Tag: National Review

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Election 2008 Obama

That Better Place Around the Bend


[Obama announcing his bid for the presidency in 2007.]

[digg-reddit-me]It’s funny to think of how much the pundits were complaining about how the convention speakers weren’t going after McCain before tonight. All that worrying. Yet, now, the plan is clear – all these other speakers were supposed to build Obama up – and then, Obama was supposed to tee off on McCain himself – at the moment of maximum publicity.

The Corner over at the National Review is sniping – nitpicking. They have pronounced the speech “LAME,” “Same old same old of the last two decades,” “pie-eyed utopianism,” “a September 10th convention,” and “This is not a great speech, and it is not a great delivery.” For the coup de grace, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggests “Maybe McCain shouldn’t speak next week and replay this instead?”

With that type of response, it’s a wonder the Republicans haven’t been run out of town. Talk about out-of-touch. Or perhaps, these comments are better understood as the rationalizations of the captain of a sinking ship – trying to convince his crew to keep doing their jobs, and the band to keep playing.

Barack Obama gave, tonight, not his best speech – and not his best delivered speech – although it was delivered well and was a great speech. Because of it’s ambition, it could not be perfect. Instead of small perfection – like Obama’s keynote address in 2004 – it was a broad vision, with specific detail, responding to all of the charges thrown against him, and striking at the perceived strengths of his opponent while praising his past opponents and calling on the best in America. It was exactly the speech he needed – accomplishing so much without overstretching. It was truly remarkable.

MSNBC made some headlines for it’s on and off-air catfights recently, but Chris Matthews summarized the highlights and the genius of the speech well in the immediate aftermath:

Keith Olberman: I’d love to find something to criticize about it. Got anything?

Chris Matthews: No. I’ll be criticized for saying he inspires me, but to hell with my critics…I think what he said was about us; and that’s why we care about what he said. It was not about an ego – it was about a country. And when he said it at the end, he really challenged the country to make a decision. He said our strength is not in our money or our military or even our culture – he said it’s the American spirit, the American promise that pushes us forward even when the  path is uncertain. It binds us together in spite our differences; it makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but in what is unseen – that better place around the bend. That is America. And I think that is the challenge. It is an open challenge to the hearts and minds of the country. They can choose him or the other guy. It’s an open election.

But what he was saying is choosing the unknown is what we did when we picked Roosevelt; it’s what happened the country chose Reagan; it’s what they chose when they chose Clinton; oftentimes you have to take the unknowable and move away from the unacceptable. And in this case he’s saying: ‘Place your bets on the 90% not the 10%’ where McCain disagrees with Bush.

I thought it was an amazing..but…I’ve written speeches all my life, of course nothing like this. Let me tell you what was great about it. What he did was – and it’s a military practice – it’s called attacking from a defensive position. It’s how Henry won in Agincourt; it’s how Alexander won; it’s how Reagan kicked the butt of Jimmy Carter. And what you do is this: you take your opponent’s best shot and throw it back at him.

Are we a nation of whiners? If this is an ownership society, you own your failure. Was my upbringing a celebrity’s upbringing? If you’re going to follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell, how about going to his cave and getting him? And how dare you say this election is a test of patriotism when we’re all in this together? It was a great way of throwing back the other side’s best shot and saying it’s full of crap.

Politically, it was a remarkable performance. Now we see if the McCain campaign and the Republican noise machine can match him – or at least neutralize him and his message. “Class warfare!” they will say, because he spoke of how the tax code penalizes work; “Tax and spend” they will say because he want to fix our nation’s failing infrastructure. They will paint him as weak on national security – despite his pledge to build up our military and defend our nation’s interests. They will call the same plays as they have for the past three decade.

I pray that enough of us will choose something better – will choose the unknown over the unacceptable – will choose to find that better place around the bend.

Categories
Criticism Election 2008 McCain Politics

Where did the real Glenn Greenwald Go?

Glenn Greenwald has been one of the best – and most influential – voices in the blogosphere. Every day he writes an incisive piece exploring some hypocrisy within the Republican establishment and/or the press. He has been one of the few voices keeping alive such vitally relevant stories as the Pentagon propaganda scandal, the US attorney firings scandal, the many torture scandals, and the general media acquiescence to telling their stories on terms set by the Right. Greenwald’s writing does have a particular sense of continuous outrage that becomes off-putting. As serious as the issues we face are, outrage can become wearing. Despite this stylistic critique, I have found Greenwald to be one of the most insightful commentators on our current politics.

But since Glenn Greenwald has gotten back from his book tour, his writing has seemed off. Take these three lines from three of his latest blog entries:

They’re as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty.

The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters.

John McCain is the ultimate embodiment of America’s hoary, Vietnam era “stabbed-in-the-back” myth. We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over “collateral damage” and unimpeded by domestic questioning. That’s how we could have (and should have) “won” in Vietnam and how we’ll “win” in Iraq. That’s why the central truth of the 2008 election is that, when it comes to foreign policy, the Kristol/Lieberman-supported John McCain is a carbon copy of the Bush/Cheney warmongering mentality except that he’s actually more extreme about its core premises.

With all of these, I agree with the basic points Greenwald is making – but he veers into the territory of unconvincing polemicism instead of the more nuanced yet strongly worded critiques that are his best.  For me, even worse are the topical errors he has made.

