"We've been here before": How Obama frames our history

Obama is blessed with a deep resonant voice and fluent delivery. Luck of the draw, and part -- but only part -- of his incantatory appeal. Why do his speeches stir so many so deeply -- even people who resist, who ask themselves where's the beef or remind themselves that they're opposed to his policies?

When Obama speaks off the cuff, he pauses and stammers and audibly thinks his way through. In his speeches, there's tremendous fluency, but the intonation still follows that think-it-through rhythm. Long pauses spring rolling clauses; short "on the one hand" setups march slowly uphill toward long "on the other hand" torrents.

Many have complained that Obama's speeches are short on substance. If "substance" means concrete policy proposals, this is sometimes true and sometimes not. Often his laundry lists are as long as Hillary's. But the speeches are always conceptually complex; they cast the present in a three-phase historical perspective (four, if you count the future). In reverse order, these phases are: the disastrous course of the Bush years; the (brief, barely suggested) era in which Republicans were 'the party of ideas,' several of which he acknowledges to have a legitimate foundation (deregulation, free trade); and the longer American tradition of promoting fairness, commonwealth, equality and opportunity. The call for change always harks back to this longer tradition; the call to reverse course (turned left hard) is softened by acknowledgment of a few conservative precepts. It's this historical and ethical frame that makes Obama's 'change' feel conservative -- a return to what Obama called, in his March 18 speech on race, the Constitution's promise of "a union that could be and should be perfected over time."

This post was supposed to be about speech rhythms, not content. But the two can't be separated. Obama's speeches are symphonic; their most forceful passages are freighted with this historical orchestration. Many of his speeches or long speech segments follow a common trajectory. The sequence may vary a bit, but here are some recurring parts:

• Pre-emptive qualifier of the coming thesis -- "the other side has a point" or large historical forces are at least partly responsible for our problems.
• But -- various policy errors have put us in a hole.
  
• We've been here before -- in the past, America has faced similar problems or corrected similar errors.
  
• Let's get back -- our history dictates that we have to renew a commitment to fairness, shared prosperity, opportunity, innovation. We have to follow this (liberal) course in order to restore these core American values
• That's why -- when I'm President, I'll/we'll do x,y,z.

A few examples:

Pre-emptive qualifier:

• I understand that the challenges facing our economy didn't start the day Geroge Bush took office and they won't end the day he leaves (Raleigh, NC, June 9).
• The truth is, trade is here to stay. We live in a global economy. For America's future to be as bright as our past, we have to compete. We have to win (Pittsburgh, PA, April 14).
• Let me be clear: the American economy does not stand still, and neither should the rules that govern it (New York, March 27)

But:

• We did not arrive at the doorstep of our current economic criss by some accident of history...It was the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosphy that has dominated Washington for far too long (Raleigh, June 9).
• For America to win, American workers have to win, too. If CEO pay keeps rising, while the standard of living for their workers continues to decline, that's not a win for America (Pittsburgh, April 14).
• Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one -- aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight (New York March 27).
  

We've been here before/Let's get back:

• But I also know that this nation has faced such fundamental change before, and each time we've kept our economy strong and competitive by making the decision to expand opportunity outward; to grow our middle class; to invest in innovation, and most importantly, to invest in the education and well-being of our workers (Raleigh).
• Back in the 1950s, Americans were put to work building the Interstate Highway system and that helped expand the middle class in this country. We need to show the same kind of leadership today. That's why I've called for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years and generate millions of new jobs (Pittsburgh).
• But if we unite this country around a common purpose, if we act on the responsibilities that we have to each other and to our country, then we can launch a new era of opportunity and prosperity. I know we can do this because Americans have done this before. Time and again, we've recognized that common stake that we have in each other's success. That's how people as different as Hamilton and Jefferson came together to launch the world's greatest experiment in democracy. That's why our economy hasn't just been the world's greatest wealth creator – it's bound America together, it's created jobs, and it's made the dream of opportunity a reality for generations of Americans (New York).

That's why:

• But since then hundreds of thousands more people have lost their jobs, and so we must do more. That's why I've called for another round of fiscal stimulus, an immediate $50 billion to help those who've been hit hardest by this economic downturn – Americans who have lost their jobs, their homes, and are facing rising costs and cutbacks in state and local services like education and healthcare. We need to expand unemployment benefits and extend them for those who can't find another job right away – especially since the long-term unemployment rate is nearly twice as high as it was during the last recession. And we must help the millions of homeowners who are facing foreclosure through no fault of their own (Raleigh).
• That's why I opposed NAFTA, it's why I opposed CAFTA, and it's why I said any trade agreement I would support had to contain real, enforceable standards for workers. That's why I believe the Permanent Normalized Trade agreement with China didn't do enough to ensure fairness and compliance (Pittsburgh).
• That's why, throughout this campaign, I've put forward a series of proposals that will foster economic growth from the bottom up, and not just from the top down. That's why the last time I spoke on the economy here in New York, I talked about the need to put the policies of George W. Bush behind us – policies that have essentially said to the American people: "you are on your own"; because we need to pursue policies that once again recognize that we are in this together (New York).

Since presidencies are about action, the whole sequence in one sense serves the "that's why I'll" passages devoted to policy precepts. But there's a bit of a paradox here: Obama stands out less in what he promises to do than in his account of why specific policies are necessary -- how they serve strategic, ethical, national goals. Nonetheless, the passages promising action, whatever the policies' individual merits (and some of those outlined above are hokum) often project terrific force. And for that, the explanation may be partly grammatical.

