Yesterday's Issues

Mickey Kaus on Obama:

... it's hard to believe we're about to nominate a Democrat who doesn't acknowledge the lesson of the 1990s--that voters are worried about issues like welfare because they are worried about welfare, not because "welfare" is a surrogate for "lack of national health insurance." Can a Dem who hasn't learned that lesson can be elected in a two-candidate general election? That's no longer unthinkable, but it would require not only that the old Carter-Ford-Reagan-Clinton issues like welfare, crime, etc. recede into the background (replaced by Iraq and the economy). It would also require Republicans who are too stupid to find a way to bring them back into the foreground.

For those Democrats worried about Obama's seemingly old-fashioned liberalism--sorry, progressivism!--the great hope has been that of course he'll pivot and turn toward the reformist, Clintonian center once he's got the nomination in hand. But what if The Pivot never happens (as David Frum, for one, has predicted)? That's a big issue--maybe the big issue--raised by Obama's "race" address. That's a big--maybe main--reason that it's a gaffe. Obama's honesty is bracing. But he honestly doesn't seem to be the sort of neoliberal politician who wins national elections.

Unless that paradigm no longer holds, and the success of neoliberal and neoconservative efforts on welfare and crime - manifest in falling welfare rolls and plunging crime rates - make it possible for a liberal candidate who doesn't really have anything substantive to say about crime and poverty policy to win a national election. Obviously, I'm hoping that Obama says something bolder about welfare than what he's said to date. But at the moment, I think the note he's hitting - acknowledging liberalism's past failures (i.e., his suggestion that welfare policies "for many years may have worsened" the state of the black family) while implicitly consigning those failures to the past - may be sufficient to inoculate him against conservative criticism. Crime and welfare are yesterday's issues, and while they may (and should) matter again some day soon, I can't imagine them playing anything close to the role they played in the 1970s and '80s in this election cycle.

The one place where Obama might be vulnerable to a neocon/neoliberal critique is immigration, and of course the GOP has proven itself utterly incapable of exploiting that issue effectively of late - and even if they could, John McCain isn't the standard-bearer to do it.

Comments

Just because the prestige media label Obama a new paradigm doesn’t make his thoughts a new paradigm. (that would still beg the question” What paradigm & ought we enact it?) Likewise anointing him beyond partisanship and beyond racial politics.

That’s not the man I see. Rather: I see a standard liberal (even far left) candidate that cant break out of the old paradigm because no one can. Kaus recommendation seems (politically) more astute then most of the tongue wagers. Batter Obama ape Bill Clinton DLC narrative while he crests the wave of a “new politics” sheen than reveal himself as the same tired big government liberal he is.

Posted by Fitz | March 24, 2008 1:05 PM

I'm still waiting for Mickey Kaus to pivot back to sanity.

Posted by How Insane Is John McCain? | March 24, 2008 1:33 PM

Obama regularly speaks to issues of personal responsibility. He did so in his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, and does so on the stump. Andrew Sullivan links to an example today.

Posted by THS | March 24, 2008 1:57 PM

I just find the lack of self-awareness on Kaus's part to be breathtaking. Kaus is ideologically predisposed to only see the "lesson of the '90s", and not the lesson of the 2000s! That lesson is the one which matters in '08, that the capitulation and conservatism-lite that neoliberalism represents leads only to the defeats of '02 and '04. The Democrats regained Congress in '06 because they represented a genuine alternative to the conservatism that had wrecked our country. Kaus is just utterly unable to countenance the fact that America is, largely, a liberal country, that Americans support liberal policies, and that conservatism has just suffered one of the most embarrassing and thorough failures in political history. He's so tone-deaf, dense and blind that he can't see beyond his preconceptions.

But wait, I forgot! He's really a liberal! No, honest! It's not just a pose adopted to create an "iconoclastic" persona with which to better bludgeon liberal politics in this country.

Posted by Freddie | March 24, 2008 2:06 PM

Rather: I see a standard liberal (even far left) candidate that cant break out of the old paradigm because no one can.

