History is Happening Now

I have been traveling for several weeks and have thus not had much time to compose proper responses to the amazing developments in the election and our economy.

In little more than a week, Obama has overcome the post-Palin “bump” to secure a five point lead over McCain.  All indicators suggest that he is going to win this election–do we owe Kos an apology for doubting his all-knowingness?–though these indicators may prove illusory.  I find it remarkable how much my mood has been pegged to the polling numbers.  The prospect of a McCain-Palin administration is so horribly unpalatable to me that any indication of the ticket’s strength hits me in the gut.  Why he has lost his post-convention and post-Palin bump is something of a mystery to me.  Are voters so fickle-minded that they abandoned Obama in droves only to change their minds less than a week later?  What’s so hard about choosing between the candidates?  Their positions on a host of issues are crystal clear, it seems to me, even if our media has no interest at all in covering these differences, except in the most superficial way.

One explanation for the shift is that the meltdown of our financial system has punched through the bullshit of personality-based politics.  The economy has been traditionally strong turf for Democrats, with some justification.  Fortunately for Obama, McCain has backed himself into all sorts of rhetorical corner w/r/t the economy.  Gaffe after gaffe–the economy is “fundamentally strong,” etc.–re: which the Obama campaign has rightly hit him hard.  The fact is, the Republican hatred of regulation and government is, as far as I can tell, partly what has caused the present financial crisis, though I am open to evidence making the opposite case, or laying some of the blame w/ the Clinton administration.  Whatever the causes of the crisis we should note with some interest that when the chips are down our present Republican administration has proven itself to be more interventionist and statist than a Democratic administration would ever be allowed to be.

A Democratic administration that nationalized (or as Paul Krugman put it de-privatized) Fannie Mae would be regarded as well nigh crypto-communist.  A trillion dollar purchase of bad debt from the private financial sector using our tax dollars would be held up as evidence of liberalism’s love of “big government” and the nasty “nanny state.”  Always remember, ye true-hearted libertarians, no Republican with any proximity to real power (ignoring the blogging blowhards and talk radio types) actually believes in non-intervention by government, either in principle or in practice.  No one except maybe Ron Paul, who has the virtue of consistency, though the consequences of Paulite economic policies would be a terrible disaster for the American people; a President Ron Paul would be non-interventionist for about thirty seconds before those who hold real power in this country forced him to spend our tax dollars in exactly the same way that President George W. Bush is spending them.  Talk of the menace of “big government,” from Reagan on, is only a sort of rhetorical bludgeon Republicans use to crush Democrats in elections and to destroy much-hated social welfare programs.  We live in a country that demands market discipline of its poor, but lavishes massive taxpayer subsidies and bailouts to those sectors of the economy that “cannot be allowed to fail,” though said sectors are allowed to do whatever they want, unsupervised, up to the point of their failure.

To be clear, I don’t think these bailouts are a bad idea.  They may be necessary to prevent our present liquidity crisis from going nuclear.  We need an economy with a functional financial system.  But these government bailouts are a sort of emergency-room economics.  What we need is an economics of preventative medicine.  What needs to be regulated isn’t some big mystery, as far as I can tell.  No regular reader of Krugman’s NYT columns, which expounded on the housing bubble at significant length before it collapsed, could honestly claim so.  What is more odious to me is the hypocrisy at work in Republican paeans to small government, and the sometimes reflexive desire of liberals to defend themselves against such attacks by preemptively saying how much they love the free market and how capitalism is the only true path to national virtue and prosperity. 

Liberals should be unashamed to repeat the following mantra:  the free market is a disaster, for us and for other countries.  Not even Republicans, it should now be obvious, trust the free market.  The economic success of the US since the end of the Second World War is a testament to the power of planned economies that couple direct government investment and protectionist industrial development policies and welfare safety nets to tightly regulated markets.  This is, it should go without saying, not a synonym for centrally-planned command economies where the government decides how many tubes of toothpaste will be manufactured in a particular year. 

So:  the free market is a disaster. 

And:  government is (sometimes) the solution to our economic problems.

Now everybody–

This just in: If John McCain is elected president, we may not be on speaking terms with Spain.

(Remember, Spain is a democracy and a member of NATO with 1,000 troops currently in Afghanistan. It also has the 7th largest economy in the world. If Spain is attacked, treaty obligations require the United States to respond as if WE have been attacked.)

Shockingly, It appears that this we-don’t-talk-to-Spain policy was formulated to cover up for the fact that McCain couldn’t understand what was being asked of him during a radio interview. If you thought Bush policy was reckless and full of mindless bravado, get a load of this.

Here’s what John McCain said recently in an interview with Spanish owned Union Radio:

INTERVIEWER: Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you are elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

McCAIN: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I’m glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the merida (sp?) plan, and I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders, to the White House.

INTERVIEWER: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president himself?

McCAIN: I don’t, you know, honestly, I have to look at the relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you, I will establish closer relations with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America. I know how to do both.

INTERVIEWER: So you have to wait and see if he is willing to meet with you or if you be able to do it in the White House?

