Obama – Biden ’08!
The Biden pick is excellent in many ways. In these situations, I always have two conflicting parts of my personality. One is the voter who wants whomever will be best for the job. The other is the strategist who, having already decided I prefer Obama to McCain, wants whomever will maximize Obama’s chances.
The voter side of me is thrilled. I’ve liked Biden for years because he’s clearly smart and knows his stuff. He’s known and respected in foreign capitals for a reason. In addition to having plenty of legislative experience, he was also a constitutional law professor like Obama, and is clearly willing to say what he thinks. Really, he’s the kind of guy who should have a lot more national name-recognition than he does. Americans are, in general, pitifully bad at identifying members of their own legislature, and Biden ought to be as easily identified as anyone. If name recognition really worked the way it should, Biden probably would have had a very good shot at getting the Democratic nomination himself.
The strategist side is also happy, but not totally without reservation. My concern is largely what I’ve said before — that I think picking someone whose credentials are largely in foreign policy does more to highlight and tacitly admit to a shortcoming on the issue than it does to address it. Nevertheless, it clearly does something to address it. There is also the strategic concern of his earlier comments about Obama not being ready, but I think this is, despite being a clear downside, not going to be horrible.
Biden does have a lot of other strategic considerations going for him. He has blue-collar appeal, though I don’t think he has so much blue collar support at this point. I’m sure within Delaware he does, and he has a lot of national potential, but I don’t think he has the name recognition to have much support already. (I think I caught on CNN that he’s the least wealthy senator?) Also, he’s clearly very good at the nonabrasive attack. He’s so straightforward with all his thoughts that his attacks seem like he’s just more candid about his thoughts than others are. I think he’s one of few that can add the aggressiveness the Obama campaign needs without undermining the positive image. His son is going to Iraq, which will be a mild background help. He has Pennsylvania roots, though I doubt that’s a huge thing (I think that Pennsylvania is actually not that big a concern — if Obama is losing there, he’s already lost). Overall, Biden’s a politically solid pick, and I’m not sure anyone else would clearly be better, but from this perspective he’s not as unambiguously good as my voter side would rate him.
This is a good choice and a strong ticket. Any Democrat should be happy. Now I get to go back to being conflicted about whether I want to see a good Republican VP who I wouldn’t mind in office versus seeing a stupid choice (i.e. Romney) that’d maximize Obama’s chances.
A second look at Clinton
I think the media has largely written Clinton off as a possible VP choice, but I think it’s actually been making a lot more sense recently than it did before. I should be clear – I’m not saying it’s my preferred choice or that I expect it, but I think it makes a lot more sense than most people seem to realize. I should also say that I’m not a bitter former Clinton supporter. I was ambivalent and happy with both during the lead-up to the primary, started to lean towards Obama around Iowa and New Hampshire, supported him clearly after the crap Clinton pulled in South Carolina, and got increasingly annoyed at Clinton as she stayed in and went negative after she had no hope of winning.
A lot of the reasons for not picking her have disappeared. Early on, it looked like if he had picked her he would have been caving to pressure from her supporters, but expectations of her being selected are now so low that I think Obama has clearly established his ability to pick someone else. If he picks her, it’ll be seen as a proactive choice by most, I think. I also think it will be much more surprising. Most of the reasonable choices are widely suspected, and only a few (Richardson?) would come as much of a surprise. Most of the ones that would be surprising would also be obscure. Clinton seems like a unique way to generate a lot of excitement. It was also help with her former supporters, most of which seem to have come around to Obama, but are less stable in their support and less enthusiastic. (This boost can even be tied to specific states like Florida, where her supporters are greater in number.)
More importantly, Clinton has secured in the primary – deserved or not – the status of the experienced, well-qualified candidate. She brings with her the image of someone with good national security credentials without generating the stories about how he picked her to fill in his national security gap. She is also someone who could add these credentials without seeming to some to overshadow the nominee. They’ve gone against each other and she lost, so no one will wonder about why it is that Obama was picked over Clinton. Well, some will, but the answer is clear – his greater ability to inspire, his better campaign management skills, and so forth.
That’s not to say there won’t be downsides. The biggest downside is named Bill Clinton, who will be difficult to control and very tricky to use, but could end up being a benefit if all goes optimally. There will also definitely be some stories about satisfying disgruntled Clinton supporters, but it wouldn’t be assumed without question that this was the reason for picking her.