Verb phrases can be in passive or active voice. Presidential aspirants naturally tend toward the active. "I will" is the operative phrase for those crazy enough to run. But Obama, when he gets rolling on what "I will," what "we will," what we must, what we can do, slips into hyperactive voice. His long sentences, stacked with series of parallel phrases and clauses, are crammed like a power bar with verbs. This tendency tipped toward the messianic on the night Obama clinched the nomination:

If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

That may be over the top. But it doesn't come out of nowhere. "Yes we can" is the core of every Obama speech. Believe what you will about the ultra-optimistic view of American history in which that phrase is embedded. But embedded it is.

Related posts
Audacity of Respect: What Obama Owes to Reagan II
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Truth and Transformation
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Nudging toward Bethlehem: Obama's theory of governance

In December, I noted that when asked what he hoped to accomplish in the first two years of his presidency Obama was both modest and ambitious, in that he set expectations for substantive progress on a broad front of issues while also emphasizing that on each front he was aiming to change course rather than effect radical, immediate change.

Tonight, in his hundredth day press conference, Obama elaborated that conception into a theory of leadership that extends decades rather than years:

This metaphor has been used before, but this -- the ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue of how to bring about the changes that the American people need is to -- is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that was when we started getting serious about clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable, that's when we became serious about raising our standards in education.

This remake of the tiredest of metaphors works on two tiers. Obama was talking about both the impact of policies that might be enacted in the near future and about the method by which a President shapes national policy. With regard to method, this "ship of state(ment)" followed a more immediate response to Jeff Zeleny's question, "how has the presidency humbled you?" Here was the prelude:

Humbled by the -- humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want -- (laughter) -- or -- (chuckles) -- or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line. And so, you know, what you do is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say and coax folks in the right direction.

The theory of governmance expressed here seems in tune with that laid out in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. Methodologically, to "coax" is to nudge. On the policy level, Obama speaks often about creating the right incentives to shape behavior, whether through tax cuts or regulation or medical outcomes research. Fundamental change by degrees is what he's after.

The image of moving the ocean liner a few degrees also casts a retroactive light on what many considered a moment of hubris, Obama's peroration on the night of the final Democratic primary:

If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

While the change envisioned is almost apocalyptic, note the constant repetition of the qualifier "began to." The time horizon is longer, and the changes envisioned are greater, but the process is the same: catalyzing, beginning, changing direction. Can you be a messianic pragmatist?

Our liberal history: Obama's oldest trope

In my response to Obama's second inaugural speech, I took it as a given that it's a well-worn Obama trope to equate liberal priorities with the nation's founding principles and historical development -- so much so that Obama rather abbreviated the argument this time around.

I am therefore a bit gob-smacked to note that many of those whom I like to read best seem to be assuming that the equation of active government and collective action with the credo expressed in the Declaration of Independence and with the course of American history is some kind new departure for Obama. See  Greg Sargent, Ezra Klein and James Fallows, That Obama today expanded his circle of concern to include immigrants and gays and (implicitly) safety from gun violence in new ways, I recognize. Ditto that he's dropped the pretense (or rather, belief) that acknowledging some "good ideas" from the other side will get him where he wants to go (as I noted after his convention speech).  But the core concept of government that he articulated today, and the historical support he mustered for it, were utterly familiar..

Back in June 2008, I examined Obama's deployment of our shared past in a post called "We've been here before": How Obama frames our history. Not to bore you with peripherals in that post, I've culled a few examples of such deployments from it and other 2008 Obama speeches.

Janesville, WI, Feb. 13, 2008:

when opportunity is uneven or unequal - it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States....

In the end, this economic agenda won't just require new money. It will require a new spirit of cooperation and innovation on behalf of the American people. We will have to learn more, and study more, and work harder. We'll be called upon to take part in shared sacrifice and shared prosperity. And we'll have to remind ourselves that we rise and fall as one nation; that a country in which only a few prosper is antithetical to our ideals and our democracy; and that those of us who have benefited greatly from the blessings of this country have a solemn obligation to open the doors of opportunity, not just for our children, but to all of America's children...

It’s a promise that’s been passed down through the ages; one that each generation of Americans is called to keep – that we can raise our children in a land of boundless opportunity, broad prosperity, and unyielding possibility.

New York, New York, March 27, 2008:

But if we unite this country around a common purpose, if we act on the responsibilities that we have to each other and to our country, then we can launch a new era of opportunity and prosperity. I know we can do this because Americans have done this before. Time and again, we've recognized that common stake that we have in each other's success. That's how people as different as Hamilton and Jefferson came together to launch the world's greatest experiment in democracy. That's why our economy hasn't just been the world's greatest wealth creator – it's bound America together, it's created jobs, and it's made the dream of opportunity a reality for generations of Americans.

Speaker for the dead? Nasr indicts Obama's AfPak policy in Holbrooke's name

Vali Nasr, a former aide to the late Richard Holbrooke when he was Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan, has put the gist of his book-length brief against the Obama administration's conduct of foreign policy in a j'accuse published in Foreign Policy.

