Jonathan Chait made a keen observation today:
Do you remember when conservatives used to speak warmly, and sometimes rapturously, about Barack Obama? That was back when they were certain that the Clinton voodoo magic would make Hillary the nominee, and Obama her sympathetic roadkill. Since then, the right has made the horrifying discoveries that Obama is, successively, a left-wing ideologue, a coddler of anti- Americanism, a wine-sipping elitist, and, now, a shameless flip-flopper. The man will say anything, discard any position, in order to win the election.
If such a tragic tarnishing of the reputation could happen to a fresh-faced reformer like Obama, it could happen to anybody. And, in fact, it has--at least to anybody who has happened to attain the Democratic presidential nomination at any point over the last five election cycles. John Kerry, as everybody remembers, came to be defined almost exclusively as a flip-flopper. (A 2004 Wall Street Journal news article described him as "a politician with a troublesome reputation for trying to have it both ways.")
So why does the media keep carping on the GOP's spin?
Jonathon Chaits gives a solid answer. I will present it, because I agree with it. But I will also add to it, because I think he is missing something even greater going on.
It was true: Voters didn't trust Clinton--or Gore, or Kerry. In all of those elections, polls showed the Democratic nominee scoring higher on most of the issues, but the Republican nominee scoring higher on honesty and other personal qualities. Either this is because the Democratic Party keeps nominating weasels for president, time and time again, or else there's something systemic that makes Republicans (and the press) portray them as such. I'm going with explanation number two.
Here's my systemic explanation. In the late 1980s, the popular revolt against government that had bubbled up in the mid-'60s began to peter out, sapping the power of straightforward anti-government appeals. And, starting in 1992, Democrats ruthlessly purged nearly all their political liabilities by embracing anti-crime measures, welfare reform, and middle-class tax cuts, and, more recently, by abandoning gun control. What's left is a political terrain generally favorable to Democrats, which has, in turn, forced Republicans to emphasize the personal virtue of their nominees.
And so, every four years, we have a Democratic candidate campaigning on health care, the minimum wage, education, Medicare, or Social Security, and a Republican candidate campaigning on themes like Trust, Courage, and so forth. President Bush in 2004 was explicit about his elevation of character over issues: "Even when we don't agree," he would say, "at least you know what I believe and where I stand."
My second part of this answer is the media's need for false equivalency. "Both parties do it", the "answer is somewhere in between", it's "a close election" etc. The traditional media is very orthodox in the way it presents stories. Yes, there are always two sides to an issue, but almost never two EQUAL sides. If one pundit says "the earth is round" and the other says the "earth is flat", there are two opinions. But the answer is in between one is clearly correct the other isn't.
As the countries ideological headwinds have changed and become more progressive, the media is "forced" to create more horseraces. Since almost all the issues favor the democrats, the media has to "balance" this by making all character issues favor the republicans. I mean John Mcain is calling Obama a flip-flopper? JOHN McCAIN?
If one needs any final proof of the ridiculousness of this quadrennial exercise, it is the fact that John McCain has embraced the flip-flopper attack. John McCain! I've said this before, I'll say it again: This is a man who, in his quest to make himself an acceptable GOP nominee, reversed his political philosophy (crusading anti-business progressive in the Teddy Roosevelt mode); his political orientation (frequently siding with, and nearly joining, Senate Democrats); and almost every particular undergirding it (taxes, the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, his own immigration bill, etc.). But if you actually think that flip-flopping is a sign of flawed character, and not just a handy partisan cudgel, then, sure, Obama might be slightly cynical, but McCain must be a dangerous sociopath.
But of course the traditional media has an excuse. Obama is trying to be "all high and mighty", he has set himself up at "a different standard". The media will argue (somehow with a straight face) they are just attacking hypocracy.
