Clinton and Obama, Sexism and Racism

The topic is unavoidable, since so much ink and hard feelings are being spilled all over the blogosphere, in the mainstream media, and over family dinner tables. I think it's important that we try our best to get this one right, since the understandings we reach now could have a real impact on the outcome of this year's elections. Here are my thoughts, for what they're worth.

I think a big part of the problem we Democrats are having with one another arises from the fact that we have been conflating several very different questions and talking around all of them without fully realizing that we're doing so. Some of these questions, I think, are pretty easy to answer; others not so easy. Distinguishing them from one another may be a helpful first step. Here are the questions, as I see them.

1. Is there a lot of sexism in American society today?

Obviously yes. I won't bother with the proof--if any of my readers want to argue this one with me, we can do that at some future date. But I think the majority of Democrats, no matter which candidate(s) they supported this year, would agree on this one. (I'm sure there are some who would disagree. But I think we have to stipulate that any large group of people will include some who are ignorant or foolish. Let's not got sidetracked by focusing on them but instead stick with the mainstream for the purposes of this particular discussion.)

2. Was Hillary Clinton treated in a sexist fashion during the Democratic primary campaign?

Again, this is an obvious yes (despite the fact that many in the media are in denial). I think the main culprits were the news media, as well as some Republicans, conservative pundits, and others with an anti-Clinton axe to grind--abetted, unfortunately, by the same media. Like many other observers, I've been appalled by this for months (and wrote about it here, here, here, here, here . . . well, that's plenty of examples). Those who have been complaining about this--including both Clinton supporters and others--are completely right, and it's important that we work to make overt sexism as taboo in our society as overt racism (usually) is. (After that, we can tackle covert examples of both, which are plentiful.)

3. Did Clinton lose the nomination because of sexism?

Here we get to a hard question--one that I think is really impossible to answer, because there are so many imponderables. Obviously in a race this close, you can point to almost any single factor and decide that it was the crucial one. Sexism was certainly an obstacle that Clinton had to battle against. But one can also point to several other factors that arguably were at least as important in costing her the nomination: Obama's superior electoral game plan, especially in managing the caucuses; his ability to raise more funds than Clinton, especially from small donors; various gaffes and mis-steps committed by Bill Clinton; Obama's personal charisma and oratorical skill (which Clinton almost managed to match, though not till late in the process); and, perhaps most crucial, Clinton's vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, which created the initial opening for a challenge to her supposedly "inevitable" nomination.

If there had been no sexism in the media, it's possible that Clinton would have overcome all those things. On the other hand, at least some portion of Clinton's support derived from her appeal to women as a ground-breaking female candidate--just as some portion of Obama's support derived from his appeal to his fellow African-Americans. So if Clinton had been a man--or if we lived in a completely gender-blind society--the opposition to her candidacy would have been weaker, but so, I think, would some of its appeal. How would those things have balanced out? It's hard to say.

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Clinton "obviously" would have won if sexism hadn't been a factor. Those Cwho contend that sexism is the only logical explanation for Obama's victory--that Clinton is (was) the overwhelmingly qualified, unquestionably most attractive candidate in the Democratic field--are going a bit far. Her resume is good, and her policy stances (with the big exception of Iraq) are mostly very strong. But her governmental experience--one and a half terms in the US Senate--is actually on the modest side, and her years as First Lady aren't really as strong a credential as she sometimes has claimed. (And after all her biggest policy initiative in the Clinton White House--health care--was a failure.)

I think her credentials, on paper, are comparable to those of John Edwards, who I also found a very attractive candidate but who I would never claim to have been overwhemingly qualified. There were perfectly sound arguments to be made for several other Democratic candidates, including not only Edwards and Obama but also Richardson and Dodd, and I don't think we can assume that sexism is the only possible reason that someone might have favored someone other than Clinton.

4. Did Obama or his campaign contribute to the sexist assault on Hillary?

Here is the toughest question of all. As a man, I wouldn't presume to tell any woman how she should feel about it. If you as a woman feel that Obama has treated you with disrespect, then I have to take you at your word (and try to learn from your reaction, since as a man I constantly have to work on outgrowing my own latent sexism).

But I have to say that, while I observed lots of sexism directed at Hillary during the primary campaign, I really didn't see any coming from Obama or even from his surrogates. And the examples of offensive behavior I've seen raised by enraged Hillary supporters seem puzzling and, in some cases, based on factual errors.

"You're likeable enough." This remark by Obama during debate in January infuriated many people. (And as this New York Times article suggests, it helped to galvanize the support of some women for Clinton--an example of how sexism was a double-edged sword in this campaign, working against Clinton, of course, but also in her favor to some extent.)

It was certainly a silly and awkward comment by Obama. But why "sexist"? It didn't refer to any physical, psychological, or emotional characteristic supposedly linked to women. If anything, it was just the kind of ill-conceived off-the-cuff comment people make during a grueling series of public events. (I think Clinton's later remark that many people took as implying that "hard-working Americans" are equivalent to "white Americans" was another example--not a "dog whistle" designed to appeal to racists.)

"Sweetie." Obama used this word when asking a female reporter to wait a moment before asking her question (he was speaking with someone else at the time). I wouldn't use this word (and I'm sure Obama won't any more, either), but I think the furor over it just reflects a cultural gap between different styles of talking. I've certainly been called "Sweetie," "Honey," "Darling," etc. by some women (and I understand there's a difference between a woman saying something to a man and vice-versa). I see why many people would consider this language tacky and over-forward. But I also know that 99 percent of the people who talk this way are not trying to be arrogant or condescending, just friendly.

In any case, if "likeable enough" and "sweetie" are examples of the worst things Obama has said to or about women during this campaign--and these are certainly the examples I've seen most frequently cited--does he really qualify as a hard-core sexist? Is this the kind of person we want to declare an "enemy of women"? I think that's a pretty harsh standard. Especially considering that Obama's stands on issues of importance to women are generally conceded to be excellent ones and that he earned (for example) 100 percent ratings from NARAL for his pro-choice votes every year in the Senate.

And what about things supposedly said by Obama supporters?

"Iron my shirt!" This was the offensive "joke" screamed at Clinton during a rally in New Hampshire. I've heard this remark attributed to "Obama supporters," and it certainly got a lot of publicity during the months that followed. But the stunt was actually the work of two employees of a Boston radio station known for its "shock jock" antics. (They'd done similar stunts at other feminist events.) No one connected with Obama had anything to do with it.

In a similar way, one of the online commenters on the recent Nick Kristof column suggesting that Obama give a speech about gender writes:

Father Pfleger's rant against Clinton was as shocking a display of woman-hatred as you could see within an institution (a church of all places). Pfleger was Obama's spiritual guide for nearly 20 years!

This commenter is evidently confusing Father Pfleger with Rev. Wright. Obama knows Pfleger only slightly (he was never "Obama's spiritual guide"), the priest was merely a guest preacher at Trinity Church, and Obama broke all ties to the church right after Pfleger's appearance. Yet this commenter feels that Father Pfleger speaks for Barack Obama. I don't see why.

There were sexist remarks made by anonymous Obama supporters in various venues, such as blog comment threads. But I wouldn't consider it fair to hold Obama responsible for these, just as I wouldn't hold Clinton responsible for the racially-charged remarks about Obama that some of her supporters made. I haven't seen any sexist language attributed to official Obama spokespeople, staffers, or surrogates.

I recognize and respect the anger many people, especially women, feel about the sexism with which Hillary Clinton has been treated. But it seems that at least some of the linkage people are seeing between sexism and the Obama campaign is based on assumptions that aren't true.

I would point out that Obama did in fact devote time in practically every debate and in many speeches to praising Clinton extravagantly, and repeatedly said she was well qualified to be a fine president (something Clinton pointedly did not say about Obama--remember the "commander-in-chief threshold" argument?) All in all, it's very hard for me to see any pattern of disrespect shown by Obama toward Hillary during the campaign.