In today’s piece about McCain embracing the “stabbed-in-the-back” narrative about Vietnam, Greenwald has to retract one of the more damning insinuations he makes – that McCain cares nothing for civilian casualties in war.

In another piece last week, Greenwald wrote about “The right’s selective political manipulation of Catholicism.”  But instead of taking the arguments of his opponents seriously, he – whether through laziness or misunderstanding – simply ignores their points.  Kathyrn Jean Lopez of the National Review is an extremely lazy thinker who Greenwald should be able to defeat handily in a blog-battle.  Yet Greenwald’s response to Lopez ends up being wildly off the mark.  He tries to attack her for hypocrisy for saying she wants to protect innocent human life while supporting Republicans.  Republicans have started a war that has cost over a million lives, Greenwald rightly points out.  What he fails to acknowledge is that Lopez would point to the hundreds of millions of “innocent lives” lost to abortion as a countervailing force.

She can – and should – still be taken to task for hypocrisy.  Andrew Sullivan has been especially effective on this front.  But Greenwald ended up seeming like a petty hack.

I know he’s better than that which is why I’m disappointed.

I have hope though that after some time to recuperate, the real Greenwald will be back.

Continue reading “Where did the real Glenn Greenwald Go?”
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Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Betting on the American People

[digg-reddit-me]I wanted to call this post, “The End of Hillary 2008” but there were no “knockout blows” in this debate. Only the gradual erosion of Ms. Clinton’s candidacy and the demonstration of Barack Obama’s resilience.

On October 30, 2007, the Democratic candidates for president debated in Philadelphia. At the time, I noted that this debate might mark”The Beginning of the End of Hillary 2008“. I based this prediction on the fact that the fundamentals of this election year favor Senator Barack Obama, and that Ms. Clinton had just made a significant mistake that played into her perceived weaknesses. Many people scoffed – and the conventional wisdom of the time was that although Ms. Clinton made a large blunder, she hadn’t offered a large enough opening for Mr. Obama to take advantage of. It is hard to recall now how obvious it seemed then that Ms. Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

Now tonight, 170 days later, and 10 days before the umpteenth “final showdown” between the candidates, they debated again. In the October debate, Ms. Clinton complained that Tim Russert and Brian Williams were “ganging up” on her because they pressed her to answer questions that she was trying to evade, most specifically regarding driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

Tonight though Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did gang up on Mr. Obama. They used a surrogate to ask if he was loved the country and the flag; they brought up the fact that he had once served on a charitable board with a former member of the Weather Underground; they of course mentioned Bittergate; they brought up again the comments of Reverend Wright. Ms. Clinton piled on – especially by trying to raise the issue of William Ayers, the former member of the Weather Underground who Mr. Obama knew from the charitable board and the University of Chicago and by saying, again, that Mr. Obama’s comments about “clinging” to religion, guns and nativism were elitist and out-of-touch. Watching her closely as she flung this mud – which had often been thrown at her in the past two decades – I thought I could see her squirm, as she refused to focus her eyes on anyone or anything in particular, looking up, then down, then left, and right, all awkward yet determined. I thought I could see Ms. Clinton’s conscience squirming as she tried to teach Mr. Obama the lesson that she had been taught: the only way to win is to ignore the issues and the truth as you know it, and try to bring down your opponent.

The National Review‘s Jonah Golberg halfway through the debate wrote on The Corner:

I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.

I think if he were more honest, Mr. Golberg might say he did find the debate to be “nothing but Republican water-carrying” and that the issues the moderators and Ms. Clinton kept pressing were “valid and legitimate” points only if “valid and legitimate” points were defined to mean those issues which would help Republicans beat Mr. Obama.

It’s worth noting how far Hillary Clinton has come – as demonstrated in the following video which many redditors will be familiar with:

(h/t The Nation ‘s Ari Melber.)

In the debate tonight, Ms. Clinton attacked Mr. Obama as an elitist, attacked him by invoking 9/11 (some 4 times by my informal count), and attacked him for associating with a former terrorist (a charge which Obama parried very well, pointing out that President Bill Clinton had pardoned several members of the same group that Ms. Clinton was attacking Obama for having served on a charitable committee with.)  Ms. Clinton has gone from the foremost victim of the Drudge-style smears and gaffes to the foremost practitioner of the varied and dark arts of dirty politics (now that Karl Rove has retired).  Tonight’s debate on ABC provided her with an ideal platform with sympathetic questioners who aided her.

And yet here is the key: Obama scored no knockouts, but he kept going, and he kept talking about the policy issues that matter to most Americans without looking like he was dodging the questions.  He answered, then pivoted.  Again.  And again.  And again.  And it worked.

What his candidacy comes down to is this: he is betting on the American people.  That’s why, when confronted with the incendiary statements of Reverend Wright, he didn’t do the typical political move and disown him; he condemned the comments and sought to explain why he still admired the man who said them, speaking to Americans as if they were adults.

Mr. Obama’s candidacy is not magical, as it did feel for a time in the days after Iowa.  What his candidacy is is grounded and methodical and competent and substantiative and groundbreaking.

Maybe there’s a bit of magic mixed up in there too – but it’s not in the candidate himself.  It’s in the hopes of the people who are coming into the political process to support him; it’s in the sense that America is righting itself after many, many rocky years; it’s in the movement that is swelling around his candidacy; it’s in the connection between Barack Obama’s story and the nation’s; and it’s in the fact that the candidate who is winning is the one who was willing to bet on the good sense of the American people.

Continue reading “Betting on the American People”