m not so sure that a kind of progressivism is not sustainable. It would mean higher taxes and state-imposed limits on health care, and a mix of regulations and subsidies that bind business, government, and key interest groups that creates a large enough constituency and incentive structure to make centralized technocracy very difficult to resist at the electoral level. The result would be a huge hit to American living standards and world standing (though I am more concened about the first), but it could be sustained for a long time. You say that the American people would never stand for it? I dunno. Creating such a system might actually be the hard part. The destruction of alternatives in being (by the creation of a single-payer system in health care) and the expansion of both the state in terms of numbers and in making large numbers of businesses and employees indirect wards of the state could, through the combination of fear and corruption of the economy, create a political culture where going back is very difficult.
2. I think that Obama came off badly in places during the summit and I think that the Republicans deserve some of the credit. The congressional Democrats came for a food fight. I think the script was that the congressional Democrats would bait the congressional Republicans into an ugly squabble (your ideas of high risk pools are lile Jim Crow, you locked us out of writing the bill). Then the President would intervene among the congressional children and say, “Listen, you both have good ideas. We need a plan that combines the best ideas of both sided. Luckily I posted just such a plan earlier in the week.” The Democrats then laud the President for his high minded approach to compromise (he made the tough choice of giving up the public option, sob) and invite the Republicans to meet the Democrats the rest of the way in the spirit on national unity. The Republican broke up the play by addressing their arguments to Obama (rather than Reid and Pelosi) and being specific but respectful in how they differ from the President’s approach. This put the President in the awkward position of arguing that the Republican suggestions were dishonest, partisan, ideological, innumerate, futile, AND that the two sides were very close to a compromise. This double burden of havng to be both a partisan in the fray and the above-it-all transpartisan arbiter became impossible. I also think that any other politician that tried that same trick would have looked alot worse than Obama. He remains a formidable politician.
3. I agree that Obama is not an original thinker or even semioriginal and truly scholarly in the vein of Wilson who applied some German-derived ideas to an American context. His preferences seem to include a state-led industrial policy orientation to economic growth, and a belief that state-run health care will lead to both more efficient and more fair outcomes. This stuff is commn sense in large parts of the American Left. Obama’s talents are in rhetoric and coalition-building. I think that the political dangerousness of those talents is easy to underestimate – especially in moments when he has suffered setbacks. But it would be a mistake to sell him short.
March 1st, 2010 | 8:46 am
I certainly agree that we shouldn’t sell Obama short. And I certainly like him better than Woodrow; he’s much more personable and much less insufferable. He’s also not a racist. So far I haven’t been that impressed with his coalition-building as president, but I do believe he could work with a Republican Congress. I also agree that the Republicans did pretty well at the summit, and all they need as an infusion of new blood to be competitive in more than a negative way again. The studies are showing that Obama’s mega-advantage with the young is dissolving, and maybe all the Republicans need is some young blood to achieve parity in the emerging generation again. A full study of Wilson and the German ideas would have to include one that genuinely COMPARES and CONTRASTS Locke and Hegel, as well as bringing in the facts that Tocqueville found the ideas of pragmatism, indefinite historical perfectibility, something like historicism or our domination by historical forces, and even pantheism in democratic America without any German help.
March 1st, 2010 | 1:31 pm
Campaigning is not the same as governing, though there is surely some overlap–Obama was impressive in buidling coalitions while he running for president but really not all that impressive since he’s been in office. It’s considerably harder to spin far left ideology as moderate centrism when you actually have to make concrete decisions and support specific policies, rather than simply reside in the world of ethereal rhetoric. And I’m not sure how sustainable that brand of progressivism is given the demographic shifts coming down the pike–we might not find ourselves in the position of Spain, Greece, or Italy but something considerably less robust than what Canada is today. And Tocqueville didn’t have Hegel but he did have Rousseau, who actually provides us helpful clues on the many ways Locke, without intending it, paves the way for Hegel and historicism.
