Professor Obama unsettles liberal students

Thanks to a long article w/ online document dump in the New York Times, I'm eager to explore Obama's teaching career through syllabi, exams etc. For starters, this byte in the article jumped out:

For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws that crowded blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.

Herein lie some of the roots of Obama's qualified praise of Reagan, not only in the primary campaign but in The Audacity of Hope:

That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.

This intellectual openness, more than the policies Obama has pursued, explains the respect he's won from conservative colleagues throughout his career. When he says he's willing to consider cutting the corporate tax rate if/after lobbyist-written corporate tax loopholes are closed, or that he's not against all wars, just dumb wars, or not against free trade but in favor of fair trade, or that working class white resentments have some just cause, he's not trying to split a difference but to incorporate insights he regards as legitimate.

When Obama said during the primary that the Republican Party was "the party of ideas" for many years, he meant it -- and he fudged when Hillary attacked, in part because he'd screwed up the time frame when he said that Republicans had been the party of ideas "for the last ten or fifteen years." Clearly he thinks that Republican creativity came sooner, in the 70s and 80s, and had some legitimacy.

"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

Obama's 'what I meant' moments

Repelled as I've been by Hillary's "Obama loves Reagan" attack line, it must be admitted that Obama has an unfortunate tendency to dig deeper when he's in a hole. It is really not true that he didn't praise Reagan's policies. He did, implicitly, by acknowledging that Americans felt that government had grown unaccountable after "the excesses of the 60s and 70s." To say that the Republicans have been "the party of ideas" because they "challenged conventional wisdom" also implies that there was a there there - his later qualification suggests that those ideas are stale now, but not that at least some of them weren't good ideas at some point. In fact, his time frame in the 'party of ideas' comment was screwed up. I suspect he meant to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas in the 1980s; these ideas were corrupted, became self parodies, were driven to an extreme in "the last ten or fifteen years." It's the time confusion that's enabled Hillary to suggest that he spoke approvingly of 'bad ideas' like huge tax cuts for the rich, wars of choice, government by lobbyist, budgeting by earmark, etc. etc. since that's basically been the Republican agenda since they won control of Congress in 1994.

Another time Obama 'dug deeper' was in the YouTube debate, when he said he'd meet five rogue leaders in the first year of his presidency. Hillary was absolutely right to call him out; he sounded naive. I suspect he didn't fully absorb the question and didn't mean to say that he'd meet all five personally within a year--just that, on principle, it makes sense to be willing to meet when there's something to be negotiated. But in post-debate dueling he went the other route and tried to suggest that Hillary wouldn't be willing enough to negotiate with rogues.

The Lying Clinton Meme

Barack Obama seemed hesitant as he went after Bill Clinton on Good Morning America today - lots of blinking, lots of pauses. Still, this carefully measured stop-lying-about-my-record counterattack may well be effective, because without using the word "lie," Obama chimed several times in several minutes on the Clintons-can't-quite-tell-the-truth meme that is lodged, with good reason, in our collective psyche:

You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling...He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

I completely understand his wanting to promote his wife's candidacy, and Michelle is out there doing the same thing on my behalf. But I do think think that there should be standards of honesty in any political discourse. That's part of the change I want to bring about. If you have something that just directly contradicts the facts coming from a former president I think that's a problem because people presume that a former president if going to have more credibility. I think there are certain responsibilities that come with that.

I understand him wanting to promote his wife's candidacy. She's got a record that she can run on. But I think it's important that we try to maintain some -- you know, level of honesty and candor during the course of the campaign. If we don't, then we feed the cynicism that has led so many Americans to be turned off to politics."

What I don't want is a situation in which we are so driven to just win that we are willing to say anything, and over time, you know the American people just get turned off because they don't believe what politicians say (my emphasis).

As is usually the case with Obama, his choice of words displays simultaneously his mode of "fighting" - that is, criticizing his opponents - and his mode of "uniting" - acknowledging the element of legitimacy in his opponent's efforts. (As Mark Kleiman points out today, Obama is "perfectly sincere about wanting to make major progressive change without using demonization as a primary political tactic." That goes for Bill Clinton as well as Ronald Reagan.) His tone was more in sorrow than in anger, his stance that of an adult calling timeout when a child's game overheats. Almost every allegation was couched in either praise of (Bill) Clinton or acknowledgment that his support for Hillary is itself legitimate. The rhetoric was masterful; again, I'm not so sure about the delivery. It's that hesitancy that I think made me lean toward Hillary after watching several debates this past fall.

The moment of Clintonian dishonesty that ABC focused on in the aftermath was not that egregious. According to Bill, Obama “said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas." Obama actually said, ``I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.''

Okay, Obama didn't say the ideas were 'good,' but generally, challenging conventional wisdom is thought to be a good thing. Perhaps Obama got his time frame wrong; earlier in the interview, he had acknowledged that the American people were ready for Reagan's call to shrink government, strongly implying that doing so was a "good idea": "I think they [the American people] 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." (He might have added, but didn't, that "peace through strength" was a good idea, in that our military buildup pressured the Soviets into attempting the reforms that unraveled their economy.)

Obama made his comment more inflammatory by shifting the time frame from the Clinton years to the present--a frame in which the only "ideas" Republicans have acted on are huge tax cuts for the wealthy, government by lobbyists and budgeting by earmarks, and war of choice to preempt imaginary threats.

Obama is on firmer ground calling Bill Clinton out for dismissing his claim to have consistently opposed the war in Iraq as a "fairy tale." There Clinton was engaging in a classic smear-the-Senator maneuver, mis-characterizing up-or-down votes as complete representations of a policy position. Like most Democrats in favor of withdrawing active combat troops from Iraq, Obama did not vote to cut off funding for them while they're there. End of story.