Biden or Bayh or whoever definitely might be better, but I think Clinton does deserve at least another quick look.
Obama and red states
There’s been substantial coverage lately of how the Obama campaign seems to be putting a lot of effort into states that have normally seemed utterly beyond reach for any Democrat. You can’t really blame them for dreaming — there has been some impressively close polling out of states you wouldn’t expect (Alaska? Indiana?). Nevertheless, these states have been so lopsided in the past that you can be “impressively close” without really having any chance of winning. The other reason, of course, why they’re willing to spend a lot of money advertising and organizing in Georgia and Montana is that they have a lot more money to work with than McCain does (though really you need to include the RNC and DNC in these calculations, and that drastically shrinks the gap). Their efforts in the reach states haven’t prevented them from matching (and usually outdoing) McCain in the traditional swing states.
Still, you’ve got to ask yourself whether this is really the best allocation of resources. Sure, Obama has been out-organizing McCain in Ohio, even while organizing in Georgia, but wouldn’t it be better if the gap in Ohio was even wider? The answer depends on what assumptions you make about how state results relate to each other.
One possible assumption is that states generally move in tandem with each other. If Obama goes up or down nationally, that move is seen roughly equally reflected in each state. Certain states are just more conservative/liberal than others. Say Pennsylvania is slightly more liberal than Ohio. They could both go the same way, or Obama could win Pennsylvania while losing Ohio, but it’d be nearly impossible for him to win Ohio but lose Pennsylvania. Under this assumption, as Obama becomes less popular, Ohio always flips first. Now, you could imagine that campaigns can push individual states through greater advertising/campaigning/organizing efforts, but these things being equal, states have a stable ordering in their general willingness to vote one way or the other.
If this assumption is true, there are only a handful of states where the campaigns should be focusing. The efforts should go not to the place that is most borderline at any particular time, but to the states that are closest to the national average. That’s because these are the states that will be casting the deciding electoral votes in the event that the election is very close. There could be national trends that push Obama far ahead, making Georgia very competitive, but in that case he’s winning regardless, so it doesn’t matter if he put the organizing into Georgia that was necessary to push that state in particular over the edge. Similarly, efforts in Connecticut could help Obama reduce the margin of defeat in some cases, but never change the outcome. Only states where campaigning could make the difference in the event that the national popular vote is close to 50-50 are worth focusing on.
Under this assumption, Obama’s strategy is very much out of whack. He should be putting more money and time into Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, and Michigan. His time in Indiana, Georgia, and his other dream targets is wasted. The only way it makes sense is if you believe that, given the huge investment already made in traditional swing states, the marginal benefit from additional resources is very low, and that the complete lack of opposition he’s seeing in traditionally Republican states makes them more vulnerable than the swing states. I don’t think anyone really believes this. Maybe Obama can win North Carolina, but even with McCain ignoring it, it’s just a tougher target for him than Colorado.
The opposite assumption is that states move greatly in ways that are totally independent of each other. Because of local differences in media coverage, which issues are important, demographics, etc., it is possible for candidates to go up significantly in some states while going down significantly in others. In this case, it’s very possible for some of the “stretch” states to go for Obama while the traditional swing states don’t. If this is true, he should try to get lots of states within range of random variation flipping them. He should take advantage of the fact that his efforts probably do the most good in states where he’s unopposed, and try to make those states competitive. If a lot of states are very close, he’ll almost definitely win some of them.
Obviously the truth is in between the two extreme versions of reality, but I doubt it’s far enough towards the latter to really justify the level of attention Obama has been paying to some states that really just look out of reach. There is, of course, another set of reasons to pay attention to these states, unrelated to the outcome of this presidential election. One is that over the long term, making the Democratic argument in those states will slowly increase the acceptance of those arguments, and maybe make it so that in some future election these states really are winnable. In the short term, he could at the very least make his presence on the top of the ticket less of a harm to down-ballot candidates. These goals are incredibly important, and I’m all for them. I just hope Obama isn’t biting off more than he can chew. I’d really like to see him as president, and that is by no means sewn up yet.
Don’t take pride in being ignorant
Here’s a video that’s worth seeing. (Hat tip to Ben Smith at Politico.com.)