5. Should Obama have denounced the sexism?

"Well," some Clinton supporters might say, "Obama may not have said anything that was overtly sexist himself. And he can't be held personally responsible for the sexist things Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Keith Olbermann, and others in the media said. But he should have spoken out against the sexism and refused to accept support based on sexism."

I certainly wouldn't have minded seeing Obama go out of his way to make a speech denouncing sexism--and I suspect the vast majority of his supporters would feel the same. But let's get real. Obama and Clinton were competing for the nomination. They were battling one another, criticizing one another, attacking one another. Is it realistic to expect one of the candidates to leap to the defense of the other in the middle of the campaign?

Did Clinton leap to the defense of Obama against the various slurs he suffered--the "madrassa" insinuations, the scurrilous emails, the "elitist" and "Muslim" attacks, the month-long pile-on regarding Reverend Wright? No--if anything, she encouraged some of them. And that's normal political behavior.

Notice, I am not accusing Clinton of being "racist" for abetting some of the unfair attacks against her opponent. It wasn't her job, in the heat of a campaign, to defend her opponent. And I would suggest it wasn't Obama's job to defend her, either.

And what if he had? What if Obama had given a speech decrying sexism and talking about the problems of gender bias in America in the midst of the primary campaign? Would this have delighted all of Clinton's supporters, and all the women (and men) who oppose sexism? Or would a sizeable fraction of them have said, "How dare he presume to lecture us on sexism! What makes him assume that a man has to step up to defend Hillary Clinton--as if she can't defend herself?! How arrogant and condescending!" etc.? I think many would.

If you think this is pure fantasy on my part, look again at the comments Kristof received after suggesting Obama make just such a speech. Many of the women say it would be a terrible idea for just these reasons.

For all these reasons, I think it's somewhat unrealistic and unfair to criticize Obama for not speaking out against the sexism directed at Hillary.

6. Which is worse in our society--racism or sexism?

As for this question--which has been injected into the conversation by people such as Gloria Steinem--I think it's basically meaningless and pointless. Obviously the answer depends on exactly how you define the terms, which sectors of society you choose to focus on, what forms of deprivation, oppression, or abuse you choose to consider most egregious, whether you choose to emphasize "breadth" or "depth" of impact, etc. etc.

It's hard to see what useful purpose any such parsing could serve. Are we supposed to be choosing which form of prejudice we will fight and which one we will accept? Clearly both are unacceptable and both must be fought. Are we supposed to decide whether to vote for Clinton or Obama based on which oppressed group "deserves" it more? That would be a silly basis on which to choose a president.

The only possible result of engaging the question of "which is worse" would be to drive a wedge between advocates of women's rights and advocates of racial justice. And who do you think would benefit from that?

If you believe, as I do, that sexism is a terrible problem and that too many people have their heads in the sand about it, then speak out. But let's not pit sexism against racism as if there's a zero-sum contest going on, with only so much freedom, equality, and dignity to be parceled out. And if you are tempted to think of Barack Obama as "part of the problem" for women in our society, and therefore to treat him in ways that will improve John McCain's chances of winning the White House, I would respectfully ask you to reconsider.

We win when we support one another.

We Democrats Need To Remember Who The Enemy Is

Thanks to Hillary's wins last night in Rhode Island, Ohio, and (in the popular vote) Texas, the Democratic race lurches on. I'm okay with that; Like Kevin Drum, I'm skeptical of the proposition that a prolonged primary battle automatically spells doom to the party.

But I am a bit concerned about how the growing testiness of the campaign may be affecting Democratic voters, as suggested by this bit of evidence from yesterday's exit polls:

The question for the fall is whether there are Clinton voters who won't vote for Obama and Obama voters who won't vote for Clinton. The exit polls don't really answer this question. The closest they get is to ask respondents whether they would be "satisfied" or "dissatisfied" if Clinton or Obama were the eventual nominee. The results tonight do not look good for Obama. In Wisconsin, for instance, only 17 percent of Democratic primary voters said they would be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee. In Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas, 30 percent or more of voters said they would be "dissatisfied" if he were the nominee. That means that a sizable percentage of voters who backed Hillary Clinton may not back Obama in the fall. But Clinton's percentages were not that much better. They were in the high twenties.

As I've been saying for months, I think we have two fine candidates here, and I would be delighted to vote for either of them. God knows they both rise hand and shoulders above McCain as potential presidents. So I am disturbed by evidence that at least some Democrats are starting to take the inevitable negativity of a two-person intraparty race too much to heart.

In particular--since Obama is still the more likely Democratic nominee, and since Hillary has gone negative more forcefully in recent days than her rival--I worry that some supporters of Hillary are starting to think of Obama as "the enemy" rather than as a friendly competitor.

Hillary herself is starting to show traces of this, as in her sarcastic mockery of Obama's uplifting rhetoric, or in the formulation she started using this past weekend: "I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to [bring to] the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002" (for which James Fallows, I think rightly, criticizes her).

Is it really necessary to give the Republicans sound bites they can use in October? I don't think Obama has said anything equally harsh about Hillary.

And then there is the question of sexism. Hillary has been the victim of a horrendous amount of misogynistic abuse during this campaign, much of it from the media, some of it from Republican operatives. I've written about it over and over again on this blog. But I think it is a big mistake--and just plain false--for Hillary's supporters to blame this sexism on Obama. Yet this is an accusation I have been starting to hear lately.

The list of Obama's "sexist" acts that I've heard people cite strikes me as pretty thin. For example, his remark to Hillary several weeks ago, "You're likeable enough," was a lame joke that didn't work, but what makes it sexist, particularly?

More recently, there was this (I'm quoting a letter to the editor of the New York Times):

I wonder if Senator Barack Obama would have accused a man complaining about unfair campaign tactics of whining. Since the senator is well aware of the power and meaning of words, he must not have minded revealing a sexist and dismissive attitude toward his female rival. Buck Rutledge

But "whining" isn't a sexist word. A five-minute Google search turns up a whole array of recent news stories and columns in which it is used with reference to men, from Mitt Romney to anti-McCain Republicans to London Mayor Ken Livingstone to baseball pitcher Roger Clemens to Mike Huckabee.

It's just not factually accurate to imply that the word "whine" is generally used with reference to a woman. It's not a compliment, obviously. But it's also not sexist.

If Hillary doesn't win the nomination, sexism will probably be a major reason. But that is not Obama's doing--unless you consider him sexist simply for running against Hillary in the first place.

I'm not trying to say that Obama is a perfect person or a perfect candidate. He's not. But of course neither is Hillary. And more important, for us as Democrats, neither Obama nor Hillary is the enemy. The enemy is the hard-right Republican ideology that has brought our country to the brink of disaster, militarily, economically, and socially. And if we Democrats start fighting viciously among ourselves over the next few weeks, the only winners will be the purveyors of that ideology.

Attacking one another personally--and becoming increasingly embittered in the process--is exactly what they want us to do. In fact, it may be their only real hope for victory.

An Anti-Hillary Crusader Can't Be Bothered With Mere Facts

Fed up with Andrew Sullivan's anti-Hillary raving, I hadn't visited his blog for a while. Checked it out today and was immediately confronted with this little tidbit:

A Good Question

Gets to the nub of Clinton's privilege, and inability to actually persuade anyone of anything: Is there a single member of the U.S. Senate besides Hillary Clinton for whom it was the FIRST elected office?

Maybe Liddy Dole, another marital nepotist?

You might think that, before posting an item like this (which, though couched as a question, clearly and tendentiously implies a NO answer), Andrew might consider glancing at the list of current U.S. senators on Wikipedia. Links make it easy to check their bios. This exhausting ten-minute process reveals that those currently serving for whom the U.S. Senate was the first elected office include:

Mel Martinez (R-FL)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Robert Bennett (R-UT)
John Warner (R-VA)
Jim Webb (D-VA)

I don't think all these senators got there because of their spouses. But I guess Andrew Sullivan considers any factoid that he can use to attack Hillary Clinton "too good to check."