Sigh. Obama at least be able to break the standard "conservative vs. liberal" debate that was framed during, and persisted since, the Vietnam era.

My generation could care less about these labels. For example, we don't consider pro-environmentalism a "liberal" or "conservative" cause, but rather a necessary one. And so on, on many issues.

Posted by AKBY | March 24, 2008 2:30 PM

Kaus is a self-aggrandizer, first and foremost. Welfare policy should be important, he thinks, because...he wrote a book about welfare policy!

The issues in this election, rightly or wrongly, are already drawn: foreign policy will be as important as it has been in a generation: most prominently the candidates will argue about WoT, the Iraq war, Iran; on a secondary level they may also address Venezuela/Latin America, Russia, and China. All of these topics are pressing.

Domestically, "the economy" will be #1, health care reform #2. The candidates will talk past each other and seek to connect their priorities to the nation's sense of what is good economic policy. McCain, because he knows nothing and is surrounded by true beleivers, will fetishize tax cuts in a way that would make W proud.

There's no oxygen left for "welfare" or "crime" as major issues, because everyone knows welfare got reformed in the 90s, and crime is at a 40-year low. I say these last 2 things not as truths, but as popular perceptions (which are not unsupported in fact).

Posted by dgj | March 24, 2008 2:30 PM

"Obama at least be able to break the standard "conservative vs. liberal" debate that was framed during, and persisted since, the Vietnam era."

I don’t see this as true. That what the Rev Wright scandal and Kaus point seems to be. Yes; both the prestige media & average voters may want to project Obama as someone who transcends the "politics of the past." That’s not to say he does or can.

Posted by Fitz | March 24, 2008 2:41 PM

More to the point, what does Kaus even think he's saying here: Can a Dem who hasn't learned that lesson can be elected in a two-candidate general election? The lesson was learned, in Kaus's telling, by a candidate who won a plurality rather than a majority in an election dominated by worries about the economy contested by three major candidates. Hell of a powerful lesson, Mickey.

I can't tell if Kaus's style of dishonest argument is neocon-inflected, or proto-neocon and part of the same stew which birthed the neocons.

Gawd, what a ridiculous ass.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 24, 2008 2:47 PM

Kaus and others may continue to frame the debate this way, but newer generations will replace this framing with something new; albeit it gradually.

The issue of race and class will evolve as well.

Certainly Obama will do more to break the mold as it exists; at least he holds more promise of doing so compared to Clinton or McCain.

Posted by AKBY | March 24, 2008 2:47 PM

We need to pay attention to what Obama is actually saying. In his South Carolina victory speech he promised to "stop giving tax breaks to rich companies and instead put the money in the pockets of struggling homeowners who can't pay their mortgages", and at the same time stop the export of American jobs overseas, while raising everyone's wages. At this the crowd chanted "Yes we can! Yes we can!"

The fact is that Obama is out there making frothy, irresponsible statements that he couldn't possibly back up as president. There is an unreality about this man that is stunning.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | March 24, 2008 3:17 PM

Welfare? That's around the bottom of voters' priorities at the moment. Nobody cares about it this time around. We could afford to be concerned about welfare in the 90s because we weren't in the middle of an occupation. This isn't then.

Posted by Tel | March 24, 2008 3:38 PM

Welfare or corporate welfare? I'm more concerned about the latter.

Posted by Michele | March 24, 2008 4:51 PM

Welfare or corporate welfare? I'm more concerned about the latter.

Posted by Michele | March 24, 2008 4:51 PM

represented a genuine alternative to the conservatism that had wrecked our country

Get a grip. Much of Georgia in 1865 qualified as wrecked quite literally. The Great Plains in 1933 and Detroit in 1982 might have qualified as 'wrecked' in the economic sense. Considerable wreckage in social relations is strewn all about us, but that damage was done in the years running from 1958-82, not during the last seven years. Disagreeable policy dilemmas do not a 'wrecked' country make.

