I Do Endorsements
In what should be no surprise to anyone, I’m strongly endorsing Michael Bloomberg for another term as Mayor of New York.
I’m not crazy about the way he gets to run. And I wish there were a lot of choices for a city headed for the kinds of trouble my hometown is headed for. But I can’t think of any good ones – certainly not among the Democratic frontrunners. When I think about the election that way, it’s not a close call.
When I think about the actual Bloomberg record, meanwhile, here’s the way I think. He was elected to do three things: hold the line on crime and quality of life issues; shepherd the city through the aftermath of 9-11 economically and socially; and fix the schools. He’s done the first. He’s done an OK job on the second (the mess at Ground Zero is really not his fault) and now he’s going to have to do it all over again (and it’s going to be much harder). And the third is a mix: his reorganization of the regular public school system has been a mess, but he’s given a huge push to public school choice (and charters particularly) in New York, and that aspect has been a big positive. I hope he’ll use a third term to expand the good parts of his educational record and fix the bad parts, but while I’m pretty confident about the former I’m much less so about the latter.
I’m also endorsing Tzipi Livni for Prime Minister of Israel. She’s a lightweight who doesn’t really have a clear idea of how she’s going to extricate Israel from the West Bank, or how she’s going to deal with Iran, or how she’s going to handle Israel’s economic/demographic problems, or really anything else. But Bibi Netanyahu is a snake who cannot be allowed to hold the Premiership ever again, and Ehud Barak is a borderline Asperger’s case – he’s a deeply weird man whose own political allies think is crazy (which he isn’t; he’s just very, very strange). For all her flaws, Livni is the only candidate who can actually lead Israel, and she represents the political faction that current sits bestride the center of the country.
Oh, yes: and I’m supporting Barack Obama for President. More on that after the jump.
I feel very strange supporting Obama, even though it’s been clear to me for some time that that’s who I was going to vote for. After all, John McCain was pretty much my first political crush. I was an enthusiastic supporter in 2000, and his defeat left me very ambivalent about that year’s general election. I also supported him in the Republican primaries this season (and I’ll go into the reasons for that support in a minute), and you think I’d support my chosen candidate once he won the nomination.
And I’m not a big Obama enthusiast. There are things about him that I like and things about him that I don’t like. He strikes me as a kind of a combination of Jack Kennedy and Jimmy Carter: he has Kennedy’s glamour and emotional distance, as well as his relative inexperience, but he has a policy orientation that is more than a little reminiscent of Carter’s. Given that I think Kennedy is hugely overrated and Carter was a substantial failure (neither assessment is exactly going out on a limb), that suggests I’d be rather underwhelmed by the prospect of an Obama Administration.
So why am I voting the way I am?
Because McCain’s changed, I’ve changed, and the world’s changed.
How has McCain changed? In a nutshell, he’s gotten older. As we age, we get more set in our ways, less mentally flexible, more inclined to rely on narrative structures that we absorbed long ago. And the structures that dominate McCain’s brain are an almost perfect mismatch with our country’s needs at this time.
How have I changed? In a nutshell, I’ve gotten more conservative and less right-wing. (I’m using conservative in the sense of skeptical and cautious as well as in the sense of seeking permanence and valuing rootedness, and right-wing in the sense of believing in the importance of rewarding success more than in ameliorating failure.) More specifically, I’ve decided I was wrong about a bunch of things, and some of those things are Republican Party dogma, and much of that dogma is now central to the McCain campaign message.
How has the world changed? In a nutshell, the Bush Administration happened. We can’t pretend it didn’t. And whoever is the next President has to be responsive to that legacy. Perhaps, if McCain had been President in 2001, things would have gone better – or perhaps not. But we don’t get a do-over; we have to deal with the world as we have it and have made it, and not as we’d like it to have been.
