“The Obama campaign has yet to reach bottom in its race-baiter accusations…They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.” Taylor Marsh, Ph.D? A Clinton supporter from Day One, he at first dismissed Obama as merely the newest in a long tradition of “beautiful losers,” like Adlai Stevenson and Bill Bradley. (If you come ’round here often, you can probably guess that didn’t sit too well with me. In fact, it’s basically the same argument recently made by friend and colleague David Greenberg, before he went the way of the Great White Hope.) Well, if today’s TNR piece is any indication, historian Sean Wilentz only knows how to lose ugly. Despite the fact that Wilentz has been ranting worse than Krugman for most of this election cycle, I’ve been inclined to give him a pass, partly as a professional courtesy of sorts to a well-esteemed historian of whom I once thought quite highly, and partly because of his well-publicized Dylan fandom. Well, no more. Wilentz has been writing increasingly blatant pro-Clinton spin pieces throughout the campaign, which is his wont as a Clinton supporter, I suppose. But here he’s penned a shrill and intemperate screed which, frankly, is more embarrassing than anything else. It’s the type of angry, weirdly conspiratorial rant you’d expect to be written by an anonymous, and possibly drunk, Salon poster, not one of the more venerable American historians in the profession.
Am I overstating the case? Well, let’s take a look at some of the spleen-venting on display here: “After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama’s promises of a pure, soul-cleansing ‘new’ politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp–over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress–will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.” Calculated, deeply dishonest conduct? Ploy? Manipulative illusion? Tell us what you really think, Prof. Wilentz.
And that’s just the first paragraph. It gets worse. Check out this unsightly sentence: “As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign’s most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads.” Riiight. I really started to buy your case after that fifth negative adjective or so.
I’d spend time refuting Wilentz point for point if I thought he was trying to make a reasonable case here. But he spends most of the article just shrieking “race baiter race baiter race baiter!“, punctuated with occasional whiny, Clintonesque accusations of pro-Obama media bias. (One of the many targets of Wilentz’s wrath, Frank Rich, has recently pointed out the problems with that line of argument.) But, in general terms, in order to buy what Wilentz is selling here, you’d have to believe all of the following:
And so on. Meanwhile, in between the purging of bile (Obama’s “cutthroat, fraudulent politics,” “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since Willie Horton, “the most insidious” since Reagan in Philadelphia), Wilentz trots out stale and rather sad race-conspiracy talking points from pro-Clinton hives like TalkLeft, such as Jesse Jackson Jr. chiding superdelegate Emanuel Cleaver for standing in the way of a black president. (Please. As if female superdelegates weren’t receiving similar calls from the Clinton camp. Clinton even made the explicit gender case — again — in the debate tonight.) I dunno, perhaps this is what you should expect from a thinker who cites Philip Roth as an expert on black-white relations. (Although, fwiw, Roth’s voting Obama.) Nevertheless, Wilentz has crossed over the line here from politically-minded historian to unhinged demagogue, and made himself to look absolutely ridiculous in the process. It’ll be hard to read his historical work in the future without this hyperbolic and ill-conceived polemic in mind.
Hey there, colleague. I had (blissfully) missed Wilentz’s crap until I saw this post. I, too, used to respect him. Wow. I really do wonder how much he has to be drinking right now. I think it would take a lot, to have gone quite that far off the deep end. I’m still boggling. Anyway, thanks for the pointer, and for your eloquent refutation. I also commented right on the TNR piece, as I couldn’t help myself.
(And yeah, you know me – did you know I was reading your blog? Thanks for all the Obama news/analysis; it’s been great.)
Kevin,
Thanks for writing this. My jaw was on the floor reading Wilentz’s piece. What a spectacular fall from professional grace. I realize that he’s friends with the Clintons and probably sees his hopes of being their Schlesinger fading with every passing day. But this was extremely embarrassing.
One doesn’t have to absolve Obama’s campaign of all fault to see that the Clinton campaign made some egregious errors. In fact, it’s interesting that Wilentz makes no mention of Obama’s expressed regret in the SC debate about the race memo that his campaign sent out. Doesn’t fit the thesis, I guess. Neither did Hillary Clinton’s expressed regret about her husband’s Jesse Jackson comment this weekend in New Orleans.
Which brings up the most laughable part of Wilentz’s piece: his explanation of Bill Clinton’s Jesse Jackson comment. We all remember that Clinton was asked nothing whatsoever about Jackson. It was clear to everyone that Bill Clinton was attempting to marginalize Obama as the ‘black candidate.’ But Wilentz offers the ludicrous explanation that Bill Clinton was actually being modest and insightful with his comment before being victimized by those nasty Obama race-baiters.
You do a fantastic job of providing all that would need to be believed to accept Wilentz’s conspiracy theory.
P.S. One of my favorite lines was the following–did Mark Penn write this for Wilentz?
“Hillary Clinton’s unexpected popular victory in Nevada and her crushing Super Tuesday wins in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and California seemed, according to media reports, to have been offset by Obama’s more numerous victories in much smaller states that Democrats are highly unlikely to win in a general election.”