Posted by Art Deco | March 24, 2008 5:40 PM

Disastrously prosecuted, pointless quagmire of a war.... check.
Economy in crisis, probably going to get worse.... check.
America's image in foreign countries irreversibly damaged.... check.
Government making unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties, attacking our most sacred values.... check.
Hyper-partisan national conversation dominated by the worst, most divisive forms of discourse.... check.
A cowed and subservient media, failing to do any of its work in holding government to its rules and promises.... check.

Get a grip, indeed.

Posted by Freddie | March 24, 2008 6:05 PM

Did you guys read Obama's chickens coming home to
roost speech about the Jena Six?

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-on-jena-6.html

The Dems managed to pick an even worse candidate than four years ago. How does that feel? The Dems couldn't even beat that buffoon George Bush beacuse they picked an even bigger buffoon. Now McCain, that intellectual giant that graduated fifth from the bottom of his class, is gonna wipe the floor with your Harvard Law Review messiah. Ouch. No wonder so many lefties are so unhinged nowadays.

Posted by Hans | March 24, 2008 7:08 PM

Disastrously prosecuted, pointless quagmire of a war.... check.

It may be a quagmire and may not be worth the blood and treasure. Pointless it is not. An evaluation of whether or not it has been disastrously prosecuted requires an understanding of what is possible with a given set of circumstances, which requires some understanding of counter-insurgency warfare, which few people have.

Economy in crisis, probably going to get worse.... check.

Politicians in the Republican Party have not abolished business cycles; neither have their counterparts in the opposition. It would be foolish to wager that they ever will.

America's image in foreign countries irreversibly damaged.... check.

The public mind should not resemble that of a high school student.

That aside, there are abiding and ephemeral aspects to this sort of thing. The sitting administration likely makes incremental adjustments to the former and the latter are (by definition) transient and of scant importance.

Government making unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties, attacking our most sacred values.... check.

The 'unitary executive' speculations and datamining of cell phone calls may be novelties, but they are not of novel severity, quite the contrary. Executive Order 9066 and the Palmer Raids were much more consequential (tho' troublesome history for the partisan Democrat). Robust political debate in this country remains unimpaired, for good or ill.

Hyper-partisan national conversation dominated by the worst, most divisive forms of discourse.... check.

The President is not verbally confrontational and the Administration is not responsible for the bad manners of the opposition or any decay in civility in the political culture generally. Hold responsible the publicists who traffick in this sort of thing and the people who buy their books. Politicians are usually loathe to say much that is trenchant except biennially in television commercials.

A cowed and subservient media, failing to do any of its work in holding government to its rules and promises.... check.

This is a fantasy.

Posted by Art Deco | March 24, 2008 7:46 PM

People whu spoort Obama do not do so because they hope he secretly is a Clintonite; rather the opposite. It has become conventionally wise to decry the "failures of liberalism." Is it unnoticed that this country has been living under neoconservatism since 1980 (yes, I include the CLinton years; he was a closet Republican)? Isn't it time to discuss the failures of that policy?

Posted by Miande | March 24, 2008 8:08 PM

You said Mickey Kaus......

I think that's actually the funniest joke I've heard all day. It was a joke, right?

Posted by Herb | March 24, 2008 11:01 PM

I agree with ideas AKBY and dgj have articulated. I don't accept the notions of what Douthat and Kaus label as "liberal" and "conservative." I am a disabled combat veteran of Vietnam. I have seen things and done things that are far beyond your magical, fantastical world view that you both have experienced from your cozy, soft lives. What is pathetic about you both is that you think your opinions when posited as assertions, go on to be facts and truths. You are both hollow, children, bereft of intelligence.

Here are the facts and the truth [although facts are not necessarily truths, e.g., racism is a fact, but it is not true, one "race" is not superior to another]. Bill Clinton used a young woman for self-centered sexual gratification. He's a pathological liar. He knowingly lied to the American people for a reason no larger than himself. He supported legislation [nafta, welfare reform] that were keystones of the right-wing conspiracy. His presidency was a failure. Those were the golden '90's? How old were you two then, and what were you doing?

