My title is the same as The Washington Post editorial this morning about the "issue" on Rashid Khalidi. In fact, the title comes from Khalidi himself, as you can see here in the final paragraph of this worthwhile editorial:
Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.
I do encourage people to read - and pass on - the editorial to anyone who might be concerned by this false issue raised in desperation by the McCain campaign.
I want to explore another aspect of the editorial below the fold, something I believe is an important tack to take, especially in light of how the McCain campaign has approached this Obama relationship.
My focus is on the penultimate paragraph of the editorial, which reads at follows:
It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Post, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.
There are two key sentences in that paragraph. Let me explore each separately. First, Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. Intellectual curiosity should be a quality we want in our next Chief Executive especially given how little has been demonstrated by our current president, who is interested only in how things affect his digestive tract. But it is far more than mere curiosity. The world is a complex place. There are people who interpret events differently, perhaps because they are shaped by different cultures, genealogies, education, religions. . . It would ill suit anyone in a position of power to assume that all think as does s/he, or that s/he can ignore the different points of view. One not only has to be willing to listen when one encounters thinking other than one's own, it would behoove one aspiring to positions of power and authority to seek out such different points of view. The Post is correct about Obama: this is a pattern he has demonstrated clearly as far back as during his Presidency of the Harvard Law Review, as conservatives such as Bradford Berenson have expressed: he is willing to listen to divergent views. We have seen it recently in his dialog with the idiot known now as "Joe the Plumber."
While I will return to the issue of listening anon, let me explore the other sentence of interest in the quoted paragraph: To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. I fully agree with this sentence, but it does not go far enough. Far too often in our political discourse we see those wllling to demonize others by labeling. Someone with whom you do not agree seems fair game to be called not American. We may dismiss them as "liberal" or 'conservative" depending upon our own point of view. We demean them as "point-headed" or as too intellectual in an attempt to make ourselves appear as "plain folks," the kind of person with whom you might want to have a beer. In the other most recent example of this we have seen Elizabeth Dole attempt to portray Kay Hagan as an atheist in hopes of damaging Hagan among a portion of the electorate.
We are increasingly a diverse nation. Of equal importance, the world is composed of many different cultures, religions, political ideologies, etc. For better or worse, any American President is perhaps the single most important player on the world stage. We should want a president to have intellectual curiosity about those different, so that s/he can understand the meaning of actions. Perhaps that curiosity will empower a president to consider alternative ways of achieving desirable goals, ways that invite in and include different points of view, rather than merely seeking as has Bush to impose his way by force upon those who might strongly disagree at least in part.
Obama is both a politician and a university teacher - remember, he taught law at the same university at which Khalid taught before debarking for Columbia where he now is. The university community should welcome diverse points of view among its faculty, lest it fail to fulfill the mission of expanding the thinking of the students who pass through its care. And faculty members should be able to demonstrate a respect for those of different opinions, even as the thinking of all sides should be subject to the challenges of intellectual rigor. Hell, my students are primarily tenth graders, and I seek to ensure that they have that experience in my classroom.
We are not a nation of Babbitts, of small minds in small towns, despite what Sarah Palin and Nancy Pfotenhauer might try to argue. And even in small towns there are those who are curious about different places and different peoples. And our small towns are no longer isolated places of monolithic culture: not only has the internet shrunk the metaphorical distance from other cultures, but increasingly even our smaller towns are containing people of very different backgrounds: after all, in much of rural America, if you have a doctor s/he is likely to be from some distant place such as the Indian subcontinent. And I remember Doug Christensen, at the time Commissioner of Education in Nebraska, explaining during a panel at the 2nd YearlyKos in Chicago how his state had an increasing need for instruction for English Language Learners because of all of the Hispanics, mainly Mexican, now working in meat-packing plants.
If we believe that America's best days are still ahead of us, we cannot and should not be afraid of differences. We learned on December 7, 1941 that being bordered by two oceans was insufficient to protect us from involvement in major conflicts around the world, something we should have learned in the previous global conflict. And unless we are willing to actively seek to understand differences, our involvement with other parts of our common globe will too often be limited to conflicts that come about at least in part because of our stubbornness, our unwillingness to understand differences of culture and interpretation.
The question should not be why Obama was willing to meet with a man like Khalidi, whose points of view might be very different than his own. The real issue should be why McCain and Palin and those now attacking Obama are so afraid of allowing expression of ideas with which they disagree. Is it an indication of their fear that their own ideas cannot stand up to rigorous scrutiny? Are they like Pat Buchanan, who in every exchange where he is losing he resorts to raising both pitch and volume and attempts to shout down others? Is that what we want for our polity? Of greater importance, in a time when the American public has made it clear that they want us to put aside pure partisanship and find solutions for the common good, is such an approach what they want?
Or might we not be at a crucial moment, where the desire of the American people for something very different might enable us to begin to get beyond our chauvinism and our fear of "the other" and the different, both within our society and in our nation's relations with other nations?
It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. One can engage in rigorous discourse and challenge the thinking of others. But until one is willing to listen one is not engaging in discourse, not even in an intellectual exercise, because one is not processing all the information that is available, which includes the points of views of those with whom we think we disagree. We learn from encountering different ideas, different thinking. A person not willing to listen is not willing to grow, and might well be too insecure for us to entrust her with great power.
I think we should celebrate the willingness of an Obama to engage intellectually with someone who is a strong advocate of a position with which he disagrees. Learning about this incident has raised my estimation of the kind of president he will be.
And it has done something else - reminded me of the dangers of using fear of the other, in any circumstance, and of the unfortunate aspects of our history that have flowed from previous attempts. I can only hope that my sense that the American people will reject this latest move of desperation by the McCain campaign is correct.
I commend the Post for the editorial, even as I do not think it went far enough. Of greater importance I commend Obama for demonstrating a quality I want in my president, in anyone who would seek a position of leadership - a willingness to engage intellectually with those different from himself.
As for the bloviations of the McCains and the Palins and the Roves and the Steve Schmidts? Khalidi is correct. Each time they open their mouths little comes forth except yet another "Idiot Wind."
Peace.