“It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant,” Obama says. I’m thrilled whenever I hear politicians calling each other out on that tactic rather than trying to outdo each other with the old “I’m jest reg’lur folks like you, don’t need no fancypants edjumucation” act. If there’s an effective, logically sound idea out there, we should use it, even if it might sound silly to “reg’lur folks” who don’t want to take the time to think it through. Obama’s banking on the fact that the average voter is actually smarter than that. I hope he’s right.
Sending tire gauges tagged as “Obama’s energy plan” is a cheap trick. It would have been a politically useful cheap trick if it had actually made a legitimate point, but it’s a shameful and easily mocked trick since it deliberately ignores the context surrounding the original suggestion. A man in the audience had asked about what small, everyday thing he could do to contribute to a solution to our gas woes, and Obama suggested a small, everyday thing that has been demonstrated to make a big difference. There’s nothing about that that’s worth poking fun at.
Setting a new record in missing the point, the person who posted this particular clip on YouTube has titled it “Obama Insists Inflating Tires Better Than Oil Drilling.”
McCain goes negative
Well, McCain has had a bad week (though it wouldn’t be obvious to you if you were just watching the polls). There was of course Obama’s trip overseas, which gave him all the presidential photo-ops he could ask for. Obama got supported on Iraq by the Iraqi prime minister. McCain made more in a series of misstatements that would make most candidates look like they don’t understand key issues — except McCain, at least on foreign policy, is immune from that interpretation, so they just make him look old and generally out of it. No one can fault the McCain campaign for feeling a little bit desperate at the moment. I’m even willing to let them slide a bit for pulling stupid tricks like pretending they’re about to announce their VP pick in order to get attention.
I am not, however, willing to forgive the suddenly harshly personal tone that the campaign has taken. I have no problem with negative ads when they attack policy differences. I have no problem with negative ads on personal qualities that are relevant for governance (leadership experience, or intelligence, or whatever). I have no problem with negative ads that assault someone’s character when there are actual grounds for doing so. McCain’s most recent ad (below) is negative, personal, and has no basis in reality.
The main attack point of the ad is that Obama canceled scheduled visits to military bases in Germany. That’s true, but the reason the Obama campaign gave was that they were worried it was inappropriate to visit troops in the campaign-funded part of the trip. McCain’s ad says that Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” It then adds that “John McCain is always there for our troops.” Did the Obama campaign cancel the visit because of a lack of allowed cameras? Maybe. Anything is possible. But as far as I can tell, there is is no evidence to support it. (It’s the one statement about Obama in the ad that doesn’t have a citation appear on the screen for it.) Really, though, the thing about this ad that goes beyond mean into sheer idiotic is the picture in the background. It’s criticizing Obama for going to the gym instead of visiting troops, and it has a clip of him playing basketball. The only problem is, the clip is from his visit with US troops in Kuwait a couple days earlier! The people in the background are US soldiers. I really am at a loss for words here. I can’t do anything other than marvel at the amazing level of shameless, meaningless attack that is going on here.
This comes after McCain has started using the line that “It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” implying that Obama is choosing a popular position he knows is harmful to US security. I have said before that I think too much has been made of Obama’s early opposition to the war as a measure of good judgment, but at the very least it shows that this is clearly a positions he’s had since well before the presidency was remotely on the table, and that it’s not just political opportunism.
I don’t know why the campaign is taking such a personal tone all of a sudden. There has been a lot made of McCain’s supposed personal dislike of Obama, so it might just be that showing through. It might also be a calculated (and not unreasonable) political decision that in a year where a generic Democrat would clearly defeate a generic Republican, the only way for McCain to win is to make it personal. Nevertheless, it’s the kind of thing where you would expect better of McCain. The message here is supposed to be that Obama would do anything to win, but I think McCain is being much more successful in proving such a thing about himself than about his opponent. Those of us who value intelligent debate shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be sad.
From confusion to certainty on Iraq
Until recently I have been torn about what to do in Iraq. That makes me a bit of an exception, since most people who are well-informed and care about the issue have very strong opinions. Still, while I have leaned towards the anti-war view, I’ve always been very conflicted about it.
I believe that, in retrospect, the war was clearly a mistake, but I don’t blame most of the people who supported it at the time. At that time, the argument hinged largely on the existence of WMDs, or at least substantial WMD programs, and that existence was vouched for in very strong terms by the nation’s intelligence agencies. Given a belief in the WMD accusations, the decision to go to war, while still somewhat dubious, was at least understandable. I don’t think there was any real reason to doubt the WMD accusations at the time, either. Even most people who opposed the war believed there was some truth to those accusations. Saddam was definitely acting as though he had something to hide. The real blame for the error in going to war lies in my mind with the intelligence agencies who got the facts wrong, and (most importantly) with the Bush administration, which from all accounts created an atmosphere where dissenting opinions were ignored, and delivering evidence and/or analysis to support preconceived goals was rewarded.