His wife has stated that she and McCain have "passed" the Commander-in-Chief test. So her heartfelt determination to end the US occupation in Iraq and some form of universal health care is a cheap ruse, as McCain, the only one to pass the test she imagines isn't interested in health care and wants to expand the war. She is a liar as well. Sniper bullets, eh? Right. She is a corporatist and militarist, she never met a weapon system that didn't have her support in the senate. Check the record. Check the facts. I'm not interested in your opinions.

Obama is the only one of the three who stands for anything, who means anything he says. He hasn't spoken about prisons, crime, and 10,000 other problems we face? Well, why don't we lock the three of them in a room, and have them tell us everything they want to do and know that will inform their presidency. Sort of a uniquely "Gitmo American Mandarin Test." If we get McNutz [ask his fellow senators] or HRC, we are on our way to a shattered country that will leave our children in what we might imagine the middle ages were like.

I reject you both as charlatans and cowards.

Posted by Ralph | March 25, 2008 12:04 AM

Ralph tells it like it is.

Posted by Daniel Shays | March 25, 2008 12:22 AM

Jesus, do right wing pundits actually, like, read?

Obama has a long, well known record on issues of "crime and poverty policy", dating back to his time as a community organizer in Chicago, and a state legislator in Illinois. He's also on the record on issues such as the war on drugs.

I'd explain this record in detail, but why bother? Clearly Ross and Kaus don't read anyway. Go look it up yourself.

The guy has a web site with these positions clearly stated. Numerous articles, not to mention his, um, autobiography, discuss this stuff.

Anyone who acts like his views on these matters are a mystery is either lazy or stupid, or (more likely) both.

Posted by BillB | March 25, 2008 1:06 AM

Obama is a standard liberal. He's running farther to the left every day to keep his cult following satisfied.

And you all are profoundly delusional if you think the nation has changed at all, much less that much.

Unless that paradigm no longer holds, and the success of neoliberal and neoconservative efforts on welfare and crime - manifest in falling welfare rolls and plunging crime rates - make it possible for a liberal candidate who doesn't really have anything substantive to say about crime and poverty policy to win a national election.

The paradigm does hold. Or perhaps you're forgetting the lessons of 2006.;

Posted by Cal | March 25, 2008 1:38 AM

I know this sounds cultist(as we Obama supporters often are accused of being), but I have a prediction. Now, I know this will sound crazy, but every previous Obama supporter consensus prediction has held true. Here it is:

By the time November rolls around, Obama will completely pivot hard-left. HARD left.

The markets will sink, the economy will go bust, and Obama will calmly remove his quiet voice. He will begin yelling. He will turn into one of those roaring zombie creatures from I Am Legend. He will perform a total mind-fuck on the United States electorate, the kind of mind-fuck not seen since Reagan or FDR.

That is my prediction. I have no evidence, it's just my gut feeling. It derives from Obama's quality of awesomeness. Remember the awesomeness? It's not gone away. It's just in storage for now.

The only reason Obama has been restrained is because:
A. He's fighting a Democrat.
B. He's fighting a female democrat, one who has a victim-cult constantly protecting her from the serious mauling any other candidate would get at the hands of Obama's awesomeness.
C. Obama is saving his power for the final act, the general election, at which point he will transform into Giga-Obama the Great, Man of Deep and Powerful Voice of Scorn Heaped Upon Evil Republican Scumbags.

What this whole Wright thing demonstrates is that Obama is practically invincible against attacks from Republicans. Obama is vulnerable only to attacks from Democrats. If Republicans come at him on Wright, he will shove their attacks back down their throat. He will, rhetorically, kick their ass. He will not back down under fire.

You may think I'm nuts now. Just watch.

Posted by Abe | March 25, 2008 2:54 AM

As Ross says, as long as he doesn't campaign to bring welfare back, whatever little rhetorical gestures he makes in that direction won't have much of an impact on his chances. Now, I do have lots of other problems with his speech, like his argument that we should put aside our racial differences so as to focus on what really matters, i.e. punishing corporations who make rational decisions to take their factories overseas, but I don't see a problem on the welfare front.

