Known quantity, unknown result

A savvy reader on Andrew Sullivan's blog points out that outside the beltway, it's Obama, not McCain, who's the 'known quantity':

America is literally obsessed with him. He's a celebrity candidate who became a celebrity by running for president; he's been discussed, debated, and argued over on television, in newspapers, in political magazines, in gossip magazines, on the internet, among every age group, every demographic, every race, and in every subset of American life....

On top of all this, Obama has the lopsided money advantage, the lopsided enthusiasm advantage, the lopsided technology advantage, the lopsided earned media advantage, the lopsided paid media advantage, the lopsided volunteer and voter registration advantage, the lopsided issue advantage, the lopsided party advantage, and the lopsided ground army advantage.

All true. And that star quality, along with a once-in-a-generation national political realignment toward the Democrats, may be just enough to elect a black man President of the United States -- just enough to overcome conscious and unconscious prejudice plus the genuine cultural dissonance between many Americans and an African American who came to political awareness among black campus activists and South side Chicago church organizers. Even after a post-nomination-battle bounce, Obama polls only slightly ahead of McCain, barely outside the margin of error.

What a risk the Democratic Party is taking. It's a brave risk, and I think it's an intelligent one -- a doubling down on "the fierce urgency of now"-- but it's a huge risk. In a year when Gore, Kerry, Edwards, Clinton -- even, say, Gephardt -- could have won the presidency easily, we've electrified the world as well as ourselves (per the reader's observations above) by trying to get done something no one would have dreamed possible two or three years ago. The lack of experience, the unique perspective, the unique quality of mind and the almost surreal electoral savvy of this political sport of nature-- even leaving aside race, Obama's a terrific gamble.

Viral "rivals"

"Team of rivals" is starting to, er, rival "throw under the bus" as the campaign cliche of the year. Andrew Sullivan is now dreaming of an Obama cabinet containing two Clintons, one Gore, and one Edwards (why not two?)

Okay, Doris Kearns Goodwin is a very good writer, and Lincoln's cabinet had some strong personalities, but this notion of herding giants or coopting adversaries is really becoming a fetish -- maybe another wished-for antidote to Bush's coalition of the shilling.

Rivalry in a cabinet is not in itself a good. It may be a necessary byproduct of bringing the best people together. And competition of ideas is good. But there's no intrinsic benefit to throwing as many scorpions in a bottle as possible.

A Mighty Wind? Rachman Blasts Obama's Rhetoric

Golly gosh, Gideon! The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman, one of the most acute and fact-based columnists writing in English today, has charged that Obama the Orator is an emperor wearing no clothes:

his most famous phrases are vacuous. The "audacity of hope"? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. "The fierce urgency of now"? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this - other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president. [snip]

...his campaign is relying on some of the most clichéd and least challenging slogans in the American political lexicon: unity not division; the future not the past; change not stagnation; an end to "business as usual"; lobbyists are bad, the people are good. Or as the man himself puts it: "We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

Respect for Rachman sent me back to Obama's speeches. I've concluded that I'm not deluded, and that Rachman has missed the gist of Obama's grist.

Leave aside that for better or worse, Obama's been packing his speeches with policy prescriptions since floating off on the ozone a bit on Super Tuesday (see Janesville WI and Virginia). More broadly, Rachman cuts Obama's exhortations out of context and ignores his intricate diagnosis of the "now" that demands such 'fierce urgency.'

That diagnosis operates on the level of both policy and politics, or dare I say metapolitics. It wraps a straightforward liberal agenda in a bid for a new consensus and a reformed political process. Obama's not left of center, but he's making a subtle but quite open pitch to move the center left.

At the heart of Obama's pitch is Democrats' 'what's the matter with Kansas?' wonderment, a conviction that Americans have been voting against their core interests - economically, as income inequality widens and risk shifts to individuals; internationally, as we groan under the burden of Bush's jump-with-both-feet imperialism; and constitutionally, as we sign away our civil liberties (and abuse those of our captives) in the name of security.Obama has defined the damage on all these fronts forcefully and concretely.