My decision in the GOP primary was very simple, but not terribly useful in informing my general election choice. Quite simply, I decided I was not going to support any candidate who offered vocal support for torture. I made that a litmus test. That ruled out Giuliani and Romney right off the bat. I could never take Fred Thompson terribly seriously, and I’m not a Ron Paul rEVOLutionary. So that left Huckabee and McCain. For all that I find Huckabee to be an appealing fellow, I don’t think we were very likely to see eye-to-eye ideologically, and besides, he was plainly not ready to be President. (I thought he’d be an excellent Vice Presidential pick, though.) That left McCain. But it also left the general election as a new, and open question.
I respect those who have used one or another litmus test to make their decision in the general election. If I were, for example, a pro-life litmus test voter, I don’t see how I could vote for Obama. I’d be stuck voting for McCain or, if he were also unacceptable, for a hopeless third-party candidate. Those pro-lifers who have jumped on the Obama train are either kidding themselves or are not litmus test voters – that is to say, they may remain strongly opposed to abortion, and will frequently vote on that issue alone, but have let some other issue (war and peace? torture and civil liberties? economics and the welfare of the poor?) trump the question of abortion for at least one election. Similarly, it makes sense to me that Andrew Sullivan is making a litmus test of opposition to torture up and down the line (and I hope he is not too sorely disappointed in Obama on this score). But I didn’t have a litmus test for the general election. (My litmus test in the primary was about punishing those who would create an inverted litmus test whereby support for torture became the badge of a true-believing member of the GOP.)
I could make a list of issues on which I agree with Obama, and those on which I agree with McCain, but I’m not sure it would be terribly profitable to do so, because issues are an overrated basis for a vote in a general election. Most of what we can be most sure about a candidate’s agenda is what can be discerned from his or her party label. If those issues are not decisive for you, then you’re just hoping you can accurately discern a candidate’s deepest personal commitments – and hoping that these turn out to be voting issues for you. Your odds may not be as good as you think. Recall that Bush ran in 2000 in part on a more “humble” foreign policy . . .
I don’t know if it’s any easier to discern a potential President’s character, but that’s what I’ve tried to do. And, fortunately for me if not for the country, fate gave us two crises during the campaign that threw into sharp relief the differences between the two major party candidates for President, and confirmed me in my choice. These were: the war in Georgia and the financial crisis.
McCain’s response to the outbreak of fighting in Georgia was basically to side with the Georgians in an unequivocal and even extravagant manner. This in spite of the fact that Russia’s interests in the area are much more significant than ours, that we could not practically do anything to force a resolution that achieved Georgia’s objectives, and that it was more than a little unclear which side was really the aggressor. Barack Obama did not handle the situation especially well either; he started out calling for restraint by both sides (a weak response that effectively greenlighted an overly forceful Russian response) and then swung around to support for Georgian entry into NATO (a position that I would consider extremely dangerous if I thought there was any chance of Obama bringing it about), when the right thing to do was to call for an immediate cease-fire and return to the status-quo ante, and try to get a broad diplomatic front to get that result. But while Obama’s response was inadequate, McCain’s reflexive sabre-rattling struck me at the time, and still strikes me, as utterly irresponsible.
Russia is, let me stress, basically a bad actor on the international stage. But we do not have the luxury of spitting in the eye of every bad actor. McCain used to understand this, and still makes gestures in the direction of doing so. I once entertained the notion that McCain would be the best bet to avoid war with Iran while actually making some progress on that difficult relationship, because he would have credibility as a hawk and showed signs in the past of having a special talent of reaching out to former enemies (e.g., Vietnam). This was, I thought, the single best argument for supporting McCain: that he could be Nixon to Iran’s China (and yes, I know I’ve criticized that analogy in the past, and I still think it’s a poor on, but I’m using it anyway). But the overwhelming thrust of his campaign has been an attempt to convince me otherwise, and I’m taking him at his word.
