This is taking a sad turn, as some people adopt a belief system based on Obama that has little to do with his actions, very much the way Bush supporters believe in him no matter what he does. Is the kind of change we can expect from the upcoming Obama administration? “We’re not against cults of personality, we just want someone who calls himself a Democrat to worship rather than some Republican. Ugh!”
Personally I find some truth in the old Lazarus Long observation.
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
Unfortunately those who run for political office are nearly all from the first category. People in the second category tend to belong Bill Hicks’s People Who Hate People Party, whose organizing and voting rates are not very high.
Mr. Obama initially said he would try to filibuster a vote [on immunity for Bush and the telecoms], but on Wednesday he was among 69 senators who voted for the measure, which to many liberals represents a flagrant abuse of privacy rights. The legislation grants legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the wiretapping program.
The unbiased reporters at the Times have apparently discovered that only the wacko left-wingers think this is an issue of whether to follow the Constitution. Apparently everyone else, the mainstream as the Times article keeps calling them, has moved on from the quaint concept of civil liberties in a society based on laws, a weltanschauung clearly made obsolete, most likely by 9/11. Now it’s about who you believe in. (Once again, I blame it all on Paul.) Along the way we’re proudly becoming the image of our imagined opponents.
One thing about Obama, though, is that he unites the true Democrats.
For all the idealism and talk of transformation that Mr. Obama has brought to the Democratic Party — he managed to draw a crowd of more than 70,000 here in May — there is also a wide streak of pragmatism, even among many grass-roots activists, in a party long vexed by factionalism.
“We’re frustrated by it, but we understand,” said Mollie Ruskin, 22, who grew up in Baltimore and is spending the summer here as a fellow with Politicorps, a program run by the Bus Project, a local nonprofit that trains young people to campaign for progressive candidates. “He’s doing it so he can get into office and do the things he believes in.”Nate Gulley, 23, who grew up in Cleveland and is also here as a Politicorps fellow, said too much was being made of Mr. Obama’s every move.
“It’s important not to get swept up in ‘Is Obama posturing?’ ” Mr. Gulley said. “It’s self-evident that he’s a different kind of candidate.”
At first I couldn’t stop laughing, but then I started to feel sad. Question for Mollie Ruskin: can you give an example of someone voting the wrong way during the campaign so he could get into office, then doing the right thing once he got there? And if Obama doesn’t believe in punishing corporations who knowingly violate the law, what does hope mean? Question for Nate Gully: do facts matter, or is the self-evidence of Obama’s difference enough to cover for his actions, including his votes on civil liberties issues? What does difference mean if one’s votes are the same?
What appears to be vital to the young Obama supporters interviewed by the Times is not to think about what Obama does, because doing so will burst the bubble of belief. And after all, what’s more important, what happens in the real world, or what you believe? This is not an attitude the country needs more of.
If any good is to come of the Obama administration it will be from the grassroots. Obama will lead the Democrats into their normal submissive pose, with the normal lack of result, though he’ll do it stylishly, with more class than we’ve seen in the White House for many years. But change will only come if we force it on him; neither Obama nor anyone else in government will lead the charge until the charge becomes unstoppable.
This is exactly right.
Posted by: Michael on July 12, 2008 11:28 PM"Can you give an example of someone voting the wrong way during the campaign so he could get into office, then doing the right thing once he got there?"
FDR ran on a promise to reduce the federal deficit. Woodrow Wilson ran on a promise to keep us out of World War I.
Posted by: Ever the Optimist on July 13, 2008 10:18 AMOf course Wilson was right in the campaign and wrong in the White House, but the principle is the same. Come to think of it, Dubya ran as a compassionate conservative who would bring us together, and as an enemy of foreign entanglements and as a man who would restore honor and dignity to the White House.
Posted by: Ever the Optimist on July 13, 2008 10:23 AMSee, I don't think the principle is the same at all, in fact I think it's the opposite.
Plenty of people, one might even argue a majority, promise good things while they're running and then do bad ones once they're elected. And overall, few enough people do anything worthwhile once they're elected that the sample is too small to project from.
But my question is, can we find an example of someone making promises or casting votes that directly violate the candidate's supposed base values as a means of attaining power, after which the base values re-emerge?
I'm guessing we can't.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on July 13, 2008 7:47 PM