March 1st, 2010 | 4:59 pm
Some more thoughts,
1. I am less optimistic (but do not despair) about Republicans and the young. In the last poll I saw, the Democrats had an eleven point lead in voter identification. That is a big improvement over the 2 to one Obama win in 2008 but these are also very favorable circumstances for Republicans. The unemployment rate is high and the Senate version of Obamacare targets the young for higher taxes, higher health care costs and for most of them no clear benefit. Oh, and you can’t not buy health insurance. A recovery in the labor mrket could easily see a return of much of the Obama margin among the young – though probably not all of it, 2008 was very favorable for the Democrats in the other direction. That doesn’t mean the Republicans are doomed, just that their problems with the young are bigger than recent trends in polling might indicate. The problem of appealing to the young is also bound up with issues of race, ethnicity and rhetoric. The young are less white than older age cohorts and Republicans have done less well among nonwhites in recent elections. The young also, it seems to me, are immune to much Republican rhetoric that seems to assume a great deal of familiarity with evens that occured before today’s young voters were born, and on top of that assumes they have bought into a certain narrative of those events. I don’t believe that demography is destiny, but demography presents Republicans with a series of interlocking challenges, some of which the Republicans have not even begun to address.
2. I think alot involves in what one means by sustainable. Demographic changes makes progressvism undesirable certainly (given certain asumptions about the outcomes of progressive policies), but a more corporatist, and expensive state (one with higher taxes and more centralized rationing of many good such as medical care and energy) could last for quite a while though at great cost in personal suffering and national standing. It could also be very difficult to transition out of. That is one reason why it is so important to stop Obamacare now.
3. Obama’s stimulus and first budget were already a bigger lurch to the left than anything Clinton got in economic policy. One one hand that is no big deal. If that is the worst we get from an Obama election and Democratic supermajorities, I’ll say we got off easy. But the stimulus does lay the groundwork for arguing that the economic recovery (such as it may be) was because of Democratic spending. That will be a talking point on the left for years to come and it may be plausible sounding to many people (most of who like and would like to believe Obama). He has also came horribly close to passing a transformative health care bill that a Republican takeover of the House of Reps would not have undone. So much of the failure is due to quirks of Massachusetts political infighting and it is still possible that Obamacare might pass. Obama is, in my estimation, a much more effective fighter for leftish policies than Clinton ever was. I also have fewer hopes for how well he will work with a Republican Congress.
March 1st, 2010 | 5:28 pm
Okay, Pete is right. I cannot let my own exasperation with President Obama let me miss the fact that he remains a political talent to be reckoned with, and that few Dems are nostalgic for the Clintonian approach. Barack sure is hanging tough of late, not panicking.
So, I change my tune:
Pete Spiliakos for President!!! I’ve got slogans ready, too: Stop the Cranks, Stop the Whackos, Vote Right Now for Spiliakos! Or maybe he could be jwc’s Rove. But seriously, Pete, your analysis is spot on. Would that the real Rove had had you to advise him.
March 2nd, 2010 | 4:53 am
Carl, what did I ever do to you, that you would have that job (or really any elected job) inflicted on me!?!
March 2nd, 2010 | 7:35 am
Peter, I think the president is a racist and I would point to the ‘Cambridge Police” affair, his failure to require the DOJ to prosecute the Black Panther’s in Philadelphia for intimidating voters, his failure to require the DOJ to investigate ACORN for corrupt and fraudulent practices, as well as his failure to eliminate the corrupt, incompetent, and racist Fanny May and Freddy Mac and prosecute those congressmen who may have conspired to keep the effects of their lending practices from federal regulators as examples.
March 2nd, 2010 | 8:22 am
It is generally acknowledged that Wilson began his political career, running for governor, only after he was pushed out of Princeton. Facing pretty much the same the same fate inside my own department, I am now grateful for the draft movement begun by the great scott and seconded by lawler. And in an anti-sherman vein, let me make it perfectly clear that if nominated, I will accept, and if elected I will serve. And the first lady will require universal instruction in biblical Hebrew.
Scott having moderated somewhat his anti-obama ire, let us turn to lawler and his statesmanlike SON campaign (Save Obama Now). The SON campaign consists of electing a Republican Congress, or one House at any rate, in November, which would force a change in both the president and, as peter indirectly hints, in the GOP. The president would be compelled to have the courage he does not now display and would have to moderate; the GOP would have to assume (some) responsibility and embrace measures that (if the President goes along) it would otherwise find too difficult and unpopular. And so, as the logic goes, we might actually get something needed, like (a) de-coupling health care from employment and introducing some kind of individual incentive for care (perhaps a la indiana plan) and (b) some substantial leveling off of social security in the future. In substance, this sounds much more like a GOP plan. I still wonder what would be in it for Obama at that point: maybe he could let everyone go from Guantanamo to satisfy his base. Is the president up to the SON campaign?