As for the financial crisis, what it revealed is that McCain has absolutely no interest in a serious domestic policy. McCain appears to have no framework within which to understand what has happened, or what needs to be done to get us out of the hole we’re in, or what reforms might help prevent a recurrence. I dread the thought of a McCain Administration managing the restructuring of America’s banking system. Again, I thought differently of him in the past. I thought, back in 2000, that he was a contemporary version of a Roosevelt Republican: that he was a cheerleader for “dynamism” more than for free markets or property rights, and that what this meant in practice was that he favored a regulatory scheme that focused on transparency and avoiding self-dealing and so forth. He still postures that way, but there’s no meat on the bones – his proposals change almost daily, and the changes are often radical from one iteration to the next, but the candidate shows no sign of comprehension that he is swinging from one thing to the next. Given the magnitude of the crisis we’re in, that’s absolutely terrifying. Either McCain once took this stuff seriously, and no longer does, or I was mistaken about him in the past, and his commitments on domestic policy were driven by motivations (pique at rivals, desire for press approval, views of key interest groups) on which I don’t think we can rely for good outcomes.
Obama hasn’t been perfect on this score either – he’s been extremely general in his responses and also rather backward-looking, much more articulate about how he thinks we got into this mess than about how we’re going to get out of it. But he clears the minimum threshold of being serious about the crisis, and he’s got a team of advisors – from Volker to Summers to Geithner to Goolsbee – in whom I have a pretty high degree of confidence, certainly higher than I have in McCain’s team.
Indeed, the financial crisis was what finally made it clear to me that there is, not to put too fine a point on it, no leadership whatsoever in the national GOP. The party seemed to be completely at a loss for how to respond to the most serious economic crisis since the 1970s. And, in fact, seems to still be at a loss – unable to even discuss the relevant questions coherently. The real question that needs to be asked now is whether there is an alternative leadership waiting in the wings that could be trusted with the responsibility of national governance, or, if not, whether the party will be willing and able to grow such leadership. In other words, the real question is whether I and folks like me should give the GOP time to figure itself out, or swallow our concerns about the Democratic Party and see if we have more luck finding a home somewhere inside their big tent.
What do I expect of an Obama Administration? Obama’s main domestic priorities are: a carbon tax (structured as a rationing scheme); a health-care overhaul similar to the sort of plan a number of governors have been exploring or implementing (notably Mitt Romney); a tax hike on top earners coupled with a tax credit for people who pay payroll taxes but no income taxes; and revising labor laws in such a way as to make private sector union organizing easier. I can’t see the first item passing as we enter a deep recession; the second strikes me as a good idea; the third strikes me as a reasonable idea (I’d rather see a VAT rather than a hike in income tax rates, but what can you do, and the rebate is similar to a payroll tax cut, which I favor); and the fourth makes me nervous. That’s not a terrible average.
A friend of mine said to me that the only reason he’s considering a vote for McCain is that McCain’s so crazy that he might actually scare the Iranians into knuckling under on their nuclear program. I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe a policy of unremitting confrontation with Iran is sensible. And Obama will not pursue a policy of unremitting confrontation. (Whether any overtures he makes succeed is another matter; I’m skeptical myself.) Obama is not exactly the modest, restrained, Hamiltonian consolidator I’d like to see on foreign affairs. But neither does he strike me as the gung-ho interventionist that Daniel Larison thinks he is – or that McCain is. He strikes me as a garden-variety liberal internationalist. That’s an improvement over what we’ve got now.
One area where conservatives may legitimately fear an Obama Administration is in its choice of judges. If you’re hoping for audacity, here’s where to look. But I have never voted primarily on the complexion of the courts (and that probably has something to do with the fact that I’m in the mushy middle on a bunch of social issues), and there’s one way in which Obama could have a salutary impact on the high court: if he picks Justices who are suspicious of unchecked Executive power and make a point of protecting the legislature’s prerogatives against the Executive. That would be a useful corrective to the Bush years, and also notable in its own right given that Presidents don’t generally do things that limit their office’s power.