Once in, of course, there are lots of reasons to try to succeed in Iraq despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. A stable, friendly democracy in the Middle East would be a huge improvement, and an unstable, fractured, and dysfunctional Iraq would be a huge disaster. The real problem for me in determining the right course of action was the great degree of uncertainty connected to either course of action. Withdrawal could put pressure on the Iraqi government to step up, make some tough decisions, make the political compromises it needed to, and really take control. However, it could also lead to total failure. Similarly, staying in could eventually produce an acceptable outcome, but could also be hopeless, leading to the same disaster but with more lives and money wasted in the meantime. Given that all four of these outcomes seemed possible to me, there was not much of a way to decide on a clearly correct course of action.
One thing that was clear to me was that if we were going to stay in, the surge was the right way to do it. It was at least a clear improvement over what had been the status quo up to that point. (On a related point, another reason I don’t blame those who supported the choice to go to war is that much of the cost of the war has been more the result of mismanagement than a necessary cost of such an endeavor. Yes, the danger of mismanagement is always something you should take into account when making a decision like that, but the level of idiocy in the conduct of the war seems like something that someone should be forgiven for not foreseeing.)
All of my indecision has gone away recently, though, as the Iraqi government has begun to push for the kind of timeline that Democrats have been asking for all along. The most extreme example came today when al-Maliki said that Obama’s 16-month time frame was correct. As far as I’m concerned, whether a timeline was a good idea before or not, this request from Iraq makes it the obviously correct course of action now. Iraq is a sovereign nation with its own democratically elected government. Because Iraq depends on the US for its security, the US has incredible leverage over the Iraqi government, but that should not be mistaken for a lack of Iraqi sovereignty. In the end, if Iraq asks the US troops to leave, they have to go.
McCain has said this himself in the past, but now seems to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the request. The reason he gives, that al-Maliki is just doing this for domestic political reasons, is idiotic. That’s what’s supposed to happen in a democracy. If the vast majority of voters within a country believe something to be good policy, their leaders should be forced to fall in line with that belief. If anything, the fact that this is the will of the Iraqi populace rather than of al-Maliki personally should make it a more important request. Is it best for Iraq if the US leaves? Probably. It’s definitely not certain, but it’s the future of Iraq that is at stake, and when there’s a tough call to make, it’s the Iraqi people who should get to make it.
How to choose a VP
So, as anyone who is remotely aware of the news knows, Obama and McCain are currently in the midst of the VP vetting and choosing process. There is no shortage of speculation about various potential choices, rumors, and so forth. There are of course numerous points I could make about various particular candidates, but there is one common line of thinking that I just really disagree with. The standard version says something to the effect of, “Obama needs to pick someone with lots of foreign policy credentials, to make up for his lack of experience.” There are also versions about McCain needing to pick someone who’s strong on the economy because he is weak there. I think choices like this won’t help.
The vice president just doesn’t have that much power. Cheney obviously did, but more because of influence than actual direct authority, and that I think was largely the result of a president who didn’t have the experience, intellectual ability, or confidence to really have strong independent opinions. I think the trend towards more powerful VPs is real and will continue, but I think it will look more like the Clinton-Gore relationship (where Gore had much more of a role than had been true through most of history) than the Bush-Cheney situation. More importantly, the public votes for a president. That’s who they see as running the country. It’s good if they have good people working for them, but it’s the president that the public has to have confidence in.
I don’t think anyone is going to say “I know Obama isn’t really qualified to handle national security, but he has Sam Nunn as VP, so it’ll be fine.” Anyone who agrees with the first half of that sentence won’t be voting for Obama. Now, you could argue that having Nunn or Biden or whoever as VP shows that people who really know what they’re doing trust Obama, but I don’t think any single person has that kind of sway over the public in general. Maybe it would work in elite foreign policy circles who really know these people, but not with the general public. All it would do is generate headlines like “Obama compensates for national security weakness” and reinforce that perception in the public’s mind. It also has the potential to make the ticket look bottom-heavy.
