May 2008 - Posts
I was struck by what Joshua Micah Marshall has just written in a post called "The Long View" on his Talking Points Memo blog.
"Those of us who look at politics from moment to moment tend to look at gaffes, campaign strategies, the foibles of this or that politician. But it's always important to step back from the particulars to see the broad sweep of political and social change. It's almost always dominated by long term trends -- demographic, ideological, economic. But particular events can pivot history off in dramatic new directions."
We should keep his words handy during the diminishing number of weeks between now and November. We might combine Josh's thought with something I've come up with myself. Call it the "textbook" standard.
Here's how it works: Try to look at the election we're about to have from the perspective of a high school history student years from now. What will it say in the textbook? What will it say caused the voters to choose the new president? What condition, what political trend, what event will the textbook say was decisive?
When you look back at the "change" elections in American politics - when one party got dumped for the other - the answer to that question is strikingly clear. Every election is an effort by the voter to solve a problem that looms the largest at the time. Think of the Great Depression (1932), the Korean War (1952), and the Iranian hostage crisis (1980). In each case there were problems, admittedly of varying degree of consequence, which voters sought, rightly or wrongly, to address in the voting booth.
The problems this time are manifest, real and large: a long, unpopular war; an insipient recession, a poorly-respected incumbent, a long backlog of inaction: health care, social security, energy dependence, climate change.
Posed on the other side is the historic novelty of the first African-American presidential nominee, someone with a fascinating, even compelling biography offset by an extremely brief tenure in major public office. Alternatively, the option will be Hillary Clinton, another breakthrough candidate of historic proportions.
Let's look at this 2008 election, as I suggested, through the perspective of some future high school history lesson.
Did the voters of 2008 elect a candidate they would have been unlikely to choose in normal times? Will Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton have taken his or her place with Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as a "change" president when "change" was judged essential?
Or will textbooks note that voters chose to stick with the Republican Party even through the worst of situations out of deep uneasiness with the alternative?
What's bound to happen, and despite all the weekly distractions, is an emotional debate on the number one question of our times: What is America's shrewdest role in the world of formidable economic rivalry and islamist hostility? Putting a sharper point on it: If George W. Bush is the problem, what is the solution?
Is it to take a sharp turn from Bush's doctrine?
If our current predicament in Iraq resulted from a lack of historic perspective, a failure to embrace the experiences of the British in Iraq, the French in Algeria, is it that we want a president who grasps that brutal legacy and will put it to instructive use?
Is it to try and more usefully grasp the realities that led 19 people to commit suicide on September 11, 2001 -- hatred so great that the hijackers were said to squeal with ecstacy as they hit the World Trade towers? Is it to examine the roots of the anger the average Iranian feels toward our country after those decades of the Shah, the bitterness of the young Egyptian and Saudi toward their own governments as well as ours? Is it to gauge our own policies to ensure they don't ignite more lethal hostility?
Or is it to stick with the basic Bush policy but strengthen it with a new ideological toughness? Is it to take the lessons of World War II and the Cold War that warned of "appeasement" and apply them to the terrorist threat? Is it to follow John McCain?
On this essential question, two of the candidates -- Obama and McCain -- could not be more different, the divergence in their calls for action more stark.
When students reach the page on which the 2008 election is explained, I predict -- and hope -- they will dwell on this very question more than all the rest. Josh Marshall is right.
The question we have to decide long before this election gets covered in the history textbooks is whether or not we want the here and now election of 2008 to deal with the central question of our time.
I'd love to hear what you think.
I argue politics for a living. In the years after 9/11 there emerged a vulnerability in this country, exploited by some, to any criticism of government policy. Dissent made people nervous, even suspicious. This jumpiness inspired a mob-like attack on anyone who said anything that contains even a jolt of novelty, a spark of evidence that a mind somewhere might be getting out of line. Every week, it seemed, there was someone - Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks - who had said something you’re not supposed to say,
How about this for a thought: arguing politics, arguing about the politics of foreign policy, especially, and, yes, whether the decision was right to invade and occupy Iraq was a smart move or not, whether it’s right to keep our forces there now, whether the whole “mindset” of this war is good for our country, is a matter of legitimate debate. Arguing what’s good for this country isn’t unpatriotic, speaking up and caring about what we’re doing in the world can be the very essence of patriotism. Trying to silence criticism is the very opposite of democracy.
What happened last week offers evidence that this long period of nervous debate is ending. When President Bush accused his fellow Americans of “appeasement” for advocating meetings with leaders of hostile countries, he was hit back hard by Barack Obama. When a Bush advocate came on “Hardball” and couldn’t identify the most basic information about the historic appeasement of Hitler in the late 1930s that showed the shallowness of the comparison, even by those making the loudest claims.