McCAIN: Again, I don’t, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those that are not, and that’s judged based on the importance of the relationship with Latin America and the entire region.

INTERVIEWER: Ok, what about Europe? I’m talking about the president of Spain.

McCAIN: What about me, what?

INTERVIEWER: Ok, are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

McCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are, for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not.

Did McCain understand that he was being asked about Spain? The interviewer clearly thought McCain might be confused after hearing the Senator refer to “the hemisphere” and “the importance of the relationship with Latin America and the entire region.”

But McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann cleared that up in an email to Politico:

“No, the questioner asked several times about Senator McCain’s willingness to meet Zapatero, and ID’d him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred,” said McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Schuenemann in an email.

And he said this in an e-mail to the Washington Post:

“In this week’s interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally,” he said in an e-mail. “If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.”

A Spanish newspaper apparently tells a different story about McCain’s views on meeting with Zapatero, according to a piece by Max Bergmann in The Huffington Post.

McCain even told El Pais, Spain’s major newspaper, in April that he would bring Prime Minister Zapatero to the White House. (translation via America Blog)

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, is ready to change the policy of estrangement with the Spanish government that was put in place for four years now by George Bush. He declared that he was ready to fully normalize bilateral relations and that Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was invited to the White House.

Of course, it could be that McCain was simply lying to the Spanish press. Or, it could be that the Spanish press was lying. I don’t know much about the Spanish press, but I’d tend to believe they reported the story correctly, which means McCain has changed his position on meeting with Zapatero … why, exactly?

Apparently this story has been big in Spain. Imagine how you’d feel if you were a Spaniard reading about this. Is John McCain uncertain as to whether Spain stands for human rights, democracy and freedom? Is Spain on a list of nations John McCain intends to punish?

Are we scared yet?

My favorite right-wing wacko radio pundit, Jay Severin, has spent several hours today calling Obama a liar for running this attack ad.

I think it’s fair to call the ad misleading. I’m still trying to decide whether or not it’s a lie. There’s obviously more than a grain of truth in the ad, however.

So here’s a question: Is this ad more or less misleading than John McCain’s Kindergarten ad?

And more importantly — if you think this ad is comparable to the Kindergarten ad, or if you think the ad is a lie – is it wrong for Obama to run this ad, under the circumstances?

On the one hand, if Republicans — who lie about why they took us to war and about what American intelligence indicated, lie about torture, lie about Obama’s positions, lie about the size of the crowds at McCain’s rallies, lie about Sarah Palin’s position on the Bridge to Nowhere, etc, etc, etc. – are going to lie with abandon and get away with it, aren’t Democrats actually duty bound to fight their lies with lies, if necessary, in order to keep the right-wingers from winning this election and ruining our country?

On the other hand, I’ve admired Obama for sticking to the truth for most of his campaign and I’d hate for his reputation to suffer as a result of misleading ads. Obama’s reputation for honesty may be helpful when he is president.

I would also invite anyone to use this thread to describe their favorite Republican lie.

They say nice guys finish last. The same could be said for honest guys in politics. I’m sick of finishing last.

Narcissism. 

This is the most important word to consider if you want to understand why Sarah Palin is getting conservatives so excited. To say it in a sentence: The McCain campaign is using Palin to manipulate narcissists who celebrate Palin as a way to celebrate themselves.

The following excerpt from Bill O’Reilly’s radio show on Friday afternoon (Sept 12, 2008) helps show what I mean by “narcissism.” O’Reilly is taking a call from a woman who is calling to discuss Sarah Palin’s recent interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson.

O’REILLY: Chantelle. St. Louis. What’s going on, Chantelle?

CHANTELLE: Hi, Bill. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time to tell you we named our son after you.

O’REILLY: Oh, how nice –

CHANTELLE: His name is Reilly.

O’REILLY: How nice.

CHANTELLE: So it’s an honor to talk to you.

O’REILLY: Thank you.

CHANTELLE: Um, last night I listened to the interview, and I thought he looked bored. He, um 

O’REILLY: Gibson?

CHANTELLE: At one point where, he said something, and she was talking about her son being deployed, and he’s looking at his watch, and he’s kinda, you know, I thought he, his body language insinuated that he wasn’t real impressed with her.

O’REILLY: All right. Well, we’re gonna do a body language on it on Monday. You may be right. Look, he had a long trip to get up there and I think it may be more fatigue than bored. 

This is Chantelle’s complaint: Gibson looked bored. “His body language insinuated that he wasn’t real impressed with her.” He looked at his watch when she told him her son was being deployed in Iraq.

So here is what this woman apparently demands of Gibson and of all those who interview vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin: They must appear interested in what Palin has to say. They must give the impression that they find Palin impressive, especially when she mentions that her son is headed off to Iraq.

Here’s my question: Why?

Who the heck does Palin think she is? Why do Charlie Gibson and other journalists have to pretend they think she’s the bestest thing ever?