In Nasr's narrative, Obama's conduct of war and diplomacy in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- Holbrooke's bailiwick --  was controlled by a narrow coterie of White House staff. The policy, according to Nasr, was overmilitarized, diplomatically disengaged, driven mainly by domestic political considerations, and undermined by Obama's timeline and swift withdrawal. The wound that drives the whole is Nasr's conviction that his patron, master diplomat Richard Holbrooke, was undercut at every turn and never given a chance to operate.

The heart of the strategic indictment (motive is a separate story) is that the admnistration first slow-walked and then mis-timed and undercut its negotiation with the Taliban, which Holbrooke had urged almost from the start. Here's the gist:

It's not about him

George Packer's blog posts are relatively rare, and I always look forward to them.  He usually brings new information and a deeply informed perspective both to international affairs and to domestic politics. But I think he's simply off his rocker about Obama in his latest:

His campaign was based on the man more than any set of ideas or clear vision of the future. Everyone knew what Reaganism stood for. No one knows what Obamaism means, which has allowed his enemies to fill in the blank.

That is complete malarky.  No one ever campaigned on a set of policy proposals more coherently situated in a conceptual framework than Obama did. He laid that framework out in speech after speech after speech, not to say in The Audacity of Hope. When I get my hands on the book this evening, I will fill in an early manifesto here.

"Obamaism" is liberalism on a diet, with programs subject to outcomes assessment, undertaken with awareness that overtaxation kills the golden goose, and biased toward creating the right incentives, as in the Race to the Top education program. It's mainstream  liberalism chastised by Reaganism: government as part of the solution but aware of its limitations and the law of unintended consequences. It is a liberalism that, thus chastened, bids to move a commitment to shared prosperity back to center of American politics:

But through hard times and good, great challenge and great change, the promise of Janesville has been the promise of America - that our prosperity can and must be the tide that lifts every boat; that we rise or fall as one nation; that our economy is strongest when our middle-class grows and opportunity is spread as widely as possible. And when it's not - when opportunity is uneven or unequal - it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States (Janesville, WI, Feb. 13, 2008). 

Obamaism focuses on long-range foundations of economic growth: improved education, renewable energy sources, a repaired safety net, control of healthcare costs, a rollback of the growing income inequality of the past 30 years. (Perhaps it's that long view that hurting him now. People know what he stands for; not enough yet trust that what he and the Democrats deliver will help them.) Here, for example, is Obama laying out his economic program in February 2009 (after outlining what went wrong in the runup to financial crisis):

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad.

It's a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation; new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive; new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. That is the new foundation we must build. That must be our future – and my Administration's policies are designed to achieve that future.

While "New Foundation" has been largely written off as anodyne politispeak, the chosen metaphor is in sync with Obama's propensity toward thinking long-term and thinking big: changing the trajectory, moving the battleship by degrees. In the campaign, Obama stressed the results he would pursue.  As President, starting from the deep hole of a hellacious recession and pleading for patience, he has often stressed process:

How long have we known the truth about the Cuban missile crisis?

I "agree" with the reader cited below by James Fallows in his continuing series on threat inflation and ensuing U.S. military engagements:

I said that nearly all the major official "threats" of the modern era proved in retrospect to have been hyped. Missile gap, Tonkin Gulf, WMD, etc. Reader JA immediately replied, "You left out terrorism." And reader AS wrote:

It's true that we came close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. But according to a well documented article in the Atlantic [plus others],  the missiles themselves were an inflated threat, i.e., according to US generals at the time did not materially hurt US security and could easily be traded, as they eventually secretly were, for US missiles in Turkey. 

Attention, Barney Frank: Obama was the partisan warrior when it counted most

Scott Lemieux does a nice job rebutting Barney Frank's contention that health care reform was an inevitable loser for Democrats (and strategic error for Obama) because "When you tell [people with health insurance] that you’re going to extend health care to people who don’t now have it, they don’t see how you can do that without hurting them." So Frank told  Jason Zegerle in a long debriefing published this week. Lemieux, bemused that the normally combative and often courageous Frank would avoid that heavy lift, retorts:

This is – uncharacteristically — essentially an argument against most progressive change. Anything that challenges privilege and disrupts the status quo carries risk and disrupts people’s sensitivities.

Frank's anomalous pusillanimity with respect to health reform was evident at the crisis hour when Scott Brown won the special election for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in January 2010, ending the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority and thereby endangering reconciliation of the passed House and Senate versions of what became the Affordable Care Act.  Frank led the cut-and-run chorus, putting out  this statement on January 19:

Toward the end, Obama still seeking beginnings

Much as I admire both David Remnick and Barack Obama, I did not find Remnick's new 17,000-word profile of the president particularly illuminating [update: not so for the outtakes Remnick published a few days later].  Remnick asked some tough questions but did not push back much on the answers. That allowed Obama to be Obama, splitting differences, embracing complexities and balancing opposites, without really enabling him to defend his record with much vigor.

On the other hand, Obama being Obama is always interesting to me, and I did find a couple of his dicta revealing in the way they reiterated and updated old habits of mind and speech. Here's one:

I will measure myself at the end of my Presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class, and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.”

