Category: Politics

Categories
Law National Security Politics

Cokie Roberts Thinks the Rule of Law Might Be More Important Than A Pleasant Atmosphere in Washington

[digg-reddit-me]When I heard Cokie Roberts saying this on Sunday my jaw dropped:

The self-centeredness of the response – and the fact that she showed no shame about explaining this as her reasoning on national television when she was supposed to be acting as a serious commentator. Though it is pretty awesome that she is willing to undergo the inconvenience of the “bad atmosphere” in Washington as a result of attempting to uphold the Rule of Law. I’m glad she is willing to make the sacrifice for the rest of us.

It’s pretty telling that committing war crimes isn’t what is credited with souring the mood – but instead the blame is foisted onto those who uphold the law…

Categories
Criticism Politics The Media The Opinionsphere

On Media Bias and Conventional Wisdom (cont.)

[digg-reddit-me]I wrote earlier about the history of major news organizations and Conventional Wisdom. It is important to acknowledge though that the role of the news organizations has rarely been more prominent than it was at the beginning of that history – in the 1950s and 1960s.

Where the previous piece ended was with acknowledgement that the Conventional Wisdom of the mainstream news organizations was no longer authoritative – as partisans of the left and right each sought to contest every aspect of the media landscape, and as certain flaws in news gathering, news presentation, and commentary became more apparent.

Those following the biggest news organizations – the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, McClatchy, and many of the other top news organizations – can sense a bias if they follow the coverage closely. Though many of the reporters, editors, anchors, and others may subscribe to a mainstream form of liberalism (as polls show), the actions of the news-gatherers and their editors demonstrate that their primary ideology is not liberal but instead is based on cynism and opportunism. (Fox News is the rare case of a newsgathering organization that is almost purely ideological – making its “Fair and Balanced” tagline positively Orwellian.) Even the Huffington Post – which is one of the most liberal news gathering organizations – published off-the-record remarks by their darling, Barack Obama – at a time when it caused him considerable damage. The press went after Bill Clinton – rooting amongst his sexual dalliances – all in search of a scoop. The reporters were pretty brutal in their takes on John Edwards – the most progressive Democratic candidate to have a plausible shot at the Democratic nomination in a generation – even before his affair. If you listen to the members of these news organizations talk – which you can increasingly do with podcasts and other behind-the-scenes takes – the unstated biases are not liberal – but are instead a distrust of every official and every politician – and a desire to make a name for themselves by bringing someone big down with a juicy story.

Another primary aspect of these newsgatherers is faux-objectivity. This sometimes leads to news stories being framed in a manner to give credence to more liberal views (though this primarily is true on social issues rather than political ones) – but more often, it leads to the news stories on controversial topics being presented as “he said, she said.” Campbell Brown presented a perfect example of this faux-journalism recently:

Even as the news organization no longer play an unchallenged role in deciding on the Conventional Wisdom, they still play an important role. No longer can an individual pronounce – as Walter Cronkite did – that Vietnam was “unwinnable” after a news report and succeed in shaping the Conventional Wisdom. No longer can the press hound a president from office on the basis of law-breaking. No longer will those who stand to benefit from the status quo allow a consensus opinion regarding what action should be taken on civil rights or to combat global warming be reached. Partisans would challenge it and attack the messenger – and given the mistrust of most people for the press, they would likely succeed to some extent, which is all they need to paralyze the system.

The most effective way news organizations can – and do – shape the Conventional Wisdom of the public as a whole is to make some conclusion they have reached implicit in their coverage. Some recent examples of such nuggets of conventional wisdom from the press – which are mostly personal characterizations:

  • “Al Gore exaggerates.”
  • “George W. Bush is dumb.”
  • “There’s not much difference between Bush and Gore.”
  • “America doesn’t torture.”
  • “America does torture.”
  • “Dick Cheney is really in charge.”
  • “Joe Biden puts his foot in his mouth.”
  • “Bill Clinton is a philanderer.”
  • “John Edwards is phony.”
  • “Obama throws people under the bus if they’re causing him trouble.”
  • “John McCain is a maverick.”
  • “John McCain is erratic.”
  • “Sarah Palin is out of her depth.”

True, not true; fair or unfair, these conclusions, once reached, became implicit in news coverage, unchallenged by the commentators or the press, and the fodder for late night comedians and political cartoonists. Today, it is probably comedy more than anything else in which the Conventional Wisdom is expressed and accepted.

Probably the most basic rule of faux-journalism is that every event and off-hand remark must be interpreted as confirming the conventional wisdom of the press – becoming part of the litany of “proofs” that the stereotype is true.

Categories
Election 2008 Palin Politics The Opinionsphere

Why I Despise Sarah Palin

[digg-reddit-me]One of my friends asked me this question. Actually, he accused me of despising her (which I admit to) and postulated that feminists and liberals hate her so much because she stands for “a sort of  ‘reincarnation’ of the traditional post-war female that scares the bejesus out of liberals for a variety of reasons.”

I can’t speak for every liberal, or every progressive, or every feminist – but I can speak for myself – and I tell you, it is not Palin’s  status as a reincarnation of the traditional post-war female (a description which I incidentally don’t find that fitting) that leads me to despise her. It is that she found herself to be a very capable demagogue. Frank Rich in The New York Times explained it well this Sunday:

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological… The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

Palin constantly positions herself as a victim of the conspiracies of the elite. As interviewers lob her softball after softball, she points out the few outliers and claims she is a victim of a giant conspiracy. As a local blogger files a frivolous ethics complaint, Palin claims she is being targeted for persecution by Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama. A similar logic of collective victomhood makes its way into every speech she gives; she constantly sets up a dynamic of “us” against “them” – the “Joe Sixpacks” versus “the Hollywood/NY elite” and the “real Americans” against those “who [see] America…as being so imperfect…that [they are] palling around with terrorists [who]…target their own country.” What this accomplishes is what Cass Sunstein in the Spectator describes as the dyanmic of self-reinforcing moral outrage:

Political extremism is often a product of group polarisation and social segregation is a useful tool for producing polarisation. In fact, a good way to create an extremist group, or a cult of any kind, is to separate members from the rest of society. The separation can occur physically or psychologically, by creating a sense of suspicion about non-members. With such separation, the information and views of those outside the group can be discredited, and hence nothing will disturb the process of polarisation as group members continue to talk.

Sunstein does not link this to Palin – but it is clear that she is playing with this exact dynamic. This stands in stark contrast to John McCain who, to his credit, realized how dangerous this dynamic was and tried to calm his crowds down; and it stands in contrast to Barack Obama who has deliberately taken an approach that minimizes this dynamic of escalating moral outrage – challenging his audiences when they seem to be dehumanizing the other side. Palin though escalated her rhetoric. Her crowds became more extreme – in the way that like-minded groups do, especially when united against a nefarious and dehumanized “them.”

Why do I despise Sarah Palin? Because she is a demagogue, and more important, because she is an effective one.

Continue reading “Why I Despise Sarah Palin”
Categories
Criticism Politics The Media The Opinionsphere

On Media Bias

There was a time when news organizations could pronounce the Conventional Wisdom of our society as a whole authoritatively. This Wisdom was not decided on by the media – but rather once it had reached a critical mass of acceptance among the media professionals, the political class, and the public at large, a news organization would close down the debate and declare it so. Before this point, various news organizations would be engaged in the battle for what was accepted as true and what was not. Pronouncing and explaining the Conventional Wisdom was the main focus of the biggest news organizations of the 1950s and 1960s. Time magazine, the New York Times, CBS News – all prided themselves on this. But there came moments when a news organization catalyzed opinion so suddenly, when they played a decisive role in creating the Conventional Wisdom. For example, when news organizations showed the images of the children with fire hoses turned on them – and vicious dogs – in Birmingham, the brutality of the oppression of black Americans was driven home. When Walter Cronkite declared “the bloody experience of Vietnam is a stalemate” and that the war was “unwinnable,” Lyndon Johnson famously declared he had lost “Middle America.”