So: I think Obama would be a better President than McCain, and there are at least some areas of policy where I think we agree more than disagree, and agree more than I agree with McCain. Maybe that means I’m just a mushy moderate; maybe it means Obama’s not the extreme left-winger so many on the right think he is; or maybe I’ve got him all wrong. Have I drunk the Kool-Aid? No. Do I think Obama is going to lead to a period of liberal realignment? Probably – the GOP has screwed up so massively that such a realignment really is conceivable for once. Do I think a McCain Administration would be a good break on such a realigning movement? No. McCain would be an incredibly weak President, with poor relations with his own party and facing a furious opposition Congress. He’d probably focus almost exclusively on foreign affairs, quickly getting a reputation for being out of touch with the economic problems of most Americans. And his signature foreign policy idea – a League of Democracies – has not a prayer of even being considered in any foreign capital. A failed McCain Administration would be followed by an even more ferocious reaction against the GOP than is already occurring. And there is no chance whatsoever that the GOP would take any kind of dictation from McCain to change its ways.
In retrospect, do I wish John Kerry had won? Yes. It’s a shame he ran such a substance-free campaign, and that he picked a running mate so manifestly unready to be President on day one.
Finally: why don’t I vote for Bob Barr? Because I’m not a libertarian and neither is he. What would be the point?
I agree on almost all points, especially Israel. Just the thought of Benjamin Netanyahu gaining power once again…within six months he’d have troops back in Gaza to stop the “rocket attacks” whose sole purpose is to manipulate Israel to do exactly what Bibi wants to do. Any peace with Syria would be shot to hell because Netanyahu wouldn’t give up the Golan Heights, and I can already hear saber rattling with Iran. Livni is not the strongest possible leader for Israel, but she is absolutely the best and most realistic of the major choices. Actually, I think Ehud Barak would almost certainly be a better PM than Livni, but he is almost certainly not going to win.
— Lev · Nov 4, 06:53 AM · #
this was a really excellent post, even if i disagree with a lot of it.
please send tips along to Reihan about how to write a thoughtful political endorsement.
— raft · Nov 4, 06:55 AM · #
raft, step off of criticizing Reihan, please.
Think about this, from Kevin Drum.
“..the upshot is that both parties get moved to the right. Most of the Democratic pickups will be in centrist states and districts, which will move the Democratic caucus moderately toward the center. At the same time, it will remove these centrist states and districts from the Republican side, which will make the GOP caucus not just smaller, but even more conservative than it is now. As a touchstone, the Republican Study Committee, the hardcore conservative wing of the House GOP contingent, currently represents a little over half of their total strength. After Tuesday they’re likely to represent nearly two-thirds, which means that the rump of the House Republican caucus remaining after Tuesday is likely to be almost entirely in the hands of the most faithful of the movement conservative faithful. These true believers are not likely to give in quickly to the notion that hardcore conservative ideology needs a bit of freshening up if the party wants to regain its competitive edge. On the contrary, they’ll probably double down, convinced that they lost only because John McCain and George Bush abandoned the true faith that America truly yearns for.
Will these folks rally around Sarah Palin as their conservative savior? I continue to see that as unlikely, but who knows? Desperate people do desperate things, and there’s no telling if they’ll somehow convince themselves that she represents their future.”
Reihan has deep care for the Sam Clubber’s, the working class, Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, Dr. Pournelle’s 40percenters, the “bitter clingers”. How can he lead them out of the wilderness if he is doing a tear down on McCainPalin and socon principles?
It’s like bricolage…..to reform the conservative movement, which works best for the renewal project?
A poptop or a scrape-off?
— matoko_chan · Nov 4, 03:13 PM · #
Thank you, as always Noah, for a thorough, and thoughtful, take on the issues at play. And thank you in particular for this…
“If I were, for example, a pro-life litmus test voter, I don’t see how I could vote for Obama. I’d be stuck voting for McCain or, if he were also unacceptable, for a hopeless third-party candidate. Those pro-lifers who have jumped on the Obama train are either kidding themselves or are not litmus test voters – that is to say, they may remain strongly opposed to abortion, and will frequently vote on that issue alone, but have let some other issue (war and peace? torture and civil liberties? economics and the welfare of the poor?) trump the question of abortion for at least one election.”