"Began to" is Obama's signature way of hedging his goals, which he has always cast in terms of new beginnings rather than completed revolutions.  It's his vaunted "long game" from the other end of the telescope. Not for the first time, I'm driven back to his in his 100th-day press conference:

The making of a great President

In his long essay Can America Rise Again? James Fallows sought for a solution to "the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke."  Our political system has not evolved, Fallows warned, citing the unrepresentative Senate, the distortions in the House wrought by gerrymandering, and the near-impossibility of fundamental Constitutional amendment.  So what to do?  Fallows concluded that we can only "muddle through" -- in effect, trust that our society's civil and economic dynamism will continue to throw up leaders who squeeze far-sighted policies through our creaking political institutions:

America has been strong because, despite its flawed system, people built toward the future in the 1840s, and the 1930s, and the 1950s. During just the time when Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, when Theodore Roosevelt set aside land for the National Parks, when Dwight Eisenhower created the Pentagon research agency that ultimately gave rise to the Internet, the American system seemed broken too. They worked within its flaws and limits, which made all the difference. That is the bravest and best choice for us now.

Tonight is a night to celebrate a muddle-through breakthrough.  One month ago,  Barack Obama framed the struggle to pass comprehensive health care reform this way: "What’s being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem."

The country passed this test because we have a leader who understands how broken our governmental machinery is and works simultaneously to fix our politics and our policies. We elected a President who appreciates how messy democracy is and understands the manifold constraints as well as the multiple levers of presidential power.  His acknowledged errors notwithstanding, Barack Obama moved this mountain because he knows how to prioritize, strategize, execute and communicate. 

Where Obama's placation ended

In honor of the ACA's end-of-open season rush, a repost. 

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Garry Wills, summing up David Remnick's portrayal of Obama in The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, is close to right, and yet so very wrong, as he segues to his own judgment:

Obama’s strategy everywhere before entering the White House was one of omnidirectional placation. It had always worked. Why should he abandon, at this point, a method of such proved effectiveness? Yet success at winning acceptance may not be what is called for in a leader moving through a time of peril. To disarm fears of change (the first African-­American presidency is, in itself, a big jolt of change), Obama has stressed continuity. Though he first became known as a critic of the war in Iraq, he has kept aspects or offshoots of Bush’s war on terror — possible future “renditions” (kidnappings on foreign soil), trials of suspected terrorists in military tribunals, no investigations of torture, an expanded Afghan commitment, though he promised to avoid “a dumb war.” He appointed as his vice president and secretary of state people who voted for the Iraq war, and as secretary of defense and presiding generals people who conducted or defended that war.

Where Obama's "placation" ended

Garry Wills, summing up David Remnick's portrayal of Obama in The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, is close to right, and yet so very wrong, as he segues to his own judgment:

Obama’s strategy everywhere before entering the White House was one of omnidirectional placation. It had always worked. Why should he abandon, at this point, a method of such proved effectiveness? Yet success at winning acceptance may not be what is called for in a leader moving through a time of peril. To disarm fears of change (the first African-­American presidency is, in itself, a big jolt of change), Obama has stressed continuity. Though he first became known as a critic of the war in Iraq, he has kept aspects or offshoots of Bush’s war on terror — possible future “renditions” (kidnappings on foreign soil), trials of suspected terrorists in military tribunals, no investigations of torture, an expanded Afghan commitment, though he promised to avoid “a dumb war.” He appointed as his vice president and secretary of state people who voted for the Iraq war, and as secretary of defense and presiding generals people who conducted or defended that war.

To cope with the financial crisis, he turned to Messrs. Geithner, Summers and Bernanke, who were involved in fomenting the crisis. To launch reform of medical care, he huddled with the American Medical Association, big pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms, and announced that his effort had their backing (the best position to be in for stabbing purposes, which they did month after month). All these things speak to Obama’s concern with continuity and placation. But continuity easily turns into inertia, as we found when Obama wasted the first year of his term, the optimum time for getting things done. He may have drunk his own Kool-Aid — believing that his election could of itself usher in a post-racial, post-partisan, post-red-state and blue-state era. That is a change no one should ever have believed in. The price of winningness can be losing; and that, in this scary time, is enough to break the heart of hope. 

It is true that Obama sets tremendous stock in his ability to win buy-in from potential adversaries, to disarm them by acknowledging what he regards (or presents) as the legitimate points in their argument, to find common ground and therefore assent. Remnick captures this.  Recounting Obama's reaction to Robert Caro's portrayal of the old hard-core segregationist bull of the Senate Richard Russell, Reminick writes:

Much of Obama's self-confidence resided in his belief that he could walk into any room, with any sort of people, and forge a relationship and even persuade those people of the rightness of his positions. Jim Cauley, Obama's Senate campaign manager, said he thought Obama believed that he could win over a room of skinheads. "All of us are a mixture of noble and ignoble impulses, and I guess that's part of what I mean when I say I don't go into meetings with people presuming bad faith," Obama has said. Now he seemed to think that he would have had a fighting chance with Russell: "Had I been around at all in the early sixties and had the opportunity to meet with Richard Russell, it would have been fascinating to talk to somebody like that.  Even if you understood that this enormous talent would prevent me from ever being sworn in to the Senate"(426).

But placation is only weakness if it has no end point. Obama did persist too long in trying to win Republican cooperation. But his faith in his ability to win assent was not weakness but hubris.  According to George Packer, the title of whose long chronicle Obama's Lost Year gave Wills his keynote above:

Obama's quest for bipartisanship, in the face of exceedingly discouraging facts, has been so relentless that it suggests less a strategy than a core conviction: reasonable people can be civil, exchange ideas, and eventually find points of agreement.

Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia

Obama seems to have responded to warning bells that he was floating off on elevated campaign rhetoric like the Wizard of Oz in his balloon.

