Political symbols

Stephen Colbert is the Best Revenge

Problem: Republican message-maker Frank Luntz realized that no-one likes Republican ideas (turns out)! Solution: get new ideas? No! Cover your bad ideas with enough misleading language, that no-one actually knows what you stand for! Well I don’t know about you, but when I saw this, I was livid. We expect a certain amount of “spin” in politics, but how dare Republicans use language to trick voters into supporting positions they actually hate. Spin should convince, not manipulate, but here we are. Well, then I remembered this interview. If Frank Luntz is going to spend his life deceiving the American people, we can at least comfort ourselves that he’s endured torture-by-Stephen-Colbert.

Campaign for the Unemployed

With unemployment at 9%, we should take two lessons. First, this is untenable long term. And second, Democrats should make every effort to win the trust (and the votes) of this unfortunately large demographic.

Unemployed Americans are a natural Democratic constituency. They’ve been wronged by corporate interests, and feel the system — the unrestrained free market, so belovéd lately by the right — has left them behind. And as they partially dependent on public support, unemployed Americans are less likely to be taken in by the right’s anti-”big government” shills (the tea party). The unemployed understand the value of the social safety net, and should (absent some bizarre cognitive dissonance) wish to see it continue. And when you’re out of work, it’s the first thing on your mind: a worker’s identity, as one of the unemployed, cuts across other divisive sociopolitical cleavages. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or a fundamentalist: if you’re looking for a job, providing for your family is priority #1.

More, Republicans seem to be doing everything they possibly can to alienate this bloc of voters. Herman Cain essentially told everyone without a job that it’s their fault they’re out of work — when in this economy, we know that’s not the case. How easy is it to be excellent at your job, but become part of a random downsizing initiative that takes no account of your individual value? (Granted that Cain explained away his callousness at the last debate — but why should that matter? The sound bite’s on record. Run with it.) And the Republican wing of the Senate, helped along by two Democratic defectors, refused to even open debate on the only job-creating bill that any party has even proposed in months. While Republicans debate whether Cain’s “9-9-9″ plan is a secret tool of Satan, and muse poetically about how ending gay marriage and other “threats to the family” would magically restore the economy to its previous grandeur, the candidates’ Senate colleagues aggressively block any attempt to provide necessary relief to this neglected set of voters. Why should we let them get away with it?

A bizarre quirk of campaigning for the unemployed is that your goal is, naturally, to eradicate your supporters as a distinct bloc. So be it. When your voters return to the rolls of the middle class, they’ll remember whose policies helped them to get there.

Glimmers of Intellect from Mitt Romney

It’s intensely interesting that candidates have to play dumb to get votes in the Republican what-passes-for-a-primary-so-far. But read this statement by Mitt Romney, on why he won’t sign a “pro-life pledge”:

The pledge also unduly burdens a president’s ability to appoint the most qualified individuals to a broad array of key positions in the federal government. I would expect every one of my appointees to carry out my policies on abortion and every other issue, irrespective of their personal views.

Emphasis mine. “Undue burden” is the rubric used by the Supreme Court to evaluate the constitutionality of restrictions on abortion ever since Casey. And, that decision came out well after Mitt graduated law school in 1975. We talk about dog whistle racism, but what about dog whistle intellectualism? Mitt’s a smart guy, we know; maybe this is his nod to supporters that, even though he can’t act smart, he actually knows what he’s talking about. Whether he’d act that way as President, well…

History as Myth

In light of Sarah Palin’s, well, “interesting” interpretation of American history — which describes Paul Revere galloping down the causeway, ringing bells and firing wildly into the air, to attract as much British attention as possible – Andrew Sullivan argues that history, to the Republicans, is just another creation myth to be manipulated for social purposes.

For once, I don’t think this is entirely fair. Sure, Palin’s third-grade understanding of American history is hilarious, especially in light of how proudly her followers proclaim themselves to be the direct and exclusive heirs to the colonial tradition. And the halting, confused explanation is especially stunning in light of the simple question that preceded it:

What have you seen so far today, and what are you going to take away from your visit?

I would pay a lot of money to see this woman in a presidential debate.