March 2nd, 2010 | 8:27 am
After Carl and Pete sharing the love I don’t have much to add. I do think it should be Pete for prez (another populist manly man from Mass.) and Ceaser should be (a more charming version of) Rove. Carl should be tne newly created Secretary of Pop Culture and Friendly French Critics. But what’s most likely–to make the subtext text–is that the Republicans get Congress but Obama gets reelected. And it’s our job to make the best of that situation, which may not be the worst of all worlds. And sure Tocqueville knew the foundation of “historicism” in Rousseau. But I have to add with Strauss and Kojeve that the true foundation of Hegel is Hobbes.
March 2nd, 2010 | 8:33 am
I like SON. I agree it may be utopian, but maybe not. Similar circumstances led to the ending of welfare as we knew it. I would prefer to actually beat Obama, but I don’t see eitehr jwc or Pete prevailing in the primaries.
March 2nd, 2010 | 10:28 am
In the realm of pedantry. Tocqueville was aware of Hegel and of German historicism. He knew it thru Gobineau and also tried to become familiar enough with German to get into it directly. He has a letter or two on Hegel. I would have to look up the source, but it is far easier just to go to the Oracle himself and ask Dan Mahoney.
March 2nd, 2010 | 10:50 am
jwc, I’ll get to work on the commerce clause justification for the universal Hebrew instruction bill.
But while we’re seemingly just having fun w/ castles in the air, Mickey Kaus has filed papers to run against Boxer for the CA Senate seat!
So, Pete, you’d better watch out and say something foolish soon. I do think we should all wish Kaus the best…it’s a real chance for the Dems to be tugged in a more moderate and Galstonian direction. Were I still in CA he’d probably get my vote.
And yes, Bob, ire-y guys like you and I should think about the possibility of SON, at least from December ’10 to about October ’11, and what that possibility likely means for responsible Republican rhetoric right now. And no, I don’t think use of the r-word describes Obama’s issues with race accurately, or helps the R-party.
March 2nd, 2010 | 1:10 pm
Carl’s right on Kaus and on SON being dependent on not calling the president a racist. We can stick with the fact that by the standard set by President Wilson he’s not a racist at all. Tocqueville knew about Hegel, that’s for sure. He didn’t read Hegel for himself, as far as we can tell. And he missed the Hegelian dimension of early Transcendentalism in the America he visited, as far as we can tell. But the point is he didn’t need Hegel to understand democratic development.
March 2nd, 2010 | 1:42 pm
Last year, in preparation for a Liberty Fund with Ralph I went through the Tocqueville correspondence with Gobineau–I’m pretty sure Peter is right that T-ville only knew Hegel second hand, mentions him here and there in some letters (also with Brandis and Monnard after the Gobineau letters), and read some second hand accounts of the Left Hegelians that were popular at the time (like Taillandiers’). Still, as Peter points out, the issue is that T-ville didn’t need Hegel (or Hobbes or Rousseau for that matter) to anticipate and understand these currents. And for what’s it’s worth, the account T-ville gives of American egalitarianism is actually a lot closer to what Kojeve says in say 1945 (in some respects very close) than what you find in more mainstream Marxism, certainly what you find in MX’s German Ideology.
March 2nd, 2010 | 1:53 pm
Insofar as I have a provisional criticism of Tocqueville, it is that he’s too close to Kojeve. He sure is in the Paul Rahe version. But in the Carl Scott version, not so much. In my version, Pascal’s psychology does or ought to triumph over Rousseau/Kojevian history. Our greatness and misery are natural, not historical. That means we’re powerless to eradicate them. We can screw ourselves up by distorting and denying–but failing to destory–the needs of our souls.
March 2nd, 2010 | 2:27 pm
“Carl’s right on Kaus and on SON being dependent on not calling the president a racist. We can stick with the fact that by the standard set by President Wilson he’s not a racist at all.”
Woodrow wasn’t a racist… really?
That claim might be contradicted by his order calling for the dismissal of many African Americans from the federal work force following his election.
(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_segregation.html)
I’m not so concerned by President Obama’s apparent racist attitude, rather by the efforts of Americans to turn their head and pretend that they don’t see it.