Posted by Tray | March 25, 2008 3:01 AM

The main advantage McCain has is a reputation for straight-talk, while Obama's campaign has been a massive exercise in disingenuousness. He's campaign as a non-partisan centrist, but he's to the left of the average Democratic Senator, and, deep in his heart, he's way, way to the left.

It's as if Ronald Reagan was running in 1980s as a moderate.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 25, 2008 3:51 PM

"The paradigm does hold. Or perhaps you're forgetting the lessons of 2006.;

Posted by Cal | March 25, 2008 1:38 AM"

So the Dems won in 2006 because we ran on welfare reform? It wasn't so much that we pivoted hard right in 2006 in terms of our candidates - after all, some moderate veteran candidates (Tammy Duckworth, etc.) and DLCer's (Harold Ford) ended up losing their races - but that the war, the Katrina response, the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the economy sucked and the Democrats finally got their shit together over at the DNC for the first time in years (getting Dean in there and McAughliffe out has been a blessing). You just don't seem to like this country very much and constantly underestimate it.

Posted by Reality Man | March 26, 2008 8:09 AM

There continues to be a tremendous confusion on the part of people that partisanship is a synonym for extremism, while non-partisan is a synonym for moderation. And this completely mistaken impression seems to be the source of folks who think Obama is dishonest or a fraud because he is both liberal and (relatively) non-partisan.

On a different note, why is it that Obama seems to be the only candidate held to a high standard when it comes to having ideas and plans? What about Kaus' critique (which I think is an ill-founded one, for reasons discussed above) doesn't also hold for McCain? What ideas does McCain have on crime or welfare?

I've been to McCain's website and its policy section is a joke. He has almost no substantive proposals at all--his pages are merely an enumeration of happy wishes and goals, without the faintest attempt to explain how he intends to achieve any of them. And on foreign policy, his supposed area of expertise, he seems intent on proving true Trilling's gibe that conservatism is merely a set of irritable mental gestures.

There is a fraudulent empty suit of a candidate who has no ideas and a fake reputation for moderation running in this election, but it isn't Obama.

Posted by Doug T | March 26, 2008 8:14 AM

For Mickey Kaus, history ended in 1996, around the time he was at TNR. He made his name as a centrist on welfare and a union-basher then, so he needs those issues to keep himself relevant. Much of his commentary at this point is just about keeping his career treading water and not drowning.

Posted by Reality Man | March 26, 2008 8:20 AM

Re: Politicians in the Republican Party have not abolished business cycles; neither have their counterparts in the opposition. It would be foolish to wager that they ever will.

Do people often give credit or blame to the party in powr, especially the pesident, for economic matters that they really have little to do with? Yes, abolutely. That's why Jimmy cater got blamed for a lot of things he hadn't cuased, and why Reagan and Clinton both left office popular with voters who had propered under their watch. Now George Bush is getting the blame of the current ugly mess. Unless you;re going to apologize to Carter and tarnish St Ronnie's halo, you really don't have grounds for complaint. The buck usually stops at the White House even if it really shouldn't

Re: The main advantage McCain has is a reputation for straight-talk

In 2000, yep. I even bought into that image. But this year that's old news. McCain's endless chanting of the Bushite mantra has badly damaged his image with anyone not hopelssly enthralled by the cult masquerading as a political party that is today's GOP. Unless he finds a way to do a Nicholas Sarkozy and run hard against his predecessor I don't see how he can be elected with his "more of the same, but with gut feeling" program.

Re: It's as if Ronald Reagan was running in 1980s as a moderate.

Reagan did not run a a moderate certainly, but he was a lot less wingnutty in 1980 than he was in 1976. To win in American politics you have to capture the center while portraying your opponent as a radical. And Karl Rove notwithstanding, even George Bush had to do that with Compassionate Conservatism in 2000 and his own form of disingenuousness in 2004.

Posted by JonF | March 26, 2008 2:17 PM