As usual, the best political commentary this week took place on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Of course, we’re talking about this whole “bitter/cling” flap, and the emergent accusations of Barack Obama’s “elitism.” John Stewart’s take (at 7:25) is precise and priceless. To the presidential candidates: “If you don’t actually think you’re better than us, then what the f*** are you doing?” Colbert pointed out on Tuesday night that the most common kind of political condescension involves “sucking down pizza, raising the roof, eating HuckaBurgers and shaving old men.” Senator Clinton’s own description of Obama’s comments as “elitist, out-of-touch and frankly, patronizing” is, well, patronizing. None of us need to be told how to feel about what we’ve heard a person say; that politicians routinely invite us to do so, and that we routinely await those invitations, is among the most depressing things about political discourse. So let’s not tie our donkey-tails in a knot over Barack Obama now being cast as “elitist.” They were going to call him that anyway (oh, by the way: the Clintons just released a tax return disclosing some fat years, to wit: they made $16 million in 2006. They were going to call her that, too), and that’s not the point.Here’s the point: The eventual nominee is being held up in his or her next necessary political maneuver, the “center pivot.” I don’t know jack about irrigation (see link), but I know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both need time to recast their national images as appropriate for a national election. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the two candidates hardly differ at all on policy–for goodness’ sake, we’ve been getting awfully wrapped up in health-care mandates, haven’t we–but the question that needs to be put before the country is not, for example, “insurance mandates: yes or no?” but “national health care: yes or no?”. Only when confronting John McCain can the candidates make that distinction clear–and only when one drops out can the other finally turn and confront the real adversary.
This long campaign has qualities good and bad. It is a good thing, for example, that the dueling Wright-Tuzla scandals occured in March and April, instead of October. It is a bad thing, though, that each candidate, should he or she get the nomination, will have been prevented from making a quick center pivot–a projection of their image beyond, say, Amherst, Mass., and out into the center of the electorate. The problem now is that John McCain has been left all by his lonesome to do just that. Every wing and faction of the Republican party represented in their enviably simple primary faced its own difficulty, in that the majority of the electorate was predisposed to reject their messages, weary of the past eight years. One could argue that McCain’s particular difficulty was the greatest of all, and that this was reflected in his statistical hibernation in the summer of 2007. John McCain had to convince the American people that the most visible catastrophe of the second Bush administration was its most vital legacy. He has made it half way: he has convinced his party. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton have very little convincing to do within their own party. But if one of them can’t start talking to those remaining center-right and center-center folks, and that right soon, there might not be much left towards which anyone can pivot.
We interrupt this blog post with a little item from the United States Supreme Court. The decision in Baze v. Rees, the Kentucky lethal injection case whose pending status had imposed a de facto moratorium on lethal injections nationwide, was handed down yesterday. The Court ruled 7-2 upholding the Kentucky procedure. That’s not surprising–but this case is worth noticing for the concurrence written by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the longest-tenured member of the Court, in which he joins the majority judgment but goes out of his way to express his conclusion, inapplicable here, that the death penalty is unconstitutional. (AC Professor Austin Sarat is cited in the concurrence.) Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate concurrence, which is joined by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, explicitly to contradict Justice Stevens’s opinion. The two most senior (other than the Chief Justice, who leaps to the top of the seniority list by default) justices at each other’s throats in separate concurrences–this is good stuff. It’s also not terribly long, beginning on page 39. Okay, it’s long–but not that long. Enjoy.
Bonus links re the OBitter thing for those who Take Marx Seriously: Bill Kristol, in the April 14 New York Times getting all paranoid; Mickey Kaus on Slate, April 20, expounding.
12 responses so far ↓
1 mcase10 (mcase10) // Apr 18, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Hey, Aaron– I agree with your post, and you’re right that Obama and Clinton were both going to be called “elitist” by the media no matter what. But I wonder if there’s a difference between Edwards’ $400 haircut, Kerry’s wakeboarding habit, and the Clintons’ $100 million fortune on the one hand, and Obama’s words on the other. Obama made that speech in a public arena, on the record, and was talking directly about his politics. He made his political ideals themselves sound patronizing (yes, patronizing), which I think is different than going to an expensive barber. Sure, it might be a little, I don’t know, incongruous that Edwards, Kerry, and the Clintons are all rich–but at least they didn’t make a speech about it.
