Obama : Clinton : : Symbol : Wonk (I'll take the Wonk)

Over at MyDD and TPM they're mad at Dana Milbank. They think he's quoting Obama out of context when he writes:

Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

The full context, according to the blogger boys, should have included the following:

A Dem leadership aide who was in the room has emailed me and other reporters this: "His entire point of that riff was that the campaign IS NOT about him. The Post left out the important first half of the sentence, which was something along the lines of: 'It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol ... ."

That's the context that's supposed to make Obama look humble? He's informing an audience of Congress Critters that even though millions of people see him as the symbol of American Greatness, it's not really about Barack at all! It reminds me of the old line about the egotistical Hollywood actor who says, "But enough about me. What do you think of me?" He's not fooling anyone.

Barack Obama is no less arrogant than George W. Bush. After 9/11, Bush was able to make his particular brand of arrogance work for him politically. It's doubtful that Obama can pull that off, but the real problem is not his abundant self-esteem, it's his view of himself as a "symbol." In this, he is absolutely correct, and it's the reason he will be a weak president.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are not symbols. They are policy wonks with out-sized public personalities who can survive--and sometimes thrive--without the help of the corporate media. Obama's political strength derives from his exploitation of a cool, carefully constructed and strangely impersonal image as a unifying symbol of hope. Under no circumstances may he allow that image to be tarnished, which is why he will never engage in any serious battles with forces on the right. He'll cave if he has to.

That's why he's so hard to pin down on substance.

Another Nervous Nellie in Obama Land

Remember when the Netroots told us that Barack walked on water and Hillary was pond scum? Well, it turns out she might have to be on the ticket. The Democratic Party is experiencing an enthusisam shortfall:

As I said, my first choice is Biden. But beyond that is my determination that we win. And that may, I said may, require the excitement -- the big bump -- that would be produced by the picture of these two fighters joining hands and joining forces. They looked amazing in Unity, New Hampshire. Maybe that show needs to go national.

If Obama's not exciting enough, then what good is he? He can't run on his record, because he doesn't have one. (He's the anti-Nixon.) The truth is that his political survival requires that he surround himself with a protective aura of positive buzz. The problem is that he's not brand-new anymore. He's new (anybody's new compared to McCain!) but he's not brand-new. From now on, positive buzz about Obama will have to be manufactured. (I doubt he'll ever again get 200,000 Germans to listen to him speak, unless he actually does something.)

People don't necessarily object to being manipulated by politicians--or movie studios or advertisers or sports teams--but they're not going to buy what they don't think they need. We know from the primaries that Obama doesn't wear well. It wasn't just that Clinton got stronger. Obama himself seemed to evaporate upon exposure to real people and real problems. An essential phoniness came through.

It's no surprise that Obama's trip abroad isn't giving him a bounce in the polls. It's such an obvious photo-op extravaganza that it merely reinforces what makes voters uneasy about him in the first place. The powder-puff press coverage--complete with a full body massage by Brian Williams on the Nightly News--isn't helping. Everybody knows that unless Obama acts like Chevy Chase in European Vacation, the media is going to make him president-in-waiting. The whole thing has all the credibility of professional wrestling.

M. J. Rosenberg is as doctrinaire an Obamabot--and Clinton-hater--as you'll find in the blogosphere. If he's sending out an SOS to Hillary, you know they're scared.

Won't get fooled again

Todd Beeton at MyDD thinks this ad is ineffective. He says that "mocking Barack Obama as a media darling" didn't work for Hillary, so it won't work for McCain. After all, she really was getting shafted by the press, and McCain isn't.

Well, as George Bush would say, "Fool me once. . .Shame on. . .You can't get fooled again!" Voters who observed the media cramming Obama down the throats of Democrats during the primaries may be resistant to another round of it. And the deification of the junior senator from Illinois is completely out of control. Check this out (h/t The Confluence). Tiger Beat journalism at its finest.

Hasn't she been fired yet?

Life is too short to spend many nanoseconds reading Maureen Dowd's columns, but I thought I'd check in on Sunday to see if Clark Hoyt's recent rap on the knuckles had any effect on her snippy attitude. After enduring sixteen little paragraphs of tiresome, disjointed snark about Barack Obama's trip abroad, I came to the heart of the whole sorry mess:

Instead of obtaining the girdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hippolyte, Obama has to overcome the hurdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hillary. He has to figure out how to let her down easy on the vice presidential deal, while wooing the frantic Clinton
sisterhood and Hillraisers who would rather see a McCain Supreme Court than support the glib, cocky young guy who presumptuously sped past their gal.