March 2nd, 2010 | 2:56 pm
Bob, What I meant to say is that in comparison to Woody Barack is no racist. W was our most racist president ever, as you show. There is something to your last par., though.
March 2nd, 2010 | 3:35 pm
Oh, thanks for the clarification! I’m older now, my mind wanders.BTW, it’s that last paragraph I’d like you fellows to explore. People seem to see in Obama, even his political enemies, what they want to see.
March 2nd, 2010 | 7:57 pm
“But we have to talk up the sustainability of the life of the Evangelical (or orthodox) workaholic family man (or woman). This guy is charitable, productive, sensible, patriotic, and does his replacement duty to his species. Without him (and her), our birth rate approaches that of, say, the France that is fading away”
This passage came right after praise for American exceptionalism. But exceptionalism now bases itself upon the same universal ideology that erodes things like family and sex roles, through habits such as fastidious gender neutrality.
“Family woman” is a bizarre construction. Without specifically describing our need to shore up “fatherhood” and “motherhood,” we are dealing in useless generalities. It is the father trying to support a wife and kids who needs the most help, and who is most overlooked. Patriarchy is the rule of fathers, and until we overcome our feminist taboos fathers will never enjoy their rightful place in our society, politics and economy.
March 2nd, 2010 | 8:45 pm
To bring the coversation down to my level,
1. If there were an unmanliness word championship I would be a contender. Every year.
2. On social security, I assume that President Obama can do math and knows that some kind of means-testing for social security must come and this might be one of the issues on which he could agree with the Republicans in principle. But there is zero political incentive for Obama to work with the Republicans on this issue. He could just do nothing, attack any social security “cut” the Republicans suggest and leave the issue to be handled by the next Republican President (whenever that is) probably on an emegency basis that will include some tax increases. This might also put the Republicans in the postion of either letting the country go bust or being sentenced to a one term presidency or both. Clinton signed welfare reform in part, because it was really popular. Cutting back social security won’t be.
3. I really like the Daniels health plan, but watching the health care summit, it seemed to me that Obama was deeply invested in constructing a system of comprehensive, prepaid medical coverage, preferably through the government, but through private “insurance” as second-best. He does not trust either insurers or health consumers with any real choice. In his discussions of HSAs, he seemed to think that HSAs would lead people to skip all nonemergency medical services in order to save a buck. I don’t think Obama is being cynical. I don’t doubt that he thinks that a comprehensive system of state-run and state-rationed care would lead to a more fair and cost effective medical system with better health outcomes. The ideological distance between Obama and conservative (or even moderate) Republicans is huge and it is tough to see any “compromise” that is more than just a bridge to the next big fight.
4. My best guess is that the Republican might take over the House of Reps (I think that by November, circumstances will be a little bit more Democrat-friendly than at present), but just miss on taking over the Senate. I think this will lead to an ideological knock-down-drag-out fight with congressional Republicans that is less personal than the Clinton-Gingrich battles, but that also leads to less good policy. My fear is that this leads to an Obama reelection and Democratic congressional majorities (though smaller than at present) due to more Democrat-friendly economic and demographic circumstances in 2012. This is assuming the Republicans are mostly competent, but don’t make any big improvements in coalition-building. I have less hope for major left-right compromise between Obama and a semi-Republican controlled Congress. Obama is more liberal than Clinton. Advancing his ideological beliefs seems to be closer to Obama’s core as a person. Compromise might prove more difficult because Obama is, in many ways, a better man than Bill Clinton.
March 2nd, 2010 | 11:35 pm
BTW, I know it’s unnecessary to say to y’all, but above when I joked about finding a commerce clause justification for a universal Hebrew bill, the joke was entirely about the commerce clause being used to justify virtually any sort of law Congress wants to pass. No connections between Hebrews and commerce was meant to be implied. Just want to be crystal clear–probably because I attended a talk on Merchant of Venice and anti-semitism today, my guard is up.
Bob, I think the usual term for the bone-headed things folks like Justice Sotomayor say needs to be something like “divisive multiculturalism.” Let’s save the r-word for those blacks and hispanics who really believe whites are morally tainted (and perhaps otherwise inferior) and thus deserve to be shunned and mistreated. I would agree that Obama as a politician and person has been a practitioner of divisive multiculturalism, as to my mind one of the creepiest things about him has been his long willingness to play the black-identity card big-time, even so that it shapes his own personal life(i.e. raising your daughters in Wright’s church), despite his multi-racial, cosmopolitan, and upper-middle-class (educationally) background. I get this mainly from Shelby Steele’s book, and it’s one reason why I sometimes think we eventually will see personal pyschodrama from no-drama Obama, hopefully after his presidency.