President Bush made a basic political mistake here and Barack Obama made a smart one.
By seeming to attack Obama personally Bush made him the clear leader of the Democratic opposition. That was Lyndon Johnson’s mistake when he attacked Richard Nixon back in 1966. When Obama came back hard, he executed the tactic known in military matters as the “attack from a defensive position.” By swinging hard at a rival who has just unleashed his attack you catch his flat-footed; you nail him at a point he can’t defend himself because he’s already committed to his line of attack. It’s what Ronald Reagan did when Jimmy Carter swung at his early opposition to Medicare. “There you go again, Mr. President.”
The exchange over “appeasement” was Bush’s worst political move of recent memory, Obama’s best riposte.
But don’t get me wrong. The substance of this episode and its role in the policy debate far outweighs the politics. This administration has been successful for seven years in suppressing a consistent voice of opposition. When relentless battles occurred over funding the war, the Democrats in Congress have failed to state their position on Mideast policy clearly. On the matter of direct talks with Iran, Barack Obama just did. As Fareed Zakaria writes in this week’s Newsweek, the need to make contact with Iran was the unanimous judgment of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group. Zakaria points out that the direct dealings with Iraqi Sunnis, who had been hostile to our presence in their country, has been key to the reduced violence of this year.
So after years of exploiting buzzwords like “terrorism” and “mushroom clouds” and “homeland” and “weapons of mass destruction” to control the policy debate, the president finally went a buzzword too far.
[Historic footnote: “Appeasement” isn’t talking to a hostile country, it’s giving away countries like Czechoslovakia to a hostile country. If you can’t make sense of history, it’s hard to make sense with policy.]
I’d love to hear people’s comments.
On Thursday's Hardball, Chris Matthews had a discussion about President Bush all but accusing Sen. Barack Obama of appeasement for wanting to talk to enemies of the United States. Conservative radio talk show host Kevin James and Chris Matthews then had a disagreement about what constituted appeasement. Chris Matthews had the following to say on Friday:
"Look, I'm a student of history, especially of the late 1930s when the world didn't stand up to Hitler and my hero Winston Churchill saw all the hell coming and couldn't stop it. The catastrophe of the 1930s was thinking that Hitler would be satisfied with the gift of bite-sized countries. The evidence suggests he wanted war to avenge World War I and to dominate Europe. He also had his heart set on extermination of the Jewish people. The horror of appeasement was not in talking to him and letting him yammer. It was giving him countries - like Czechoslavakia in 1938.
Anyway, perhaps it's little surprise that our Big Number tonight is the number of times my guest - demanding we not repeat the appeasement of the 1930s - failed to tell me what that appeasement actually was. 'What did Neville Chamberlain do?' I kept asking to no avail. The number? 24! 24 times I tried to get an answer out of our guest!
Anyway, we do like Kevin James and hope he’ll be back on Hardball again."
This video from Thursday's Hardball is getting traction on other news shows and on the blogosphere. For those who missed it, take a look.
Chris Matthews fondly looks back on his first trip to Israel while remembering the founding of the state of Israel nearly 60 years ago.
"The first time I visited that incredible country was in 1971, when it was still in the afterglow of its wondrous victory against all sides in the Six Day War. I remember sitting in a restaurant. It was really more of a bar as an older fellow, who'd had a few, loudly proclaimed his pride in a group of soldiers who'd just entered the room. How exciting to be in such a little country that had just taken on such tough odds and won!!
Being a movie buff, I spent a lot of time in movie theaters in Israel, where everybody's a movie buff, and looking down at the Uzi lying on the seat next to me that had been brought along by the young woman member of the IDF, sitting near me. Talk about a self-reliant country where some guy's date is carrying an automatic weapon along for the night.
Yes, I've been back a trio of times since and have loved the mix of the old and the new, the mix of the three great religious sites side by side in the Old City of Jerusalem where I loved visiting the old Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I feel at home there and have nothing but joy and good will and Shalom to wish to this great and gutsy country on its anniversary.
On Tuesday's post-Indiana and North Carolina primary coverage, Chris Matthews ranted about talk show host Rush Limbaugh's plea to conservatives and Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton in an attempt to prolong the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination between her and Sen. Barack Obama. Here's what Chris had to say:
"I have to offer a Keith-style special comment on that. Anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives. What a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died, to use that vote to make mischief. I hope you're proud of yourself."
