Is Criticism Okay?

October 17, 2007

Here’s the Post Campaign Trail Blog on Obama, asking whether you can criticize and unite at the same time, and implying that the two are diametrically opposed. But I think this is mistaken. Of course you can criticize and unite. In fact, true unity is probably only possible through criticism. Not criticism of the ranting, raving, near-lunatic variety by right-wing radio and television talk show hosts, but informed, insightful criticism that crystallizes the problems infecting the status quo. If (a) you can determine what the problem is, and (b) you can articulate a solution in a compelling manner, and (c) the media does not cloud your message with uninsightful commentary, then the people at large who care about the status of their daily lives and the future of America will unite.

 Of course, there will be irreconcileables, but that is always the case, and these folks would never vote for a Democratic ticket anyway. On the other hand if you let the past slip away without examination, if we all let “bygones be bygones”, then that creates the very conditions for sustaining disaster. If nothing was wrong to begin with, then why ask for change? If the moral and strategic rationales for waging the Iraq war were impeccable, then why does it matter is someone opposed it or not? Why do we need an Obama or an Edwards or whoever? There are huge and important questions about what kind of country America wants to be. Bush has one answer–but do the Democrats have a different one?

 I still think at the end of the day Americans respect politicians who have spine, who trust their instincts and abilities, and who can express criticism of the status quo in order to create a better country. But if Obama et. al don’t speak up then the vast majority of Americans will deservedly tune them out as the same old, same old, and the sordid business of the last seven years will continue unabated.

The challenge is also for the media to not cloud the message of candidates with distorting commentary. If the media keeps formulating unity as a function of the lack of criticism, then false dichotomies will further distort public consciousness.  In this most recent coverage of Obama’s campaign in Iowa, note the framing by the Post reporter:

“”…But when it came time for questions, it was clear that at least some members of the crowd had not escaped the partisan mind-set that Obama said he wanted to overcome. What did he think about President Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance bill?…”"

So asking a question about Obama’s views of a current, immensely important policy with implications for millions of Americans and their children equates to possessing a “partisan mind-set”? If this narrative continues to be peddled, then rest assured the disasters of the last few years will increase and multiply without end in sight.

No Comments » | Iraq War Stance, New Iowashire, Obama | Permalink
Posted by AAH4

Forgot About Biden? Here’s why.

October 3, 2007

I’m going to take a second to toss a little Love to Joe Biden who, for those of you who don’t know, is a candidate for President of the United States.  This little known fact is in sharp contrast to a little tidbit I caught today in the WaPo stating that between the Mr. and Mrs., there has been at least one Clinton on a televised spot virtually each day for the last month. Shocking.

 However, it appears as though Biden is using his status as a Senator (and Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee) to gain a few points on the foriegn policy scoreboard. Biden, along with Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, published an opinion piece in the WaPo entitled, “Federalism, Not Partition” today in response to the continuing debate over how the hell to get out of Iraq. Don’t get too excited…it’s far from groundbreaking and, I will argue, perhaps fundamentally wrong. But hey! At least he’s getting a little publicity, right?

Basic premise of the article: I’m right, everyone else is wrong. The Bush Administration errs egregiously by continuing to support a strong central Iraqi government even as it is now painfully apparent that Iraqi ineptitude and corruption is far too entrenched for the US to fix in the next “four score and seven years.” (Sometimes I like to pick an absurd time frame just for fun!)

Next, those who support partition the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the end of WWII are also completely off base. After all, the Berlin Wall came down, didn’t it?  Or perhaps India and Pakistan…Nuclear war, anyone?

His argument for federalism is attractive, although it neglects to account for two things:

1.  The idea of the federal nation-state, in a modern era that seems increasingly defined by civil wars and ethnic strife, is obsolete.  People are now defining the borders of their countries, and any “outside-in” strategy from the US, who are essentially occupying Iraq against the will of the people, needs to be somewhat deferential to the desires of the various sects who are perfectly happy to remain completely separate.