Right-wingers – seeing how the media had decisively affected the course of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam protests by influencing the Conventional Wisdom – began a deliberate campaign to undermine the media’s ability to play such a role again. They promulgated studies of media bias, promoted conservative media and commentary, opposed regulations ensuring the equal treatment of controversial subjects on public airwaves, and constantly repeated the talking points about a liberal media elite. By the 1980s, they had mainly succeeded in delegitimizing the mainstream news organizations in the eyes of conservatives, right-wingers, and Republicans – but independents and those towards the left continued to see these news organizations as legitimate.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that progressives, liberals, and Democrats, began to seriously question the legitimacy of these news organizations – as the Clinton witch hunt became frenzied. Most though just saw this whole episode as tawdry. They saw it reflecting badly on both the president and the news organizations who followed each revelation with tabloid-like zeal.

The real turning point came in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the success of Fox News with their Orwellian slogan, “We Report, You Decide,” and the election of 2004 – as Karl Rove and the Republicans attempted to influence those outside of their base with a deliberate strategy of manipulating the media. The last straw for many came in 2004 as Rove sought to discredit John Kerry by promoting the extreme allegations of a handful of Vietnam veterans who accused Kerry of faking his injuries. News organizations, wary of being branded “liberal” and adhering to standards of faux-objectivity, reported the story in their classic, unenlightening “he said, she said” style. What they did not report prominently was that many of these reporters had researched these allegations and came to the conclusion that Kerry’s Swift Boat attackers were wrong in their accusations. To report this truth would be to compromise their objectivity and take a side in a presidential campaign.

Liberals, progressives, and Democrats – seeing how these news organizations had been deliberately manipulated by Rove – began to realize the flaws in these news organizations and how they affected the public debate and the Conventional Wisdom. From this came the boom in the progressive blogosphere – some, like Talking Points Memo and Huffington Post focused on reporting from a progressive perspective; others, like the Daily Kos, MoveOn, and myDD on creating an online communities for progressives.

By the 2008 election, both Democrats and Republicans contested the Conventional Wisdom of the mainstream news organizations constantly – and partisans on both sides developed their own communities around their own set of agreed facts and opinions – creating their own “conventional wisdom.” It seemed that there was only one group left trusting the legitimacy of news organizations – independents.

[Image by Chris Seufert licensed under Creative Commons.]

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Domestic issues Politics The Media The Opinionsphere Videos

Campbell Brown Does the Best Journalism Ever!

[digg-reddit-me]Last week Campbell Brown provided a perfect example of the total abdication of the main responsibility of the press in a short piece in which she discussed the debate over whether or not the stimulus had worked or was working. The story was done in a perfectly formulated “he said, she said” manner in which she made no attempt to perform her basic job as a journalist: figuring out who is right and who is not.

It is hard to think of a more basic description of what the job of a journalist is than to say, “He or she should try their best to state the facts, and when there is controversy to try to get to the bottom of it.” Brown though is clearly happy to merely play clips of two different sides saying entirely opposing things, and then to smirk and hold herself above these individuals by taking no position whatsoever. It is on the shoals of this irresponsibility that our public policy debates will be run aground:

Someone here is right; someone is wrong; and there are various sets of facts out there backing up each side. Showing these clips like this – without delving into the actual policy questions accomplishes nothing.

Of course, someone might take the position that there was limited time on the air – and Brown didn’t have time to go into the details of the actual debate. And you’re right. Brown needed time for this great montage a few minutes later:

At the end of this segment, it’s easy to see how Obama is personally so popular and why his policies are less so. The policies are ignored on this serious news show while his coolness under the pressure of an annoying gnat are replayed once again.

Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, an actual discussion of policy in which facts were discussed rather than accusations traded would be to everyone’s benefit.

