More thoughts on Obama

Rafique,
That's not really what I was trying to convey; my problem with Obama's announcement isn't just that he doesn't talk in specifics about his ideas and his ideals, because that's par for the course. It's that he is attempting to portray himself as being above the fray, to suggest that every other politician is defective, divisive, self-interested and partisan, while he, on the other hand, isn't any of those things. He just has the right answers to these divisive questions; all those bad, divisive politicians know his ideas are right, but they're too busy playing divisive politics for political advantage.

To be sure, you're right that I prefer what Gingrich says his causes and ideas are to what we have to infer to be Obama's causes and ideas, but Gingrich is not trying to portray his ideas as just obvious common-sense solutions that everyone actually agrees on, and that would have been in place years ago if it wasn't for these terrible political partisans who try to obscure the issues with divisive rhetoric.

I've got (or previously had) nothing against Obama, and I don't object to his seeking the Democratic nomination. I do, however, resent the attempt to portray himself and his ideas as something other than what they are: he is a liberal who perceives problems through a liberal lens and concludes that liberal remedies are the best. He has nothing that he can point to that suggests that he is anything else. And there's nothing wrong with that at all, per se; what makes him seem less genuine in his speech is the mismatch between rhetoric and reality, the idea that he's a non-partisan wise philosopher-king who happens to have all the answers, and anyone who disagrees with those answers must be a divisive partisan, even though, without exception, his answers seem to resemble precisely what we'd expect from a liberal, and thus the divisive partisans who he's railing against - by pure coincidence - all happen to be on the right.

He's simply too smart to really believe a statement like "[p]olitics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions." Politics has become bitter and partisan precisely because we are tackling big problems that demand solutions, but not everyone agrees what the problems are and what the solutions are. I remember having this argument with Brian at Centerfield months ago in the context of abortion - Brian kept insisting that he was a "moderate" who adopted a "compromise" position; of course, it was nothing of the kind, it was the bog-standard pro-choice position, just more softly-spoken. But Brian defended the idea that he was actually in the middle of the debate, that he was a moderate on the issue as if his life depended on it. No amount of logic or force of reason could dissuade. That's the kind of "moderation" that Obama exudes - the unshakable faith of necessity, the overwhelming need to see oneself as a moderate, to resolve the cognitive dissonance between a self image as a reasonable pragmatist and the knawing awareness of having bought fully into one side of the debate. Obama can insist that his positions are "common sense" all he likes, that they are non-partisan and non-divisive, but that won't change their actual nature.

In short - if you want to adopt the language of national unity, you have to show some indication that you understand both sides and are willing to seek genuine compromises. David Brooks says that Obama listens to both sides, that he processes all this information, but if you still come out uniformly on one side - big deal.

Thomas Brackett Reed once said that the best way to run the House was for one party to govern and the other paty to watch - and on balance, he'd prefer his party to govern and the other party to watch. When Obama says "[w]e have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans," he means precisely the same thing as Reed, but at least Reed was honest about it.

Rafique, Are you a character in Obama's book? Check it out:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/chicago_suntime.html?CMP=google_brianross_&partner=google&gclid=CMjdqcTg6okCFRUPVAodDCHRKQ

I don't have a problem, particularly, with a politician demonizing his opponent. But when he demonizes every other politician, and hypocritically holding himself out as somehow above the fray, he is doing a disservice to all of us.

For me it depends. What you at least seem to be suggesting by this is that all politicians ought to be regarded as equally venal, and that none has any more ability to transcend partisanship than any other. And hey, that's your mileage, you defend the virtues of partisanship. And I cheerfully concede that within the confines of the system, partisanship can have some virtue or at least utility in delivering for one team. Like you and Simon seem to love to say or at least imply, at the end of the day, you have to stand for something.

I agree that at least in the modern era the delivery rate on transcendence seems awfully low, and I also agree that any claim of transcendence must be at least partially false. The President will tend to deliver more for his own team, that's how it has to work. But he or she can also set the tone and look to the middle and do the thankless job of delivering what's best for the country. When the President does this, the other party will seldom if ever acknowledge this or give thanks.

I stop well short of the cynical equivalence you seem to be selling. I see a set of politicians adopting the centrist theme of transcending partisanship, and I assume that many of them are full of crap. But I'm measuring delivery, and hoping for one with a hair of sincerity. I am not willing to assume that 100% insincerity is a political given. This is where you usually reply that I am foolish whenever I insist that there must be a way without providing data that demonstrates there is. That's OK. It's called hope, or alternatively faith, and it's what separates skepticism from cynicism.

So even as I cheerfully concede that yes, at the end of the day maybe you DO have to stand for something, I insist that the moral necessity of clinging to the hope of transcendence is a worthwhile thing to stand for. It's far less dismissable than you suggest.