Obama Baffles The Washington Post
Mon Feb 25, 2008 at 04:11:50 PM PDT
The lead editorial in Sunday’s Washington Post is called The Obama Enigma. Echoing a column by David Ignatius last week called The Obama Mystery, the editorial complains that Obama has failed in his duty to label himself according to the conventions of our current politics.
When the Illinois Democrat talks about bringing together red and blue America, does he mean that he will persuade the red (Republican) part to come around to blue (Democratic) policies -- or does he mean that he will forge a new, centrist answer that will bridge the red-blue divide? Is he a liberal at heart who tacks occasionally to the center or more of a centrist capable of suppressing leftist instincts when political circumstances demand?
Here we see Fred Hiatt and the rest of the Post’s editorial board – the high priests of acceptable DC opinion, the wise men who endorsed Clinton’s impeachment and Bush’s war – working hard to assimilate new information.
Join me after the jump for a look at how their musings can help us understand Obama’s politics from a more progressive point of view.
In the paragraph quoted above, Hiatt and Company remind me of the Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy, trying to make sense of the glass Coke bottle that has fallen from the sky. They regard it first as a pestle and then as a club and finally as a punishment from the gods. Just so, the editors of the Post test their ready-made labels on a political figure who defies them.
As progressives, we do not necessarily understand Obama any better. His politics are new to us, too, and I have read many comments on Daily Kos that, in praise or blame, attempt to stuff Obama in similar pigeon holes. Let’s look closely at the pigeon holes that the editorial offers, in an effort to move beyond them.
In Pigeon Hole One, we have a Democrat who will unify the country by
persuad[ing] the red (Republican) part to come around to blue (Democratic) policies
This is the George W. Bush strategy, in which bipartisanship happens when one side capitulates utterly. This is the style of bipartisanship that Grover Norquist called "date rape." It’s an appealing prospect, at first, to partisans like me, who chose Obama over Edwards in part because his capacity to defuse the opposition makes him a more plausible change agent. But it’s an ultimately limited and unsatisfying view, stuck in the divisive politics of the Clinton and Bush years. Progressive can’t win by beating Bush and Rove at their own game. We have to change the paradigm.
In Pigeon Hole Two, the Post imagines Obama as a conciliatory figure who will
forge a new, centrist answer that will bridge the red-blue divide
Hiatt here is not hoping that Obama will be a transformative figure like FDR or (in reverse) Ronald Reagan. Rather, like David Broder, Hiatt is dreaming of an establishment stooge like Michael Bloomberg. To imagine a "centrist" leader who can "bridge the red-blue divide" is to invoke The Unity Project, which seeks unity in the interests of the status quo. A "new, centrist answer" solves the problems of the wealthiest Americans who did well under Bush but are, at the moment, freaked out by war, incompetence and Jesusism. It’s a false synthesis. There currently is no articulated "centrist" agenda and no real "centrist" constituency.
(More and more Americans, dissatisfied with both parties, are registering as "independents"; but "centrists" are found most often on Meet the Press or in David Broder’s living room.)
Finally, let’s have a look at Pigeon Hole Three, the home of the Clintons:
Is he a liberal at heart who tacks occasionally to the center or more of a centrist capable of suppressing leftist instincts when political circumstances demand?
Here are the two poles of received opinion about Bill and Hillary. They are either liberal sell-outs or champions of the establishment who know how to pander. As in the other two Pigeon Holes, there is no potential for authentic change. The tired continuum of left, right and center is fixed, static, hopeless. All we can do is "tack" this way or that in the poisoned sea of our current politics.
So that’s it. That’s all the possibilities the Post can muster. A leader can either be like Bush, like Clinton or (if we allow ourselves to dream) like Michael Fucking Bloomberg.
And yet the editorial, in it’s own way, is open to change.
For one thing, the editorial’s narrow range of choices allows us to see a fourth choice, beyond the tired Pigeon Holes, that Hiatt et al can’t afford to imagine. Obama will be a transformational leader who breaks the spell that movement conservatism has had on our politics.
Obama does not have to persuade Red America to support Blue America policies, because strong majorities of all Americans, in every region, already support supposedly "leftist" policies like universal health insurance, sensible regulation and a working safety net (cf Thomas Frank and Paul Krugman). Obama does not have to become a centrist, nor does he have to tack this way and that, avoiding the whirlpool of Fox News and the rocks of Move On. No, to be a transformational leader, Obama just has to move the nation beyond the ideological impasse created by Newt, Grover, Ralph, Karl and the rest of the movement conservatives.
In short, the only way to truly "bridge the red-blue divide" is to recognize that the divide is a fiction, fostered by elite conservatives who exploit cultural division (God, Guns and Gays) to serve their economic interests. Obama has been working for such recognition since he first spoke to a national audience, at the 2004 convention. He called for us to rise above "pundits" who "like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States." In other words, pundits exactly like the editorial board of the Washington Post.
Which makes it even more amazing that Hiatt seems to like the junior Senator from Illinois. At least, the editorial does not fight very hard for the old order, or for the pathetic dream of a Bloomsbergian future. Rather, the editorial takes a puzzled, cautious tone. It chides Obama for refusing to vote with the Blue Dogs on FISA and for adopting an "orthodox liberal" campaign platform. But it applauds his thoughtfulness, complexity and willingness to confront audiences (including the screaming hordes here at Daily Kos) with ideas the audience might not like to hear.
The editorial ends with a whimper, wondering meekly whether "voters understand where, exactly [Obama] would like to lead them."
None of us really know, probably not even Obama himself, exactly where an Obama presidency will go. But it appears that even Fred Hiatt hopes Obama will lead us beyond the toxic politics the he and his colleagues did so much to create.
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