But we all co-opt, mythologize, and exploit history. It’s practically a Western tradition, at least as old as Rome, where personal histories were wildly distorted to serve as useful morality plays. American democracy is founded on a similar premise: that Rome republicanism — which actually masked a brutal, unequal, and authoritarian society — could form the model for a government where all men are actually equal before the law. It’s a conceit that most of the Founders candidly acknowledged to each other as false. Jefferson especially was well-versed in the classics, and knew what he was doing, but the image was (and remains) valuable.

This is to say, if we’re to upbraid Sarah for this latest catastrophe, we should focus on the ineptitude of her historical appropriation, not the fact of the appropriation. Query, for example, whether Paul Revere riding a horse to protect the militia’s stockpiled arms from the invading British is in any way analogous to Sarah Palin riding a hideously tacky bus to protect your right to unnecessarily shoot animals with AK-47s.

President Obama’s Origin Story, and the Power of the Personal Narrative

When John McCain’s presidential campaign released the “Celebrity” ad — which attempted to equate candidate Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, by dint of nothing more than the Senator’s popularity — we knew that the rational, bipartisan John McCain, the one who truly would put “country first” and in some part deserved the presidency, was dead and gone. In his place stood a shrilly partisan operation, convinced that victory could be won by stacking gimmick upon gimmick in a vain attempt to distract the electorate from the obvious failures of Republican policies. (This trend, naturally, would culminate in Sarah Palin.)

Now, the same charge is back, but as an excuse for the lackluster Republican field, and an explanation for Obama’s likely re-election. Per The Wall Street Journal, if Obama wins, it’s because of the myth — and celebrity — but not the man.

I don’t dispute that President Obama’s personal life presents a compelling, relatable, important, and quintessentially American story. But what’s most important is that Obama uses his past to inform his politics. Other candidates, like Tim Pawlenty, actually have similar rags-to-riches upbringings, but make no attempt to relate their rags-to-riches tale to their policies. Instead, Pawlenty’s past seems to contradict his present and future, and denies the very “social exceptionalism” that the author admits her party needs. Here is a party that “believes in you,” as we hear, but leverages the same as an excuse to let you go your own way, pull out the social safety net, and rely on lines discredited by Bruce Hornsby songs should you fail (“Just for fun he says… get a job!”).

Oh, but don’t you believe them. What works for President Obama is that his story matches with a compelling vision for you. Here’s a man who emerged from a tough beginning against all odds, and doesn’t believe you need to face the same odds. That’s a powerful message, because it results from the knowledge that living the American dream is very, very hard, unless we look out for each other. Not to over-indulge in music this post, but we must bear our neighbors’ burdens within reason, and our labors will be borne when all is done. Don’t carry it all!

Obama’s struggles taught him that compassion, and it comes through. Pawlenty’s life taught him… what, exactly? When a Republican can answer that question, he’ll do well. Until then, we can suffer through the Wall Street Journal’s overwrought explanations of the party’s failures, but this will be the extent of the Republican Party’s relevance. This I swear to all.

*     *     *

Oh, and you know what? The author’s treatment of McCain’s decision to ignore the President’s middle name goes completely amiss. It wasn’t cowardice, and it wasn’t political correctness. It was class, a word we may have forgotten. But what would you expect from an author who, in the very next breath, attributes Trump’s meteoric rise, and meteoric fall, to his insightfulness?

This American Life Questions the Premise of “Job Creation”

Can a Governor — or a President — “create” a job? After speaking with more than a few economists and subject matter experts, the celebrated radio program’s conclusion seems to be… no. Except over the long term, in which case infrastructure, in the form of public universities, etcetera, matters much more.

Why don’t we hear this argument a lot? Well, think about it: if you’re perceived as “successful” in job creation, you’ll stay way the Hell away from anything that threatens to question your “achievement.” And if you’re perceived as “unsuccessful,” it sounds like an overthought and convenient excuse. If campaigns require selective indulgence in myths, this is certainly one to cultivate.

@RepPaulRyan is Following Only One Account

@NationalDebt. That’s messaging, folks.

Misunderestimating President Obama

It’s fun to see conservatives try to rationalize how one of ours had the wit, and the, uh, balls, to go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, without Pakistan’s say-so. Here’s Erick Erickson from RedState:

Say what you will about President Obama, but it is hard to imagine two years ago he would have taken unilateral military action in Pakistan without telling the Pakistani government. He has grown in office.