Clinton-Obama '08

In his latest column on the website of The Century Foundation, my friend Peter Osnos makes an observation that we've seen others make about the potential global impact of an Obama presidency:

Americans will not make their election choice based on what the rest of the world thinks. But here's a prediction: if Barack Obama prevails, one of the earliest and potentially most positive effects of his presidency will be in the way he and the United States, generally, are welcomed in all those places where the John Fitzgerald Kennedy photos were hanging so many years ago.

I strongly suspect that this is true, based not only on Obama's personal history, tone, and style, but also on the kinds of internationalist policies he would probably follow. (And Peter's connections with journalists and thought leaders around the world confirm this impression.)

Now it so happens that earlier today I caught a few minutes of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on the Brian Lehrer Show on New York's NPR outlet. She was talking about the enormously positive effect on America's world image that President Hillary Clinton could have. (Albright is a Clinton supporter.)

She spoke about how, during the Bill Clinton administration, Hillary not only traveled the world with Bill but made a point of visiting local communities, meeting with humanitarian organizations, women's groups, labor organizations, etc., as a result of which she is known and admired by ordinary people around the world. (As I've written, Mary-Jo and I certainly found that to be the case when we visited Bangladesh.) And Brian Lehrer noted that, when he interviews heads of immigrant organizations in the US and asks their opinions about the presidential race, most say they support Hillary because of the favorable impression of her shared by their countrymen and -women back home in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

Here, then, are strong, positive, uplifting reasons to support both Obama and Clinton. And the longer the Democratic race goes on, the more reasons like these I find myself encountering--on both sides of the contest.

And so the longer the race goes on, the more I find myself drawn to the logic of a Clinton-Obama ticket.

I can actually see a case for such a ticket with either partner on top, although I suppose the conventional assumption is that Hillary would not accept a vice-presidential slot. And I further suppose that, in reality, neither of these two candidates is likely to pick the other as a running mate. The pressure to "balance" the ground-breaking presidential candidate with a familiar white male will be enormous.

But of course our last successful candidate, Bill Clinton, defied convention by choosing a running mate who did not "balance" the ticket but seemingly replicated himself, picking another youthful moderate white male from a border state. Maybe 2008 is another moment when the conventional wisdom ought to be defied.

Why do we have to choose between the brainy policy wonk and the inspiring orator--between the respected Senatorial operative and the idealistic community organizer--between the ceiling-breaking woman and the unifying multiracial champion? Why not have both?

P.S. I see that Doris Kearns Goodwin has said that the idea of such a "team of rivals" would be "a bold move but a great one." I agree. Let's do it.

The XX Factor Keeps Up The Anti-Hillary Barrage

Updated below

Meanwhile, back at The XX Factor--a few days after Emily Yoffe's bizarre attack on Chelsea and Hillary Clinton--another commentator, Hannah Rosin, offers her own weird take on the "pimping out" controversy:

[MSNBC commentator David] Shuster was totally wrong, but the more important point is the Clintons' reactions. Apparently Shuster has offered to apologize to all involved, the NBC president got down on his knees, but they won't have it, they are just too insulted and outraged.

I mean, come on. Hillary's the tough one, who knows how to fight the right wing machine, right? So why does she take it seriously? Why does she pay any attention to this nonsense. Are we supposed to believe Chelsea just crumpled when she heard the word "pimp" attached to her name and took to her bed? No. This is just the Clintons, at home and alive again, in their happy role as the Most Aggrieved.

Umm, maybe this is HOW you fight the right wing machine--by taking it seriously, attacking it publicly, expressing your outrage, and demanding apologies. After all, isn't this how the right responds to attacks from the left?--As when Congress dropped everything to pass a resolution of outrage over the MoveOn "Betray Us" ad.

Rosin seems to imply that the best way to "fight the right wing machine" is by ignoring it. That worked very well for John Kerry, didn't it?

And lest you have any doubts about Rosin's attitude toward Hillary and Chelsea, her post then shifts topics, inexplicably:

Who needs Chelsea, anyway, when we got Amy. Amy Winehouse, that is. I've seen that recent paparazzi shot of her wandering the streets in just her bra. . . .

Good grief. Only in the warped minds of the women of The XX Factor is there any conceivable connection between Chelsea Clinton and Amy Winehouse.

Get ahold of yourself, Hannah--at least try to maintain a facade of logic while throwing everything you can find at Hillary, including the kitchen sink.

Update

And just to avoid suspicion that The XX Factor is going too easy on Hillary, today yet another commentator on the site, Emila Bazelon, turns over her real estate for a guest post by Daniel Gross, who says that David Shuster "has been one of my closest friends for 26 years" and then proceeds--what a surprise--to defend Shuster and trash the Clintons. Apparently it's not enough for the members of Slate's "women's forum" to be devoted to excoriating Hillary--they seem to feel the need to invite selected men onto their page to help out with the job.

Obama And "Substance"--A Bum Rap?

Updated below

Lately I've begun hearing some Hillary supporters complaining that the Obama campaign has "no substance"--that he is just "a pretty face" with a kumbaya message of uplift that the media swoons for. For example, several members of my editorial group made comments to this effect during our last meeting.

Actually, I think this is probably a bit of a bum rap. During their Los Angeles debate, for example, I thought that both candidates responded to questions with equal amounts of "substance," by which I mean policy details that appear well thought out and fact-based. And if you visit the "Issues" pages of the two candidates' websites (Obama's is here, Hillary's here), I think the amount of meaningful content is very comparable.

Of course, you might disagree with one or the other candidate on a specific issue (as Paul Krugman and others have disgreed with Obama on health care), but that is not the same as saying that either candidate has no substance. In fact, if there were no substance, there would be nothing to disagree with, which I don't think is the case with either Obama or Hillary.

It's easy to see why people feel the Obama campaign lacks substance. It's an understandable impression based on TV news soundbites and the candidate's own commercials, which are indeed long on inspirational rhetoric and short on policy details. But I think this is a stylistic and "marketing" choice rather than a reflection of the vapidity of the candidate. Obama and his team believe that most voters respond more to atmospherics than they do to policy details, and so they are trying to sell Obama on that basis.

And is there any evidence they are wrong? Would Obama really be more appealing to a large number of voters if his speeches and ads emphasized lists of ten-point plans and statistical breakdowns rather than uplifting rhetoric? I doubt it. We might prefer it if most voters made their choices based on rational, factual analyses rather than how they feel about the candidates, but it sure doesn't look as if that's true.

The old story about Adlai Stevenson still contains a lot of truth. During one of his presidential campaigns, a fan supposedly told him, "Every thinking American will support you!" Stevenson replied, "That's no good, I need a majority."

Dig a bit, and I think you'll conclude that both Hillary and Obama are candidates of substance. However, Obama is choosing not to lead with substance but instead to lead with atmospherics, believing this is his route to the White House. We'll see whether he is right or wrong. But in the meantime, I think it's a bit unfair for Democrats to accuse him of offering nothing but hot air.

Update

Matt Yglesias offers his own take on this topic from a slightly different angle.

I Pulled The Lever For Obama

Forced by the calendar to make a choice between Hillary and Obama (today of course is primary day here in New York), I broke with certain members of my family whose opinions I deeply respect and cast my ballot for Obama. I would certainly be happy to vote for either Hillary or Obama in November--not just as a superior alternative to any likely Republican, but as a genuinely talented leader with smarts and good instincts that I think would make a fine president.

I voted for Obama partly on the (admittedly weak) grounds that he is probably the underdog in the nominating race. I wouldn't have wanted Hillary to cruise to an easy nomination, which is what many pundits were predicting six months ago; I have enough concerns about her hawkish foreign policy leanings and her apparent accommodation to corporatist interests that I want her to suffer a bit (figuratively speaking) before being nominated. (A vote for Edwards would have been even more effective in lodging this sort of "protest.")

If Obama had a big lead, I would probably have voted for Hillary. I wouldn't want him to cruise to an easy nomination, either.

On a more logical plane, I find that James Fallows does a fine job of summarizing the way I see the pros and cons of both candidates. I'll quote him at some length:

--On domestic and economic and environmental policy, it's a wash. The Clinton and Obama positions are similar to each other and different from any Republican's. Some people think there is a huge difference in their health-care proposals. Having seen administrations come and go, I am absolutely certain that the difference between Clinton's and Obama's stated objectives in 2008 matters much, much less than what either of them will be able to get through the Congress in 2009 and afterward. Thus: an important distinction in domestic policy is which candidate will bring in a larger bloc in Congress to work with.

--On foreign policy, Clinton and Obama actually do differ, and I agree with him more than with her. He (like Al Gore) was against invading Iraq before it happened; she was for it. He (like Jim Webb) opposed the infamous Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which at the time was undeniably an attempt to legitimize military action against Iran; she voted for it. (Obama, to his discredit, failed to show up to cast his No vote, but his position was not in doubt.) He has criticized the current flat-earth idiotic US policy toward Cuba; she has defended it (as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out in a strong recent essay). I understand the argument that Sen. Clinton has to take these positions to maintain her "credibility" and appearance of strength. To me that matters less than that she keeps voting in what I consider the wrong way. Thus: the positions and "mindsets" differ, and and I like his better.

--On style and governing philosophy, she is for incremental policies and incremental politics--"experience" and "competence"--based on the underlying belief that Republican obstructionism makes nothing else possible. Not even for a dreamer like Obama. He obviously is trying for something more--as Bill Clinton was in 1992, when I preferred him to an incomparably more experienced and time-tested President.

--On straight electability, just unknowable. Given that everyone in the country already knows her and a large minority say they don't like her, a narrow victory seems the most that is within Hillary Clinton's grasp. People can argue that Obama would be capable of much more--or, on the contrary, even less, and that not even a narrow win would be possible once the smear machine got through with him. There is simply no way to be sure now, when it's time to vote. Thus: also a wash.

--On diversity and opportunity, a breakthrough either way. But on a deeper level of "diversity," we have the prospect of returning a husband-and-wife team--Bill Clinton's emergence has made this unignorable--already in the White House for eight years, versus fresh blood.

Any vote for anybody is a gamble. Who imagined that the George Bush of 2000, with his "compassionate conservatism" and critiques of "nation building," would become the man we've known in office? We have no idea what surprises will confront a President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Romney, or McCain, or how they might respond. We have to place bets--roll the dice, if you will--based on what we do know, which for me is the elements above.

Like Fallows, I think "electability" is a chimera. And like Fallows, I don't place a lot of importance on the details of the candidates' respective health care programs, although here I part company with my aforementioned family members as well as other people I respect, such as Paul Krugman.

Note that, in his column, Fallows never actually tells us whom he would vote for--he just lists these as the main elements he would consider in making a choice. But to me, the combined logic of these points adds up, though narrowly, to a vote for Obama.

Do We Really Have To Choose?

Over at Columbia Journalism Review's website, Gail Beckerman offers this succinct, vivid account of two South Carolina campaign events--an Obama rally and a Clinton rally--which crystallized for her the differences between the two candidates. Obama comes across as passionate, charismatic, inspiring; Clinton as matter-of-fact, wonkish, and detail-oriented. Beckerman suspects that these differences go a long way toward accounting for the differing ways the candidates have been treated by the press:

It occurred to me that Obama's message was easy to encapsulate, could be boiled down to a very distinct nut graph. And his success, at least in the press, seemed to me very much the result of this convergence of time-pressed journalists' need to tell a succinct story and Obama's ability to deliver it. It seemed a perfect marriage. And even if many of the reporters look bored, pale, and poorly fed, he was making their job easy. . . .

[By contrast,] Where I would have known exactly how to translate Obama's message, Clinton's was much more difficult to distill. If I had to, I might use the same words as the Times used in its endorsement:

"Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America's big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience."

These qualities are not so easy to write about.

This distinction seems right; it certainly encapsulates the impressions of the two leading Democrats that we've built up over the last six months. And maybe for some people Beckerman's formulation makes it easy to choose between them.

I can easily imagine someone saying, "We've lost one election after another with smart, wonkish candidates who can recite laundry lists of policies. It's time we finally nominated someone who can inspire people!" I can just as easily imagine someone else saying, "The country is facing serious problems. We can't afford to nominate someone who is long on charm but short on ideas!" Both arguments make a certain amount of sense to me.

And that's my problem. It seems clear to me we need both: charisma and policy smarts, inspirational rhetoric and mastery of the details. The next president must be able to understand the problems we face (economic, social, military, diplomatic, etc.) and craft or at least recognize intelligent, far-sighted solutions to them; he or she must also be capable of moving a large swath of the electorate towards new attitudes (hope, trust, optimism, and mutual support) and out of the defensive crouch in which seven years of post-9/11 fear-mongering have left us. Without those new attitudes, big progressive initiatives on health care, global warming, international relations, and the economy will be awfully hard to pass.

And so, as this primary season winds on, I find that it's getting harder, not easier, for me to decide where I want to invest my vote. I don't want either Obama's charm or Hillary's smarts. I desperately want both.

And maybe the Democratic electorate, taken as a whole, feels the same way--which is why the pendulum keeps swinging back and forth, from one week to the next, between Obama and Hillary. Collectively, the party is saying: Do we really have to chose?

Obama, The Jews, And The Mirage Of "Electability"

Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post is a forerunner of the kind of chip-away-and-destroy tactics the right wing will be using against Obama should he win the Democratic nomination. After writing about how the minister of Obama's church has publicly praised Louis Farrakhan, Cohen says:

I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though, "present" will not do.

As so often, Black leaders are expected to "denounce" anyone even indirectly associated with them whom the mainstream media dislikes. And, as Greg Sargent points out, Cohen quotes but then ignores a statement by an Obama spokesman in which he quite clearly disagrees with his minister about Farrakhan--which evidently is not enough of a denunciation for Cohen.

Then, too, like Andrew Sullivan, I wonder about Cohen's choice of words: "Mettle? Is this code for 'sound on the Jews'? Too soft on the Muslims? Or what?"

I have a friend who is a conservative Jew, quite hawkish on Israel, who has voted for both Democrats and Republicans over the years. When we got to chatting about politics recently, he told me that the buzz among his connections was over the question of whether "Obama can be trusted." The issue, he made it clear, was not whether Obama is a liar, but whether or not he might betray Israel, kowtow to Iran, or otherwise let down the side in the Middle East. The anti-Obama foundation is there for the right wing to build upon.

Despite Republican inroads in recent decades, Jews still vote mostly Democratic. Their numbers are fairly small, but they have real clout as fund raisers and opinion leaders. It's very likely that the Republicans will be doing all they can to spread rumors, via the Internet and elsewhere, that Obama is an anti-Semite, in hopes of peeling away this significant bloc of Democratic support in 2008.

This illustrates a factor that needs to be considered by those who insist on basing their candidate preferences on "electability." Hillary certainly has her points of vulnerability. But I think we'll all be amazed as to how many points of vulnerability Obama has once the G.O.P. focuses its attention on discovering--or inventing--them.

As for me, the older I get, the less I believe in that arcane combination of calculus and clairvoyance known as "gauging electability." Nobody knows what "electability" actually means, and, in practice, choosing a candidate on that basis amounts to ignoring one's own preferences (which at least are real) and instead trying to guess the preferences of some hypothetical set of "average" voters. It's a mug's game.

Waking Up To The Obama Victory

I have to say, my reaction to the Obama victory in Iowa is a lot like Kevin Drum's:

It's funny how sometimes you have to wait and see how you actually react to something to know how you're going to react to something. I've been sort of fitfully supporting Hillary Clinton for the past few months, but I have to say that I don't feel any disappointment tonight over her loss. Just the opposite, in fact. My arguments against Obama have mostly been fairly abstract ones, but emotionally I'm as susceptible to the famous Obama charm as anyone. And the idea of a young, charismatic, black guy as our next president is pretty damn inspiring. Just sayin'.