At the Virginia Jefferson-Jackson dinner, he led with a straight electability argument, tied to a more down-to-earth version of his change-our-politics argument, and followed by a laundry list of policy promises. None of it was new, but the proportions were changed. By word count, the policy section was approximately 40% of the speech, compared with slightly more than 10% on Super Tuesday. This speech was a business case for a candidate claiming he can win a broad mandate and use it to push through legislation less distorted by lobbying interests than any other.

Obama began by taking on the mantle of nominee presumptive, moving John McCain up from Exhibit B to Exhibit A of Honorable Policymaker Corrupted by Washington Politics. After the obligatory "good man" gesture, he hit him first on policy and then on process, i.e. flip-flopping for political gain:

Now, John McCain is a good man, an American hero, and we honor his half century of service to this nation. But in this campaign, he has made the decision to embrace the failed policies George Bush’s Washington.

He speaks of a hundred year war in Iraq and sees another on the horizon with Iran. He once opposed George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest few who don’t need them and didn’t ask for them. He said they were too expensive and unwise. And he was absolutely right. [McCain has actually spoken of a 100 year troop presence in Iraq, along the lines of our presence in Japan and Korea, with whom we're not exactly at war, but never mind...]

But somewhere along the line, the wheels came off the Straight Talk Express because he now he supports the very same tax cuts he voted against. This is what happens when you spend too long in Washington. Politicians don’t say what they mean and they don’t mean what they say. And that is why in this election, our party cannot stand for business-as-usual in Washington. The Democratic Party must stand for change.

This time Hillary was Exhibit B of Politician Corrupted by Process -- the better to demonstrate that she was like McCain, or maybe a bit worse with regard to politics if not policy:

It’s a choice between debating John McCain about lobbying reform with a nominee who’s taken more money from lobbyists than he has, or doing it with a campaign that hasn’t taken a dime of their money because we’ve been funded by you – the American people.

That allowed a segue to the electability argument - brought home to the local audience:

And it’s a choice between taking on John McCain with Republicans and Independents already united against us, or running against him with a campaign that’s united Americans of all parties around a common purpose.

There is a reason why the last six polls in a row have shown that I’m the strongest candidate against John McCain. It’s because we’ve done better with Independents in almost every single contest we’ve had. It’s because we’ve won in more Red States and swing states that the next Democratic nominee needs to win in November.

Virginia Democrats know how important this is. That’s how Mark Warner won in this state. That’s how Tim Kaine won in this state. That’s how Jim Webb won in this state. And if I am your nominee, this is one Democrat who plans to campaign in Virginia and win in Virginia this fall.

While arguing electability would normally come across as politics-as-usual, Obama's casting his as hardheaded idealism. His appeal to independents and Republicans is not born of triangulation; his policy pronouncements are liberal straight down the line. That's the best argument for his straight-talk pitch: he's succeeding beyond his liberal base in spite of his policies, not because of them.

Next came the policy prescriptions, nicely salted with arguments as to why he'd be able to get them effected -- including past accomplishments (expanding health coverage and passing middle class tax cuts in Illinois), others' endorsements (Kennedy's statement of faith in his health care commitment), quick-draw contrast with Hillary (why mandates don't help), and promises to get things done in a timely matter (health plan passed in first term, yearly minimum wage hikes).

He ended with a deft two-step that syncs up two halves of his argument: that Democrats have the right policy prescriptions, but that Democrats have been almost as corrupted by political process (over some undetermined period of time) as Republicans have. His solution, he admits implicitly (and refreshingly), is as much a product of the historical moment as of his own abilities: because the electorate has swung left, Democrats can come out of their defensive crouch and advance an unabashedly liberal agenda. Dropping the defensiveness is itself a cure for "broken politics," first because it means being less beholden to polling, and second because reducing the power of lobbyists is a natural Democratic platform plank, since Democrats by creed defend the poor and middle class against the monied interests that wield the vast bulk of lobbying power.

Spelling all that out would make for dull speaking. Obama does it by emphasizing that 'this is our moment" and by reminding us that "hope" has been realized by Democratic leaders in other such moments:

This is our moment. This is our time for change. Our party – the Democratic Party – has always been at its best when we’ve led not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction; when we’ve called all Americans to a common purpose – a higher purpose.

We are the party of Jefferson, who wrote the words that we are still trying to heed – that all of us are created equal – that all of us deserve the chance to pursue our happiness.

We’re the party of Jackson, who took back the White House for the people of this country.

We’re the party of a man who overcame his own disability to tell us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself; who faced down fascism and liberated a continent from tyranny.

And we’re the party of a young President who asked what we could do for our country, and the challenged us to do it.

That is who we are. That is the Party that we need to be, and can be, if we cast off our doubts, and leave behind our fears, and choose the America that we know is possible. Because there is a moment in the life of every generation, if it is to make its mark on history, when its spirit has to come through, when it must choose the future over the past, when it must make its own change from the bottom up.

This is our moment. This is our message – the same message we had when we were up, and when we were down. The same message that we will carry all the way to the convention. And in seven months time we can realize this promise; we can claim this legacy; we can choose new leadership for America. Because there is nothing we cannot do if the American people decide it is time.

This time, Obama managed to make hope seem pragmatic.

Related posts:
Feb 10: Obama decries the 47% solution
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Obama's seductive love for America

The irony in this "Obama doesn't love America" crap is that Obama got himself elected by holding up  to Americans a flattering mirror that was suited to the moment.

