Often, Thomas Friedman drives me crazy with his neo-lib economic theories and his support for the war before it started. But this column — essentially advice to Barack Obama — makes too much sense to dismiss. I hope the candidate reads it.
Tag: Barack Obama
Speeches telegraph GOP strategy
Some additional thoughts on last night’s RNC speeches:
They plan to play the elitism card to what can only be described as its illogical conclusion. First, there was Mike Huckabee with his cracks about “the elite media” and “Barack Obama’s excellent adventure to Europe,” which he said
took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don’t even vote or pay taxes here. But let me hasten to say that it’s not what he took there that concerns me. It’s what he brought back: European ideas that give the government the chance to grab even more of our liberty and destroy our hard-earned livelihood.
European ideas? What is he talking about?
Mitt Romney followed with his own attack on a Washington that he said was beholden to the liberal elite.
You know, for decades now, the Washington sun has been rising in the east. You see, Washington has been looking to the eastern elites, to the editorial pages of the Times and the Post, and to the broadcasters from the — from the coast. Yes.
His big target, however, were the liberals running the federal government. You know, the liberal president who has run the executive branch for the last eight years and the liberal Supreme Court that has been chipping away at civil rights protections.
OK. Maybe there is now a liberal Congress, but it has been in charge for just under two years and with the barest of majorities — not enough to override vetoes leaving that liberal George Bush with the ability to stymie its ability to do much of anything. From 1995 to 2207, however, liberals like Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were in charge, so I can see where Romney might want to take them on.
(This whole anti-Washington thing — which both sides have made into general themes of their campaign — is getting tiresome. It is not Washington that is the problem, but a culture of corruption that has come to define Washington. The corruption — both legal and illegal — needs to be rooted out, so that government — Washington — can operate more effectively. Targeting a more generic Washington plays into the drown-the-puppy crowd (you know, Grover Norquist’s famous line about shrinking government until it is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub) and makes it that much more difficult for reformers who think that government has a real role to play in the lives of Americans to effect the kind of change that is needed. But I digress.)
Rudy Giuliani took the anti-elite theme a step farther, attacking Obama’s work as a community organizer (a job that put him in contact with people in poor neighborhoods, helping them to improve their lives):
The American people realize this election represents a turning point. It’s the decision to follow one path or the other. We, the people, the citizens of the United States, get to decide our next president, not the left-wing media, not Hollywood celebrities, not anyone else but the people of America.
Obama, he says, is a “celebrity senator” who denigrates small towns:
I’m sorry — I’m sorry that Barack Obama feels that her hometown isn’t cosmopolitan enough. I’m sorry, Barack, that it’s not flashy enough. Maybe they cling to religion there.
Of course, I don’t remember him ever saying that. but Giuliani has never been one to concern himself with the truth.
Palin closed things out with a rather harsh attack speech — unusual given that it was the first impression most people will have of her. That said, she hit on many of the same anti-elite themes raised by Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani (does anyone else find it humorous that the former mayor of New York City and a former Massachusetts governor — and scion of a famous political family — are decrying Eastern elites?), tagging the press for writing off McCain (a well-deserved rebuke, by the way), but then ratcheting up the criticism. Consider these excerpts:
On Obama as community organizer:
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.
On small towns and “bitterness”:
I might add that, in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.
No, we tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
She bemoaned the “permanent political establishment,” adding that she has
learned quickly these last few days that, if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.
And Obama, of course, because of his eloquence, is just another part of the establishment. One thing Palin is good at, based on the speech, is damning with faint praise and then turning the praise into derision:
And now, I’ve noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have, too. We’ve all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the State Senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word “victory,” except when he’s talking about his own campaign.
But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, when that happens, what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
What exactly do these speakers offer, however, except for more of the same? More tax cuts to bankrupt the federal budget, more war and bellicosity and more faux concern for the economic plight of working Americans.
That said, the contours of the campaign are set: Run against the media and the so-called elites, paint Obama as an elitist, and call for more oil drilling.
Obama’s theory of government
I want to get back to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech from last night because I think it deserves a little more attention, especially with much of the media being focused on McCain’s announcement that Sarah Palin would be his vice-presidential candidate.
Let’s cut through all the peripheries — the exceptional delivery, the massive crowd, etc. — and look at the meat, as they say.
After outlining why most Americans say that the nation is heading down the wrong road — war and joblessness, increasing bills and foreclosures — he reminded the crowd of a very important point:
America, we are better than these last eight years.
He’s right. But what does that mean?
The criticism of Obama has been that his message of hope and change has lack specificity. That is a media meme built on a line of attack used by Hillary Clinton during the primaries and picked up by the GOP, but anyone who has been paying attention knows that Obama has offered a far more detailed plan for the future than his Republican opponent.
That said, it was important that the speech find some way of combining his soaring rhetoric with his specifics — which I think he accomplished, an opinion with which most observers agree.
He defined the mission of government, the “American promise,” as saying
each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.
It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.
Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.
Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.
That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.
It is a theory of government that says we are only as good as we treat other people and it is government’s job to act as our surrogate.
It is within this framework that Obama offers his proposals, some quite progressive and some I find troubling. He’s talking about a tax cut for the middle class and small businesses, which seems sensible at a time of economic meltdown. And he is pushing for alternative fuels — though his openness to nuclear power is difficult to understand.
He promised equal pay for equal work and health care for all — something that the Republicans do not view as important.
Ultimately, he made the strong case that he best understands the troubles we are facing and that the Republicans do not, cannot and never will in a way that neither John Kerry nor Al Gore did.