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Foreign Policy History Iran Law National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

McNamara, Cuomo, Bearing Witness, Iran’s Bomb, Sri Lanken Victories, and Historical Dignity

It’s that glorious time of the week – Friday. So, here’s my recommendations of some interesting reads for this weekend that came up this past week…

  1. There were a number of excellent obituaries of Robert McNamara published upon his death. But what I would recommend would be reading this speech given in 1966 at the height of his power.
  2. Another speech worth reading is Mario Cuomo’s “Our Lady of the Law” speech from November 2007 which was published for the first time on this blog earlier in the week.
  3. Roger Cohen in the New York Times tries to express the insufficiency of online reporting aggregating news and media – as Andrew Sullivan and Nico Pitney did so usefully did during the Iranian protests. As these two journalists amassed tweets, photos, videos, news stories and every other bit of information about what was going on in Iran, Roger Cohen himself was in Tehran having evaded the Iranian censors. He went to the protests, interviewed the protesters, ran from basij with them. What I could see then was that while what Sullivan and Pitney were doing was new and unique – and extremely useful for understanding what was happening, it was missing a certain urgency that Cohen was able to provide with his bylines from Tehran. So he writes here about the “actual responsibility” of the journalist – to “bear witness:

    “Not everyone realizes,” Weber told students, “that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar. This is particularly true when we recollect that it has to be written on the spot, to order, and that it must create an immediate effect, even though it is produced under completely different conditions from that of scholarly research. It is generally overlooked that a journalist’s actual responsibility is far greater than the scholar’s.”

    Yes, journalism is a matter of gravity. It’s more fashionable to denigrate than praise the media these days. In the 24/7 howl of partisan pontification, and the scarcely less-constant death knell din surrounding the press, a basic truth gets lost: that to be a journalist is to bear witness.

    The rest is no more than ornamentation.

    To bear witness means being there — and that’s not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.
    No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.

  4. Robert Patterson in Foreign Policy brings some measured historical analysis to what would happen if Iran got the bomb.
  5. Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic explains how the Sri Lankan government was able to achieve a monumental victory over a terrorist group – and also why America should not imitate its methods in any way. He concludes bleakly:

    So is there any lesson here? Only a chilling one. The ruthlessness and brutality to which the Sri Lankan government was reduced in order to defeat the Tigers points up just how nasty and intractable the problem of insurgency is. The Sri Lankan government made no progress against the insurgents for nearly a quarter century, until they turned to extreme and unsavory methods.

  6. David Brooks wrote about dignity:

    In so doing, [George Washington] turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Categories
Iran Political Philosophy Politics

The Intellectual History of the Green Wave

Abbas Milani explains the “intellectual history of the Green Wave” in Iran in a New Republic piece that provides a glimpse of the deeper theological and philosophical forces at work in the movement. Milani warns that this intellectual tradition “has not always found itself on the side of the angels,” but makes a strong case for it as an authentic incorporation of democracy and other “Western” 20th century ideas into an Islamic framework:

The roots of Iran’s current divide to a great extent lie at the turn of the century, when the country’s ayatollahs essentially split into two camps on questions of religion and politics. The first was led by Ayatollah Na’ini, an advocate of what is called the “Quietist” school of Shiism–today best exemplified in the character and behavior of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq. According to Na’ini, true “Islamic government” could only be established when the twelfth imam returned. Such a government would be the government of God on earth: Its words, deeds, laws, and courts would be absolute and could tolerate no errors. But humans, Na’ini said, were fallible and thus ill-fitted to the sacred task of establishing God’s government. As the pious await the return of the infallible twelfth imam, they must in the interim search for the best form of government. And the form most befitting this period, Na’ini argued, was constitutional democracy. The role of ayatollahs under this arrangement would be to “advise” the rulers and ensure that laws inimical to sharia were not implemented. But it would not be to rule the country themselves.

Opposing Na’ini was an ayatollah named Nuri. He dismissed democracy and the rule of law as inferior alternatives to the divine, eternal, atemporal, nonerrant wisdom embodied in the Koran and sharia. As Ayatollah Khomeini would declare more than once, his own ideas were nothing but an incarnation of Nuri’s arguments. But for the moment, at least, those ideas were on the defensive. It would be decades before they would reemerge to dominate Iranian politics.

Categories
Criticism National Security Politics The War on Terrorism Videos

My Congressman Pete King Pisses On Michael Jackson; I Repay the Favor

[digg-reddit-me]Reading the news stories about my Congressman Pete King’s “rant” pissing all over Michael Jackson’s dead body – saying “there’s nothing good about this guy” and calling him a “lowlife,” a “pervert”, a “pedophile,”  a “child molestor” – I expected to be incensed when I saw the video. It’s not that I believe Jackson wasn’t any of these things – it’s just that in the absence of any convictions and with the accusations in the second trial at least looking rather calculated – I’m still reserving judgment. I wouldn’t go around denouncing a dead man for being a child molestor based entirely on the media’s portrayal of him.

But rather than being incensed at a ranting Congressman, what I saw instead was a rather sober, if cliched, Rep. Pete King – just down the block from my house in Wantagh – trying to cut through the bullshit and express something he felt without a politically correct censor. He does well to remind us that our country has many unsung heroes – police officers, firemen, people who volunteer in cancer wards, teachers who work in the inner city. It’s always a good time to remind people of that point. King’s “rant” reminded me of the way I had admired him for his defense of Bill Clinton through the impeachment trial:

In that same spirit that led King to take on Michael Jackson (but without relying on smears and accusations and instead relying on the Congressman’s own documented words), let me say this to my congressman, mincing no words:

Whatever your other redeeming qualities, you are a bigot – and a disgrace to the House of Representatives.

You have repeatedly demonstrated that you equate Islam with terrorism in public remarks – notwithstanding your attempts to save face by saying you are not talking about all Muslims.

When asked about protecting civil liberties, you responded that “there are too many mosques in this country.”

When asked by Sean Hannity about previous statement you had made that 85 percent of mosques in America are “ruled by the extremists,” you said that many American Muslims are in reality “an enemy living amongst us.”

You denounced a mosque for running subway ads as “especially shameful because the ads will be running during the seventh anniversary of September 11, and because the subways are considered a primary target of terrorists” – equating, once again, the religion of Islam with terrorism.

You recently claimed that the FBI was investigating a number of Long Island mosques – which if true, was classified and endangered active operations; and if not true, is a lie for your propagandistic purposes.

I first realized you were a bigot when I read your novel Vale of Tears back in 2004 expecting a standard thriller – but what I got instead was page after page of anti-Muslim invective, approvingly noted by the narrator – an Irish American Congressman from Long Island who bore a striking resemblance to you.

And all of this bigotry is justified by your reaction to September 11 – which transformed you from a sensible moderate to a bigot and a fetishist for executive power. Since then, you have had little time for such niceties as the rights of citizens and American values – as you focus on this fight against “the enemy living amongst us,” thereby targeting the rights of us all. When asked about balancing American values with government power over citizens, you advocated the government using any means necessary – ignoring civil liberties and constitutional protections – as “if there is any doubt, [you] want this resolved by going out and getting the job done.” “If there is any doubt” you want to err on the side of constricting the liberty of citizens! This is not consistent with your oath to uphold the Constitution. Given this, it’s not that surprising that you think Guantanamo – a place where hundreds have been tortured according to America’s own records – goes too easy on them – that it’s like “Club Med.”

You are not the type of congressman we need. Your bigotry is embarrassing. Your disregard for American values is abhorrent in a public servant, sworn to uphold the Constitution. Whether you decide to challenge Kristen Gillibrand for New York’s Senate seat or remain in your House seat, I will do my best to make sure you no longer represent me.

That’s from me, Joe Campbell, addressing you in the no-bullshit style you so value. Go ahead – rant about that.

Categories
Criticism Politics The Opinionsphere

Noam Chomsky’s Useful Fantasy

[digg-reddit-me]I’ve long been a bit puzzled by the respect given to Noam Chomsky’s politics. Yesterday, I listened to a lecture given by Chomsky this past Friday which seemed to consit of his meandering thoughts on the state of the world and the economy. I have to credit it for being interesting – and persuasive in a manner which all lasting worldviews as well as conspiracy theories are.

But there are several reasons I still find it difficult to take Chomsky’s politics seriously. His worldview has an all-or-nothing quality to it – as it is based on a number of presumptions which he does not attempt to prove and which inform every aspect of his view. These Chomskyian assumptions include:

  • Everything of significance is controlled by a small number of wealthy individuals.
  • These individuals deliberately and consciously inflict great evil on the world for their personal gain.
  • These individuals control American foreign policy and government and thus America has become a malignant empire which violently imposes the will of this oligarchy on the world.
  • The American people are opposed to this, though they have been propagandized to accept it.
  • The American people are also being exploited by having their jobs shipped overseas.

Chomsky preaches only to the converted – those who accept these premises. He has a certain understanding of the world which is quite different from that understood by at least most Americans who are his primary audience – but he does not attempt to speak to these masses. His presentation is directed squarely at those who agree. Chomsky makes little secret of this. As he wrote regarding American torture under George W. Bush:

For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantánamo was a torture chamber.

For Chomsky, who starts out assuming the evil intent of those he opposes, this is a reasonable supposition. None of this makes his views necessarily wrong. But it makes his presentation unpersuasive to me. I do sense the attraction of his views though – similar to that of the fantay world of vampires or Harry Potter or Star Trek – except no one confuses these interesting and at times revealing fantasies with the world we live in.

His insistence that the many evils of the world are the result of secret and evil planning strikes me as improbable, as in my own experience, I have found that most awful things are not the result of deliberate and evil planning but stupidity and accident and coincidence and incompetence.

The other thing I noticed in his work is his easy lies, his distortions and omission of facts to fit his propagandistic purposes. Some of these are easily figured out by anyone paying critical attention. Others are harder to smoke out. For example, in the lecture referenced above he speaks of the current poverty in Bangladesh and then observes:

We might, incidentally, remember that when the British landed in what’s now Bangladesh, they were stunned by its wealth and splendor. And it didn’t take very long for it to be on its way to become the very symbol of misery, not by an act of God.

In this accusation, he is unusually indirect – as he generally specifically blames the Western elite for the evils of the world. But perhaps in this case, he realized how nakedly dishonest this observation was. After all, any slight knowledge of the history of the world in the 17th century begins with the fact that the “standard of living” – to use a modern term – was extremely poor for all but the most wealthy. The wealth the British were impressed by was that of the royalty – who were busy exploiting the people before the British arrived. At the same time, Bangladesh became “the very symbol of misery” not because the fate of it’s citizens deteriorated from the moment the British arrived – but because they did not progress at the same rate as the Western world. The greatest strides in reducing poverty in Bangladesh have in fact come in the past two decades (as poverty decreased by nearly 20%)  under the precise economic liberalization that Chomsky opposes with all his intellectual skills. (This also coincides with the introduction of microfinance.)

Similary, in his article on America and torture – in which he tries to make the case that torture has always been one of the tools America uses to force its will onto the world – he mentions that in the war in the Phillipines, there was “widespread use of torture”  by the Americans. He fails to mention that President Theodore Roosevelt and his War Secretary Elihu Root prosecuted and punished those soldiers and commanding officers who were found guilty of torture.

I find Chomsky’s views to be quite interesting as well as fantastic. In the same way that a well-thought out fantasy can reveal important truths about reality, so can Chomsky’s work. But it is difficult to accept as a serious worldview.

[Image by MatthewBradley licensed under Creative Commons.]

