Huckabee Blows His Dogwhistle

So Mike Huckabee is still using the cockamamie story about the high school teacher who tells her students that they don't have to "earn" the desks in their classroom, because military vets already did it for them. You might recall I wrote about that weird, nonsensical story last year. Now it has resurfaced, thanks to Huckabee trotting it out again at last week's Republican convention.

One of my favorite journalists (and bloggers), James Fallows, has now done a follow-up story, linking to an account that he says "solves the mystery" of the Huckabee story. According to Fallows, "the story makes perfect sense once you assume that its real subject is eternal salvation through the grace and sacrifice of Jesus."

Well, I suppose, in a way, that does "make sense"--if you're willing to overlook the illogic of claiming that having American soldiers fighting overseas is somehow a necessary prerequisite to operating classrooms here at home; and even more egregious, if you're willing to equate soldiers (whose job is to kill as many of the enemy as possible) to the martyred Jesus, who not only did not kill his enemies but actually paused, in the very moment of being betrayed, to miraculously heal one of them (Luke 22:47-51).

I have no doubt that Fallows is right about the "dogwhistle" message that Huckabee is trying to send to his fundamentalist followers--a message that equates US soldiers, and John McCain in particular, to Jesus Christ. But as a Christian myself, I find it awfully depressing that both Huckabee and Fallows seem to share an assumption that might be summarized like this: "Hey, it's a Christian parable! It doesn't have to make any sense!"

Thanks to people like Mike Huckabee, millions of Americans naturally assume that "Christian" is a synonym for "stupid." Can't say I blame them.

The Scorn Of Some People Is A Badge Of Honor

Not having looked at James Fallows's blog in a while, I missed his commentary on the passing of Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's White House chief of staff. Fallows was a speech writer in the same administration. In Fallows's post, he quotes from a review he wrote years ago about one of Jordan's books, No Such Thing as a Bad Day:

An unstated operating assumption of the permanent D.C. establishment is that outsiders like Jordan are essentially brought into town on sufferance, for tryouts. They can adapt, "make it," and survive when their time with the administration has ended--or they can be drummed out of town and dismissed as losers. In D.C. terms, Jordan was in the latter category; he worked for a losing administration, and he didn't cut it in society. Yet this book suggests that he has become a more substantial person than most who dismissed him--and even before he went through this transformation, he was a more complicated person than the "Hannibal Jerkin" caricatured in the press. This has made me think of the damage done to other people hooted out of town. (Gary Hart?) If you're thinking of a midsummer gift for a favorite columnist or Style section writer, consider this book.

The sad thing is that you can say pretty much the same thing about Jimmy Carter himself--a president who, whatever his flaws, has done a lot of good for America and the world, yet will always be treated with thinly-veiled contempt by the same Washington insiders who idolized Reagan, regarded Cheney and Rumsfeld as "adults" who would bring wisdom and integrity back to the White House, and will be delighted to foist McCain on us if they can get away with it.

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.

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.