The national narrative that Obama put forward in 2007/8 had two salient points (okay, may it had three or four or five, but two come to mind here). It was, first, a bid to move the political center to the left -- to cast American history as a progression in which Americans at various crux points demanded and obtained new common investments in shared shared prosperity and new extensions of equal opportunity to an ever-widening and more inclusive circle -- African Americans, women, gays. In Obama's telling, the nation had veered off-course for eight or thirty years, but democratic self-correction was also part of the long historical pattern and would come with him.

That's a kind of "whig history" for America, and it resonated in the wake of a disastrous conservative presidency.  It was also a message essentially common to all Democrats and would have worked for almost any Democrat.

The real contest in 2008 was in the Democratic primary, and perhaps Obama beat Hillary by making this whig history sing, tapping a deep American mysticism previously tapped by Lincoln and -- somewhat more caustically -- by Martin Luther King. This second element was captured by Obama's "more perfect union" trope.  That is: America's founding documents expressed principles for the best ordering of human society, and while the nation has never lived up to these ideals, its democratic engine draws it ever closer -- ever more perfect, never perfected. Those ever-widening circles of inclusive opportunity are bending the arc of history toward justice. Martin Luther's famous "check" of equal opportunity, returned for insufficient funds, is being paid on a very long mortgage schedule.

Progressives, don't forget: The Freedom Caucus killed the AHCA

Defenders of the ACA are right to take some satisfaction and pride in the failure of Paul Ryan's repeal bill, the American Health Care Act.  All those packed Town Halls, jammed phone lines and floods of mail had their effect. Dozens of Republican reps and senators, moderate and not so moderate, expressed qualms about un-insuring tens or hundreds of thousands of their constituents -- and tens of millions of Americans.

As we consider next steps, though, it's important to take full measure of the rather mind-bending fact that it's the Freedom Caucus that really sank the bill. They reportedly killed it partly because Trump managed somehow to trivialize their concerns even as he caved to most of them -- but more fundamentally, because it left some ghost of the ACA tax credits and consumer protections intact for those seeking insurance in the individual market.

For these zealots (and their right-wing think tank backers), the AHCA wasn't harsh enough.  It didn't cut the taxes that fund Obamacare benefits fast enough. It didn't uninsure beneficiaries of the Medicaid expansion fast enough. It didn't kill the concept of subsidized private insurance dead enough. It didn't take us back to the future of medical underwriting and health "insurance" that would render unaffordable coverage for such incidentals as childbirth and mental health treatment.

Healthy, relatively wealthy, and hit by ACA rate hikes

Past and forthcoming posts of mine have looked (and will look) at the situations of several people who do not qualify for ACA subsidies but were still satisfied with the coverage they obtained for 2014.  That is because they all either had pre-existing conditions or were in a household where someone else had one -- as do a very large percentage of Americans, particularly those over forty in households larger than one person. As for the young, the overwhelming majority of them are subsidy-eligible.

At the same time, of the 12-18 million people who bought insurance in the individual market in 2013, nearly half were not eligible for subsidies, according to the Urban Institute. Of the substantial percentage of them who were not punished for a pre-existing condition in the pre-ACA market, many will pay more for coverage in 2014 than they did last year (click here for more statistical detail on these fronts).  Some will get better coverage for the extra money, but some won't, and some will get coverage they would not buy if they did not have to.

In recent days I've heard from two of them, neither unsympathetic to the ACA (yes, my readership is skewed that way).  Sam, living in New Hampshire, was hit hard by a premium increase this year.  If the timing of certain life events had been somewhat different, however, he might have benefited directly from the law's enactment. His initial note indicates somewhat unusual circumstances:

A thoughtless post

Prompted  by having just read Joe Klein's provocative year-end wrap, which begins "Nothing much happened in 2010," I just thought, "nothing much happened this week" -- a much more defensible proposition, snowstorms notwithstanding.  The corollary, 'nothing much is happening in my mind," leads me to an old want-to-write trick, writing without thinking, which will never see the light of bloggy day unless thinking transpires. The best expositor of such self-stimulating tricks remains Winnie the Pooh, who, wishing to complete a half-finished hum, repeats the previous portion in expectation that the next part will present itself.

How often do most of us remember that "blog" derives from log, as in weblog, as in a kind of writer's notebook. The first blog so-named that I recall paying attention to was kept by a small business journalist, David Lidsky, and I've retained the notion I picked up from one of his introductory posts (as I remember it...) that a blog is a kind of public scratch pad, or commonplace book, the raw material that a writer of whatever kind compiles as fuel for more finished productions, albeit meant from the first to be public-ized.

My thought here was to spin out the analogy with the commonplace book of renaissance or later vintage, which I recall as a personal log of quotations that struck the author as worth remembering.  I may have first encountered the concept in a footnote (or lecture note?)  to Hamlet's exclamation, post-ghost trauma: "My tables--meet it is I set it down/That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." -- I recall this being glossed as Hamlet thinking how right he had been to have bookmarked this jewel of wisdom when he encountered it in his studies and put it in his "tables," which are like the multiplication tables minus the multiplication, i.e. a written record meant as a memory aid.

So...checking my memory of what a commonplace book is (no free association these days is free of instant fact-check...), I find, inevitably, that its relationship to the blog has already been noted, probably repeatedly, but first in Google by a certain Lisa Spangenberg, who dredges up this wonderful definition from Jonathan Swift (get the Swift link from Lisa...):

A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that “great wits have short memories:” and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his.