My regular readers know how much time and energy I've spent defending Hillary from the viciously sexist attacks being mounted by everybody from Chris Matthews to Andrew Sullivan, so you know I have nothing against her and (God knows) would gladly vote for her over any conceivable Republican in November. But I also must say that I don't find the prospect of voting for Hillary particularly exciting. She comes across as someone with a good resume, a good checklist of positions, a lot of intelligence and toughness--and a personality and style that may well be liabilities in a presidential candidate.

By contrast, Obama would earn slightly lower points from me for his resume and his policy positions (with the big exception of Iraq, where he is stronger than Clinton). But he has a big advantage on the personality front. He is a charismatic speaker and an energizing presence. And the events in Iowa suggest he may really be able to generate enough excitement among young people to make a meaningful difference in a general election.

And what about his (to me small) deficits on the resume and policy fronts? I'm not terribly worried about those things, for two reasons. One, I think resumes are usually overrated as measures of presidential potential. Looking back, I don't see much correlation between pre-presidential experience and presidential greatness. George H. W. Bush had a gold-plated resume in 1988, and was a mediocre president--a lot worse than Bill Clinton, whose resume was much more modest. Today, the most impressive resume (in terms of sheer "experience" and "credentials") is that of John McCain, who I think would be a crummy president.

Second, I don't find the policy differences among the three leading Democrats tremendously compelling. It's really pretty rare for newly-elected presidents to actually carry out the policies on which they ran in anything like their original form. Pressures from Congress, public opinion, and intervening events almost always play a major role in reshaping what presidents actually do. So I don't think the current differences among Obama, Clinton, and Edwards on (say) health care reform are terribly meaningful, nor do I expect those differences to correlate very closely with the kind of health care system we will actually end up with five years from today.

I've voted many times for Democratic candidates who made me feel the way I feel about Hillary--competent, smart people with good resumes and respectable policy positions who were unfortunately not very charismatic or effective as politicians. Every time, I said to myself, "Well, he's not the most exciting person, but he'll do a good job, and he'll certainly be better than the Republican." And all of that was true--but it didn't help Mondale or Dukakis or Kerry to get elected.

Which is why I have to admit I won't be heart-broken if Hillary ends up losing the nomination. I don't think this makes me sexist--does it?

The Hillary-Haters And The Racial Insult That Wasn't

The Hillary-haters have found their latest outrage to froth about. This one is the supposedly vicious attacks being launched by the Clinton campaign against Barack Obama. If the latest claims of the Hillary-haters are to be believed, what makes these attacks so unconscionable is the near-racist motivation behind them: The Clinton camp doesn't just regard Obama as a dangerous rival for the White House, but as an "uppity" Black man who is being "presumptuous" for daring to challenge Hillary's right to waltz to the nomination.

Wow--if true, this is nasty stuff. (Calling Black men "uppity" sounds more like Bull Connor or the unreconstructed George Wallace than Hillary Clinton.) No wonder concern trolls like Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Obama-infatuated Andrew Sullivan have been eagerly blogging about this latest evidence of Hillary's arrogance.

But then you click through the links and devote thirty seconds of scrutiny to the actual source of these accusations, and you discover it is this post by David Corn:

When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. "They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes."

So the idea that Hillary's people "hate" Obama for being "presumptuous" comes not from one of her spokespeople or even one of her supporters but from a journalist's conversation with an anonymous "Democratic operative" who has no link to Hillary or her campaign. In other words, David Corn was swapping opinions with somone in a coffee shop somewhere, and the two of them decided they had a shared impression of the Clintonites--which thus becomes "news" to be breathlessly reported.

And notice where the word "uppity" comes into the picture: It wasn't uttered by anyone associated with Hillary. It wasn't even suggested by Corn's "source," the anonymous Democrat. It arose in the conversation through prompting by Corn himself: "You mean, he's, uh, uppity? 'Yes.'"

In other words, there's nothing there.

But given the sloppy way in which people like Kaus and Sullivan have passed this meme along--and the eager way in which people tend to latch onto, over-simplify, and magnify ideas that fit their pre-conceived narratives--it's easy to picture how people who hate Hillary will remember, and repeat, this story: "Did you hear the latest? Hillary has been going around calling Obama 'uppity'! What a bitch!"

This latest example of how the haters have been demonizing Hillary illustrates why I agree with Ezra Klein's take on the theme of the "polarizing candidate." Klein points out that, in fact, candidates deemed "polarizing" are simply those who have long been politically prominent and therefore subject to partisan attacks for a long time. He shows, for example, how John Kerry magically became "polarizing" after the Swift Boaters and the Republican spin machine did its work on him.

If Hillary is currently considered "polarizing," that is simply because the Republicans have been attacking her, using some ammunition based on fact and some that is utterly dishonest, since the early 1990s.

The obvious corollary: If either Obama or Edwards gets the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary, he will experience the same miraculous transformation from unifying figure to "polarizing" one. Just as, somehow, the Republicans managed to transform moderate, religious Southern Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore into weak, corrupt, ultra-liberal threats to the republic.

If you believe that nominating yet another conciliatory, centrist, "non-polarizing" Democrat will inspire the Republicans to mount a clean, civil, honest, respectful election campaign, I have some beautiful beachfront property in southwest Bangladesh to sell you. Instead, let's stop wasting our time trying to identify the "least polarizing" Democratic candidate and instead nominate the one who will fight hardest and most effectively for our values and policies.

The Clinton Machine Crushes All--Not Even Talk Shows Are Safe

From Andrew Sullivan on Monday:

Clinton Works "The View": Not a stone is unturned in her impressively relentless campaign.

From Andrew Sullivan on Tuesday:

Michelle's Move: Obama's wife will be co-hosting "The View" next month.

But of course there's nothing "relentless" (or even "ruthless" or "cutthroat") about it when Michelle does it.

Maureen Dowd's Latest Dispatch From The World of Her Personal Psychodrama

I was out of town this past Sunday, so it wasn't till today that I got a chance to read Maureen Dowd's latest junior-high-school gossip column masquerading as political analysis.

Just as a number of progressive bloggers had warned me, the column was deeply cringe-worthy in classic Mo Dowd style, with its contrast between "Mistress Hillary" the "debate dominatrix" and the wimpish "Obambi" who, she implied, has already been emasculated by his wife and therefore is happy to accept discipline from the shrewish Clinton.

The Times is providing quite a public service by giving us these twice-weekly projections from Mo's subconscious--and saving Dowd a bundle on psychotherapy, I imagine.

She capped off the column with these paragraphs about yet another character in her internal psychodrama:

If Rudy's the nominee, he will go with relish to all the vulnerable places in Hillary's past. At the Federalist Society on Friday, he had barely spoken the word "she" before the audience began tittering appreciatively.

He went through a whole faux-bemused riff on Hillary's driver's license twists without ever uttering her name: "First, she was for the idea, and supported Governor Spitzer, who wanted to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Then she was against the idea. Then she was for and against the idea. And then finally she said it should be decided on a state-by-state basis. This is the only time in her career that she's ever decided anything should be decided on a state-by-state basis. You know something? She picked out absolutely the wrong one. Right? I mean, this is one of the areas that is given to the federal government to deal with under our Constitution, the borders of the United States, immigration."

Rudy laced his speech with faith references, including the assertion that America has "a divinely inspired role in the world" and a mission to "save a civilization from Islamic terrorism."

Hillary has her work cut out for her. Rudy will not be so easy to spank.

In Dowd's mind, her job as a columnist is mainly to tease out the psychosexual implications of the national political debate--or, if there are none, to make some up. She does it admirably.

But if Dowd were actually interested in politics or government, she might have noticed something else about the quotation from Giuliani: That it makes no sense at all. Rudy mocks Clinton for saying that the question of who gets drivers' licenses is a state matter, not a federal one. (And Dowd admiringly quotes his mockery to prove his mettle as a candidate.)

But of course the fact of the matter is that drivers' licenses are issued by states--not the federal government. Always have been, always will be. And no one, including Giuliani, is proposing otherwise. So when Giuliani says that "this is one of the areas that is given to the federal government to deal with under our Constitution," he is simply making things up--no matter whether the members of the Federalist Society find it titter-worthy or not.

Too bad little things like the facts aren't worthy of mention in The Newspaper of Record. Dowd's admiration for Giuliani is the appreciation of one narcissistic fantasist for another. God help the country that looks to people like these for insight or leadership.

There Are No Honorary Men

A bunch of us were chatting the other night about the Democratic presidential field, and someone expressed dismay over the fact that Hillary--with her hawkish, old-school approach to politics--is the front-runner for the nomination. "She's just not inspiring," was the comment. As for her gender, which might otherwise make her an appealing, ground-breaking figure, even that doesn't help matters, because "She's an honorary man."

If anyone on the American scene could be an honorary man, it would probably be Clinton. But in this post, the ever-brilliant Digby shows exactly why there are no honorary men in our political system--at least not in the eyes of the men. No matter how skillfully and conservatively you play the old boys' game, if you are a woman you will never be treated as one of the old boys by the insecure junior-high-school nerds who dominate the national conversation. Instead they will snigger and insinuate and introduce idiotic standards for measuring "character" designed solely to justify gossip-mongering and innuendo (check out Tucker Carlson's question, "Which candidate would be the most severe when it comes to toilet training?").

Yesterday on NPR I heard part of an historical account of the 1983 election of Harold Washington, the first Black mayor of Chicago. The story described some of the incredible racist barriers thrown up in his way by the white power structure, even after Washington won the Democratic primary (which under normal circumstances is tantamount to election in Chicago). I'm talking about things like Republican opponent Bernie Epton running on a slogan of "Epton Before It's Too Late" and vandals decorating Roman Catholic churches where Washington spoke with "Die Nigger Die" graffiti.

One of the most astute observations in the story was a comment by Washington himself concerning the double standard Black politicians are judged by to this day. He was talking about a line that he and some of his supporters liked to use among themselves during that first campaign: "It's our turn now." When white politicians and commentators heard about it, they called it "racist" and "hateful."

Washington's observation (slightly paraphrased): "When Irish-Americans try to elect an Irish-American, that's good politics. When Polish-Americans try to elect a Polish-American, it's good politics. But when Black Americans try to elect a Black American, that's racism."

Now Hillary is facing an exactly parallel double standard. According to the Tucker Carlsons and the Chris Matthews of the world, white males who declare they could never vote for a woman for president are understandably fearful of the effect that a powerful female leader might have on their fragile psyches. But if Hillary even indirectly intimates that women might want to vote for her because she is a woman, that is "playing the gender card," an illegitimate, dishonest, despicable tactic that would justify drumming her out of the race altogether.

Imagine the vitriol these self-appointed gatekeepers of our political system would be spreading if Hillary were in fact a strongly progressive, feminist voice! But even being a cautious, bend-over-backward moderate doesn't make her "an honorary man" in their eyes, because as far as they are concerned there is no such thing. Just as any Black person who is perceived as threatening to white privilege becomes "just another nigger" when the chips are down, so any woman with a chance at real power becomes a "castrating bitch."

I wish this weren't the case, but I'm afraid it's true. It makes me embarrassed to be a man.

Peggy Noonan Frets About the Power of Political Families--Or At Least One of Them

As you know, the Bushes are the fourth family to have members of two generations serve in the U.S. presidency, the others being the Adamses, the Harrisons, and the Roosevelts. Along with the Kennedys--who had only one president but who have had several senators and representatives over two generations--these are generally considered the great American political dynasties.

Now there is a strong possibility that a second member of the Clinton family will be elected president. This doesn't really qualify as a "dynasty," since we are not talking about a second generation. And unlike all those true dynasties we just listed, the Clintons did not inherit position, wealth, or fame. Still, it's unusual and notable that a second Clinton might serve in the White House less than a decade after her husband. And this has our serious thinkers deeply concerned:

It is the nature of modern politics. A political family gains allies--retainers, supporters, hangers-on, admirers, associates, in-house Machiavellis. The bigger the government, the more ways allies can be awarded, which binds them more closely. Your destiny is theirs. Members of the court recruit others. Money lines spread person to person, company to company, board to board, mover to mover.

The most important part is the money lines. Power is expensive. The second most important part is the word "winner." The Bushes are winners; the Clintons are winners. We know this, they've won. The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system; the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For a generation, two generations now, they have had the same dynamics in play, only their friends are on the blue team, not the red, or the red, not the blue.

They are, both groups, up and ready and good to go every election cycle. They are machines. There are good people on each side, idealists, the hopeful, those convinced the triumph of their views will make our country better. And there are those on each side who are not so wonderful, not so well-meaning, not well-meaning at all. And some are idiots, but very comfortable ones.

Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability? Is it good in terms of how the world sees us, and how we see ourselves? Or is it something we want to break out of, like a trance?

It would be understandable if they were families of a most extraordinary natural distinction and self-sacrifice. But these are not the Adamses of Massachusetts we're talking about. You've noticed, right?

Peggy Noonan isn't the only right-wing concern troll to furrow her brow about this topic lately. And of course they are all motivated by sincere worries about the future of democracy, the evil effects of concentrated power, the shallowness of a public that can't seem to get beyond mere family ties--right?

Then again, it seems a bit odd that no one on the right ever expressed any concern over the perpetuation of the Bush dynasty into a third generation (remember that paterfamilias Prescott Bush actually launched the sequence back in the 1950s). They haven't even uttered a peep of protest over the many, many suggestions that Jeb will someday be the third Bush president.

I guess, for some odd, purely coincidental reason, only Democratic dynasties raise these serious historical concerns about the course of our Republic.

The Hillary Clinton Rorschach Test

So let's say you are Michelle Cottle, a political writer for The New Republic. Let's say you have come up with a new angle on the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign--a story about Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime Clinton friend who now serves as her campaign manager. Doyle is interesting--relatively little known, and also the first Latina ever to run a major national campaign. Great! says your editor. Go for it!

So you do your reporting for the piece. You interview Doyle, a bunch of people who know her, and several people connected with the campaign. Unfortunately, you come up with very little. It turns out that Doyle, like any good campaign manager, wants to keep the spotlight on the candidate rather than herself. So while she is friendly enough, she doesn't give you the kind of juicy inside gossip that more accommodating (read: self-serving) managers might provide. She even asks others connected with the campaign to follow the same strategy. So you get a couple of cute stories and some general descriptions of Doyle's personality and her role in the Clinton entourage, but not much more.

You keep digging. It would be nice if you could at least get hints of some kind of dissension within the campaign. For example, suppose Hillary were some kind of control freak who won't tolerate varying views--and Doyle's job were to ruthlessly stifle any hints of disagreement! That would be a good story. But no. Turns out the campaign actually permits and even encourages open argument about policies. Of course, Hillary makes the final choices, but only after everyone has debated their positions vociferously. Ho-hum. Nothing exciting there.

Still, this is the campaign of Hillary Clinton, who everyone knows is the most divisive, disliked, widely-feared politician in America! There's got to be some way to turn this story into a source of controversy, or (better still) a feeding frenzy among the Hillary-haters on the Sunday talk shows.

Professional that you are, you bend to the task. Racking your brain, you remember an offhand exchange between Doyle and another member of the campaign staff about the last episode of The Sopranos. (They chatted about it just like sixty percent of the population of the United States.) Hmm--maybe something could be made out of that. You free-associate for a while: Tony Soprano . . . the Mafia . . . the Family . . . enforcers and hit men . . . That's it! Fired with inspiration, you sit down at your computer, and you begin to write:

There's something priceless about talking mob hits and snitches (even fictional ones) with Solis Doyle, who has served as Hillary's right-hand woman for the past 16 years. If the infamously close-knit, tight-lipped Clinton campaign is the Washington political equivalent of La Cosa Nostra, Patti, as she's known throughout Hillaryland, is the family's consigliere, its chief enforcer, and its most devoted member. She is also one of its least known. Like her boss, Patti places a high priority on privacy, discretion, and loyalty. Press-averse to the point of hostility, she scorns the Fourth Estate as an irritating distraction and shares her boss's distaste for aides and advisers who chat up reporters in the service of their own reputations. "I hate doing media," she asserts. "I just want to get my work done." . . .

Among Solis Doyle's trickier duties is refereeing the squabbles that staffers say erupt over everything from when to roll out a policy to how strong the language in a speech should be. ("Brothers and sisters fight and fight hard," she shrugs, bowing to the family analogy.) Within the core group on the seven-thirty strategy call each morning--Solis Doyle, Tanden, Ickes, Grunwald, Wolfson, Penn, and Henry--the talents are large, the egos larger, and the debates voluble. (While everyone on this campaign is brilliant, say insiders, not everyone is easy to love.) . . . And it is Solis Doyle's job, say staff, to keep all this self-expression from getting out of hand. For instance? Don't ask. While Team Hillary will discuss campaign business in generalities, requests for detail prompt wandering gazes, backpedaling, professions of bad memory, or flat refusals. Quizzed about Solis Doyle's oft-cited leadership savvy, senior adviser Capricia Marshall, a Hillary loyalist and Patti pal since the 1992 race, laughs. "I can think of a lot of good examples," she admits. "But I don't want to repeat any of them."

Now we're getting somewhere! You toss in a quote from Harold Ickes about how "Patti knows how to read Hillary's moods. She knows how to assess them--when to push certain issues, when to hold back"--which admittedly sounds like something every smart aide-de-camp does for a busy, over-stressed boss, but at least it's something. You add a couple more gratuitous references to the Mafia, slap on a title ("The Enforcer: Hillary Clinton's Consigliere Speaks"), and voila! You've made something out of nothing!

What's amazing is not so much the willingness of The New Republic to print Cottle's concoction as some of the online responses from readers of the piece. People predisposed to consider Hillary sinister, threatening, and evil apparently find confirmation of their views everywhere--even in a virtually fact-free melange of innuendo like Cottle's profile. A few samples:

No HRC-basher here but man, these people are repulsive. Gives you the CREEPs.

Hillary's penchant for secrecy bears an eerie and disquieting resemblance to that of our current incumbent. I've never quite gotten over the remarkable coincidence of the subpoened Rose law firm records magically appearing in the White House days after the Statute of Limitations expired on the alleged acts of misfeasance.

Great, another administration of self-obsessed, egotistical Machiavellians.

The kind of worldview that produces a mindset like the one on display in this Solis woman is not, shall we say, the best one for making wise policy judgments. If the #1 concern behind every single move is neutralizing one's (real or imagined) domestic political enemies, it's hard to see how these people will get out of their little hall of mirrors and see a complex world with clear eyes when it comes time to fix a strategy for Putin, Hu, Ahmadinejad, Pakistan, India, etc.

Good lord, it sounds like it must be a nightmare to work over there. It wasn't just the campaign manager but just how byzantine it sounds . . . look at this statement by Ickes, "Patti knows how to read Hillary's moods. She knows how to assess them--when to push certain issues, when to hold back. Some of the rest of us," Ickes notes wryly, "don't necessarily understand such nuances." This makes Hillary sound like Leona Helmsley. And we want this nightmare why?

("Brothers and sisters fight and fight hard," she shrugs, bowing to the family analogy.) Not when they become adults. I haven't fought with my brothers or sister for decades. Is the Hillary campaign full of arrested adolescents? (By the way, I am not talking about her fundraisers who are just arrested adults.)

I find this absolutely bizarre. A reporter desperate for an angle takes a collection of not-very-remarkable campaign anecdotes and tarts them up with totally irrelevant and unsupported allusions to the Mafia. In response, an array of readers not only seconds the analogy but adds further absurd twists of their own: The fact that Hillary has "moods" (unlike everyone else in the world, apparently) makes her the equivalent of Leona Helmsley. The fact that the policy wonks on Hillary's team argue among themselves makes them "arrested adolescents."

Where does this stuff come from?

It's becoming increasingly clear that, for the mainstream media, Hillary Clinton scarcely exists in her own right. She is solely an inkblot onto which reporters feel free to project whatever fantasies lurk in the most sordid corners of their unconscious. The results are then served up to the nation with the label of "political reporting." And a significant slice of the public is apparently ready to assume that any slurs, however fact-free, that fit the image they've absorbed after fifteen years of partisan Hillary-bashing must be accurate.

Imagine--fourteen more months of this to look forward to.

"Father Knows Best" Was a Fantasy Even in the 1950s

Over dinner tonight, Mary-Jo told me a little anecdote that I thought was interestingly revealing. As you may know, she works with adolescent patients at a psychiatric hospital.

Mary-Jo: The new guy at work was commenting last week about the kinds of patients he'd been seeing. "I can't believe we have all these kids who are acting out, and almost none who are depressed," he said. I told him, "Just wait till school starts." Sure enough, this week all the depressed kids are being admitted.

Karl: Huh. Why is that? What is it about the school year that brings all the depressed kids to the hospital?

Mary-Jo: It's simple. During the summer holiday, the depressed kids just sit at home in their rooms, quietly plotting how they're going to kill themselves. No one notices they have a problem till they go to school. Then the teachers and counselors get alarmed and send them to us.

Karl: That's kinda weird.

Mary-Jo: Yes, you'd think the parents might notice that their kids are in trouble. But usually they don't. When we ask them about how their kids have been during the summer, they say, "Oh, everything seemed to be fine." And from what I've read, it's the same at every psychiatric hospital--the same ebbs and flows that match the school seasons.

I've written before about the silly smugness of the ultra-conservative "family values" crowd that loves to mock Hillary Clinton's slogan, "It takes a village to raise a child." (Yes, I know Hillary borrowed it from an African proverb. But if Hillary hadn't appropriated the idea, do you think Rick Santorum would have written a book ridiculing it?) These conservatives prefer to insist "It takes a family to raise a child," and they dream of insulating their kids from the evil influences of the world behind a wall that only people like them (in ethnicity, religion, language, and beliefs) and are allowed to enter. Hence the attraction of home-schooling--not for all home-schoolers, but for those who are driven by theocratic motives.

This little story is a perfect illustration of why they're so wrong. The fact is that families alone cannot provide everything that young people need. The average mother and father just don't have the time, the specialized knowledge, or the disinterested wisdom that it would take. In most cases, they can't even tell when their kids are considering suicide. (And let's not even talk about the families that drive their kids to consider suicide.)

If all our kids were "shielded" from the broader society and left exclusively to the tender mercies of their parents, the results would be scary.

With Luck, Bin Laden May Live Forever

Mark Buchanan's smart blog The Social Atom professes bafflement over Tom Friedman's professed bafflement over the Bush administration's failure to use its vaunted PR capabilities to discredit Osama bin Laden among the world's Muslims:

I don't find anything puzzling here at all. This administration invented the "War on Terror," and induced every major news organization to go along with the phrase, making it seem almost like an element of objective reality, rather than the very effective demonstration of framing that it is. Terrorism may be real, but the "War on Terror" is a psychological tool of US politics.

I haven't seen any evidence to dissuade me from the belief that this administration is far more interested in appearing to face up to the threat, than in actually doing so.

Well put. But I myself am a bit baffled as to why Buchanan doesn't take the obviously logical next step, which is to recognize that both the Bush administration and the Republican Party are positively dependent on Osama bin Laden for any remaining political influence and appeal they have.

It may have been impolitic for her to say so, but Hillary Clinton was not wrong when she said that a terrorist attack prior to the 2008 election would likely be a major plus for the Republicans. Yes, I know it's not logical--why should a devastating policy failure by the incumbent administration help that administration's party? But the way these issues get covered by the media--with help from the hapless Democrats, I'm sorry to say--that's probably what would happen.

In objective terms, Osama bin Laden has clearly become the Republicans' best friend. So not only does the Bush administration have no real incentive to try to marginalize or even to capture bin Laden, it actually has a positive incentive to prop him up.

Which raises the question: If bin Laden were to be killed or captured, would the administration want us to know? Or would they prefer to have him remain available as a bogeyman, the way the government of Oceania kept "Emmanuel Goldstein" alive as a threat just to spice up the daily Two Minutes' Hate?

What Motivates Phony Attacks on Liberal "Phoniness"?

There's been quite a spate of newspaper columns recently accusing liberals of hypocrisy.

First, there was Robert Samuelson in WaPo, deriding liberals for driving the Prius. (As you may know, this is now a personal insult in our home.) Samuelson calls the hybrid "a hippy car" and "a fashion statement," a way for liberals to compensate for lacking the guts to push for the tough political measures that are really necessary to avert global warming--measures that include enacting tougher automotive mileage standards so as to reduce auto emissions.

Of course, Samuelson ignores the fact that the Prius actually performs up to tougher mileage standards today, thereby reducing auto emissions immediately, which might seem to undermine the contention that owning a Prius is a meaningless symbolic gesture. One might also think that the fact that Samuelson himself has consistently opposed tough political measures to avert global warming also undermines his criticism. But never mind. The column may have been devoid of logic, but it provided Samuelson with an opportunity to mock liberals, which evidently was his only real purpose.

* * *

Then there was this article by Noam Schreiber in The New Republic. Schreiber attacks John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama for their stance on the legal loophole that allows hedge-fund managers to pay taxes at a lower rate than ordinary workers. All three advocate eliminating the loophole--and they do so despite the fact that they've raised campaign money from hedge-fund managers who benefit from the loophole.

Now, Schreiber actually agrees with the stance taken by the three Democrats. But he's annoyed with them because their position has not proven to be politically suicidal. Schreiber complains that the Democrats' pro-tax stance is not "heroic" because it hasn't harmed the party's fund-raising efforts:

According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, employees of the eleven firms represented by the Private Equity Council, an industry lobbying group, gave Democrats 51 percent of their $2.7 million in political contributions in 2000. Democrats spent the next several years opposing George W. Bush's income tax cuts for the affluent, along with his efforts to cut the capital gains tax and the tax on dividend income. All of these measures dramatically lowered taxes for the private-equity-fund set. And, when all was said and done, giving by Private Equity Council members had shifted dramatically--toward Democrats. The firms gave 69 percent of their $3.4 million in political contributions to Democrats in 2006. Suffice it to say, there's little evidence from the last six years that rich fund managers take offense when Democrats try to raise their taxes.

This means, Schreiber concludes, that the candidates' position on taxes is "pretty costless," and a form of self-righteousness that the media should "call them on."

Evidently the spectacle of liberals adopting a policy position that Schreiber agrees with leaves him totally unimpressed--unless they are made to pay a heavy political price for it. I guess Schreiber would be really turned on by a replay of the Mondale or Dukakis candidacy. Now there were candidates who did a great job of alienating potential supporters! What heroism!

* * *

Today, the third piece of the trifecta fell into place: Stanley Fish's latest column in the Times, which uses (of all things) ABC's forthcoming sitcom about the Geico cavemen as a platform for attacking liberals who worry about discrimination against racial minorities. (I'm not sure how a bunch of comedy writers became representatives of political liberalism, but I guess this makes sense in Fish's universe.) To mount his attack, Fish leans on logic borrowed from The Trouble With Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels:

Michaels's big point is that Americans, especially Americans on the left, love discrimination. Not that they love to practice discrimination; they love to deplore the fact of discrimination. And they love to propose strategies for lessening it: affirmative action, the celebration of diversity, the promotion of a culture of respect.

The reason we love those strategies, Michaels says, is that they involve cosmetic changes that allow us to feel good about ourselves while also allowing us to turn our eyes away from the economic inequalities that remain untouched as we busily respect everyone in sight.

Respect is an easy coin to proffer; it doesn't cost much.

Michaels argues that if we think "racism is the problem we need to solve," all we have to do to solve it is "give up our prejudices." But if we think our problem is that too many people are poor, hungry, homeless and uneducated, solving that problem "might require us to give up our money."

Quite an insight! Those liberals who deplore racism certainly are phonies. If they really cared about Black people, they wouldn't be fussing over racist attitudes. Instead, they would support policies that could make a genuine difference in the lives of poor Blacks. They'd oppose massive tax cuts for the affluent and would favor using the higher tax revenues generated to support programs for housing, health care, and better education. They'd defend Medicaid, Head Start, infant nutrition programs, job training initiatives, and similar programs. In short, if liberals were sincere, they would back the entire conservative platform for combating poverty rather than opposing it as they do. Oh, wait a minute . . .

* * *

Of course, these three columnists are coming from three very different places. Samuelson is a once-respectable economist who has increasingly become a predictable hack supporter of cliched right-wing positions. Schreiber is a political journalist looking for contrarian angles on the news; some of his columns are interesting and insightful, while others, like the example above, are clinkers. And Fish is a grouchy conservative academic whose specialty is conjuring up pseudo-profound significance for his personal hobbyhorses. (He devoted his previous Times column to exploring the socioeconomic implications of the fact that Stanley Fish finds it annoying to buy coffee at Starbucks.)

However, the three columns illustrate the fact that a large number of people with prominent platforms in the mainstream media find liberals personally distasteful. They don't necessarily disagree with liberal ideas; in fact, these writers often claim to agree with them. However, they associate "liberalism" with personal qualities they profess to abhor, such as "hypocrisy," "posturing," and "preening."

Yet it's difficult to see how any actual hypocrisy, posturing, or preening by liberals is involved in the cases these writers angrily cite. Are Prius owners "hypocritical" because they drive a car that actually reduces carbon emissions? Are Clinton, Obama, and Edwards "posturing" because they advocate a tax policy that most people agree would be fair and effective? Are liberals who deplore racism and are willing to back up their beliefs with genuine social action "preening"? I don't see how. (And I certainly don't see how liberals deserve labels like "hypocritical," "posturing," and "preening" more than conservatives who use "family values" as a cudgel against their political opponents . . . but I digress.)

The truth is that the "liberals" being derided by Samuelson, Schreiber, and Fish have done absolutely nothing wrong. Their sole offense is taking a public position on something on avowedly moral grounds. Liberals oppose reckless pollution of the atmosphere, tax loopholes for the rich, and racial bigotry because it's the right thing to do. But saying so offends cynical columnists--especially conservative ones--because it challenges one of their cherished assumptions: namely, that self-interest is the only real motivation behind any public behavior.

Being cynical columnists, they can't wrap their minds around the idea that someone might actually care enough about doing the right thing to behave in ways that conflict with pure self-interest. Yet liberals do this all the time. (My taxes will go up if the liberal policies I advocate are enacted.) The only way for the cynics to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance is to assert the phoniness of the liberal positions.

And so the cynical columnists set out to demonstrate that phoniness--facts and logic notwithstanding.

Andrew Sullivan Has a Fainting Spell Over Hillary's "Ruthlessness"

As I've noted before, I haven't signed on to the Hillary campaign or to any other as of yet. And there are certainly plenty of grounds for criticizing Hillary, especially from the left, most notably her vote in favor of the Bush Iraq authorization, her support for the idea of a long-term US troop presence in that country, and her general hawkishness.

Having said all this, I am truly fed up with the constant criticism of her that is supposedly related to her "character," "temperament," or "lack of leadership." Whenever I examine these complaints closely, they seem to boil down to rehashing of scurrilous rumors about her and Bill's personal life mingled with vapid, unspecific whining about the fact that "I just can't warm up to her" or "There's something I just don't like about her."

Today's volley against her by Andrew Sullivan (he launches one practically every day) is typical. He recounts an anecdote about Hillary's political operation and sums up its moral in these words: "Don't mess with her or her cronies. They're ruthless."

And what happened to demand the use of the word "ruthless"? Did thugs hired by Hillary beat up dissidents? Did they disseminate vicious lies about some enemy in order to cause him to lose a job or to destroy his marriage?

No, it turns out that what happened was that someone made a critical comment at a Hillary fund-raising event in Los Angeles and in response received a "smattering of boos and gasps that were directed my way." (Follow the link and read the account for yourself--I swear that is all that happened.)

This is "ruthlessness"? I guess it is if you've already decided that for some reason you can't stand Hillary's guts.