Following the speech, I told Annie that, for the first time, I felt that Obama was likely to win, that he would win over the electorate and that McCain ultimately would be shown to be out of touch. I even started thinking that the election might not be as close as people think.
I have a more sober reaction today — after hearing from some Obama opponents — but I still sense that the Democrat will win the White House come November.
The Palin question
John McCain is targeting disaffected Clinton supporters. That was obvious before today’s announcement that he was choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running-mate.
The reviews of the pick have been mixed. Conservatives — who agree with her views on abortion — like her, as do the inside-the-Beltway media types, who view everything through a narrow political lens and, more to the point, are giving McCain points for surprising them.
Matt Yglesias notes this phenomenon here, focusing primarily on conservative response, but even Dahlia Lithwick at Slate buys into the political narrative:
Absolutely agree that this was an inspired, brave and buzz-y choice for veep. Everything the Joe Biden pick was not. I think Team McCain has gamed this age we live in better than the Obama camp, for which they deserve serious credit. Now this is gonna be an election. And here I was getting ready to retire my girl-cleats for the rest of the fall. I couldn’t be more excited.
Buzzy and edgy? Is that the best we can say about her?
I think Steve Brenen at Washington Monthly has a more logical response, calling it the “strangest running-mate decision since Dan Quayle.”
Sarah Palin spent a year working as a commissioner for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and has been governor for a year and a half. Now, she’ll be the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate, and if things go well for McCain, one heartbeat from the presidency. When it comes to being untested and unknown, Palin is in a league of her own.
Just yesterday, advisers to the McCain campaign conceded to the New York Times that McCain “thinks highly” of Palin, but “her less than two years in office would undercut one of the McCain campaign’s central criticisms of Senator Barack Obama — that he is too inexperienced to be commander-in-chief.” So much for the McCain campaign’s message.
Stepping back, we have the man who would be the oldest president in American history, who happens to have a record of health problems, picking a virtual unknown who’s been a governor for less than two years. Amazing.
There are dangers in making this argument, as Nomi Prins on Alternet — a lefty blog/online magazine — points out. She calls the pick a shrewd one that raises the stakes, because it keeps female Clinton supporters angry over the primary results in play and because the Democrats will have to dance a bit in their criticism of her.
They can’t attack Palin’s experience level since she has more technical executive experience as the number two woman (yes woman) on the GOP ticket, than Obama does. And if they complain too loudly about her being selected just because she’s a woman, they will alienate millions of female voters in swing states who are still annoyed about Hillary’s smacking her head on the glass ceiling after cracking it 18 million times.
Palin, after paying homage to Hillary’s feat, deftly said now they can crack that ceiling once and for all. The ticket puts a whole new gender spin on the election. To millions of Americans, particularly women, who don’t spend every minute of their days watching and analyzing political news — because they are working for a hard-to-achieve living — the GOP just stole their own piece of history, rendering Obama’s safe pick of Biden, not so safe after all.
Obama took a risk in not choosing a woman who captured 18 million votes as his VP, and not explaining why. McCain seized upon that omission by choosing the relatively unknown Palin as a result. Obama must now walk a fine line. He can criticize what Palin has done or believes. But he must recognize her for the historic choice (to take a page out of the GOP’s playbook) that she is (and that he avoided). That could be the only way to capture the millions of female voters across the country, many of which voted for Hillary and haven’t yet decided on Obama.
I think she sums up McCain’s thinking here, though I have to wonder if he undercut his chief argument against Obama, removing the experience issue from the table.
Another thing to keep in mind: Unlike the other three candidates, she has not been vetted publicly, so we have no idea how she will respond under the harsh glare of a presidential campaign. She could turn out to be a strong runningmate or she could turn out to be Dan Quayle (Quayle likely would have torpedoed the candidacy of the first George Bush, had the Democrats not run Michael Dukakis at the top of their ticket).
In the end, I think Hillary Clinton summed it up best earlier this week, reminding her supporters of what her candidacy was about and asking them whether they shared her goals:
I ran for president to renew the promise of America. To rebuild the middle class and sustain the American dream, to provide the opportunity to work hard and have that work rewarded, to save for college, a home and retirement, to afford the gas and groceries and still have a little left over each month.
To promote a clean energy economy that will create millions of green-collar jobs.
To create a health care system that is universal, high quality, and affordable so that parents no longer have to choose between care for themselves or their children or be stuck in dead-end jobs simply to keep their insurance.
To create a world-class education system and make college affordable again.
To fight for an America defined by deep and meaningful equality — from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families. To help every child live up to his or her God-given potential.
To make America once again a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.
To bring fiscal sanity back to Washington and make our government an instrument of the public good, not of private plunder.
To restore America’s standing in the world, to end the war in Iraq, bring our troops home and honor their service by caring for our veterans.And to join with our allies to confront our shared challenges, from poverty and genocide to terrorism and global warming.
Most of all, I ran to stand up for all those who have been invisible to their government for eight long years.
Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should, too.
I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
I would add this question: What is more important? Putting a woman in the vice-president’s office, or achieving equal pay, protecting a woman’s right to choose and ending the war? Are disaffected Clinton supporters — especially the women — prepared to vote for a ticket featuring two pro-life candidates — especially with at least one of the liberal, pro-choice Supreme Court justices likely to retire in the near future?
Palin may offer an opportunity to break through the glass ceiling, but a McCain/Palin administration is not likely to be any friendlier to women than the Bush/Cheney team has been.
That’s ultimately what should matter to Clinton supporters.
The speech is over and it was a good one
Here’s the text from The New York Times. I’ll try to have more analysis after I get a chance to think it through and digest it, but my initial sense is that he knocked it out of the park, as they say.
Hank Kalet 