…for expressing succinctly and respectfully the kind of thought process that I obsessed over all day yesterday. Someday, I hope I can write as well as you.
For today, with not a little conflict and confusion, I say: Obama all the way.
— Russell Arben Fox · Nov 4, 04:09 PM · #
excellent post!
I’m not a regular reader and I am a strong Obama supporter, but you are the kind of reasoned Conservatives the Republican Party needs to re-embrace. The Party of Bush and Rove, and now McCain, has damned itself with it’s divisive, incompetent and deceptive practices.
Once upon a time I could vote for Republicans, that ended when Tom DeLay took over the party.
McCain has some good points, but he is not leader. He is too desperate to win…too willing to compromise his principles. It’s really a shame – he’s betrayed himself. Sarah palin and his erratic behaviour has revealed that.
Obama is not the saviour, I disagree with him on a number of issues. But he is the change this country needs now. There is no other choice.
So thank you for a reasoned, insightful post. You and other ‘real’ Conservatives can hopefully reclaim the Republican Party. Good luck.
— jlg · Nov 4, 05:23 PM · #
I really like Barack Obama,I think he will be good for the poor people as Iam right now.I had a job of 17yrs and quit to care for my husband who has a incurable disease.I`ve tried to get help only to be knocked down.I would like to know how someone in my situation could get financial help?This is the type of president we need to help me and other people in a health situation!
— debbiemedley · Nov 4, 06:45 PM · #
Thank you for a very thoughtful post.
There is bile and hatred on both the Left and the Right.
But the crucial difference right now is, on the Left, it’s the fringe.
On the Right, it’s pretty much the mainstream. Anyone read National Review or The Corner blog recently?
There, Mr. Obama is a gay Muslim socialist and terrorist lover who wants to shut down talk radio and kill and molest your children. And conservatives who disagree are called traitors.
And sadly, the McCain campaign is using the same filthy mud.
But Obama demonstrated astonishing grace.
This is, ultimately, why Mr. Obama will win: he is an admirable, thoughtful man.
We’re ready for that.
— William · Nov 4, 07:49 PM · #
Intriguing that Iraq does not figure at all in this analysis. Is that because there’s no real difference between the proposals of the candidates, because what they will actually do has little connection to their proposals, because Iraq is already won, because Iraq is already lost, or because Iraq is fundamentally irrelevant? (I hope that’s a fairly comprehensive list of reasons.)
— M. Grégoire · Nov 4, 09:03 PM · #
As somebody who reads The Corner and subscribes to National Review and is gay, I have to say that William’s comment is demonstrably false.
His early associations with unrepentant terrorists notwithstanding, Obama hasn’t been cast in that bad a light, to be honest. It’s mostly been the agenda of the congressional Democrats (reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, for example). And nobody’s called Christopher Buckley, et. al., a traitor…people have expressed wonderment at his and Ken Adelman’s and Bruce Bartlett’s supporting Obama, but nobody’s even insinuated stuff on the level that William suggests is the case.
— Will · Nov 4, 10:01 PM · #
uh, dude here’s a clue: it’s won. that’s whay its not an issue. cause BHO wanted to lose. the really cool thing is: he will claim he won it! when it was “wrong” to be there. but “right” to be in the balkans. and jee wiz, we really should be in dharfur, but, uh, we just cant do that right now. uh, yeah. now, here’s your 500 check. and your sign……
— fred · Nov 4, 10:09 PM · #
I’m down with electing the guy who takes his family to a racist church every week. A southern Democrat tradition.