Obama's response to this frustration (on the economic front at least) grows out his life project, the first half of which is recounted out in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. The drama at the heart of the book is Obama's rejection of identity politics and black militancy in favor of learning the slow, patient labor of organizing--helping disadvantaged people identify what they need most and helping them work the political system to get it.

That early work shaped Obama's political style, which is to avoid demonizing the opposition -- and co-opt enough of it to build a 'working majority.' The keynotes of his rhetoric - yes, we can; the audacity of hope; the fierce urgency of now; we are the change we've been seeking -- express his invitation to all of us to join this working majority.

In this regard, Obama's controversial acknowledgment of Reagan's legitimacy as a 'transformational' leader is crucial. Reagan, Obama said, "put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating." In effect, Obama is saying, the country was right to swing right in 1980 -- and it's ready to swing left now." But he doesn't call it 'left' -- he casts his economic agenda as necessary to restoring "balance" and "fairness." Edwards emphasized the present divide between two Americas; Obama, noting the same ills, keeps his focus on past, future and ideal:

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.

Obama's policies, as he often points out, reflect what is right now a virtual consensus Democratic agenda. His metapolitics is a critique of process: "we need to do more than turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policies; we have to turn the page on the politics that helped make those policies possible." That means cutting lobbyist influence; acknowledging that the opposition occasionally has an idea in its head; calling out Rovian campaign tactics and avoiding them himself (an ideal he hasn't always lived up to). His cure is part legislative fix of the process (lobbying and campaign reform) and part personal example. Obama uses his electoral success to date to argue explicitly that he can build a working majority for Democrats. He's used the Clintons' nastier attacks to argue that Bill failed and Hillary will fail to build a working majority for Democrats because of their long-established "truthiness" problems.

There's nothing vapid about this package. The policy agenda is explicit, the process diagnosis is detailed, and the pitch to build a working majority is indeed built on the urgency of this moment -- a moment in which, as David Frum recently pointed out in Rachman's FT, a generation of young voters is emerging that's likely to be voting against Bush into the 2060s.

At the heart of Obama's case that he can build a working majority is the evidence of the moment:

And we are showing America what change looks like. From the snows of Iowa to the sunshine of South Carolina, we have built a movement of young and old; rich and poor; black and white; Latino, Asian and Native American. We've reached Americans of all political stripes who are more interested in turning the page than turning up the heat on our opponents. That's how Democrats will win in November and build a majority in Congress. Not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but by choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change.

Many sense that unity being forged as he speaks. He strikes chords across the political spectrum (see the reaction to his speeches on foxnews.com) . And he's hiding nothing in a very detailed policy agenda.

Related posts:
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
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

Hillary Gets Motherly II

Hillary’s close-out in the Austin debate could be her pre-New Hampshire tear-up moment squared. I believe it struck a deep chord, what perhaps is and should be Hillary’s dominant campaign chord: her bid to nurture the nation, to be mother of us all.

If Hillary were a man, her governing philosophy would be dubbed paternalistic. She wants government to take care of us. When Obama says “yes we can,” that “we” is fruit of his bottom-up political trajectory: he began public life as an organizer. Hillary’s “we” is a royal “we,” a Queen Mother “we.” In her stump speeches a while back, and in her Super Tuesday speech, she fused herself with the Statue of Liberty as provider of refuge for the downtrodden:

We must continue to be a nation that strives always to give each of our children a better future, a nation of optimists who believe our best days are yet to come, a nation of idealists, holding fast to our deepest values, that we are all created equal, that we all deserve to fulfill our God given potential, that we are destined for progress together.

It's the ideal inscribed on the base of the Statute of Liberty in this great city that has overlooked our harbor through wars and depression and the dark days of September 11, the words we all know that give voice to America's embrace -- "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" -- a constant reminder that here in America, we face our challenges and we embrace all of our people.

So today we say with one voice -- give us the child who wants to learn, give us the people in need of work, give us the veterans who need our care. We say give us this economy to rebuild and this war to end. Give us this nation to heal, this world to lead, this moment to seize.