No dorky ombudsman is going to tell the Head Heather at Washington High how to behave! She gets out her old copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology to dress things up with talk of girdles and Hercules, but it's still the same old shit. Obama has to prove his manliness. Hillary is a sexless bitch (when she's not simply a "gal.") And then there's "the frantic Clinton sisterhood" and their icky problems. Thank God Maureen and her friends don't know any of them.


I guess it's just MoDo being MoDo. It still sucks.

Forget the cover

The Barack Obama who emerges from the mean political streets of Chicago in Ryan Lizza's excellent New Yorker piece is a far cry from the man whose silver tongue got Chris Matthews' pant leg fluttering in February. He comes across as a slick, malleable and ruthless politician, who--even more than most of his fellow narcissists--sees little difference between his own well-being and that of the multitudes blessed to vote for him. Had this Obama been better known during the primaries, he might not have been able to get away with playing the race card so brilliantly in South Carolina, and he wouldn't be the Democratic nominee today. (Timing is everything, and--as Lizza points out--Barack's is "impeccable.") The article helps dispel many myths about Obama, from his supposed distaste for lobbyists to his allegedly superior judgment on matters of war and peace . (As Saltzman told me, “He was a Hyde Park state senator. He had to oppose the war!”)

We're going to have to keep an eye on this guy at all times.

Over before it begins

Matt Stoller makes it official: Obama isn't a progressive, and there's a good chance he'll be a really crappy president. No worries, though:

We have a variety of problems in the progressive movement, but several of them are changing quickly. The 50 state strategy has reshaped the party apparatus and grassroots, and the homogenized boomer white leadership structure is changing quite quickly both racially and generationally this cycle. That is exceptionally good. There's a lot of work to do yet, including building much stronger links with elements of the corporate world and a renewed need for strong gender diversification, but at a certain point, the progressive movement will be big enough to regularly influence and even change policy. And then we're going to be able to proactively shape the agenda of all politicians.

I'm with Anglachel in being skeptical of the creative-class progressivism advocated by Stoller's crowd. Too many traditional New Deal constituencies get left behind. But even if the new kids on the block aren't as bad as I think they are, why would Obama let them have the car keys just because he seems to be running the country into a ditch? He's consolidating his power and rebranding the party with the full consent of Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and the rest of the Democratic invertebrates. They like their cushy jobs.

"Today is the first day of the rest of my presidency. . ." Repeat as needed.

Ronald Reagan, in another "change" election, came into office committed to reducing marginal tax rates and slashing government programs. These were his signature issues, and everybody knew it. Although Reagan would compromise when necessary, he had no need to continually update his reasons for being president. He was free to start the Reagan Revolution.



Barack Obama--unlike his role model--is associated with no signature issues and doesn't want to be. He is positively radical in his commitment to nothing. Indeed, his recent frenzy of flip-flopping is designed to help position himself, not in the center of the political spectrum, but over it--above it--beyond it. He needs to be a continually moving target unburdened by any policy baggage. (Ideally, the very concept of an Obama "flip-flop" would become a non sequitur. He'll be all things to all people, and not in a negative way, but transcendently.)


President Obama's long-term political survival requires that be able to parachute into the middle of a fight between competing interests, find something to sign, and then move on to the next triumph of his Unity Administration. While the sociological benefits accruing to the country by virtue of electing an African-American president could be quite significant, Democrats seeking the implementation of progressive policies would be much happier with Hillary Clinton in the White House. Universal Health Care has the potential to become as fundamental to a revitalized New Deal as was Social Security before politicians like Barack Obama started bad-mouthing it. It's Clinton's signature issue, and she was clearly planning on kicking ass and taking names until she got it done. Obama? Not so much. Issues are so divisive.



If you like bipartisan mush--the only type of Wahington fare that David Broder can gum down--you'll love President Obama. Liberal malcontents who think they'll be able to pressure him are living in a dream world. He doesn't need them. And they won't even be able to blame the Clintons for their troubles anymore--though they're certain to give it the old college try.

Live Blogging: Where's the remote?

Has this ever happened to you? You're attempting to watch Hardball, and Chris Matthews suddenly blurts out, "Okay--There are five white guys sitting at the bar--"

Click!

I'm betting that's a common occurence.