— Mike Jackson · Nov 4, 10:19 PM · #
I hope you are right. Personally, I tend to discount what people say during campaigns and look at their record. After all, George Bush campaigned as somewhat of an isolationist. So your claims about Obama are great— assuming that he governs as he’s campaigned. But, aside from being nice to the few conservatives at the Harvard Law Review when he was President, what part of his work history suggests that he is not a hard-leftist?
— Andrew · Nov 4, 10:20 PM · #
As someone who also reads The Corner every day, I beg to differ.
Mark Steyn constantly calls Mr. Obama a metrosexual, and has called him “limp-wristed” and a “wimp”.
If you’ve seen much of Steyn’s other trash, you know exactly what he’s getting at.
— William · Nov 4, 10:22 PM · #
Dear William: Would you please post links to any entry from National review or its blog The Corner to support the following assertion that you made: “On the Right, it’s pretty much the mainstream. Anyone read National Review or The Corner blog recently? There, Mr. Obama is a gay Muslim socialist and terrorist lover who wants to shut down talk radio and kill and molest your children. And conservatives who disagree are called traitors.”
I voted for McCain today, so I have to confess that what I deal in is facts about the candidates, from which I develop my opinions.
No reasonable person on the right thinks any of what you assert. Morons on the right yes, but no one reasonable, which includes NRO.
We can disagree on issues, but your lying furthers nothing. Moreover, the treatment of issues in the press has lacked depth, insight, and evenhandedness. We have had Trooper-Gate (which Palin has been cleared of by an independent counsel), but we have not had Ayers-Gate, or Khalidi-Gate, or New Party-Gate, or Dohrn-Gate, or Rezko-Gate, or
Joe-the-Plumber-gate, or Reporter-Ban-Gate, or Ear-Mark-Gate, or
Annenberg-Gate, or Project-Vote-Gate, or Chicago-Hospital-Gate, or
Donation-Fraud-Gate, or Big-Money-Influence-Gate, or Biden-Gate of many
possible colors. How is it possible?
Put the shoe on the other political foot and tell us with a straight face that the MSM would not have jumped into each of these issues in depth had McCain been remotely involved with any of these issues, organizations, or characters.
You can rationalize your support for Obama or disagreement with the Right by pretending that the Right doesn’t like him because they think he’s a “gay Muslim socialist and terrorist lover who wants to shut down talk radio and kill and molest your children.” That doesn’t make Obama less involved with Khalidi, or Ayers, or Rezko, and it doesn’t make his ideas about redistributing wealth, or making the government the arbiter of health care, or green-mailing the energy industry, or Acorn, or black liberation theology, or partial birth and late term abortion any less disconcerting.
So, if you want to stick to your over-the-top arguments and straw men, go ahead, but that hardly makes your case for you.
I’ll wait for those links from National Review.
Zachgarber
— zachgarber · Nov 4, 10:29 PM · #
William,
You state “Anyone read National Review or The Corner blog recently? There, Mr. Obama is a gay Muslim socialist and terrorist lover who wants to shut down talk radio and kill and molest your children. And conservatives who disagree are called traitors.”
I have not read any of the comments you mention, and I read The Corner regularly. Perhaps you are part of that left-wing ‘fringe’ that you mention, given that you so freely lie about its content.
How does that Kool-Aid taste?
— NoSocialismForMe · Nov 4, 10:31 PM · #
A much strained thought process to arrive at a Endorsement. I suspect you will have buyers remorse within two years. Your analogy to Carter is interesting given Carters performance. I suspect that Barack is closer to Marx than to Carter.
— Scott Phelps · Nov 4, 10:31 PM · #
Can’t say I’ve been over-impressed with the punditry, academics and experts during this election cycle. I try to follow the logic and look at the facts, and cannot seem to jive what I’m seeing and hearing and reading with what I’m getting from professional analysts, reporters, columnists and the like. With Obama, what you’re selling—disguised as thoughtful analysis—is a moderately left-of-center symbol of racial unity. What we’re getting if Obama is elected is a Chicago machine politician surrounded by corrupt cronies and associates who make Harding’s Ohio Gang look like a Cub Scout troop. What we’re getting is a former New Party socialist who has never repudiated those views. What we’re getting is a man who attended a church where America is damned from the pulpit. Either Obama believes that stuff or he attended that church for the sake of its political connections and clout, so he’s either a man who hates his country or a cynical opportunist using faith as a ladder rung. Lastly, I think history will be far kinder to George W. Bush than his contemporaries—assuming, of course, the history books aren’t written by men like Obama’s buddy, Ayers.
