Can We Get over Race?

Jacob Weisberg of Slate has a disturbing post up that makes a pretty good case that there is still a substantial element of racism in the American electorate and that itis holding back Obama's poll numbers. How can we still be hung up on race? Does anybody out there really think Barak Obama is not a legitimate candidate based on his abilities and total experience? We probably all sense this vestigial racism and we even see it in too many people, but it's the 21st century is it not? Get over it. Tell me why it matters? Give me one argument.

Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election. That warning is written all over last month's CBS/New York Times poll, which is worth examining in detail if you want a quick grasp of white America's curious sense of racial grievance. In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

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Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.

Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.

Then there's the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama's white mother always preferred that her "mate" be "a man of color." John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book.

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Choosing John McCain, in particular, would herald the construction of a bridge to the 20^th century—and not necessarily the last part of it, either. McCain represents a Cold War style of nationalism that doesn't get the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics, the centrality of soft power in a multipolar world, or the transformative nature of digital technology. This is a matter of attitude as much as age. A lot of 71-year-olds are still learning and evolving. But in 2008, being flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer, seems like a deal-breaker. At this hinge moment in human history, McCain's approach to our gravest problems is hawkish denial. I like and respect the man, but the maverick has become an ostrich: He wants to deal with the global energy crisis by drilling and our debt crisis by cutting taxes, and he responds to security challenges from Georgia to Iran with Bush-like belligerence and pique.

You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change. To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline.

Our "Watchdog" Press

Glen Greenwald has a particularly good post that nails a common practice of our national press -- being sycophantic and subservient to its government sources. I have given up watching, for example, David Gregory's show at 6 PM on MSNBC because invariably at some point duing the show he will say "from my own reporting, the McCain campaign tells me..." from which he proceeds to essentially read their press releases. And he thinks this is "reporting". He doesn't even see that he is being a tool, just as Tim Russert was as Greenwald documents clearly.

There are many revealing episodes during the Bush presidency illustrating how the media functions, but there is none more revealing than the disclosures from the Lewis Libby criminal trial. Documents prepared by former Cheney Communications Director Catherine Martin (wife of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin) boasted that Tim Russert's Meet the Press was the best venue for Cheney to answer questions because he was able to "control message." Martin also testified at trial that she "suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used. It's our best format" (Dana Milbank: "Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you"). Russert himself subsequently testified that "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record" (Dan Froomkin: "That's not reporting, that's enabling. That's how you treat your friends when you're having an innocent chat, not the people you're supposed to be holding accountable").

Just think about what that meant: the single greatest source of government disinformation and corruption in America -- Dick Cheney's office -- viewed Tim Russert as the most pliable and effective instrument for disseminating their propaganda to the country. That's not media critics or rabble-bloggers saying that. That was the view of Russert which Dick Cheney's office had -- and understandably so.

I don't think these people are stupid or even ideological. They are playing their corporate game. Their management wants them to get access, not accuracy or the rational truth, so they can claim a "scoop". But what kind of a scooping is it to be a stenographer?

Kelly O'Donnell of NBC is another classic. Every time she is on air, she is passing on what someone in the McCain campaign told her, as if that is all there is to her job -- no context, no comparison to previous statements, no checking against established facts or studies, just regurgitation. Then these are the people who are promoted to the plum assignments, not the diggers and fact-checkers. It seems obvious that this type of reporting is exactly what the corporate management of the media want.

Loose Cannon

The recent Georgia crisis brought on some heavy breathing by McCain that seems to be benefiting him by highlighting his foreign policy "experience". But that experience is really one of mouth-breathing belligerence and fear-mongering regarding every "crisis" that comes along. This is not a cool head that should have his finger on the U. S. military buttons. He has one solution, it seems, for everything -- send in the troops or bomb the hell out of "them". This is "judgment"?

On Thursday of last week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that Russia's invasion of Georgia was "the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War." This is most certainly not true, at least according to the last two decades' worth of foreign policy assessments from one John McCain.