Battle of the flip-floppers? Not really

Supporters of Barack Obama would do well to heed their own advice: the primaries are over; it's time to move on.

Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton was due largely to his brilliant spinning of a single antiwar speech he gave in 2002. At the height of Obamamania, one would have thought he had spent his entire time in the U. S. Senate camped out in front of Bush's "ranch" in Crawford, toasting marshmallows with Cindy Sheehan, while Hillary plotted with Dick Cheney to invade Iran. The truth was (as Bill Clinton pointed out, only to be called a racist) that Obama's antiwar reputation was a "fairy tale." Obama provided zero leadership on the issue when he was actually in a position to do so.

(Another unfortunate truth: The public doesn't want to think about Iraq. They know it's a mess we never should have gotten into, but they don't give a shit about Obama's prewar prescience. They want the next president to deal with the quagmire and then to start fixing the economy.)

Which brings us to Obama's Iraq "flip-flopping." I don't mean to keep picking on Josh Marshall, but TPM is Obama Central. According to Marshall, Obama and McCain are poles apart:

We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq -- a long-term 'presence' which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives.

Based on their rhetoric, this is accurate, but at some point down the road, these "starkly different positions" are likely to get blurry. Marshall elsewhere chastises Jennifer Loven of AP for characterizing Obama as squishy on Iraq, but he fails to note this:

After his remark at a news conference about refining policy exploded onto the political scene, he called a do-over four hours later to "try this again." He said the refining wouldn't be related to his promise to remove combat forces within 16 months of taking office, but to the number of troops needed to train Iraqis and fight al-Qaida. But then he acknowledged that the 16-month timeline could indeed slip if removing troops risked their safety or Iraqi stability.

That's a loophole big enough for somebody like Barack Obama to drive an army through. When are the Iraqis trained sufficiently? How many American troops will it take to fight al-Qaida? What is "Iraqi stability"? It's nice that Obama wants "an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces," but that's just blogger talk. Accomplishing it will require a president with the courage to confront the inevitable military setbacks and political challenges attendant on such a difficult undertaking--and courage is not a trait Obama has ever demonstrated in his brief career, most particularly when it comes to Iraq.

Obama refused to engage in any kind of "refinement" of his position during his battle with Hillary Clinton, who tried to speak like a potential commander-in-chief and was pilloried for it. Now that it's safe to do so, Obama--with respect to the war--is falling back on his favorite Democratic debate answer--"What she said." Gee, thanks, Barack.

It's not about flip-flopping. It's about character. Obama's antiwar position was never anything but theoretical. When it came down to acting on his convictions, he went AWOL. There's no reason to believe he has what it takes to manage our withdrawal from Iraq.

I know John McCain is no walk in the park. But don't ask me to vote for Obama on the basis of his superior position on the war. I'm sure it's continually evolving, and it's anybody's guess where he'll end up.

Obama Unleashed

All the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the progressive blogosphere over Barack Obama’s FISA flip-flop and sundry other sellouts is amusing, but it also serves to highlight how extremely lucky the man is as a politician. (Let’s hope some of that luck rubs off on the country if he's elected.)

For liberals, the question "What does Obama really believe?" is immaterial, because he never intended to govern as a progressive. The internal dynamic of his unity coalition won’t allow it, and he was always going to move to the right. (See here.) Kossacks, TPM’ers and other fantasists, ignoring the implications of Obama's own rhetoric, convinced themselves that we needed him to save us from the fiendish and ever-triangulating Bride of Clinton. Since Barack wasn’t Hillary, and since he listened to Jay-Z, and since he said he was "transformational", he must be a liberal. Or something like that.

It’s lucky for Obama that events have helped him disillusion these true believers with early shock treatment rather than with a drawn-out string of disappointments. There’s a long way to go in this campaign, and his progressive followers now have plenty of time to get used to the New Obama and to think up reasons to vote for him. (Meanwhile, Barack himself can begin working on David Broder and his brethren.)

And now that it no longer has to coddle the lefties, the Obama campaign can concentrate on what’s really important: money. They’re going to use their vast and growing pile of cash to create the New Obama (perhaps by fashioning a grown-up, multicultural Richie Cunningham who isn't afraid to go to church before kicking some terrorist ass) and sell him like Nixon in 1972. They know McCain can’t match their expenditures, so they’ll always be playing it safe.

Liberals will just have to suck it up. They have nowhere else to go, as the Obama bloggers never tire of reminding us.