“In the race for the White House, lefties seem to have the upper hand. No matter who wins in November, six of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That’s a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.” In the WP, authors Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explain why all your Oval Offices are belong to us, the lefties. We also swelled the ranks of both my undergraduate and graduate cohorts, whatever that’s worth.
Tag: Ronald Reagan
End of an Era.
A personal plug: Also out in stores this week, my fourth collaboration with Democratic pundit Bill Press (1, 2, 3): Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and not a moment too soon). If you couldn’t guess from the title, it basically argues that, just as the New Deal era lasted from 1932-1968, the Age of Conservatism that began in ’64 with Goldwater, hit its stride in the 70’s and 80’s, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and, of course, Dubya, has now hit the proverbial, inevitable, historical brick wall. So let’s survey the wreckage: On one hand, from Katrina to Abramoff and Ed Meese to Alberto Gonzales, right-wing attempts at governance over the past thirty years have usually degenerated into dismal experiments in cronyism and/or incompetence. On the other, conservatism has strayed so far from its ideological roots in the Reagan and particularly Dubya eras that the likes of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley would never even recognize it. (Case in point, the Ron Paul candidacy, wherein a traditional Taft conservative ended up being treated by his esteemed Republican contemporaries in every debate as either a fringe joke or a terrorist-sympathizing dupe.) Either way, the right-wing ascendancy is over, and it’s our time again now (and, though it’s not reflected in this tome, I think y’all know who I’d prefer to be carrying our progressive standard into battle in 2009 and beyond…)
Lakoff on the Dem Divide.
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There is a reason that Obama recently spoke of Reagan. Reagan understood that you win elections by drawing support from independents and the opposite side. He understood what unified the country so that he could lead it according to his vision.
Obama understands the importance of values, connection, authenticity, trust, and identity. But his vision is deeply progressive. He proposes to lead in a very different direction than Reagan. Crucially, he adds to that vision a streetwise pragmatism: his policies have to do more than look good on paper; they have to bring concrete material results to millions of struggling Americans in the lower and middle classes. They have to meet the criteria of a community organizer. The Clintonian policy wonks don’t seem to understand any of this. They have trivialized Reagan’s political acumen as an illegitimate triumph of personality over policy. They confuse values with programs. They have underestimated authenticity and trust… This nomination campaign is about much more than the candidates. It about a major split within the Democratic party. The candidates are reflecting that split. Here are three of the major “issues” dividing Democrats. First, triangulation: moving to the right — adopting right-wing positions — to get more votes. Bill Clinton did it and Hillary believes in it. It is what she means by “bipartisanship.” Obama means the opposite by “bipartisanship.” To Obama, it is a recognition that central progressive moral principles are fundamental American principles. For him, bipartisanship means finding people who call themselves “conservatives” or “independents,” but who share those central American values with progressives. Obama thus doesn’t have to surrender or dilute his principles for the sake of “bipartisanship.” The second is incrementalism: Hillary believes in getting lots of small carefully crafted policies through, one at a time, step by small step, real but almost unnoticed. Obama believes in bold moves and the building of a movement in which the bold moves are demanded by the people and celebrated when they happen. This is the reason why Hillary talks about “I,” I,” “I” (the crafter of the policy) and Obama talks about “you” and “we” (the people who demand it and who jointly carry it out). The third is interest group politics: Hillary looks at politics through interests and interest groups, seeking policies that satisfy the interests of such groups. Obama’s thinking emphasizes empathy over interest groups. He also sees empathy as central to the very idea of America. The result is a positive politics grounded in empathy and caring that is also patriotic and uplifting. For a great many Democrats, these are the real issues. These real differences between the candidates reflect real differences within the party. Whoever gets the nomination, these differences will remain. It is time for the press, the pundits, the pollsters, and the political scientists to take these issues seriously. |
Linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff — also the recent author of Don’t Think of an Elephant — attempts to explain what he sees as the crucial differences between Clinton and Obama.
Lies, Damned Lies, and “Dunce-Cap Dems.”
While the NYT, in venerable (and dismaying) establishment form, swung behind Senator Clinton (and John McCain) — despite contradicting their 2006 endorsement — this morning, others in the commentariat are not so sanguine about the prospect of a Clinton restoration:
“Obama’s best hope is that Democratic voters aren’t as dumb as Hillary and Bill Clinton think they are.” Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter decries the Clintons’ cynical strategy of misinformation. “Obama is stronger among well-educated Democrats, according to polls. So the Clintons figure that maybe their base among less educated white Democrats might be receptive to an argument that assumes they’re dumb. Less well-educated equals gullible in the face of bogus attack ads. That’s the logic, and the Clintons are testing it in South Carolina before trying it in Super Tuesday states. They are also road-testing major distortions of Obama’s positions on abortion, Social Security and the minimum wage.“
USA Today experiences Clinton fatigue. “[H]is famous lack of discipline, angry outbursts on the campaign trail and habit of drawing attention to himself all suggest that voters have every right to wonder how this would actually work.“
But the NYT‘s Matthew Continetti senses a pattern, and calls shenanigans on red-faced Bill’s recent (and conveniently timed) public screeds. “It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans. But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call ‘strategic emotion,’ the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press.“
Claiming “‘if Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander,’ E.J. Dionne remembers when Clinton loved Reagan. “His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to ‘set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.’ Clinton’s ‘readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,’ the paper wrote, ‘is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.’“
And, despite having written Primary Colors, TIME‘s Joe Klein just can’t wrap his mind around it all: “Let me get this straight: Obama wins Iowa. In a desperate move — unprecedented for an ex-President in American politics — Bill Clinton decides to impede Obama’s momentum by inserting himself into the campaign. He attacks Obama on an almost daily basis, sometimes falsely. He makes a spectacle of himself. And then he blames the press for not covering the substance of the campaign?”
Update: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has had enough: “I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a ‘fairy tale’) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it…we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.“
The Meaning of Reagan.
If you haven’t been following the recent flap about Ronald Reagan among the Democrats, I’ve been covering it in the comment thread here. Basically, the point Obama was making to the Reno Gazette-Journal, which Clinton and Edwards have both since jumped on, is this: For all his lousy policies — and Obama has said before they were lousy — Ronald Reagan was without a doubt a paradigm-changing candidate in 1980. In that election, he encouraged many “Reagan Democrats” to switch parties to back his candidacy, thus forging a new coalition which enabled right-wingers not only to win most presidential elections since but to pass legislation that is more conservative than the mainstream. Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, on the other hand, was not paradigm-changing. He won a plurality of votes in a three-way race and, by 1994, was already on the defensive again.
So, in 2008, the Democrats can back a possible paradigm-changer such as Barack Obama, a candidate with considerable independent and crossover appeal who might well be able to forge a new progressive governing coalition (as Reagan did for the Right.) Or we can back a polarizing figure such as Senator Clinton, one whom almost half the country is already dead set against and who rests her appeal on repeating the same cautious, poll-tested GOP-lite centrism we had under eight years of her husband…assuming, of course, she can eke out a victory over John McCain or his ilk anyway. (And there’s John Edwards too, of course: While that’s definitely more of an open question, I made my Obama-over-Edwards case here.)
As I said in the comment thread linked above, when it comes to a choice between Clinton or Obama, it would seem a no-brainer, particularly when you factor in her campaign’s tactics of late.
Update: To help put the Clintons’ attacks today in perspective, a December 22 press release from Hillary Clinton lists Reagan among her “favorite presidents.” Oops.
Reagan gets Racial.
“The upshot was that by 1980, race and ideology had become so commingled that one’s stand on racial issues served as a proxy for one’s partisan preference. Previously, economic issues had been the chief dividing line between the parties. By 1980, though, according to the Edsalls, the changes that followed the civil rights movement had crystallized, and racial politics figured just as strongly.” Slate‘s resident historian David Greenberg weighs in on the recent furor at the NYT (and elsewhere) over Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign kickoff speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the 1964 Schwerner-Chaney-Goodman murders. (Coincidence? Sheah.) Therein, Greenberg correctly and succinctly argues that Reagan’s “I believe in states’ rights” was, in an apt turn of phrase, “a dog whistle to segregationists.“
Honestly, I’m not really sure how you could dispute this, unless you want to argue that Reagan and his political handlers were completely ignorant about the civil rights struggle, massive resistance, and the significance of Philadelphia, Miss. in those struggles. (Of course, then you’d have to explain how Reagan remained blissfully unaware of the fact his 1966 gubernatorial bid often relied on similar loaded language.) Was Reagan a racist? I dunno, that’s not the issue. Did Reagan rely on coded racial messages to appeal to white conservatives, akin to what Dubya does these days with pro-lifers and Dred Scott? Obviously.
Careful what you wish for.
“Intent on using his capital to secure his place in history, Bush may finally pass a right-wing social agenda, an entitlement reform agenda and a neoconservative foreign policy…And by enacting his program, Bush may dash conservatives’ hopes for a lasting Republican majority.” With trouble already brewing among House conservatives, Columbia PhD, former FCC colleague, and Gipper scholar Matthew Dallek contrasts Dubya’s governance with that of Reagan, and finds the former wanting, to say the least.
Sympathy for the Devils.
The mystery of the grassy knoll has finally been solved, and the second shooter was…John Wilkes Booth?! For the first time in an age, I took advantage of the New York theater scene last night and caught the much-heralded revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins at the Roundabout Theatre, which chronicles the inner demons of Mssrs. Booth, Oswald, Hinckley, and assorted other murderers and would-be-murderers of presidents. All in all, I’d say I enjoyed it, although it took a musical number or two for me to warm to the material (some never made the leap — the guy next to me left outraged.) And there’s some memorable performances here, particularly Denis O’Hare as Charles Guiteau (Garfield’s assassin) and Michael Cerveris as Booth.
Still, the basic (and ahistorical) message of the play — that all assassins, whatever their surface motives, are just looking for a little happiness, a little love, and a little fame — was encapsulated much more succinctly by Peter Gabriel’s excellent “Family Snapshot” two decades ago. And, while I like that song and admire what this play was trying to be, this “everybody needs a hug” thesis is too reductively simplistic. Notwithstanding freak shows like Hinckley, assassination is by its very definition a political act, as is distressingly obvious to all of us given recent events in the Middle East. Sure, a lot of assassins are flat-out crazies…Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, Sirhan Sirhan. But others — Booth, Guiteau, Leon “McKinley” Czolgosz, James Earl Ray, Brutus — had a political agenda in mind that can’t be explained solely by “bad reviews” or a lack of affection as a child (which is perhaps why the Sondheim play ignores the Stalwart v. Halfbreed internecine strife propelling Guiteau to his foul deed.)
Bouncetime for Bonzo.
Dubya jumps in the polls after Reagan’s photo-op funeral, and decides to celebrate by lying about Iraq and 9/11 all over again. C’mon, y’all Republican moralists out there…Where’s the outrage? Clinton was impeached for far less, and we already know the Baptists won’t put up much of a fuss.
Dubya to the Dogs.
While authorization for attack dog intimidation techniques implicate intelligence higher-ups in the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Bush gets legalistic to (not) explain the pro-torture policies emanating from his administration. Hmmm. I bet the White House is wishing Reagan could die every week right now.