The long primary has probably done a bit to prevent that last danger from happening. Obama might be new on the scene, but he’s been in the news a lot, defeated Clinton, raised so much money, become so respected as a speaker, etc. The public sees him as one of the big, powerful figures in Washington now. I also think that it makes the people he beat in the primary safe in this way. No one’s going to feel like Bill Richardson should be at the top, because when they were up against each other it wasn’t even close. People were very sure Obama would be better. (Plus, with Richardson, it’s not clear what the narrative in the media is — going for New Mexico? Hispanics? National security credentials? Executive experience? Probably the conflicting narratives will prevent one from dominating.)
This goes just as much for McCain as for Obama. Despite claims to the contrary, no one is going to say “Oh, he has Romney as VP, so the economy will be fine.” They’re going to say “He’s trying to address his weakness on the economy.” The religious right isn’t going to like him all of a sudden because he picks Jindal. Jindal won’t add youth and eloquence in any way that matters. All Jindal would do is remind the religious right that McCain is trying to compensate for thinking they’re all hateful nuts, and remind the rest of the country that McCain is old and managed to get through decades in public life without ever learning how to give a decent speech.
I think both candidates would do themselves a favor by picking people who reinforce their image. What McCain needs is a another somewhat old (though not as old as him) true maverick with tons of foreign policy experience. That way it reinforces his image and allows him to criticize Obama as unqualified without people saying “But what about your VP?” (That’s a tough order. I’d say Chuck Hagel, except you also need someone where the maverick-ness has been kept strictly separate from the foreign policy…) Obama needs to stick with the idea that you don’t need 30 years of experience in national security — you just need good judgment. No one votes for the VP. People vote for the president, and it’s how the VP choice makes the person at the top look that matters.
Faith, charity, and the Constitution
Yesterday in Ohio, Obama delivered a speech on faith where he outlines his views on his version of Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative. (Policy statement here.) I have a lot of mixed thoughts on this, and some serious concerns about it. I should say up front that the separation of church and state is an issue about which I care very much, but I definitely recognize the complexities of this situation.
There is a large category of government actions that, similarly to this program, seem to put the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause in conflict. Anyone who hasn’t spent much time thinking or reading about constitutional law probably assumes that these two things, the freedom to your own religious choices and the separation of the government from religious matters, are two parts of the same thing. In many ways this is true. However, there are a lot of situations where the two are somewhat contradictory. For example, the government funding religious education/indoctrination in a particular set of religious beliefs seems obviously unconstitutional. However, the government is clearly on solid ground when it gives out Pell grants for people to attend college, and they sometimes attend religious universities or, in the more extreme example, study to become members of the clergy. Would the government be unacceptably supporting religion by funding the training, or would it be unfairly discriminating against religion by not funding it? Both things seem true, but they’re obviously contradictory. (For what it’s worth, the Supreme Court has come down on the side of funding the education.)
Funding for faith-based charities is a similar problem. I’m going to assume, for the purposes of discussion, that everyone agrees that funding groups that actively distribute material seeking converts or in other ways pushing their faith towards people they serve, or who mix the charity with religious practice (by say, asking the homeless to say grace with them before getting their food) should not get government funds. I know not everyone agrees with that, but I think it’s pretty obvious. So let’s talk about the groups that are willing to insulate the charitable arm from the rest of the organization with separate bank accounts, different hiring practices, and a complete lack of overt religious practice and proselytizing. In that case, it seems unfair to deny a charity funding in favor of a secular charity that is otherwise equivalent because of its religious affiliation. I can understand why people find the idea upsetting and refer to it as “discriminating” against those who are religious.
That said, I have serious trouble imagining that any of these charities are really, truly isolated. Money, of course, is fungible. If religious organizations are channeling money to a charitable arm already, they have no need to use the actual dollars from the government if they want to use its funding for religious activities — they could just reduce their other support for the charitable activities by the same amount and get an identical effect. I also think there is just a subtle form of advertising and pressure going on here. Imagine the summer classes that Obama wants to focus the program on happening in a church. The kids go there, into an obviously religious building, see religious imagery around, and take classes from a group run by Catholic Charities or something. They know the religion is there, get exposure to it, and the religious group gets free press for good activities that are really being done by the government.
These things are admittedly minor compared to most church-state infractions. They are nowhere near the idiocy level of putting prayer or the Ten Commandments in public schools. It’s easy to say that they are too minor to matter, or that they have no appreciable effect whatsoever. But try imagining a similar situation. Instead of a church and Catholic Charities, imagine an extreme and obviously dangerous religion. I don’t mean, imagine Jews or Muslims instead of Christians. I mean, imagine Heaven’s Gate. You can call them cults or whatever else you want, but until they do something illegal they still get protection as a religion. If the Heaven’s Gate Soup Kitchen opened up down the street, how would you feel? What if it was government-funded? If the dangerous views of the cult make you uncomfortable about the government funding its soup kitchen, it’s because you recognize that the government funding really does aid that religious group.
Of course, there’s another level of safeguards that could get rid of these concerns. The group would have to be forbidden from putting its religion in its name, or holding its events at a place of worship, or in any other way doing anything that would make it clear to those receiving the service that the group had religious connections. I just don’t think there’s any conceivable world in which that level of care will be taken. Even if someone was to try, it’d never happen. Even the more mild regulations are horribly difficult to enforce. Is the government going to have undercover homeless people to check and see if anyone hands out pamphlets at the homeless shelter? There is plenty of cause for the concern that many have expressed about Obama’s expanded version of this program.
That said, it’s also very clear that Obama’s version is much better than Bush’s. As someone who spent a while reading through the guidelines the programs had for what religious activities were and were not allowed for a charitable group to get funding, I can personally vouch for the absurdity of the “protections” that existed. (Read them for yourself.) Calling them “loopholes” would be to massively understate them. They seemed neither small nor unintentional. Obama seems like he at least will have serious efforts to make sure the religious activities stay reasonably separate.
Maybe he’ll do a good enough job that the Establishment Clause concerns will be very minor, and the Free Exercise concerns will be more important and make the program worth having. I’ve got to say, though, that any program that specifically tries to target faith-based groups seems automatically bad. Even if it’s just training on how to apply for grants that already exist, the idea that this training would be targeted towards religious groups worries me. If you really were just allowing the charitable arm of faith-based groups to have the same access as secular groups to funding for their secular activities, you wouldn’t need a special presidential council in order to do it.
Obama and the Heller decision
Today the Supreme Court struck down the DC gun law that banned handguns and greatly restricted the storage of the firearms that were still legal to own. The decision is unsurprising given the current composition of the court, and given what could have happened, is reasonably moderate. The decision is clear about most gun control laws that currently exist being perfectly fine — it strikes down DC’s because it is so extremely restrictive that it essentially (according to the court) amounts to a ban on using guns for self defense in your home. It’s a decision that conservatives clearly support, and I think it’s important that Obama get behind it too.
I’m not totally sure I agree with the decision, and Obama has said in the past that he thought the law was constitutional (which will be a tough quote to get out of), but I really think he needs to use the decision to bolster his cause. I would be extremely surprised if many people in the US really had a problem with banning military assault rifles or requiring background checks. I think the real problem is that people feel like advocates of gun control really want much more than the current, mainstream proposals. They think advocates of gun control really want to limit guns as much as possible, up to and including banning them, and that the current proposals are just the most they feel like they can get through a legislature right now.
Obama would benefit a lot politically, I think, if he used the decision to say something to the effect of “See, you have nothing to worry about.” The right most people care about is the general ability to own the types of guns they actually want to own, with regulation that is not prohibitively complex. I think that if they feel that right is secure, they will be more willing to accept other limits and regulations that don’t touch that core. Obama needs to say, “Not only do I not want to ban guns, but now you don’t have to just take my word for it. You have a constitutional protection, upheld by the Supreme Court, that will guarantee that right.”
He’s gotten close to this, with quotes like this one:
The problem is that we’ve got a position, oftentimes by the NRA, that says any regulation whatsoever is the camel’s nose under the tent. And that, I think, is not where the American people are at. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.
I think he would benefit from being a little more explicit with the linkage. I think it’s a message that pro-gun control groups would be fine with — he would still be advocating gun control, after all. At the same time he’d be expressing sympathy with gun owners and a real understanding of what’s important to them. He’d use a pro-gun court ruling as a reason why most gun control is desirable and not worrying. I think it would be a message that is all-around acceptable, still advocates the positions he believes in, and does a bit of the rising above wedge issues and building consensus that he’s always (rightly) talking about.
Nader wrong again
Ralph Nader made a fool of himself today in a not-so-well-thought-out attempt to look like a halfway reasonable presidential candidate. Just look at this:
“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”
(Hat tips to Ben Smith of Politico.com and Reason: Hit & Run for pointing out the story.) When I read this, I knew I wanted to write something here, but I was too sickened to think clearly about it. After a few hours my mind has cleared a bit. Let’s make a list of the outrageous things in this episode:
- Nader thinks that African-Americans should put “ghetto” issues above all.
- Nader thinks that if a black man doesn’t talk about poverty all the time, he’s “talking white.”
- Nader thinks that the public would like Obama more if he acted more stereotypically black.
- Nader really wants Obama to spend a lot of time talking specifically about … asbestos?
- Nader believes there is no meaningful difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
#3 is just silly. Even Nader couldn’t honestly believe that Obama is losing votes because he’s not black enough. A few choice moments with West Virginia voters should be enough to convince anyone the opposite is true. Even if there are some voters who think that Obama’s not “black enough” (whatever that means) and who make their political decisions solely by where candidates fall on some weird racial spectrum, they’re not going to favor McCain (or Nader, for that matter) over Obama. They surely aren’t blacker than him.
#4 is, I suppose, just a special case of #1, so I’ll deal with them together. In order to truly respect every person as a complete individual, we have to be able to deal with the fact that sometimes people don’t identify primarily by whatever characteristic we as society isolate and stereotype them with. The example that comes immediately to mind is the Log Cabin Republicans. While it surprises me that there are GLBT folks willing to join the party of politicians who believe their sexual orientation to be entirely sinful and deserving of scorn, I realize that there are of course some people who place a higher priority on having more agressive foreign policy and less agressive taxation than on having the most tolerant laws regarding their sexuality. It’s inappropriate to assume that if someone is a member of a minority group, their primary political concerns ought to be the issues that define that minority. So yes, it’s true that there’s a disproportionately large number of homes in low-income neighborhoods that still have asbestos ceilings and shingles. It’s also true that median income levels are lower in black households than white households. But it’s insulting to imply that Obama ought to, by virtue of his ethnic background, spend so much time campaigning on “ghetto”-related issues that his stance on asbestos in particular is well-known.
Incidentally, Obama has worked and campaigned against all these problems Nader tries to call him out on: predatory lending practices, asbestos, lead, and so on. But who cares about facts when you can be ignorant and racist?
That brings me to #2 on my list. I cannot stand phrases like “acting black” or “talking white.” When someone characterizes behavior in those terms, they are making a sweeping generalization that is both socially damaging and flat-out wrong. I understand that when a white teenager wears sagging pants, listens to hip-hop, and uses street slang, he’s becoming (or attempting to become) part of a culture that is largely populated by black teenagers. However, that does not mean that all black teenagers are part of that culture, and it certainly does not mean that all black people are. It’s impossible to accurately describe someone as “acting black” when different black people act in every possible different way, and when white people are just as capable of acting in those same ways. Similarly, it makes no sense for Nader to claim that Obama is “talking white.” In what way — perhaps by discussing the Federal Reserve, climate change, and public health policy rather than simply what it’s like to live in the ghetto? It appears that Nader thinks black people are not allowed to talk about these things; these topics are for white people to discuss, and he won’t tolerate any black people pretending to be white by discussing them. This is beyond absurd!
Finally, I’m baffled by Nader’s intention to run for president in the first place, and his insistence that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can do right by the country because they are both too involved with corporate interests and thus equally bad (#5 on the list). You can make the case that two political parties are not enough to accommodate the range of political perspectives Americans hold. You can certainly make the case that there are flaws common to both major political parties. However, it’s simply ludicrous for Nader to pick out one aspect he identifies as a flaw and ignore all other facets of the party platforms.
Nader already has no chance of winning the election, and it’s stupid to cast a vote for him even if you think he’s the best candidate. Your vote will make much more of an impact in deciding which of the mainstream candidates wins the presidency. The fact that Nader dismisses both major parties so flippantly shows that he couldn’t be a good president — one of the most important job requirements is an ability to compromise and form coalitions among the extreme variety of views in this huge country. But more importantly, this incident illustrates that Nader is completely out of touch with American society. Maybe, deep down, he’s running not to win but to set the agenda for national debate. If he was a very skilled campaigner he might be able to pique the public’s interest and at least achieve that goal, but if this is any indication of his abilities, he’s not going to manage even that.
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