That’s demonstrably false, and an obvious lie, since Politico‘s done us the favor of dredging up Obama’s campaign position on Pakistan, for which he caught all manner of flak from his primary opponents. From CNN, August 7, 2007:

Last Wednesday, the Illinois senator said that if it were necessary to root out terrorists, he would send U.S. forces into Pakistan without the country’s approval.

Obama hasn’t become anything. He simply never was the liberal caricature that the Republican Party imagines him to be.

Diminishing by Nickname: “Obamacare”

Megan McArdle does her level best to defend the right’s favorite legislative sobriquet.

I will stop referring to it as ObamaCare when we stop calling them the Bush tax cuts for the rich.  It is an effective shorthand for a law that is otherwise unwieldy to describe.  If legislators wanted me to call it something else, they should have given it a catchy name like “Medicare”, not a hypertrophied piece of propaganda like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  I don’t know why the left considers the term particularly perjorative; it is a health care program, and it is Barack Obama’s signature legislation.

Personally, I have no such lofty agenda; I just don’t have a better term for it.  But surely progressives think it is going to succeed.  Shouldn’t they be thrilled that the rest of us are associating Obama’s name with it at every turn?

Representative usage. Classy.

Pundits and Andrew Sullivan’s readers conclusively answered the question a while back: “ObamaCare” is pejorative, because it is only used pejoratively. Why are any slurs — ethnic, sexual, etc. — offensive? Very few have an offensive root meaning. They acquire their potency only through consistent usage to marginalize and insult. Meaning depends upon context.  McArdle suggests we “reclaim” the word: but that can’t happen until the pejorative use ceases to be the majority use. Using the phrase “ObamaCare” invokes all manner of classless, offensive, and even racist images, like the one at right, and cannot be divorced from that history. It’s that simple. We needn’t come up with a fancy rhetorical justification here: we can simply acknowledge the reality of the situation.

Let’s try anyways. “ObamaCare” offends in a way “Bush tax cut” does not because “ObamaCare” deletes a descriptive name for a policy and replaces it with the President’s, thereby transforming the policy’s name into a way of making some value judgment about the President (McArdle seems to agree on this point). Whichever way you use it, positively or (more likely) negatively, the phrase diminishes the office of the President, and suggests the President’s direct involvement not with the bill, but with care decisions, which plays nicely into the misleading and inaccurate right-wing narrative about “death panels,” and what have you. The possessive (“the Bush tax cuts,” or “the Obama health care act”) does not offend because it is strictly, and by connotation, accurate. The comparison would be to something like “BushFare” — a way of implying that the tax cuts were Bush’s form of welfare for his rich buddies — not “the Bush tax cuts.” Which would be equally tacky.

Simpler still, using pejorative, cutesy phrases is not how statesmen conduct themselves when discussing matters of national importance. “ObamaCare” is part and parcel of a political dialogue that diminishes, insults, and oversimplifies, all to make sure that when we talk politics, we do it at an an emotional rather than an intellectual level. I expect better from the party of Lincoln, in a government built by men like Adams, Jefferson, and Washington.

Framing the Individualist Argument

A close friend and comrade of mine says the age of the individual is upon us: technology allows increased exposure and personal expression, while sweeping away privacy barriers, the confluence of which, with the populace’s accelerating trend towards social libertarianism, makes individual uniqueness, and the protection of the values it entails, resonate stronger than ever.

Corporate forces seem to have noticed as much, and deployed the rhetoric to their great advantage in the last election. Arguments against the “socialism” of regulation, after all, collapse to arguments about the state’s meddling in private lives. But it’s not clear to me that the rhetoric of individualism ought to work against those who are, after all, seeking to increase the power of the individual against forces otherwise beyond their control, like health insurance companies, corporate soft money, and powerful investment banks. Since when is protecting Deutsche Bank and Blue Cross Blue Shield a “populist” cause?

We — Democrats, or whoever continues the work of protecting the individual against exploitation by big business — need to develop a vocabulary to make that case. Red-baiting has worked for the right, but the field remains open for a positive rhetoric exalting the individual and his independence, as procured and enforced by the government, from those forces that do not have his best interests at heart. It can be as simple as changing a word, like Fox News did with the public option “government option.” I welcome suggestions; we’re working on it here.