I’m not supposed to be getting all wound up about politics right now. I’ve been such a good patient taking my antibiotics and Vitamin C and those lovely lovely cough medicines. I’ve been good, I swear. So this isn’t a rant – it’s more like a therapeutic walk in the garden. I’m just bringing some pruning shears with me as I perambulate. Because really, it’s just too easy – like deadheading blooms – to thwack at Matt Bai’s NYT post today on the canker infested bush that is Newt Gingrich’s campaign messaging.
Take a short walk with me, will you?
Bai recapped what everyone has already heard about, Gingrich calling POTUS “the food stamp president”, then takes us into the discussions it raised among the assembled pundits both on camera and off camera. You can watch the whole thing here. I’m not going to rehash it. Honestly, it’s just another Sunday in the land where well-nourished people wax philosophical about their own navels. Peggy Noonan’s breathy tale of the green room moment of silence wins the prize in myopic analysis. She can tell you exactly what to think about Newt Gingrich based on what she saw happen 5 feet from her by the fruit tray. Genius wears Patagonia. Whatever… blah blah, have a cream cheese danish.
What Bai does in his follow-up post is use that Sunday chat as a jumping off point for his take on racism in our current political discourse. He may as well, because it’s going to be a running theme for the 2012 campaign season. If this is the start of the debate, it’s going to be a weak and passive one based Matt Bai’s voice in it.
“This is a debate that is likely to surface many more times in the next 18 months, no matter whom the Republicans nominate, and the truth seems to me a little more complex than partisans on either side might suggest.”
No, Matt, it’s not complex. There’s not the tiniest bit of complex to it. Candidates use the pre-planned short sentences that sell to their target voters. Calling Obama the “food-stamp President” is not a deep attempt to unpack our recent economic history and lay out a long-term vision to nudge our domestic marketplace in a direction that engages workers left behind without skills or resources– it’s sticking a big fat whistle to your lips and blowing so the angry middle-aged white guys know where to find you.
But, whatever, it’s complex. Thank heaven we have you to explain the nuances to us. If that’s gonna happen, let’s see where you come from in your understanding of our modern racial politics. Show me your garden of deep understanding:
Is there a racial element to some of the attacks on President Obama? It’s pretty hard to argue there isn’t, when a conservative writer like Dinesh D’Souza argues that Mr. Obama sees the world like an African nationalist (a theory Mr. Gingrich praised again in his interview Sunday), or when Donald J. Trump asserts that Mr. Obama isn’t smart enough to have gotten into Harvard or to have written his own books.
Yes “it’s pretty hard to argue”. Which means you’re about to try, aren’t ya Matt? You’re gonna look for some complexity! Oh goodie!
But here’s the thing: race and cultural otherness were powerful undercurrents in Republican politics long before the nation’s first black president came along. The infamous Willie Horton ad that George Bush deployed against Michael Dukakis in 1988, you may recall, was more overtly racist than anything Mr. Obama had to parry 20 years later. Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore were all portrayed as being well outside America’s white, Christian mainstream.
But here’s the thing: What the hell is your point? Republican politics has been racist forever, so they aren’t really being racist when they use racist rhetoric against the first black president because it’s not as OVERT? Oookay… but thank you for the reminder of the GOP’s charming history.
Mr. Gingrich’s “food stamp” line is an homage of sorts to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens.” This business about turning America into Detroit is exactly the kind of thing Mr. Reagan would have said, if he hadn’t been so busy trying to win Michigan’s electoral votes.
Oh! It was an homage to Reagan. Well that makes it a little more understanda… wait, when Reagan said it, it was RACIST.
So to say that Mr. Obama is being cast as somehow alien to the white American experience simply because he is black really does miss the point. He would still be cast in this way if he were an urban, northern Democrat who happened to be white. The fact that Mr. Obama is black may even blunt the attack to some extent, because Republican challengers have to be more careful in how they raise these kinds of cultural issues than they would with your standard-issue white liberal.