— Troy Riser · Nov 4, 10:51 PM · #
One correction to my post above. Concern over Obama’s poistion on the Fairness Doctrine is certainly reasonable and in-bounds. He hasn’t said he endorses the idea, but he has also NOT said that he would veto such legislation. Given his campaign’s attitude toward dissenting voices (Joe the Plumber, the Missouri Obama Truth Squad, kicking reporters off his plane, cutting off contact with 2 tV stations after hard Biden interviews, etc.), along with how they define “social justice” and “econmoic justice,” makes being skeptical about his position to the Fairness Doctrine VERY reasonable. He shoudl reject the idea wholesale.
— zachgarber · Nov 4, 11:03 PM · #
From a GOP’er: thanks to you and your ilk (i.e. Chris Buckley) for supporting McCain against us the wishes of actual conservatives and then promptly voting Democrat. Hooray for you, you’re sophisticated!
— illcommunication · Nov 4, 11:32 PM · #
In many posts, people on The Corner have said that Mr. Obama “supports infanticide”.
National Review made a vigorous defense of McCain’s “sex education” ad. The point of that ad was to insinuate that Mr. Obama was some sort of molester. Personally, I think that was the most disgusting political ad I’ve ever seen. But okay with National Review.
And here is Andrew McCarthy, writing in The Corner:
“Obama’s radicalism, beginning with his Alinski/ACORN/community organizer period, is a bottom-up socialism. This, I’d suggest, is why he fits comfortably with Ayers, who (especially now) is more Maoist than Stalinist. What Obama is about is infiltrating (and training others to infiltrate) bourgeois institutions in order to change them from within…”
There’s plenty more, but I give. You folks win. You’re right. National Review has been a beacon of honest civility wehen it comes to Mr. Obama.
— William · Nov 5, 12:03 AM · #
And now here is the once great Mark Steyn, alleging that Obama’s relatives are “goat eaters.”
Some replacement for Christo Buckley.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mzk4NGQ5YzY1ZjNlYjljMzAzOTAwNDM4Mzg4NTNlNDY=
— matoko_chan · Nov 5, 12:45 AM · #
Wow….i was reading a new Goldberg post and now its gone….he was calling out David Brooks, something like, how many divisions does Brooks command as opposed to Palin….Palin has divisions? Culture War commandos?
— matoko_chan · Nov 5, 12:53 AM · #
So, William, in response to your statement that NRO tries to eviscerate now President elect Obama by saying that he “is a gay Muslim socialist and terrorist lover who wants to shut down talk radio and kill and molest your children. And conservatives who disagree are called traitors,” you offer this:
1) the infanticide argument about Obama’s position on viable fetus/now babies born alive after a failed abortion
2) McCarthy’s well argued point that Obama, like Ayers after leaving his violent terrorist days, is operating from within the system to change it?
3) the alleged slur by Mark Steyn that Obama’s family are “goat-eaters”
4) McCain’s sex ed ad
Wow. That’s all you’ve got? You have provided NO LINKS to support a single notion in that ridiculous sentence of yours. But, what the hell, let’s take one at a time the points you do bring-up.