The tear-up moment in New Hampshire tapped into this self image, albeit with a strong tincture, as Maureen Dowd was pleased to highlight, of self-regard or self pity: it’s hard, but I keep trucking because I want so badly to do so much for so many. The Austin peroration started in the same vein –

But people often ask me, how do you do it, you know, how do you keep going…

But it packed a much more concentrated maternal clinch—perhaps because the object of her care was less abstract. Here, the stand-in for all of us was not the huddled masses at Liberty’s base but the “Intrepid” wounded warriors home from Iraq:

….with all of the challenges that I've had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.

You know, a few months ago I was honored to be asked, along with Senator McCain, as the only two elected officials to speak at the opening of the Intrepid Center at Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, a center designed to take care of and provide rehabilitation for our brave young men and women who have been injured in war. And I remember sitting up there and watching them come in: those who could walk were walking; those who had lost limbs were trying with great courage to get themselves in without the help of others; some were in wheelchairs and some were on gurneys. And the speaker representing these wounded warriors had had most of his face disfigured by the results of fire from a roadside bomb.

You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country. And I resolved at a very young age that I'd been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what motivates me in this campaign.

Rereading this gave me chills --even as I weighed how calculated it might be. (Seeing it live didn't.) I don’t pretend I can read the tangle of motivations powering Hillary – or for that matter, the motives of anyone else with the odd mixture of megalomania and humility that makes it possible to mount a credible run for the Presidency. But here --Obama supporter that I am -- I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She does want to bind up the nation’s wounds, and she thinks there’s something in her little black surgeon’s bag for everyone. (The link with the 71 year-old McCain casts an odd Mom-and-Pop-gazing-down sidelight on Obama.)

The final sentences in Hillary's Austin peroration cast the nation as an extended friends and family circle:

And you know, whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about. Thanks.

My wife points out to me that Hillary here adapts an Edwards line (and the alchemy casts an interesting light on the plagiarism debate). Edwards said in several debates about himself and his opponents: we’re fine, we’ll be fine. There was a two-Americas bite to this: “we,” the wealthy and privileged candidates, will be fine because we have money and government-supplied healthcare. Hillary softens this: she and Obama will be fine because of their personal networks. Then there’s a segue: surely she’s not suggesting that the American people have weak friends-and-family ties, or that this election is about strengthening them. She’s sliding from the personal safety net to the governmental. And that segue is her governing philosophy. It takes a village. Thanks.

Janesville: Obama Gets Down to Tax Brass

Janesville, Wisconsin, February 13, 2008: Obama gets down to tax brass. That is, to redistributing a bit of income and reversing the rising tide of inequality. So how's he going to build a "working mandate" for an unabashedly liberal agenda - mainly a set of income subsidies, risk relief and job creation measures?

The sweep of social spending proposed in this speech is pretty breathtaking. There's a series of measures to shore up the income and security of the working poor and lower middle class -- minimum wage with a yearly COLA raise, expanded earned income tax credit, mortgage interest tax credit, a tax cut for working families, payroll tax elimination for seniors with less than $50k income, $4,000 tuition tax credit, expanded child care tax credit, expanded Family Medical Leave Act.

Then there's risk transfers: required direct deposit retirement accounts, debt relief for those who went bankrupt because of medical expenses -- and, uber alles, subsidies to make health care affordable. Finally there's public investment to spur employment: $60 billion for infrastructure, $150 billion for "green energy" investment. Whew.

The conservative soft spot for Obama notwithstanding, their guns are sure to be trained swiftly on the economic package laid out in its entirety here. George Will, for example, is going to have to rethink his recent outburst of Obamania:

The way to achieve Edwards's and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington, and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee — an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

Will is half-right. In the Janesville speech, Obama advances an Edwardian agenda, complete with a hat-tip to Edwards' precept that "this country should be rewarding work, not wealth." And he denounces tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy and the influence of lobbyists on the tax code and legislation generally. But it's also true that he presents this agenda as "an adult aiming to reform the real world" -- and avoids the demonization trap. His calls to national unity that many find so stirring and that some find vacuous are wrapped round his call to reverse the tide of income inequality that's been rising for thirty-plus years.

In fact, he casts income redistribution -- "at a time when we have greater income disparity in the country than we've seen since the first year of the Great Depression" -- as an imperative of fulfilling the American Dream. That's his key to winning the center.

There are several steps to this move-the-center-left gambit. First, Obama frames income redistribution at this time as simple fairness and a collective responsibility:

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.

