History is Happening Now

Consider this: McCain has accused Obama of supporting “sex education” for kindergartners. (Read here and here and here for details.)

Consider this: it’s a lie.

What kind of an evil scumbag would deliberately introduce the idea of sex among kindergartners into a political campaign to smear an opponent? And does it help or hurt our country when presidential candidates make their campaigns all about stupid issues like sex ed for small children, instead of important issues like energy policy or national security?

John McCain claims to “put country first.” Apparently, “putting country first” means doing anything, no matter how evil and destructive and unjust, to win an election.

Patriotic Americans need to reject this sort of campaigning for the good of the country.

(Note: I feel guilty posting so soon after Lee posted his excellent piece below on infrastructure, which should be read. I don’t want to jump on top of it. So please give it a read if you haven’t already.)

McCain is up in the polls! It’s the Palin bump! She’s a rock star!

And all over America liberals like us are wondering what ON EARTH is going on here!

I sure am (and so is Lee). In that crazy 48-hour period after John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Sarah who?!) to be his running mate, I guessed (wrongly, it seems) that McCain’s choice would wound McCain’s campaign by showing how impulsive he is, how beholden to the crazy Christian right he is, and how deceitful the attacks on Obama’s “inexperience” have been.

No one could honestly criticize Obama for being “inexperienced” and then support putting Gov. Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency. So most of the people saying Obama is too “inexperienced” were obviously lying – which we suspected all along of course, but it’s nice to have it confirmed. 

During that crazy period after Palin’s candidacy was announced, I talked to friends of mine who’d planned to vote for McCain, who were either disappointed in the choice because they thought it would weaken McCain’s campaign — or else disappointed in the choice because it meant they could no longer support the McCain campaign. I listened to The New Yorker magazine’s political podcast and heard editor David Remnick say he thought future analysts of the 2008 election might look back and say the moment when McCain chose Palin was the moment when he lost the election.

Oh, that it were so!

It appears, instead, that all this talk about Palin “electrifying” the Republican convention and “re-energizing” the Republican base turned out to be true — McCain is now up in the polls, albeit by only a few points, for the first time in months.

Of course, it’s possible that Remnick and the rest of us will turn out to be right after all. Palin — the candidate who was for the “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it, who asked her fellow Christian crazies to pray for an oil pipeline, who sat in church and did nothing while a preacher preached that Israel deserves terrorism, who allegedly fired Alaska’s police commissioner for refusing to fire a state trooper with whom Palin had a family dispute — may yet bring down the McCain campaign.

But until then, we should be asking ourselves what Palin’s apparent popularity tells us. First off, I reject the idea that Palin appeals to swing voters — that is, voters who are open-minded enough to honestly consider voting for either McCain or Palin. Palin is just too extremist in her Christian views and too nasty as a candidate to draw undecided voters. I believe Palin has boosted McCain’s poll numbers by appealing to “conservatives” who wouldn’t vote for Obama in a million years but had been considering sitting out this election rather than voting for McCain.

These people — people who would have sat out the Obama/McCain contest but now feel compelled to get involved in support of their hero, the “hockey mom” from the wilderness of Alaska — don’t see the world the way most Americans see the world. There are many aspects to their worldview, including the widely held attitude that politics is fundamentally an epic struggle between the forces of Jesus Christ’s followers and the forces of Satan. (How could we have forgotten?)

But I want to point to another aspect that I witnessed as a small-town reporter in conservative communities, an aspect that is particularly difficult for many liberals to fathom: the culture of resentment among narcissistic small-town folks who don’t understand why they aren’t being praised all the time.

Consider this section from Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention:

 … I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involved. I guess — I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that, in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. No, we tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco. As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes and whoever is listening John McCain is the same man.

Well, I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these last few days that, if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But — now, here’s a little newsflash. Here’s a little newsflash for those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.

And this:

Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election: In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

It’s important to remember that Obama hasn’t said anything whatsoever to suggest that he “looks down” on Palin’s experience as a small town mayor. (Imagine how conservative pundits would react if liberals tried to lionize the superintendent of a small-town school district. And yet school superintendents have just as much responsibility and power as small-town mayors.) And no one in the media has suggested that Palin isn’t qualified because she doesn’t belong to the Washington elite — in fact, many have argued that Palin’s outsider status will be seen as an asset. So why is Palin so successful advancing these lies?

Now, with that excerpt from Palin’s speech in mind, consider this line from former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani’s speech where he describes Obama’s alleged opinion about Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

I’m sorry — I’m sorry that Barack Obama feels that her hometown isn’t cosmopolitan enough.

I’m sorry, Barack, that it’s not flashy enough. Maybe they cling to religion there.

Well — well, the first day — as far as I’m concerned, the first day she was mayor, she had more experience as an executive than — than Obama and Biden combined.

It’s important to recall that Obama never suggested Wasilla, Alaska isn’t “cosmopolitan enough.” He never said anything that even slightly resembled that. So why did the crowd roar when Guiliani delivered this lie?

And finally, just to drive the point home, here is political analyst Tony Blankley on KCRW’s radio program “Left, Right and Center” explaining Palin’s success (interviewed by moderator Matt Miller).

MILLER: One of the sort of classic GOP themes — I think, in a way, it’s very effective for the Republican Party — emerged this week in the reaction to Sarah Palin, where you have the kind of sneering media sort of immediately pouncing on her in ways that I think, to, you know, fair minded people in the middle would say, ‘come on, she’s a compelling life story, she has accomplished a lot, she’s come from, you know, a humble background to become the governor of her state, etc, etc. And that the, you know, the old kind of Nixonian, it’s us average folks against the sneering liberal elites. I mean, how many times did you have to hear people like Rudy Guiliani saying was, maybe Wasila, Alaska wasn’t “cosmopolitan enough” for Barack Obama. This is a guy who is from, you know, New York City. The whole, There’s a lot of hypocricy and game playing in pushing the argument. But I do think this touches a nerve that is very hard for Democrats to deal with.

BLANKLEY: One of the reasons the Republicans have done so well in national elections over the last 30 years is that we’ve been blessed with a liberal media and a liberal Democratic party that cannot help but sneer at about, you know, 65 percent of American culture, the people of small town America. So we benefit from that, and even the stumblebums can figure out how to take advantage of snobs who are our opponents. And it’s sort of remarkable that they can’t restrain themselves even for a season. And, of course it’s ridiculous to sneer at a woman like this who has accomplished so much, whose life is a living model of what most woman would hope that they could accomplish in their lives, having it all, being a mother of five, being a very successful professional person, being admired, and they’ve turned her into an icon in four days.

Is there any truth to this “sneering” accusation against the liberal media and the liberal Democratic party? (Perhaps I was sneering when I suggested Palin’s college wasn’t that impressive, but otherwise I think this post has been largely sneer-free when it comes to cultural issues.) Does MSNBC “sneer” at small town America? Does the New York Times “sneer” at small town America? Does Barack Obama “sneer” at small town America? If not, why is Tony Blankley so comfortable expressing such an ugly lie?

He may be lying, but Blankley is also telling the truth: this is a winning point for Republicans, who prey upon the insecurities of small town narcicists who resent that they aren’t celebrated more intensely in every aspect of our culture. This is why the Republican base responds so excitedly to attacks against “Hollywood celebrities” — because they resent Hollywood for not celebrating their culture as the best, the awesomest, the most supreme.

The fact is this: There are people in this country who feel deep resentment, and this resentment is exploited by Republicans. These people resent liberals because liberals “look down,” on them, “sneer” at them, “don’t think much” of them, think they aren’t “cosmopolitan enough,” etc.

Except we don’t. But it doesn’t seem to matter.

Even when we’re sincerely respectful, these people think we’re sneering. I’m guessing they think this way because they expect to receive praise and celebration, and when their expectations aren’t met, they feel resentment. These people identify with small town mayors, with “hockey moms,” and they desperately want Palin’s experience as a small-town mayor to be romanticized, idealized, worshipped, etc. They simply can’t fathom that her “American-ness” isn’t being celebrated as a model of what we should all aspire to.

Would it help if more Hollywood movies celebrated the awesomeness of white, small-town Christians? What will it take to reassure these people that we don’t think we’re better than them?

It’s hard because I do sneer at them — not because they belong to a small town. I grew up in a small town, as did my brother. My father grew up in a small town. I live in a small town now. I’ve worked in small towns. I love small towns. I sneer at these people not because they are from small towns or because they are Christians but because they are narcisists who feel deeply threatened by any worldview that doesn’t validate the supremecy of their lives. I may be a small town guy, but unlike these nuts, I don’t feel inferior to the big city kids I’ve been lucky enough to befriend. I’ve honestly never met anyone who looked down on me because I came from a small town — but then, I’ve never expected praise for it, either.

Maybe we should sponsor some summer camp programs for small town narcicists who feel inferior and resent their own inferiority. Maybe if they had a chance to actually visit the city and meet some city people, they might overcome their resentment.

Or maybe not.

1.

This is a quote from a recent NYT article by Jenny Anderson about our national infrastructure crisis.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the United States needs to invest at least $1.6 trillion over the next five years to maintain and expand its infrastructure. Last year, the Federal Highway Administration deemed 72,000 bridges, or more than 12 percent of the country’s total, “structurally deficient.” But the funds to fix them are shrinking: by the end of this year, the Highway Trust Fund will have a several billion dollar deficit.

The proposed solution to this problem, which Anderson’s article implicitly advocates, should be quite predictable:  privatization. 

It used to be that the public was resistant to the idea of privatizing public assets built with its hard-earned tax money, but “[w]ith politicians like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California warning of a national infrastructure crisis, public resistance to private financing may start to ease.”

This is almost a textbook case of what Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine,” the use of crises–natural and manmade–to convince or force the public to accept unpopular privatization.  In this case, our crumbling national infrastructure–the crisis spurring this round of proposed privatizations–is the direct result of divestment by government.

We have been running up bad debt, using our money for consumer spending and not capital investment in infrastructure.  The “free market” seems unwilling to do any such investing on its own, but seems more than willing to snatch up public assets at fire-sale prices at our moment of desperation.  We have simultaneously, at least at the national level, but also locally, been slashing taxes.  The result:  no revenue, crumbling infrastructure, lots of debt.  This is what Republicans call “starving the beast,” spending like crazy while undermining the revenue stream so that at the end of the day the public discovers it has no choice but to accede to the demands of privatization proponents.

Grover Norquist notoriously said “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

2.

Our “liberal” media–and remember this is a news article, not an opinion piece–goes to extensive lengths to make the case for privatization, giving the lion’s share of column inches here to privatization enthusiasts and their enablers in government, but giving little to no credit to the possibility that there are strong counter-arguments.

As David Bollier notes, this article “supplies no critical analysis of why governments and politicians are failing to make needed infrastructure investments, or how government might pursue public-spirited alternatives to private equity.”  OK, the article provides some, minimal critical analysis, but of an easily refuted straw man variety.

Here are the substantial critiques of infrastructure privatization offered by this article:

Critique: “[W]ary of foreign investors, who were among the first to this market, taking over their prized roads and bridges. When Macquarie of Australia and Cintra of Spain, two foreign funds with large portfolios of international investments, snapped up leases to the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road, ‘people said “hold it, we don’t want our infrastructure owned by foreigners,”‘ Mr. Mineta said.” 

Implied Message: Some Americans are xenophobic dolts who don’t recognize a good thing when they see it.

Critique:  “And then there is the odd romance between Americans and their roads: they do not want anyone other than the government owning them.”

Implied Message:  Some Americans are romantic/nostalgic dolts who don’t recognize a good thing when they see it.

Critique:  “The specter of investors reaping huge fees by financing [infrastructure] assets… also touches a raw nerve among taxpayers” because “[p]rivate investors recoup their money by maximizing revenue — either making the infrastructure better to allow for more cars, for example, or by raising tolls.”

Implied Message:  Privatization will either improve your roads or might raise your tolls.  Better infrastructure?  That doesn’t sound so bad!

Critique:  “For many politicians, privatization also remains a painful process. Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, faced a severe backlash when he collected $3.8 billion for a 75- year lease of the Indiana Toll Road. A popular bumper sticker in Indiana reads ‘Keep the toll road, lease Mitch.’”

Implied Message:  Some poor, hard-working politicians are being given a hard time for privatizing public assets.  Why?  We’re not told.

3.

All of which is to say, by the end of this article you would have no sense that there is an informed and sophisticated counter-argument to the case for privatization, beyond opposition by the bumper-sticker-wielding, xenophobic, yahoo straw men who emerge in Anderson’s piece.

If you want to read some of these counter-arguments, I direct you to this article by Phineas Baxandall, who argues among other things that “long term road contracts pose a variety of serious threats to the public interest,” including “fragmentation and a loss of public control over transportation policy, and an inability to prescribe future needs in contracts signed decades earlier.”

Anyone who admits how disastrous the privatization of Fannie Mae has been–like, say, the Bush administration!–should recognize that privatization is not always the answer, and is sometimes exactly the wrong answer.  In the case of public infrastructure, it is a recipe for expensive and damaging deprivatization, at taxpayer expense, years down the line.  The private companies get to keep their profits, of course, even after they’re proven themselves to be bad managers.