Another time we can talk about why it’s not hypocritical to be more careful about applying the r-word to American blacks than to American whites–the extra care there is in the description, not in the judgment of the facts about any particular person’s behavior. No, the r-word is not used fairly/carefully by most American liberals nor by probably a majority of blacks–but that is no reason for American conservatives white or of any color to start using it with a parallel crudity, as pay-back. That’s not the push-back against divisive multiculturalism and the various victim-group-identity obsessions/scams that is needed. This has been one of Rush Limbaugh’s major failings–making the r-word a regular part of his rhetorical quiver.
March 3rd, 2010 | 12:13 am
WW, personal friends with Thomas Dixon, made sure that Griffiths’ “Birth of a Nation” (based on Dixon’s novel the Klansman) played at the White House.
That being said, I’m happy that Peter acknowledges WW’s excellence as a historian and political scientist when compared to BO’s meagre memoirs. This fact provides hope. While Columbia and harvard educated, surely BO os not as doctrinaire in his progressivism as Wilson. Both men may have an academic naivete to them, but I think Obama has more political skill. This will be shown (I hope) only if the Repubs make significant Congressional gains this year.
Compared to Bill Clinton, Obama may lack the “personal” political skills, but our brainy president is a good an upright man who knows his stuff. No need to fear a Monica Lewisnky type scandal, and this may allow for Obama to demonstrate greatness apart from the so-called 50 years delayed expansion of govt. sponsored entitlements that his base wishes to be promulgated. But this greatness will only happen if he gets a Republican (or Repub strong) Congress, and if someone will join to Peter Lawler’s point in no. 3 about the unsustainability of our current entitlement costs.
Divided govt.–such is the fate of good government in the late 20th century and early 21st century America. I suppose M. Fiorina and D. Mayhew have much more profound things to say in this regard than me. Still, it could do Obama good.
March 3rd, 2010 | 12:15 am
Did Obama have a White House screening of Avatar? Let’s hope he took it with a grain of salt if he did.
March 3rd, 2010 | 8:52 am
Those who praise DIVIDED GOVERNMENT, of course, are extreme anti-Wilsonians. Divided government is not the ideal, but the best deal we can get these days. It’s interesting that Obama is looking better and better as a man as this thread develops. He’s morally and even intellectually superior than Clinton and Wilson. And that can be cause of despair–he’s not cynical enough to compromise his statist principles–or hope–perhaps he will display unexpected greatness not even imaginable from Bill (being less in the thrall of the illusions of literary politics than Woody but more genuinely interested in doing the right thing than Bill). SON continues to surge as O comes to seem worthy of salvation.
March 3rd, 2010 | 9:24 am
Carl, I think it’s a requirement of philosophers to examine President Obama’s psyche and to acknowledge that the question of “race” is a significant component of his consciousness. To quote Dr. Voegelin, “The symbols that expressed the experiences of the psyche, of its consciousness, of its noetic and pneumatic structure, were recognized as symbolizations of truth emerging in the process of history, which in one part is a process of the world, while in another part it is a theophanic process.”
We would do well to remember that he was advertised as a “uniter not a divider,” as the “post racial” president. The truth, we’ve discovered, is just the opposite.
In fact we might argue that the president’s preoccupation with the question of “race” indicates a seriously disturbed individual who has replaced the normal act of athanatizein (the activity of immortalizing) with an immanent hypostatizing grounded on the question of “race.” It would be appropriate, I think, to closely examine this phenomenon. Unfortunately, for a philosopher, particularly an academic, to raise the question is for him to touch the third rail of political correctness and to place his career in jeopardy; an indication of a movement toward totalitarianism.
There’s nothing unique about the president other than the fact that he’s the first mixed race gentleman to hold the office. What is unique is the method(s) utilized to apply a racial preference in the on going and expanding contemporary crisis exacerbated by the president’s immanentist sectarian policies.
I wonder if Plato and Aristotle would discuss the question?