Notes from the bully pulpit: no one hears you when unemployment is at 10%

As Obama gears up for the fiscal cliff end game, David Corn is out with a timely reminder that the deal Obama struck in December 2010, trading extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for a payroll tax cut, unemployment benefit extension and other stimulus, was far from the cave-in that liberal allies portrayed it as. Rather, it was a successful a bid to win "something bigger and better: more stimulus to aid the ailing economy."

This was actually obvious at the time, for those with eyes to see. According to Mark Zandi, the Democratic proposals that became part of the deal yielded $336 billion worth of stimulus from 2010-2012.  Even Paul Krugman admitted at the time that the provisions Obama fought for were likely to provide significant help to the economy. In concert with the payroll tax cut and and unemployment benefits extension Obama bludgeoned the GOP into accepting in early 2012, those stimulative measures probably secured his reelection.

While debunking the tax-deal-as-cave-in myth, Corn does subscribe to another narrative that does have some truth to it over the long haul but in my view is also exaggerated:  that Obama was ineffective at communicating his policy.  Here's Corn's read:

Meet the new Obama -- same (mostly) as the Old Obama

Yesterday, I sought to demonstrate that Obama was simply reverting to form in his second inaugural address by equating liberal priorities with the nation's founding principles and historical development. He did so day in and day out in 2008; the notion that liberal policy prescriptions would enable the country to continue forming "a more perfect union" was the basis of his campaign. I professed myself astonished that anyone would be surprised by his using this framework -- grounding his policies in the Declaration of Independence -- in his Second Inaugural.

Lest anyone conclude that Obama the defender of liberal priorities went into remission for four years, let's extend the 'rhetoric retrospective' back from the most recent past. Take, for example, Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention last September -- a widely panned speech that to my ear was more forceful, more caustic, and more conceptually resonant than yesterday's inaugural.  At the DNC, Obama grounded his defense of government action to expand opportunity and strengthen the safety net and stimulate enterprise in -- you guessed it -- the Declaration of Independence:

As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights – rights that no man or government can take away. We insist on personal responsibility and we celebrate individual initiative. We’re not entitled to success. We have to earn it. We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system – the greatest engine of growth and prosperity the world has ever known.

But we also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations....

John McCain was right

Say what you like about McCain's policy incoherence -- his major on-the-record flip-flops (Bush tax cuts, warrantless wiretapping, exempting the CIA from torture prohibitions, immigration reform, offshore drilling, etc. etc.), his open disavowals of supposedly current policy positions (not privatizing the existing social security program, eliminating the alternative minimum tax, refusing to bail out homeowners), his ventures into fantasyland (League of Democracies, offsetting hundreds of billions in tax cuts by eliminating earmarks).

The fact remains: he was right about the surge. Not necessarily about what to do next, or what our long-term goals in Iraq should be, but about the need to reduce violence and reach a minimum level of stability before we could expect any political progress. He was not just lucky-right; he was right because he understood the military requirements, and how a measure of military success might give the Iraqi government room to maneuver.

In hindsight, this good judgment was on full display in McCain's Socratic steering of Robert Gates during Gates' confirmation hearing on December 5, 2006 (my emphasis below):

I'd like to follow on just what Senator Levin said. We are not winning the war in Iraq; is that correct?

GATES: That is my view -- yes, sir.

MCCAIN: And, therefore, status quo is not acceptable?

GATES: That is correct, sir.

MCCAIN: I know you did a great deal of work with the Iraq Study Group, and there is a general consensus of opinion now, in hindsight, that we didn't have sufficient number of troops at the time of the invasion to control Iraq -- either Anbar Province, the looting, most importantly the weapons and ammunition depots that were looted at the time.

When anarchy prevails, it's very difficult to gain control of a country.

Do you agree that, at the time of the invasion, we didn't have sufficient troops to control the country, in hindsight?

GATES: Well, I had to deal with hindsight in some of the decisions that I've made, Senator McCain, and sometimes it's not very comfortable.

I suspect, in hindsight, some of the folks in the administration probably would not make the same decisions that they made.

GATES: And I think one of those is that there clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion to establish control over the country.

MCCAIN: And yet, at this particular point in time, when the suggestion is made, as the situation deteriorates and the status quo is not acceptable, that we reduce troops or, as General Abizaid said, that he had sufficient number of troops, in your study, when did we reach the point where we went from not having enough troops to having sufficient number of troops as the situation -- boots on the ground -- as the situation deteriorated?

That's a non sequitur that I have yet found to -- I'm unable to intellectually embrace.

GATES: Senator, I was a part of the Iraq Study Group during their education phase, I would say, and I resigned before they began their deliberations.

I would tell you that when we were in Iraq that we inquired of the commanders whether they had enough troops and whether a significant increase might be necessary. And I would say that the answer we received was that they thought they had adequate troops.

It seems to me that, as one considers all of the different options, in terms of a change of approach in Iraq and a change in tactics, that inquiring about this again is clearly something -- and it may be that a secretary of defense might get a more candid answer than an outside study group that was visiting them.

GATES: But we certainly -- the response that we received in Baghdad was that they had enough troops.

MCCAIN: Then the second and third questions should have been asked, and that is: Why is the conditions and situation continuing to deteriorate and not improve, if you have sufficient assets and people in order to get the job done -- which we now agree is not satisfactory?