2.  As a presidential candidate in an election year where Americans want clearly defined goals, benchmarks, and timetables for getting troops out of Iraq, his argument defeats the purpose. Establishing a strong federalist government in Iraq, which, by his own admission “has no experience with federalism” represents exactly the type of open ended commitment voters do not want to hear.

I’m no foreign policy expert, but it seems to me that sometimes no publicity is good publicity.

3 Comments | Biden, Foreign Policy, Iraq War Stance | Permalink
Posted by hilljunkie

Yeah, I’m a Swinger

July 9, 2007

Ah, the coveted swing vote. An article in The Nation this week on The Emerging Progressive Majority got me thinking about who ’08’s swing voters would be. This is what The Nation’s Rick Perlstein thinks:

DLC types love to talk about “swing voters,” a group often taken to largely overlap with “independents.” Say party centrists, they just don’t trust the Democrats–that “God gap.” So Democratic candidates are supposed to wear their piety on their sleeve if they ever hope to creep over 51 percent in an election. The centrists are wrong. Independents are the most secular portion of the electorate.

He supports this assertion with a bevy of statistics that a basically secular, anti-war, pro-worker, mildly pro-choice, mildly pro-gun control, definitively pro-”big government” majority has emerged over the course of the last 2 - 8 years. One has to wonder why the hell these people have been voting for the wrong party most of the time, but it’s a fairly convincing article none-the-less.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times took a look at the intra-party swingers on the GOP side, the Evangelicals who, for the first time in 8 years, will have to consider elctability (country?) in addition to God. For these folks, voting for Rudy is a bullet they just might have to bite this time around.

This all got me wondering about a third type of swinger: the libertarian (who doesn’t really fit either the Nation’s or the Times’ profile here). What’s a socially liberal, pro-business, pro-free trade swinger to do sans a Bloomberg run? Ironically, this voter faces a dilema in regards to Rudy as well, but their’s comes from the fear that he’ll run too far right on religion, choice, and homosexuality in order to cater to the Evangelicals in the Times article.

Now, let’s say that the above-described Libertarian almost always votes democrat because, let’s face it, they consider the Dems to be just as much pro-business (and are probably prioritizing ending farm subsidies) and simply can’t stomach Republicans when it comes to social issues and the environment. Now let’s say that Democrat also supports increased and sustained troop levels in Iraq because, contrary to another much-talked about Sunday Times piece, there is almost no way for a true humanitarian to rationalize pulling out at this stage. Who, in a God of your choice’s name, does this Democrat vote for?

Answers to this question and arguments against this completeley imaginary Democrat’s war-stance are welcome.

8 Comments | Giuliani, Iraq War Stance | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Obama’s foreign policy: so so…

June 11, 2007

So here’s a hint of how US foreign policy could look like if Barack Obama wins in 2008.

In a recent article published in Foreign Affairs, Obama propagates a softer and more modern version of US foreign policy: he wants to increase foreign aid; tackle global warming; strengthen global institutions; reinvigorate American diplomacy in the Middle East; and rebuild partnerships and alliances.

Sounds good. Especially after 7 catastrophic years under Bush II, whose foreign policy combined bind-boggling arrogance, strategic blunders and blind ideology, essentially destroying America’s reputation in the world along with any hopes for relative stability and, maybe eventually, peace in the Middle East.

Obama’s reaching out to the world is particularly appealing to me, who, along with 95% of people living on this planet, am a citizen of a foreign country.

However, at a closer look, Obama’s foreign policy plan is less exciting. Behind the rhetoric, there is a lot of the same old: Obama somewhat uncritically talks about combating nihilistic terrorists; he wants to make peace in Palestine, but makes it clear that America’s (almost) unconditional support for Israel will continue; he describes weak and failed states as a threat and wants to reform the UN, but fails to make a commitment to strengthening the UN’s peacekeeping capacities; Obama deplores that “the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles,” but he falls short of an explicit promise to close Guantanamo.