2 anathan10 (anathan10) // Apr 21, 2008 at 10:49 am
Meredith– yeah, I think you’re right. Obama screwed up on this one, there’s no doubt about it–and it provokes some questions about the so-called “basics” of his campaign, that there aren’t “red states and blue states,” but the “United States,” etc. It seems to me that what he was saying was yes, there are divisions within this country, perceived as well as real, but the extent to which they are real is not the fault of any ignored and excluded classes of people–it’s the fault of the political class that has decided that they’re better treated as a monolithic voting block, instead of campaign donors (read: Interests). Maybe we’d think a little differently about Obama’s comments if after the part about “…cling to guns and religion…” etc., or whatever, he’d added: “and why the hell not? Wouldn’t you?” And wouldn’t you? Some of us do anyway–
Anyhow, I happen to think that Obama’s remarks weren’t all that incongruous with his greater message; any expectation that we’d all take them in good faith was, however, naive, even absurd. Of course its not just the message, but how you say it that counts.
3 eschultz10 (eschultz10) // Apr 21, 2008 at 8:56 pm
A pun for a title? How fresh and original. Never would have expected that from you. In other news, I do agree with what has been said, though it does send a problematic message for Obama to have said that people “cling” to religion, guns, protectionism and nativism in response to their economic hardships, as if economic status completely determines a person’s values and priorities. Out of those provocations mentioned, nativisim and protectionism certainly seem relevant to economic hardship, but including religion and guns (especially religion) is really what was politically foolish here. Gun-owners certainly don’t want to be told that they are only hunting and (maybe) protecting themselves because they don’t have enough money to do anything better, and same with religion. A religious person would certainly take offense at that implication. While I don’t doubt Obama’s message, it was a very poor choice of words in our media culture that lives for the incriminating soundbite.
4 anathan10 (anathan10) // Apr 21, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Technically that’s not a pun… an allusion, I think? And I resent the notion that my sense of humor is somehow predictable. It is so not.
But I’m totally taken up with the question you present: when, if ever, is it kosher to attribute any attribute at all to economic inequality? We might say that poverty makes one more likely to resent those who are perceived to be taking away jobs, as you point out, which would excuse all of these apparently maligned, apparently “ordinary” people from charges of racism and xenophobia–but wouldn’t we say that in the first place because we thought those people were unfairly charged? And then, isn’t the real problem with Obama’s remark not that he was saying that it is irrational to believe in God or possess guns, but that there is something wrong with either of them? Our problem with racism and xenophobia isn’t that they’re (just) irrational, but that they’re morally repugnant. Ultimately, and oddly enough, Obama’s going to have to convince people he doesn’t think the same thing about Guns and God.
So a guy submits ten puns to a pun contest, and waits a few weeks hoping that one of them will win the grand prize, but when he finally gets the results he’s disappointed to discover that unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
5 eschultz10 (eschultz10) // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:04 am
It’s not my trick…it’s my allusion.
6 eandrews09 (eandrews09) // Apr 23, 2008 at 10:35 pm
testing commenting
7 tester123 (joeshm) // Apr 23, 2008 at 10:35 pm
testing commenting
8 eandrews09 (eandrews09) // Apr 24, 2008 at 9:15 pm
still testing commenting…
9 eandrews09 (eandrews09) // Apr 24, 2008 at 9:15 pm
yes! you can’t moderate a logged in user!
10 eandrews09 (eandrews09) // Apr 24, 2008 at 9:16 pm
and it says you must log-in to comment if you ain’t! a sleepless night has ended in success!
11 Aaron Nathan (anathan10) // Apr 28, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Hey Andrews, get offa my blog.
12 AmhPub - Liberal Thought () // May 5, 2008 at 3:05 pm
[…] Kristol is referring to Obama’s annoyance that Rev. Wright had attributed political motives to the distance Obama has now forced between them. I was originally going to equivocate as to the merits of the sentence quoted above, but let’s not. I’m tired of politicians taking umbrage on behalf of the United States of America abstracted, or telling us what the “American people” think, or telling us who’s “out of the mainstream.” Republicans and Democrats alike persist in this kind of nonsense, but when a pundit tries to pass off such stuff as analysis, it’s enough to make you upchuck the HuckaBurger you had for lunch. I don’t think that Obama was ever “angry…at Wright’s disrespect to the United States of America;” if he had been, his anger would have been unjustified. Obama was, however, very justifiably concerned with Wright’s disrespect to the growth of the American people, who have contended with the persistent evils of racism in every generation, and in every generation anew. Those who were outraged by Wright’s disrespect towards the United States in abstract were abstractly outraged. Let’s call it the Flagpin Fallacy: If one proclaims adoration for American symbols, and defends every slight against them as they were idols, then one must be especially attuned to the spirit of the people of America, and be their most resolute defender. Right? Wait, shouldn’t that go the other way? What was the American flag worth when Benedict Arnold rode beneath it? And is George W. Bush, flag pin firmly fitted to lapel, more of the spirit of the republic than Abraham Lincoln, who so boldly eschewed the stovepipe hat-pin? If you ask me, one of the few things about which Barack Obama can take legitimate umbrage is Barack Obama. Most anything else, and it’s a bit patronizing, which I’ve written about before. […]
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