1) If a fetus/now baby that was to be aborted is born alive, Obama condones not helping it to live; i.e., letting it die. He argues that he advocates this position only if the baby that was to aborted that is born alive is not viable. The viability of the baby is based on a typical term of gestation which would be typical medical viability for a new born. But that’s not what the law says, and that’s not what was happening at the hospital in Illinois that brought the issue to light through the courage of a now demonized nurse. The law allows doctors to decide the viability of the baby, no matter what the term, and in practice before the law was proposed, any baby born after a failed abortion was left to die regardless of its stage of development. Those are the facts. Does Obama condone killing any baby born, willy-nilly, of course not and no one is suggesting that he does. What people are suggesting is that in the rare instances when a baby is born after it was to be aborted that doctors should help it live. Saying that it is condoning infanticide to let a baby die in this situation is totally accurate. If a pregnant woman got in a car accident and her baby had to be delivered before typical medical viability, you can be assured that doctors would do everything they could to save the baby; they wouldn’t leave it in a bed to die because that would be infanticide.
2) Ayers has operated within the system to radicalize education. See this interview with him from 2006 (http://revcom.us/a/063/ayers-en.html) which includes this quote: “But John Dewey was one of the brilliant, brilliant writers about what democratic education would look like and was himself an independent socialist. But he never resolved a central contradiction in our work, the contradiction between trying to change the school and being embedded in society that has the exact opposite values culturally and politically and socially from the values you’re trying to build in a classroom. This contradiction is something progressive educators should address, not dodge. So this is what got me going.” That’s what Ayers is doing, and that’s what Obama is doing. How much does Obama agree with Ayers and Khalidi, I don’t know, no one has ever asked him.
3) Steyn doesn’t call anyone a goat-eater. The link talks about Obama’s extended family in Kenya selecting a goat to have for a celebratory feast. If you think that’s inappropriate, fine. But, he never says anything like “they’re a bunch of goat-eaters” which is what you imply.
4) If you want to interpret McCain’s sex-ed ad as implying Obama is a child molester, go right ahead. It doesn’t, and I think you know that. But if you really believe that, then you’ll have a hard time arguing against people who assert that Obama is a Stalinist —which he’s not— but people will need the same imagination to assert that as you needed to state that McCain’s ad implies Obama is a molester. The ad DOES imply that the law Obama advocated allows grade school teachers to talk about homosexuality, which it does. If you don’t think it does, look at what the teachers are teaching. Seems a difficult subject for an 9 year-old to get a grasp of, and that’s McCain’s point.
I have to apologize for pursuing this thread at all. You may not be a fool, William, but your points and arguments so far are foolish, and I probably should not have started arguing with you in the first place. But you’ll need a better line of thought to defend a Democrat legislature and White House, because new government programs anything that fails will be there fault, and theirs alone.
— zachgarber · Nov 5, 06:54 PM · #
You guys are right. Mark Steyn is not a gay baiter. Obama wants to kill children. And he’s a commie. And a terrorist lover. So National Review is on solid ground too. They’re off the hook. I was wrong.
I give. You win. Feel better now?
You are wrong about one thing, though. The “sex education” ad was constructed to make Obama seem like a molester. It wasn’t about the truth of the charges – it was about the imagery, the insinuations, the juxtapositions, and the feeling. All quite deliberately put together to suggest pedophilia. Smiling black man, white school kids – he wants to teach your children about sex.
Ads aren’t about what they say – ads are about what they suggest. Ads are about how they make you feel.
It’s not about trying to make an explicit claim tha Obama is a molester – that would never fly.
It was about getting all the right little pieces right next to each other, just close enough to make a very ugly insinuation, and just enough to make some white folks very uncomfortable. Insinuations work better than explicit charges, a picture is worth a thousand words, and of course when you’re not saying something outright, then you can always deny the intended, just-below-the-surface message.
Which is what you’re doing here.
And Nationl Review, of course, defended the ad, because they’ve never met an ugly Republican ad they wouldn’t defend, or at least, ignore – even accusing critics of focusing on “how the ad made you feel” rather than what the ad said.
Well, duh. The only way to defend that swill is to say it’s something other than what it is. Filth.
That was the most disgusting political ad ever.
— William · Nov 6, 10:58 PM · #