This morning brings us a new Paul Krugman op-ed entitled "Deliverance or Diversion?" The article hits Obama with some standard Clinton talking points: his relative inexperience, the media's favoritism of him over Clinton, his supposed preference for rhetoric over substance. And it his with his rhetoric, seen as bipartisan and not explicitly liberal enough, that the thrust of this editorial is aimed. Will an Obama candidacy deliver the Democratic party not just the presidency but the progressive policies it seeks to institute? Or will it simply divert the party, by dint of personality and empty rhetoric, from its true goals of policy enactment. If the latter happens, Krugman concludes, it "could tear the party apart."
There is little substance behind Krugman's piece, but the issue behind Obama's rhetorical style could be important to the progressive movement as a whole and is worth some discussion. Follow below the fold for a more sober assessment of Obama's lack of explicit liberalism made by Kevin Drum back in January:
Obama, obviously, has a tremendous ability to give inspiring speeches. He's far more persuasive than Hillary on this score. On the downside, however, his speeches don't tend to overtly push a progressive agenda as much as Hillary's do.
How would this work out in practice? Hard to say. One possibility is that Obama would get everyone inspired, but not inspired about a specifically progressive agenda. That would be bad. A second possibility, however, is that he'd manage to convince the public that his liberal agenda isn't really "liberal" — a word that's been successfully demonized by the right — but just common sense. So he gets the public support he wants, but he gets it by repositioning liberal ideas not as ideology, but as post-partisan problem solving. That would be good. The question is, will it work? Or is the direct approach more effective?
I think we've seen that the second possibility seems to be in play here. Take this snippet from the latest debate after Obama was asked about being ranked the most liberal senator by the National Journal:
I don't think that's a liberal position. I think there are a lot of Republicans and a lot of Independents who would like to make sure that ethic investigations are not conducted by the people who are potentially being investigated. So the categories don't make sense.
And part of the reason I think a lot of people have been puzzled, why is it that Senator Obama's campaign, the supposed liberal, is attracting more Independent votes than any other candidate in the Democratic primary, and Republican votes as well, and then people are scratching their head? It's because people don't want to go back to those old categories of what's liberal and what's conservative.
They want to see who is making sense, who's fighting for them, who's going to go after the special interests, who is going to champion the issues of health care and making college affordable, and making sure that we have a foreign policy that makes sense? That's what I've been doing . . .
Now, the nation's support for the Republicans may be low, as Krugman rightly points out, but this does not mean that support for liberalism, stated as such, has become high, as unfortunate as that may be. Further, we have known for some time that liberal policies, without an ideological framework attached, tend to be supported by a majority of Americans. We have also recognized that the progressive agenda has been, despite support for its policies, by and large stymied in recent years. Most of us have even recognized why this has happened, due to, frankly, superb framing on the part of the conservatives.
A Washington Post article on this topic notes that "bipartisanship for decades has been synonymous with compromise and incrementalism." I think this is exactly what Krugman would like to call to mind when questioning Obama's rhetorical stylings. Some of Obama's progressive detractors would paint post-partisan rhetoric as cowardly and ultimately defeatist, but it is, to borrow the previously used phrase, superb framing. To fight on what has time and again proven a losing battlefield is just poor strategy. Yes, the people are tired of Republicans, but it is not just that, they're sick of politicians in general, they're sick of gridlock, and they're sick of partisanship. There is no real evidence that explicit liberalism has become any more favorable to the general public. There is, perhaps, some evidence that it would only help McCain consolidate the conservative base behind him.
The Post piece mentioned above quotes a Republican representative, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, as saying "he [Obama] will use style and grace to achieve liberal goals, which is absolutely politically brilliant but intellectually dishonest." I completely agree that it is politically brilliant. As for it being intellectually dishonest, I refer you above to public support of liberal goals. And Obama's "style and grace" is precisely why this rhetorical tact has worked for him. It isn't that Democrats haven't tried using post-partisan allure in the past, it is that they have never truly been able to pull it off in a way that has inspired ordinary Americans of all political stripes.
We at this time have a candidate that can pull it off. We have at this time a candidate who has adopted a post-partisan framing, championing popular progressive policies while moving beyond the left-right rhetorical dichotomy. We have a candidate that can work outside of the existing D.C. power structure because of his broad popular appeal. We have a candidate that can, at last, deliver the progressive agenda that the majority of the nation supports.