Most worrying, maybe, is that Barack Obama infuses his foreign policy plan with lofty rhetoric, invoking “America’s great promise and historic purpose in the world.” Against this backdrop, Obama wants to be President of a country that contributes to “building just, secure, democratic societies.”

The daily news of atrocious violence in Iraq is a powerful reminder of the pitfalls and unintended consequences of American messianism and its most recent product: democracy-promotion in the Middle East. After Iraq, I think, America should be more careful about seeing itself as the beacon of liberty or the indispensable nation.

Then again, Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq shows that he will not be blinded by lofty ideals and that his main foreign policy concern is the concrete advancement of US interests in the world.

The best the world can expect from post-2008 America, I think, is a pragmatic US foreign policy based on the appreciation that in a globalized world there are no alternatives to international cooperation and global institutions, even for a superpower. Although his foreign policy plan is not as ambitious as many had hoped, Mr. Obama seems at least to have understood this…

2 Comments | Iraq War Stance, Obama | Permalink
Posted by davjon

What if they held a debate and nobody came?

June 7, 2007

That’s pretty much what happened last night at the Iraq Debate hosted by the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in DC. The only candidates who agreed to speak were Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich - and as far as I can tell from scanning news sources this morning, not a single media outlet is reporting on what they had to say.

No Comments » | Debates, Iraq War Stance, The Others | Permalink
Posted by megkibbee

After She Voted For It…

May 31, 2007

 [Note: This should have been published on Friday and containd a bunch more links]
This week’s Washington news cycle was dominated by a couple of not so minor bills making their way through congress – Immigration and Iraq War Funding. Then again, these bills or at least their debates have been around for so long that any given news week probably includes them. But the Iraq funding bill actually got a vote on Thursday, so I thought it was a good time to review some of the candidates stances.

Three of our eight - Clinton, McCain, and Obama– actually had to cast a vote and carve a meaningful notch in their congressional records. Not that voting for or against a war necessarily defines a candidates stance, but let’s take these candidates word for it until they really start debating whether they were “for it before they voted against it:”

Obama: No war.
Clinton: Not gonna do it (now).
McCain: Loading weapon…

In the public imagination, Obama and McCain are probably representative of the two poles when it comes to the stance of the eight on the war. There was never any doubt regarding McCain’s vote and we could be relatively certain that Obama would remain in the antiwar camp with a no-vote on the funding bill.

Meanwhile, there may have been some anxious Democrats (particularly on the left of the Left) waiting to see whether Hillary would capitulate since the President’s veto of the first war-funding bill. She did not, and she followed-up with a well-stated “I like the earmarks in this bill but I want a new course in Iraq, so I can’t vote for this bill…and btw, I’m still Wonderwoman when it comes to homeland security.”

Not that anyone was listening to Hill, especially when there’s a spat between McCain and Obama on the war funding that includes abandoning the troops, bongs, and other flack (not flak). Doing his best to make a statement in support of the war without being able to make a vote, Mitt Romney claimed that Hillary and Obama “cast a vote that singularly defines their lack of leadership and serves as a glaring example of an unrealistic and inexperienced worldview on national security.” Yup, that was Mitt Romney calling someone else’s worldview unrealistic…

So, three are on the record (again) in regards to the Iraq war. Clearly, the meaning of these stances will emerge further down the campaign trail if either side can provide anything comparable to a scorecard on Iraq. My bet is that we’ll see a draw-down in Iraq before the primaries and the Democrats will have the easier time claiming victory at that point, with the Republican hope that they can’t ride it until the following autumn. I can see McCain coming through such an affair with minor burns, but it might be the least of his worries in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, I don’t think this scenario bodes well at all for Hillary, who is now set on a steady course for flip-flopville. It’ll be particularly interesting to see if the Dems are willing to use this smear on one of their own.

No Comments » | Clinton, Iraq War Stance, McCain, Obama, Romney | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett