Steven Donegal has achieved what I’m pretty sure is an OTB first: An InstaLink to a comment, for this entry in yesterday’s Obama as Jackie Robinson discussion.
There’s only one way to resolve this 3 am thing: reality TV. Set up a TV program where each candidate is called unexpectedly at 3am and tell them of some impending crisis in their campaign and see how they react. That would be much more revealing than any debate.
Says Glenn, “Why not? It seems like everything is turning into reality TV anyway.”
Indeed. Why, even Pajamas Media is getting into the act.
Democratic pundits are understandably nervous about the fact that Barack Obama’s once impressive lead in the polls has all but vanished. That’s led to a lot of second guessing about the early convention speeches, the 50-state (or is that 57?) strategy, and so forth.
TNR senior editor John Judis thinks Obama needs to make radical changes towards “Avoiding a Long, Disappointing Fall.” He thinks that most of the concerns about Obama’s policies and experience are really just backhanded racism (a rather dubious analysis) but realizes there’s not much that can be done on that front. Thankfully,
Obama still has advantages that he can fall back on. Voters prefer Democrats to Republicans by a wide margin. And Obama has attracted intense support from African Americans; upscale, professional Democrats; and Democratic-leaning independents. According to [Stan] Greenberg’s polling, Obama is running nine points ahead of McCain in neighboring Oakland County, the home of well-to-do professionals and managers. All in all, Obama has a good chance to win in November–but this summer the Obama campaign has made the crucial error of conducting itself as it were on the verge of a landslide victory, comparable to Lyndon Johnson’s win over Barry Goldwater in 1964. And it is still displaying the same overconfidence.
This resulted in snubbing McCain’s suggestion for multiple town hall debates, staging a massive pep rally in a foreign land, and other errors of hubris. To correct course, Judis argues, Obama must use tonight’s acceptance speech to change forcus away from “change.”
Obama ran his primary campaign around the slogan “change we can believe in.” That helped burnish his outsider image against Clinton, but it doesn’t work as well against McCain (who, fairly or not, is still identified with outsiderdom and change), and it doesn’t provide the context for any economic program. This has been clear for months, but the Obama campaign has yet to provide an alternative.
I am not clever enough to come up with such a theme, but I can say that it should be an extension of Obama’s underlying appeal to the unity of American races, religions, states, regions, and even parties. That’s what brought him to Americans’ attention in 2004 when he declared at the Democratic convention that “there’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” What he has to say from now on should be framed as an attempt to prevent the wide disparities in wealth, income, and power that are undermining the promise of American democracy. By articulating a positive picture of a unified America, this theme also has the virtue of directly addressing voters’ fears about his favoring African Americans over whites.
NPR’s Juan Williams thinks “Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Race and Other Issues.”
[O]n any issue of racial consequence Mr. Obama has become a stealth candidate. It is arguably smart politics not to focus on potentially controversial racial issues when you are a black man running in an election with an electorate that is more than 75% white. But how is it possible that Mr. Obama, as he rises to claim the mantle of Dr. King before 75,000 people and a national TV audience of millions here tonight, remains a mystery on the most important civil rights issues of our day?
Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children. He apparently refuses to do it for fear that supporting vouchers or doing anything to strengthen charter schools will alienate vote-rich unions. His rare references to the critical argument over affirmative action — an issue that is on several state ballots this fall — give both opponents and supporters reason to think he might be on their side. He has had little if anything to say about the persistent 25% poverty rate in black America.
[...]
The uneasy truth may be that Mr. Obama is not worried about alienating white voters with his stands on race. It is more likely that he fears having to speak the truth about the poor — who are disproportionately black and Latino — needing to take more responsibility for family breakdown, bad schools, thug-life culture and high poverty rates.
Democratic strategist Dan Gernstein, though, argues that “Obama Should Just Be Himself.”
[T]he Democrats who are telling Mr. Obama “I love you, you’re perfect, now change” are underestimating the position of fundamental strength he is starting with, and the tremendous advantages his campaign will bring to bear this fall.
This is not just a matter of cyclical political dynamics that strongly favor Democrats (record-setting wrong track numbers, the damage George W. Bush has done to the Republican brand, a major intensity gap among the bases, etc.). Mr. Obama’s campaign itself has a substantial structural lead — the ruthlessly efficient money-raising and field-organizing machine that swamped the Clinton juggernaut is ready to do the same to Mr. McCain — that current polls just don’t account for and won’t for some time.
More importantly, the doubting Democrats are misunderstanding the challenge Mr. Obama faces in closing the deal with those crucial voters who want a leader who can move the country in a new direction but are not yet sold on Mr. Obama as the man for that job.
[...]
He mostly just needs to be himself — or to be more precise, to be more of himself. No reinvention, no repositioning — just recount the tough stands and political risks he has already taken, relentlessly reinforce those points for the next three months, and ideally look for a few opportunities to walk the change-making walk as we near November.
I agree with Gernstein that the fundamentals strongly favor Obama. Narrow polls (he’s only up 1.8 points in today’s RealClearPolitics average) notwithstanding, the race remains his to lose. The country is overwhelmingly in a mood to go in a different direction and they seem to like him. (Indeed, as Matt Yglesias notes, they seem to like both candidates.) Obama has to persuade people — who are just now starting to pay attention — that he’s got what it takes to lead. If he does that, he wins. If not, John McCain is what he was throughout the Republican primary process: The old reliable fallback position.
Gernstein’s suggestion that Obama achieve that by pointing out the tough stances he’s already taken, though, strikes me as unlikely to work. He’s a junior Senator who has spent most of his four years in an office that people count towards presidential preparation running for president. I’m not sure getting “booed by the nation’s biggest teachers union for openly advocating” a policy wildly popular everywhere outside that room is goting to cut it. He’s going to have to do it by inspiring confidence with his speeches and debate performances.
Like most of his recent predecessors as Democratic presidential nominee, he’s also going to have to assuage fears that he’s weak on national security and that looks down on regular people and their values. Telling people that they’re racist for even harboring such doubts is not the winning strategy.
I just haven’t been able to muster the enthusiasm to watch much of the Democratic Convention coverage. It’s a shame, too, as I understand John Kerry, BillClinton, and Joe Biden all gave the best speeches of their lives last night. Really, though, what were the odds?
I’ll watch Obama’s performance at Mile High Stadium tonight, though. I understand it’s the halftime show at a Broncos preseason game, yes? Not to mention, of course, historic.
An ABC News producer-reporter has been arrested for taking pictures of Democratic Senators and other VIPs, apparently from a public sidewalk.
Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker’s neck, then twisted the producers arm behind him to put on handcuffs. [...] During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, “You’re lucky I didn’t knock the f..k out of you.”
Eslocker was released late today after posting $500 bond.
Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.
Steve Verdon sent this along, noting,
As an avid amatuer photographer I find these stories rather disquieting. Technically speaking the general rule is that once you go out in public you have no expectation of privacy and hence anyone can take your picture.
Plus there is the element of not picking a fight with the guy who buys his ink (and bandwidth) by the gallon (terrabytes).
No joke.
ABC’s reporting on this matter, bylined to Brian Ross, is rather hyperbolic and perhaps missing some essential facts. But the idea that one can’t photograph public officials, going to a public event, from the public sidewalks is baffling.
It should be noted that, although the cease-and-desist order that preceded arrest was apparently done at the behest of the hotel, we don’t have any information tying it to the Democratic Party or convention officials.
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Adam Serwer laments the fact that Barack and, particularly, Michelle Obama have to humanize themselves to the electorate and fight back against an elitist caricature.
[T]he Obamas are still fighting Jackie Robinson Syndrome, the reflexive double standards and often small, sometimes large, but always public humiliations that come from being the first black person to do something.
Ezra Klein thinks this “beautifully put” but thinks there’s more to this than race.
Rather, the campaign against Obama has metastasized into a variant of class warfare. It’s the resentment of the meritocracy. What the GOP realized was that Obama did come across different than the average American, but not so much because he was black as because he was effortless. The very set of supercharged talents and qualities that allowed Obama to levitate past the boundaries of race and class make him different than those who haven’t rocketed upward on the strength of their intelligence and charisma and charm. After all, if you’re a fumbling, struggling individual out in suburban Ohio, how can you believe that this guy who doesn’t look to have struggled a day in his life cares about your pathetic problems? Obama, in other words, is elite. As in “A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status.” Obama isn’t an economic elite, but he is a social and intellectual elite. And it’s that creeping sense that he’s different, that he’s better and knows it, that McCain is trying to exploit.