That Greenberg piece was the worst piece of narcissistic horseshit I’ve read in a long time. It never ceases to amaze me the way that certain white people think that everything has to be about them. The whole Obama phenomenon is just the result of trendy white kids wanting to be down their hip black friend and make up for their guilt. If you’re Latino, Asian, African or whatever, your support for Obama is pretty much completely meaningless, because this political campaign is nothing more than a hiccup of white fantasy role-playing. As if.
If anybody compares Obama to Apple Macintosh one more time, I’m going to slit my wrist. (Don’t hold me to that.)
Kevin,
I appreciated your critique. It was clear and easy to read.
Wilentz’s piece shocked me. I don’t have an academic background — I’m just an ordinary, unemotional voter, looking for intelligent insights to inform my vote. I thought Wilentz, given his credentials and stature, was a good source of intelligent insight…until I read his piece on Obama.
Having no advanced academic background, I’m not familiar with how one adequately supports positions like the ones Wilentz puts forth. But even I could tell, within the first couple of sentences, loaded with negative adjectives as they were, that this wasn’t going to be an objective or well-reasoned piece. He seemed to be pretending that he was approaching this thing with the full weight of his academic bona fides, but I could tell it was terribly biased.
That’s what bothers me so much: readers like me, perhaps intelligent but not heavily educated, look to people like Wilentz to provide well-reasoned insight that we sometimes don’t have the time or the resources to cultivate on our own. I felt like he was trying to defraud me. I finished reading his piece feeling pissed off.
On a political blog I regularly read (Talking Points Memo), I tried to address Professor Wilentz’s piece by looking at it from an African American perspective (I’m white and so is Wilentz) and to examine one of your points (I’ll quote you here): “That African-Americans unaffiliated with the Obama campaign such as Jim Clyburn and Donna Brazile, among countless others, who took umbrage at the dismissive tone of the LBJ/fairy tale remarks (which I’ve said were not racist, just tone-deaf) were also “deep undercover,” at the sinister behest of Obama’s race-baiting shock troops.”
I noted how insulting it is to African Americans to assert that they aren’t capable of understanding why or with whom they were angry. I thought his assertion was terribly arrogant and presumptuous, and only further insulted Black people who felt genuinely offended by the Clintons’ remarks.
It was surprising to me how many responses I got from people who DO sound like they have academic backgrounds, taking me to task for critiquing Mr. Wilentz’s “thoughtful and well-reasoned” piece. Seriously! I took a bit of their intellectual bullying and was not really equipped to rebut their verbal gymnastics, but they still sounded crazy to me. And so did Professor Wilentz.
Thanks for letting me know I’m not crazy.
Sincerely,
Laura Jordan
Laura:
I find it hard to understand why you think that Brazile is un-affiliated with the Obama campaign. After all, she did leak (to Politico.com) the first version of the race card memo that the Obama campaign eventually released to activists in South Carolina. How did she get hold of that internal Obama campaign attack document before it was ‘released’? And why did she take it upon herself to leak it? Unless she was one of the ‘activists’ for whom it was intended? Here is what Ben Smith said at that time:
“Asked in an e-mail from Politico about the situation Friday, she (Brazile) responded by sending over links to five cases in which the Clintons and their surrogates talked about Obama, along with a question: “Is Clinton using a race-baiting strategy against Obama?”. Brazile later said she wasn’t intending to raise the question herself, just to pass on a question that was being asked by others.”
It really seems to me that Wilentz is right in describing her as an Obama surrogate.
I agree with you that these were at worst ‘tone-deaf’ comments – but that is not the way Clyburn and Brazile still see them – even today some time after the Obama campaign has ostensibly apologized for issuing the memo. For instance, look at what Rep Clyburn recently said about Bill Clinton:
“How do you play the race card on the ex-president of the United States? How do you do it? I would like to know how that’s done and who they [are]. And I’d like to see these memos he’s talking about. That’s what’s so bizarre about this,”
Well, for the answer as to ‘who’ and ‘how’ – Clyburn really doesn’t have to look very far. After all, he was one of many who previously exaggerated and misconstrued Bill Clinton’s fairy tale comment about the press’ coverage of Obama position the Iraq War – when he said things like this:
“To call that dream a fairy tale, which Bill Clinton seemed to be doing, could very well be insulting to some of us”
How can a comment made purely about the press coverage of an opponent’s policy position on one of the most important issues facing us today – be regarded in any way as racially insensitive? I think we run a real risk here of stifling legitimate debate of the issues.
Now, if Clyburn really wanted to find what he calls ‘these memos’, he should have no trouble at all. He need only ask the Obama Campaign. After all, Obama did acknowledge issuing the SC race card attack memo when specifically confronted with it by Tim Russert – during a debate. The only thing that is really bizarre about this is that Rep Clyburn doesn’t remember all this. But, I really take his statement above with a pinch of salt.
Later, when confronted with the memo (even after Obama had apologized for it), the Obama Campaign were still on their race message. Here is what Candice Tolliver (a campaign spokesperson) said (with regard to the memo):
“Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation or is there something bigger behind all of this?”
Regards,
Angus Maitland