One of the reasons given is it would be too great a strain on the military today; that we don't have sufficient active duty and Guard forces.

There were some of us, three and a half years ago, that said we needed to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps. And the answer was: Well, that would take a couple of years.

Well, years have passed, and we still haven't got -- and we're still putting an enormous strain on the active duty and Guard forces.

Do you believe that we need to increase the size of the Marine Corps and the Army?

GATES: Senator, if I'm confirmed, I'm very open to the possibility and the necessity of an increase in the end-strength of the Army.

However, first, because we have 150,000 troops in the field, and we have a regular Army of about a half a million, and a Guard and Reserve of about another half a million, I would like to, if I'm confirmed, to first of all ensure for myself that the other 350,000 troops in the regular Army are doing what we want them to be doing and that they are all needed in the roles that they are in as a way of making sure that before we increase the end strength that we're using the strength we have in the way we ought to be.

GATES: But if the answer to that question is that's about the way it ought to be, that those troops are deployed in the way we want them deployed, then I'm very open to the possibility of an increase in the end strength.

MCCAIN: Well, again, I think when you look at -- we are living in a very dangerous world, whether you look at Iran, North Korea, the crisis in Lebanon as we speak -- the list goes on and on -- it'd be very difficult for us to envision us being capable of handling another contingency, given the fact that our military leaders are saying it would be too great a strain on the military and the Guard even to put additional troops into Iraq.

I hope you'll look at it very seriously.

Mr. Secretary, finally, General Zinni, who is highly respected by this committee, who was former head of the CENTCOM, who was speaking of Prime Minister Maliki, said, quote: "You can't put pressure on a wounded guy. There's a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there's a capability that they've not employed or used. I'm not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence."

Dr. Gates, I don't think they're capable either. And I think political solutions are breed (sic) by stability. And if you have military instability, it's very hard to come up with a political solution.

And just about everybody I know who looks at these plans for partition, for withdrawal to bases outside of Iraq or bases inside of Iraq believe that a chaotic situation would ensue.

I think this is -- I agree with most expert that this is our last chance to save this situation. And unless we stabilize conditions on the ground, I think it's going to be very difficult to get the kind of political solution that all of us seek.

Recently, I saw this proposal to move the Marines out of Anbar Province into Baghdad.

MCCAIN: What do we say to the families of those young people who died in the first and second battle of Fallujah when we abandon it to terrorist organizations again?

I wish you every success. I know that all of us on this committee and in this country have nothing but the interests of our nation's security and the men and women who serve it as our highest priority.

And I hope you will help us gain consensus so that, as a nation, we can move forward and make sure that the American people are not subjected to more sacrifice as a result of the failures that we've experienced in the past in this conflict.

And again, I thank you for serving, Doctor.

On three points at least McCain's logic is impressive: 1) if we didn't have enough troops to stabilize the country at invasion's end, how could we be said to have enough on the ground as the situation was deteriorating (in fall 2006)? 2) if we do have enough, why aren't we winning? and 3) stability will breed political progress, not vice versa.

In December 2006, other answers to 1) and 2) seemed logical to many (including a very nonexpert me): there were not enough troops to win with, but a modest increase was unlikely to improve the situation, and our occupying forces might be doing more harm than good. Those answers were wrong. McCain's was right. It wasn't luck. In this case, he knew what was needed, and he staked his political career on it.

P.S. I don't think it should be necessary at this point to argue that the situation in Iraq has improved markedly on every front. The Economist summarizes well:

Yet it is now plain that over the past several months, while Americans have been distracted by their presidential primaries, many things in Iraq have at long last started to go right.

This improvement goes beyond the fall in killing that followed General David Petraeus's “surge”. Iraq's government has gained in stature and confidence. Thanks to soaring oil prices it is flush with money. It is standing up to Iraq's assorted militias and asserting its independence from both America and Iran. The overlapping wars—Sunni against American, Sunni against Shia and Shia against Shia—that harrowed Iraq after the invasion of 2003 have abated. The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy. In September 2007 this newspaper supported the surge not because we had faith in Iraq but only in the desperate hope that the surge might stop what was already a bloodbath from becoming even worse (see article). The situation now is different: Iraq is still a mess, but something approaching a normal future for its people is beginning to look achievable.

Related post:
Can Obama cope with success in Iraq?

A lover of fairy tales casts Obama as villain-in-chief

This one is going to hurt.

In what seems like a bid to definitively cement the perceptions of progressives disappointed in Obama, psychologist Drew Westen, a student of the alleged power of stories to shape political perception, has put together his own master narrative about Obama -- a merciless tale of presidential FAIL. It's a quadruple-length op-ed (over 3000 words) on the front page of The New York Times' Sunday Review section -- a rhetorical nuke dropped on ground zero in the liberal heartland.

Westen is a good storyteller. There is real force to many of his charges. But modeling what he says Obama should have done, he  tells a simplified morality tale -- highly selective, with a clear villain, and in some points demonstrably false. He makes copious use of political cliches about messaging that fail to take into account the degree to which economic conditions shape audience reception of a politician's message. Founded on the alleged timidity of the 2009 stimulus, his story fails to engage the question of whether Obama could have got a larger stimulus through Congress. And in the end, it devolves into an ad hominem attack with recourse to cheap psychologizing (notwithstanding Westen's protestations of scientific detachment) and unfounded impugning of motive.