"Balance" suggests the center: the nation has careered rightward. "Responsibility" is a Republican buzzword -- but Obama applies it to the community rather than the individual. And "fairness" - who's going to quarrel with that?

One of Obama's favorite formulations is "we're not blameless." The 'we' can be the nation, the Democratic party, and even in some instances himself -- he's used this formula to confess to his own campaign's excesses in sniping at Hillary. At Janesville, it frames his economic agenda:

We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control. The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington - the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced.

Second, Obama makes it a point to acknowledge countervailing realities. At Janesville, he denounces NAFTA and calls for "fair trade" agreements -- without specifying how such agreements can include "protections for American workers." But he also grants:

Now we know that we cannot put up walls around our economy. We know that we cannot reverse the tide of technology that's allowed businesses to send jobs wherever there's an internet connection. We know that government cannot solve all our problems, and we don't expect it to.

Third, contra the WSJ's Daniel Henninger, who accuses Obama of purveying "a message that is largely negative...a depressing message", Obama casts the current "imbalance" as a temporary aberration -- a condition we have more than enough strength to fix:

But that doesn't mean we have to accept an America of lost opportunity and diminished dreams. Not when we still have the most productive, highly-educated, best-skilled workers in the world. Not when we still stand on the cutting edge of innovation, and science, and discovery. Not when we have the resources and the will of a decent, generous people who are ready to share in the burdens and benefits of a global economy. I am certain that we can keep America's promise - for this generation and the next.

Finally, Obama makes shoring up the working poor and middle an imperative of the "unity" he always affirms, and which is often ridiculed as feel-good puffery. Here, unity is "shared sacrifice and shared prosperity":

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.

None of this really new. Obama recognizes that. What's new, he tells us, is the context -- a time when income inequality has reached new heights, and tax cuts for the wealthy have reached new extremes, and lobbyists control legislation, and the national wealth is hemorrhaging into Iraq. On the level of values, he's calling for renewal and return rather than innovation. And like almost all U.S. politicians, he brings it back to the American Dream:

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. That is the promise we must keep in our time, and I look forward to working and fighting to make it real as President of the United States. Thank you.

Footnote: How can Obama pay for all this? Roll back some of the Bush tax cuts? Probably. Get troops out of Iraq quickly? Dicey. Forget about the $150 billion for green energy -- or, say, 90% of it? Probably. Question, Senator: what about military spending? Looked at any big-ticket weapons programs lately?

Related posts:
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
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

The Lipitor Election

For a moment this morning, I stepped back from thinking about the individual candidates and let a surge of hope for the country as a whole wash over me. Like most Americans, I've felt that the country has gone off the rails in recent years -- in preemptive aggression, massive tax cuts and deficits, a tenfold increase in lobbying, and, most importantly, in the Bush Administration's shredding of the Bill of Rights and assault on the separation of powers. I thought, 'the great virtue of a democracy is that it can self-correct -- as long as it's still a democracy. But are we?'

Doors were slamming on multiple avenues of choice and change. Start with the K Street Project, an enterprise corrupt to its core and breathtaking in its arrogance. Think about the premise - to coerce lobbying firms into hiring agents of one party only and to contribute to one party only. That's not only pay-to-play, pure and simple, but a move toward a one-party state. Couple that with ever more radical gerrymandering techniques, a national Rove-led attempt to disenfranchise as many poor voters as possible in the name of stopping imaginary 'election fraud', the selective prosecution of Democratic elected officials, the stacking of the judiciary with right wing ideologues who would support the power of the state at every turn. Then pile on the Bush Administration's assertions of unchecked executive power - in signing statements that negate key parts of laws passed by Congress, in twisted legal documents that assert the President's right to abrogate any law in the name of national security, and in the assumed power to deem anyone the executive branch chooses an "illegal combatant" who can be detained indefinitely and tortured at will.

You had to wonder: could restrictions on media freedom and assertions that Administration critics were security risks and ultimately "illegal combatants" be far behind? (Bill Kristol, who called for the NYT to be prosecuted for breaking the warrantless wiretapping story, was fired up, ready to go.) The path to step-by-step demolition of democracy was nicely marked out by Vladimir Putin, embraced as a soulmate by Bush.