In December 1990, two months after Germany reunified and four months after Saddam Hussein did unto Kuwait far worse than what Vladimir Putin has so far done unto Georgia, the Arizona senator asserted that "the peace and security of the world for future generations [demand] that the world community act decisively to end the Gulf Crisis now." Pretty serious stuff.

In January 1994, he described North Korea's nuclear weapons program as "the most dangerous and immediate expression" of "the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today," and warned that "there can be no serious doubt that our vital national interests are imperiled." Serious!

In an April 1999 speech that everyone considering voting for McCain should go read now, the rogue-state rollbacker said that "America's most important values—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—are under vicious assault by the Milosevic regime," requiring "an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo," including mobilization of "infantry and armored divisions for a possible ground war." Très sérieux!

And of course, during the current campaign, he has repeatedly reminded voters that he's running for president to confront "the transcendent issue of our time: the battle and struggle against radical Islamic extremism." Which, he argued at a Republican debate in June 2007, "is a force of evil that is within our shores.... My friends, this is a transcendent struggle between good and evil. Everything we stand for and believe in is at stake here." If that isn't a "probably serious crisis internationally," then the phrase truly has no meaning.

UPDATE:

This editorial from the Atlanta Journal Constitution makes the same points.

In the Republican primaries of 2000, the hard-line conservative foreign policy “experts” who later pushed hardest for an invasion of Iraq did not support George W. Bush. Their candidate was McCain, because they believed he would be most likely to conduct the sort of militarily interventionist policy they advocated.

More recently, McCain’s aggressive instincts have been apparent in his policy toward Iran. There too he has been more eager than most —- including many in his own party —- to talk of military solutions to a problem that to many experts defies a military approach.

The question for the American voter, of course, is whether a candidate of such instincts is well-suited for the White House in times such as these. At rare moments in history, a military response is essential and required, as it was in World War II, and as it was in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11.

But more often, the choices offered by history are more complex, requiring judgment and wisdom. Choosing confrontation and war too quickly when other options are available can prove disastrous, as the example of Iraq should have taught us.

McCain’s instinct, demonstrated time and again and most recently now in Georgia, is to cast America as a global policeman. In the next few months, American voters have to ask themselves whether they share that vision and instinct.

The False Elitist/Stupid Dimension

Paul Krugman put up one of his best columns up Friday. this is the best line and is oh so true: "The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”" Don't we all hear it all the time that "common sense" is all you need, not facts, analysis, science, "thinking things through"?

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

To Be Clear on the Records

Mark Kleiman does a good job of pulling together several good sites on the comparative legislative records of Obama and McCain. At the very least, it is clear that Obama does have a solid record of legislative performance. Follow the links for the full details.

Obama has several substantial bi-partisan accomplishments. In Springfield, he sponsored successful bills for children's health care, an earned income tax credit, ethics and campaign finance reform, and videotaped police interrogations (an anti-torture measure). In Washington, it was ethics reform again and work with Richard Lugar on loose nukes. That is not a thin record. (Charles Peters has the details on Springfield, and Hilzoy has two long posts on Obama in the U.S. Senate and on Obama's style of bipartisanship.)

Against that , Williams cites two items only from McCain's 25-year career: campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform. McCain did indeed co-sponsor McCain-Feingold, which his campaign is currently violating by exceeding the primary election spending cap after having agreed to take matching funds and gained both financial and ballot-placement benefit from that agreement. McCain also worked on immigration reform, which crashed and burned in the Senate because he couldn't get his own Republican colleagues to stand by him, and which he has now abandoned in favor of an enforcement-only approach that is not bipartisan at all.

Also, you often hear the canard that Obama has no specific proposals, even from "professional journalists" who should at least have done their homework. Go to this site, read it, and try to say Obama had no specific proposals. There is nothing comparable at McCain's site or anywhere else.