But that’s a time-honored tactic. Witness the campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988, George H.W. Bush in 1992, Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. Or any seriously contested presidential primary, of either party, in my memory. Being “out of touch” with “regular Americans” is a political liability. Caring about “people like me” is good. Being elite is fine. Being elitist, not so much.
Getting back to Serwer’s quote, it marks the second time in recent days I’ve seen the Jackie Robinson comparison trotted out. A National Journal poll over the weekend, the results of which were released today, asked, “Who is Obama most like — John F. Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or Colin Powell?”
My response:
It’s an insult to great achievers like Robinson, Powell, and Kennedy to mention Obama in the same breath. Obama’s got the youthful charisma and inexperience JFK brought to the White House, minus the war hero credit. That leaves, by default, Jimmy Carter, who was a decent, smart guy in way over his head.
Jackie Robinson was a demonstrably talented baseball player, denied access to the Major Leagues by dint of the skin color he was born with, who instantly became a top player once given a chance. Barack Obama has faced no such barriers, getting admitted to the finest schools in the country by virtue of his qualifications and then put on the fast track in academe, politics, publishing, and other pursuits through combination of extraordinary gifts, hard word, and, ironically, the color of his skin. While there’s no doubt that being “the first black” poses challenges, it comes with perks.
Regardless, he’s very young to be on the verge of a major party presidential nomination and has none of the usual resume entries one expects to see in one who got there so quickly. Bill Clinton was about the same age but had been governor of Arkansas for a dozen years. Kennedy was a war hero and Pulitzer Prize winner. Obama gives good speeches.
That said, comparisons only go so far. As I’ve written on numerous posts in recent months, we’ve had great presidents who seemed barely qualified for the job and lousy ones who had extraordinary preparation. It’s quite reasonable to look at Obama’s and McCain’s pasts as clues to their futures — they’re really the only clues we have, after all, aside from gut feelings about their personalities — but the presidency is sui generis and people surprise you.
In his column in the New York Times this morning Tom Friedman, dazzled by China’s growth and development, urges us to get our act together lest we end up on the scrapheap of history:
China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.
Seven years … Seven years … Oh, that’s right. China was awarded these Olympic Games on July 13, 2001 — just two months before 9/11.
As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.
The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.
Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?
He may be right. It may be that an economy like ours, mostly dependent on consumer spending and, consequently, on the individual purchasing decisions of millions of consumers, just can’t compete with an economy like China’s, which is considerably more planned.
And it may be right that a government like ours, in which politicians elected in safe districts and safe states curry favor with voters by offering them ever larger benefits while filling their campaign funds with donations from wealthy donors who aren’t above exploiting the political system to become wealthier, can’t compete with a government like China’s, in which civil rights are curtailed and the decisions made by a relative handful for the greater harmony and benefit of all. Presumably.
However, I can’t help but think that the Tom Friedmans of the 1930’s were writing much the same things about Soviet Russia when the world marveled at the growth of its economy. Much later we learned that Soviet Russia’s remarkable productivity increases had come about as a result of transferring relatively nonproductive agricultural labor assets to relatively more productive industrial use. In other words people were taken off the farms and made to work in heavy industry. That strategy can only work over time if agricultural outputs per worker increase (they didn’t) or the country is willing to import an ever increasing proportion of its food (they weren’t).
There’s another point that I think needs to be made: China’s current per capita GDP is about what ours was in 1900. They have a long, long way to go with many challenges to face. I hope they make it.
I don’t begrudge China its increased prosperity and, moreover, China’s increasing wealth and prosperity hasn’t made us poorer. In fact it’s made us that much wealthier. We are cooperative with China rather than competitive. Or, more accurately, we are both cooperative and competitive with China. Increased productivity in China motivates the U. S. to become that much more productive.
Further, I think that if China is to continue its development, it will need to cultivate its own internal consumer market. And that will provide opportunities for the whole world.
Additionally, I don’t share Mr. Friedman’s relish for central planning. I think our economy and society are emergent phenomena, having reached a level of complexity that they’re beyond the ability of any small group of individuals to plan and govern, whatever American Fordists might think.
Bush expansion is over, and Brad DeLong describes it as “the first business cycle during which median household income in America falls from peak to peak.” And indeed it is. The closest we’ve come to such a dismal recovery in the postwar era was the dreaded stagflation-driven economic expansion of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
DeLong provides a chart that Drum helpfully annotates with a red circle:
In both cases, the initial peak took place well before the president took office. In Carter’s case, the second peak was achieved and a new trough began during his tenure — which was only four years. In Bush’s case, household income has been trending steadily upward since 2003. Until the line starts trending down, we won’t know what the “peak” is.
It’s worth noting, too, that the chart is in increments of $5000. Even if we presume the 2007 numbers are the peak, we’re talking about what looks to be a difference of $500 a year. And, yes, these are inflation adjusted numbers.
Beyond that, while it’s a standard metric that makes sense for contemporaneous analysis of spending power, household income is rather dubious as a long-term comparative measure of the macroeconomy, let alone of presidential performance. During the 1970s and 1980s, we saw an explosion in the number of dual-income families. In recent years, we’ve seen a marked increase in single parent head of households.
That’s a huge factor, according to (2004) Census statistics:
Not surprisingly, households with two earners tend to have markedly higher incomes than those with one or, obviously, none. And that’s largely beyond the control of presidential management.
Writing for the L.A. Times, Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl have a disturbing report about the ongoing crackdown of Iraq’s Sunni population by the Maliki government.
Much of Iraq’s dramatic security progress can be traced to a series of decisions made by Sunni tribal leaders in late 2006 to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq and cooperate with American forces in Anbar province. These leaders, outraged by Al Qaeda’s brutality against their people, approached the U.S. military with an offer it couldn’t refuse: Enter into an alliance with the tribes, and they would turn their weapons against Al Qaeda rather than American troops.
Throughout 2007, U.S. commanders capitalized on this Sunni movement, the so-called Awakening, to create an expanding network of alliances with Sunni tribes and former insurgents that helped turn the tide and drive Al Qaeda in Iraq to near extinction. There are now about 100,000 armed Sons of Iraq, each paid $300 a month by U.S. forces to provide security in local neighborhoods throughout the country. In recognition of the key role the Awakening played in security improvements, President Bush met with several Sunni tribal leaders during his trip to Anbar last September, and Petraeus, who cites the program as a critical factor explaining the decline in violence, has promised to “not walk away from them.”
But Iraq’s predominantly Shiite central government seems intent on doing precisely that. Maliki and his advisors never really accepted the Sunni Awakening, and they remain convinced that the movement is simply a way for Sunni insurgents to buy time to restart a campaign of violence or to infiltrate the state’s security apparatus. In 2007, with Iraq’s government weak and its military not yet ready to take the lead in operations, the Maliki government acquiesced to the U.S.-led initiative and grudgingly agreed to integrate 20% of the Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi security forces. Now, a newly confident Maliki government is edging away from this commitment.
Read the whole thing. This is clearly an act of hubris on the part of Maliki, who is taking advantage of the U.S. presence because he knows that, when push comes to shove, we’re going to back the elected leader of Iraq over the militias who were killing our soldiers two years ago. Without our presence, I have a feeling he’d be much more inclined to work with the Sunnis–the consequences of not doing so for him would pretty much be all-out civil war. Unfortunately, while our military forces do exist in Iraq, we’re likely to get in the middle of that war, because I doubt the Sunnis will go quietly. As the article notes:
We talked to a number of tribal and Sons of Iraq leaders during our trip. When asked what would happen if the Maliki government did not keep its word and integrate or otherwise accommodate their members, one leader was blunt: “There will be trouble.”
It is obvious where this road might end. The last time tens of thousands of armed Sunni men were humiliated in Iraq — by disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army in May 2003 — an insurgency began, costing thousands of U.S. lives and throwing Iraq into chaos. Yet Maliki and his advisors risk provoking Iraq’s Sunni community into another round of violence.
I suppose we could try to talk Maliki down, but it’s clear from his actions of the past year that Maliki’s only interest is Maliki getting more power. Here’s hoping that this somehow ends well.