Those dangers are still real. Elect a Giuliani or a Romney, and who knows what new executive powers they would seize in the wake of a major terrorist attack? But in the interim, democracy has struck back. A self-correction is in mid-course. Political choice remained real enough, and the media free and robust enough, to make it clear to two-thirds of the country that we were led to war on false premises; that the war was disastrous to our national interests; that the nation was being bankrupted to fund tax cuts for the wealthy; and that the environment was being terminally neglected. And so, in 2006, despite all the gerrymandering, the imbalance (over many years prior at least) in campaign funds, the 95% incumbency return rates, we had enough of a turnover to change the balance of power. On a state level, changeovers in legislatures and governorships reduced the overall power of Republican assaults on voter eligibility and equal access to polls.

Now, say what you like about this primary season, the choices are real and manifold; the debates have their moments of lucidity amid all the idiocy; money has been proved already not be decisive, and there is no way anyone claim that the results are not in the hands of voters. In the general election, there's still a danger that the electoral college or faulty voting equipment will skew the results. But those dangers (substituting old-style ballot box fraud for dicey electronic equipment) are as old as the Republic.

The electorate is smarter than all of us. That dawned on me about a dozen years ago, while I was reading a biography of Eisenhower; it occurred to me that I probably would have voted for Stevenson as my parents did, and I would have been wrong. Later I came to feel the same way about Reagan - who did not 'cause' the Soviet Union's breakup but certainly midwifed it, smoothed the glide path, gave Gorbachev the running room to do the job. So the electorate is at least smarter than I am, and I'm no dumber than the average voter.

That's not to say that the electorate doesn't make mistakes (sometimes pushed over the edge by our creaky Constitutional machinery) , just that it always eventually corrects them -- as long as the arteries of choice remain unclogged enough for information to flow.

Plaque builds slowly; our hearts can function with up to 95% blockage (as Bill Clinton's did just prior to his quintuple bypass). Democracy is resilient (if ultimately killable) like that. Sweeping statements that we're not a democracy because of lobbying, or incumbency, or widening income gaps are false as long as there's enough 'democratic function' to change course. I can see a descent past that line. But we're not there yet.

Short of a terror-induced executive power grab, the greatest threat to democratic functioning is the proliferation of lobbying. The most important chord in Obama's aria melody might be his promise to change the rules of the game so that lobbying is held in check. Edwards of course also promises to "take on" "lobbyists", but the weakness there is personalizing the battle, as if the problem will go away if an evil coterie of individuals is smitten. On this question Robert Reich's Supercapitalism is helpful. According to Reich, the escalation in lobbying is a function of supercapitalism, i.e. the hypercompetition in which each company and industry strives for competitive advantage on the legislative front (as in every other arena). Companies lobby not because they're conspiring to squeeze out the public interest, but to fend off rivals' attempts to gain advantageous legislation. The result is near-complete corruption of the legislative process as companies compete to buy legislation. The good news is that corporations are not reveling in this relentless arms race. Changing the rules of the game may be in everyone's interest.

Obama and McCain may both have the will and the skills to do this. Both have had more than one success on this front. Another day, another post for that one.

Nod to Dodd

Those of us who consider the rollback of unchecked executive power essential to the survival of democracy in America owe a nod to Dodd, the only candidate to put 'restoring the Constitution' at the center of his campaign. Last night, his farewell email to supporters included this pledge:

The fight to restore the Constitution and stop retroactive immunity does not end with my Presidential campaign. FISA will come back in a few weeks and my pledge to filibuster ANY bill that includes retroactive immunity remains operative.

Neither Obama nor Clinton nor Edwards has devoted enough attention to ending torture, indefinite detention, warrantless spying, and the Bush Administration's insanely expansive 'interpretation' of the 'unitary executive' theory, which boils down to a free pass to the President to violate any law at his discretion.

I watched Obama's "closer" speech before the Iowa caucuses, and it included a couple of brief gestures toward the importance of restoring "American values" and our place in the world, i.e. ending torture and unlawful imprisonment. Those were the largest applause lines in the speech. He needs to do more on this front.