In fact, there are tactical reasons for Republicans to consider scrapping the cultural argument altogether when it comes to Mr. Obama, or at least minimizing it.
I see. It isn’t because the President is black that the GOP and their propaganda machine is using racist rhetoric. It’s because they are just being themselves… Got it. Having a black President actually makes them LESS likely to use racist language and imagery. I should have realized that. I was clearly too busy trying to ignore how the President is really Kenyan, had a black nationalist pastor, invited a rapper (A RAPPER! The Horror!) to poetry night at the White House and really secretly hates white people. I must have missed the fact that those were all toned down and restrained versions of what the GOP would normally unleash if they let their flags really fly. Well how incredibly sensitive of them, and how good of you to seek out the subtle balancing energy that the GOP is putting out there into the world.
Now here comes my favorite part, because it’s just such a dead-on accurate reading of America today:
After all, we have now reached the point where a 45-year-old American voter has no memory of civil rights marches or the silent majority and grew up in a society where overt racism was uniformly stigmatized. [Emphasis mine.] In this new environment, you’re probably not well advised to make racial alienation a centerpiece of your campaign, unless you want to offend half the voting public, including most of the independent voters who decide the outcome of a general election.
We have reached the point where a 45-year old American has no memory of civil right marches or the silent majority? Really? I’m 40 tomorrow. I went to elementary school in an ex-urban district where you knew damn well why you were being bussed across town. I can chart my years at the Jersey Shore on 30 year mileposts from “remember when that family brought the black child to the beach?” to “Well, at least this beach isn’t public.” Are you freaking kidding me? I may have been born after Selma, but I certainly lived through the 2000 GOP primary when calls went out to voters in the South about John McCain’s secret interracial baby. I’m not sure what pretty pretty post-racial world you live in, but the rest of America, we’re still living out here where the racism is. We’re still living in a world where the “Southern Strategy” is a daily method of programming campaign messaging (I’d say GOP campaign messaging, but I’m honest enough to know we’ve got Dems who will use the same methods in the places where they still work). We’re still living in a society where communities are throwing up their hands and re-segregating their schools in full view. Do you need a field trip out into America to find out that there is a good reason Gingrich and the 2012 GOP Presidential dwarves are bringing out “homages” to 1980?
I’m picking a bone with how Matt Bai chose to approach what he witnessed on Sunday, and with his seemingly naive perception of how people outside the Beltway will respond to it. I think what Bai was trying to say is essentially true. The GOP is using rhetoric they have always used, it isn’t just a reflexive response to having a black President, it’s an institutional part of who they are. That rhetoric is a divisive and ultimately a losing strategy, and they should not give in to the impulse to use what won’t work. What is driving me batty about his post is he seems to be going out of his way to take the sting out of this essential truth, couching everything in an explanation that defends the GOP: Yes this is racist rhetoric — BUT it wasn’t really because we have a black president (take THAT left!), BUT it would have been used against whichever Democrat was out there, BUT it’s not OVERT, BUT it’s actually MUTED, BUT in my pundit wisdom I’m telling them it’s a bad idea to go down that road, BUT BUT BUT.
So this is how we’re gonna play the pundit game? Tell us the racism is there, then bury it in so much “context” we forget what the whole point was? It’s okay to just say it Matt — Gingrich used racist rhetoric that he consciously chose to attract the voters he wants to win the Primary. Those voters aren’t a big enough group to win the Presidency for him. See how simple that is?
Yes, I know, it sucks you are going to spend the next year having to explain racist crap from a band of GOP nominees and their supporting media that is both a losing strategy and demeans our society as it happens. You know, you could actually tell them that NOW and maybe move our political discourse in a new direction – or you could just save all of that brilliant truth for your post 2012 election book. You will say, “I saw it unfolding for the GOP starting in Spring with Newt Gingrich’s launch interviews…” and I will say, “But you did nothing about it, even though you had a prime space to make a difference.”
Prove me wrong.
* cross-posted from http://caradox.wordpress.com *