Categories
Barack Obama Domestic issues Health care Politics

Organizing a Grass Roots Movement for Health Care Reform


[digg-reddit-me]About a week ago, I got an email from Mitch Stewart, the Director of Organizing for America, the organization that is tasked with marshalling the remnants of Obama’s campaign organization to create grass roots pressure for change. It read almost as if it were a campaign email:

Joseph –

The fight to pass real health care reform will come down to one thing: you.

That’s because the efforts in Washington, D.C., to fix our broken health care system and provide affordable coverage for all Americans are only part of the battle.

By teaming up with your friends and family and organizing for real reform in your community, you can make the difference in this debate. Together, we’ll make sure the President’s plan succeeds across the country…
In communities around the country, folks will be knocking on doors, making phone calls, and doing all they can to seize what may be our last opportunity to change health care in America forever – as the President has said, reform needs to “happen this year, or not at all.”

The goal of the email was to get people to buy “Health Care 09” t-shirts. But unlike the campaign emails – which often led to me buying whatever they were hawking to demonstrate my support, reading up on the issue (if I had not already) and blogging about it, this email prompted me to no action. A few months ago, I wrote about this issue in a post about the “Paradox of Organizing for America.” The problem I saw then was that while “Obama for America” had a clear, singular goal – electing Barack Obama president – and citizens were faced with the motivating factor of being directly involved in achieving this goal – voting, and convincing others to vote as they were – neither of these factors which were essential to the success of Obama for America are present for Organizing for America.

But this email demonstrates another problem, a problem inherent in the legislative-centered approach to policy that Obama has taken in general – and his rugby-scrum strategy for achieving health care reform in particular. How can he motivate the grass roots to back him if there is no clear bill or idea to rally behind?

Clearly, their strategy is to make this a binary question: Are you for or against health care reform? Everyone is for health care reform – as our system is quite obviously unsustainable. But there are many, many valid questions critics and supporters of the various progressive-type health care reform plans have:

  • Will this reform be sufficient to “bend the curve”?
  • Should medical malpractice awards be capped?
  • Should we be moving towards a single-payer system?
  • Would non-profit insurance organizations be a better approach?

On policy grounds, many of those who support health care reform disagree about how it should be done. Now, Organizing for America is asking them to push for reform, with details unrevealed and undecided. What they are asking for is, simply, a leap of faith – to trust that the Obama administration knows what they are doing, and that they will do the best they can.

They key fact that the Obama administration and Organizing for America are pushing is that this is the time. As the email quotes Obama: “[R]eform needs to ‘happen this year, or not at all.'”

The grounds for this claim are political rather than policy-oriented. As a matter of reflective policy-making, it would undoubtedly be better to gradually experiment with different approaches, testing them to see which are successful and gradually building support for a wholesale reorganization of health care. But politically, this is untenable. First – with the retirement of the worst generation of Americans and the exponential rise in health care costs, our federal deficit is set to explode in the next thirty years. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to reign in costs and “bend the curve.” This is a problem that should have been dealt with while the Baby Boomers were in power, when the problem first became evident – but, as usual, they abdicated their responsibilities. Second, Obama now has more going for him domestically than he likely will at any other point, including if he were to win a second term. Obama’s popularity is high; he has 60 Democrats in the Senate and a sizeable majority in the House (and the president’s party has traditionally lost seats in the first midterms after the presidential election); he has several key Republicans willing to compromise – and various business and other interests willing to support some legislation.

The difficulty Organizing for America faces is motivating the many policy-oriented and otherwise savvy Obama-supporters to support the administration on this issue without having set its position in advance. Organizing for America seems to have a clear idea of what it wants from the grass roots: pressure for the idea that we need reform now. What’s less clear is how to get the grass roots to buy into their part of the strategy. Buying t-shirts is what you do after you buy into the strategy – not before.

It’s not clear to me that Organizing for America has realized its job is no longer to preach to the converted – but to convert bystanders into activists.

[Image by tandemracer of her baby’s six-month doctor visit licensed under Creative Commons 2.0]