Now, allegedly Obama can be held to a higher standard because he has loftily set himself above ordinary politicians. (McCain has, too, but never mind.) The operating theory here is that Obama represents a New Politics of the purest and most innocent sort, and to expose him as a mere politician is to destroy the very rationale of his candidacy. Obama's "flip-flopping," writes Krauthammer, proves he's "just a politician." His "dash to the center," mourns National Review editor Rich Lowry, "falsifies the very essence of his candidacy."
......................................
And, so, whatever two or three issues the Democratic nominee has changed his emphasis on are inevitably blown up into a devastating character indictment. The Charles Krauthammers and Sean Hannitys of the world can be counted on to whip themselves into a moralistic frenzy against the feckless Democrat. And news reporters will stroke their chins and ponder, because the question is being asked: Just who is Obama (Kerry/Gore/Clinton), anyway? Yes, he may have a detailed platform on domestic and foreign policy, but do we really know anything about this man?
Jonathon points out something that I too have always agreed with when it comes to the "different kind of politics" Obama will practice. It's not the elevated rhetoric that is his first point. It's Obama believes in the necessity of mobilizing his supporters as a counterweight against the power of organized special interests. This belief flows from his background as a community organizer, and requires active and continued participation from his supporters. That right there is what sold me on Obama. He is the first major nominee for the presidency that has reached this point "untainted" by special interest in my lifetime. By organizing and raising money from the little guy he has done what all organizers (union, etc) have always wished for. He isn't owned by big money. Does Obama have his big donors? Of course, but they play less of a role in his election then anyones else I can remember. As much as the beltways scoffs, "we are the change we have been waiting for".
As an aside: My first memory of realizing this is when I went to the Obama campaign early last year, I wanted to go after the small minority community in NH (hold your laughter). I had a plan that showing effort early would counter act the feeling many minorities have that democrats only come around when "there is an election". They said "go ahead". I was like huh? They asked what material I needed and then said go ahead. I was shocked I never experienced a campaign that did that. They trusted me and just said go ahead. So first experience this is what Obama believes.
But you see the attacking of democrats as flip-floppers, isn't just a staright forward attack on them. Once again it's part of the republican narrative, the cultural war. As one blogger Dan in Prague puts it:
I think it's a mistake to try and wrap your head around the flip-flopper charge on a literal, substantive level. Republicans are not saying, 'You shouldn't vote Democrat because this candidate tends to change his stance on positions and it's dangerous to have a president in office'-- they aren't making a predicative point about how Dukakis/Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Obama will act once they're in office. The point of the flip-flopper label is that it fleshes out a general line of character attack that's central to the Republican strategy of leveraging cultural resentments: many Americans are predisposed to vote again candidates like Kerry (especially) and Obama in the first place under the suspicion that they're latte-sipping elitists who are out-of-touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans, etc etc etc. However, this sense of resentment isn't enough to swing voters on its own-- the average voter likes to believe that he/she is a rational creature, something that's evidenced by the fact that Dukakis, Gore and Kerry were all winning their respective races in the early-to-mid going on the strength of advancing policies that were more favorable to the public. You can't simply tell people to vote against a John Kerry because he comes from more money than you do and is better educated-- voters still need a tangible hook on which to hang the coat of their cultural resentments, to speak. Enter the flip-flopper charge: by finding an issue on which the candidate has modified his position (which, as Chait points out, is practically inevitable in a presidential candidate), Republicans can extend a concrete example of how the Democratic candidate embodies all these personal and cultural traits that run antithetical to ordinary Americans: unforthcoming, calculating, dishonest, beholden to the proverbial 'Washington fat cats' and all the rest. So, in short: the flip-flopper charge is only applied to Democrats because the Democratic candidate is the only candidate who needs to be campaigned against in a coded language of cultural resentment.
I strongly believe the different kind of politics that Obama is talking about isn't just about changing the political party in charge. It's also about changing the political landscape, the political narrative. Unless the narrative is changed the traditional media will gang up on any reforms Obama supports. More stories on divided democrats will pop up. The blue dogs will get more exposure then Madona. Only by changing the narrative from America is basically a conservative country to America has a long progressive tradition, will we get the change we need.