March 3rd, 2010 | 10:46 am
Well, Peter, there’s something to Obama’s intransigent stand on principle but isn’t there a genuine cynicism to the way he consistently dissembles on this score? From bio-tech policy to healthcare to Sotomayor, I don’t think Obama has been remotely honest about the principles he admittedly refuses to compromise. And at the heart of his politics is that characteristically technocratic contempt for public opinion and democratic deliberation. Also, there’s a fine line (and sometimes not so fine) between principled committment and thoughtless dogmatism and O seems to lean towards the latter. And there has been plenty of evidence that he’s willing to compromise big time if he actually thinks he has no choice (I’m thinking of public campaign funding during the election) or to feign principled stands (like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). So while I agree he has it all over Bill Clinton morally that’s a pretty modest standard.
March 3rd, 2010 | 8:23 pm
It is possible that Obama has the kind of strategic flexibility that would allow him to go for real and major left/right compromise in domestic policy but I can’t remember having seen any of it. He certainly has tactical flexibility. He doesn’t mind shaving a hundred billion off the stimulus or adding tort reform pilot programs to the absurd Senate version of Obamacare. He isn’t agitating for the Freedom of Choice Act, but he will pick only pro-ROE judges to the Supreme Court. He said he supported HELLER and the death penalty, but I have my suspicions about how Justice Sotomayor will vote on the constitutionality of the right to bear arms and the death penalty. He opposes the Stupak amendment (and dissembles about his program and abortion funding) and will accept only if it seems like the only way to save state-run health care. This is the kind of flexibility that makes substantive shifts to the left (or rigt) possible. From a conservative perspective, Obama’s combination of strategic determination and tactical flexibility makes him alot more dangerous than if he were either less principled or more rigid – in other words more like Clinton or the latter Wilson – he would be easier to either push into compromise or defeat outright.
On the other hand, Obama hasn’t been rigid at all on Iraq. In 2007 he was calling for cut and run, but we are now 14 months into the Obama-era with over 100,000 troops in Iraq and the adoption of counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Credit where due to President Obama.
Part f the explanation for this seeming contadiction might be that Obama is just more liberal (or just has harder) convictions on domestic policy. He might be a statist and corporatist in domestic policy but at the same time be on the left end of the broad American consensus in favor of collective security arrangements but cautious about new large military interventions. On this side of Obama, his Nobel Prize speech and his speech announcing his opposition to the Iraq War might be a better guide than his associations with various freak show elements of the Chicago upper middle-class left.
In any case, it is up to Obama to save himself. And from Obama’s perspective, SON might be worse and more shameful than defeat. I doubt that theRepublican can beat Obama in 2012 unless the deserve to win (which includes major coalition building and updating their issue agenda). If they don’t do that, Obama, and to a greater or lesser extent his governing agenda, will prevail. If the Republicans do deserve to win, either Obama compromises for real or he doesn’t. Or maybe he prevails anyway. There are no guarantees. Regardless of what Obama does, the Republicans should focus on saving themselves rom te fate of the California Republican party
March 4th, 2010 | 9:37 am
Bob, read Shelby Steele if you are really interested in applying your Voeglinian categories to Obama’s hidden drama with his racial identity.
However, I think you recognize that such talk is not going to be understood charitably by most Americans.
Where I utterly disagree with you is that I think Obama really has, ON RACE, avoided being a divider. He has been post-racial. It’s some of his supporters who drag out the “racist” charge against his critics, and my sense is that more and more of them are learning not to do, given how pathetic it really comes across. Things like the Gates incident and that shameful Black Panther case are at the margins.
Now if Obama melts down politically, we’ll see if how well he remains a uniter on race. How well he can restrain or channel the bitterness in the Dem ranks. If he melts down psychologically in a way that involves lashing out on race, Lord help us.
March 4th, 2010 | 9:57 am
Obama’s technocratic contempt and liberal dogmatism are quite real, but it remains to be seen how they hold up as they get slapped around by democratic reality. If his flexibility remains only tactical, then he’s not worth saving and probably can’t even save himself. But I’m keeping hope alive for change in Barack we can believe in. I agree that Obama means to be a uniter on race and for the most part a postracial president. In his case especially, lashing out on race would be a side of a sign of dangerous weakness, as Carl says. The only thing I meant to say before is that SON depends on thinking at least somewhat positively about the president, which after all is a patriotic thing to do in most cases.
March 4th, 2010 | 10:49 am
Carl and Peter, thanks for your comments and in this instance I really do hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact