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?

A Suggestion For Right-Wing Authors: Go Hollywood And Go Union

Under the heading of "Schadenfreude Alert," Kevin Drum links to this story about disgruntled conservative book authors who are suing their publisher, Regnery, the notorious source of some of the most dishonest right-wing screeds of recent years. Seems Regnery may have been short-changing authors on royalties through some fancy footwork involving books distributed at very low cost through publisher-owned book clubs.

As you can imagine, Kevin's post has elicited plenty of comments mocking the conservative authors for their sudden disenchantment with the glories of unfettered capitalism and their equally sudden enthusiasm for our "out-of-control" tort system. I am certainly happy to join the derisive chorus. But from another angle, this story is just a different version of the dynamic we see at work in the current strike by film and TV writers.

In both cases, the issue is fundamentally the same: How should ancillary revenues from a media product generated by creative talent be fairly distributed among the people and organizations that contribute to its success? And in both cases, we see the same basic principle at work: Given the opportunity, a media company will always look for ways to ensure that new streams of money will flow directly into their pockets, leaving as little as possible for the creative originators.

And why not? The management of a TV network, a movie studio, or a book publisher is ultimately beholden to the shareholders, and their main responsibility is to maximize profits. Obviously they have to pay the writers something--otherwise nothing will get written. But as good capitalists, their job is to try to make that something as small as possible. Which naturally leads to conflict, whether in the form of a writers' strike or a lawsuit.

Of course, the Hollywood writers have a lot better chance of ultimately getting a fair deal on their royalties than the Regnery authors, and the reason is the clout they demonstrate by striking. And even if the Regnery Five win their lawsuit, it won't benefit the thousands of other book authors, at Regnery and elsewhere, who basically have no choice but to accept the contract terms their publisher offers them.

So the real lesson of both stories is that unionization is the best path to securing workers' rights.
It's nice to fantasize about the conservative authors (and their readers) eventually coming to recognize that . . . but I'm not holding my breath.