Don’t get me wrong: Palin deserves an opportunity to answer the questions put to her, and to be treated with the respect owed to anybody being interviewed on television. But Gibson obviously met that basic threshhold, and no one could argue with a straight face that Gibson was rude or inappropriate in the tone or content of his interview. What offends Chantelle — and many other narcissistic Americans who identify with Palin — is that Gibson’s “body language” wasn’t sufficiently full of praise and celebration.  

For an even clearer (and more bizzare) portrait of how narcissists relate to Palin, here’s a comment from Matt Miller, moderator of KCRW’s radio show, “Left, Right and Center,” about the same interview. 

MILLER: … When I watched this stuff, I was absolutely, I was sort of appalled at Charlie Gibson’s whole demeanor and carriage and behavior. The whole way he tried to make it, when he tried to confront Sarah Palin on “The Bush Doctrine.” “What do you think of the Bush doctrine?” And then, you know, sort of sneering down his nose, literally, with the glasses poised on the perch of his thing, waiting like a, you know, with the, everything about him oozing this sense of “why must I be bothered to deal with a person such as you?” I just found wildly offensive, and I understand why so many people — My big concern, as somebody who wants Obama to win, is that, is to, this just fuels the meme, to use that word, that the media are sort of in cahoots to condescend against, sort of, ordinary Americans in ways that, I think, Sarah Palin kind of represents and appeals to. And I find it off-putting.

If you watched this interview in question, then you can be the judge: Do you agree that Charlie Gibson was literally “sneering” at Sarah Palin? Do you agree that ”everything” about Gibson was ”oozing this sense of ‘why must I be bothered to deal with a person such as you’”? Was the interview “wildly offensive?” If you agree, then you must have been expecting to see an interview that was entirely different from the one that actually occured.

It’s reasonable to ask Matt Miller, Chantelle, and anybody else who found the interview “wildly offensive” to explain how Gibson could have improved his performance. I’m guessing the only facial expression Gibson could have worn to avoid the “sneer” accusation would have been a smile. And he would have had to wear contact lenses to avoid the sense that his glasses were perched condescendingly on the tip of his “thing.” Mostly, though, he would have had to give the impression that he was honored and humbled to interview Palin — only to avoid giving the impression that he wasn’t actually that honored or that humbled.

But why must Gibson accomodate the weird expectations of these McCain supporters? Is this how Palin and her ilk go through life: constantly expecting to be praised and loved and validated. (Here’s a real mind-twister: Would anybody be saying this stuff about Gibson’s performance if Palin were 80 pounds heavier? What if she were a man? I’m not sure.)

Narcissist is a label I use to describe people who expect to be worshipped and feel slighted and resentful when they don’t receive that worship. Narcissists believe they are entitled to praise and celebration, and when they’re treated like “ordinary Americans,” they feel insulted.

Not only do Palin’s supporters believe she is entitled to praise and celebration — they believe she is entitled to your vote. The message is clear: If you vote against Sarah Palin, it’s because you are a sneering elitist who hates Palin because she represents traditional American values.

This narrative is useful to the liars on the right not only because they can exploit Palin to rally their base in this election – but also because over time, this crazy story will intimidate the media into treating Republican candidates like Santa Claus and treating Democratic politicians like repo men.

It’s time to talk back to the narcissistic Americans who feel insulted that they aren’t celebrated and praised more in our culture. It’s time to tell them: If you want to be celebrated, celebrate yourself. If you want to be praised, praise yourself. We are not obligated to validate you, your choices, or your lifestyle. And we resent being referred to as “elitist snobs” for not constantly telling you how awesome you are.

The 2008 election isn’t a reality television show, and if voters treat it like one and elect a candidate to satisfy their pathetic craving for cultural validation, this country will suffer.

So I came home tonight from work after a day of quiet rage over McCain’s lies about Barack Obama and sex with kindergartners, and watched The Rachel Maddow Show (thank God for Rachel Maddow), and discovered that a “lipstick” controversy has dominated the day’s news coverage.

I wouldn’t be so angry if I didn’t care so much about this country and it’s future. That’s the price you pay for being patriotic: ugly, revolting campaign tactics give you high blood pressure, especially when the candidate launching these attacks intends to follow a course of action that will run this country into the ground.

Attention all Obama supporters who are sending anxious e-mails and text messages fretting that Obama may not be tough enough to fight the smears: YOU’RE WRONG! Please pay attention to what Obama has been saying from the beginning: This campaign is not about him. This campaign is about you! Obama is a fighter and he’s fighting hard but he can’t do it alone. It’s up to you now to decide whether or not you’re ready to fight.

Fighting means taking every (reasonable and appropriate) opportunity to say what you honestly believe. Fighting means saying it with moral conviction and with a sense of justified outrage. Fighting means letting McCain supporters know there’s a price they must pay in your eyes when they stoop to defend the indefensible behavior of a scumbag (McCain) who launches stupid, cynical, deceitful attacks and then claims to ”put country first.”  

If you’re wondering how to phrase your outrage, let Obama (the master, in my opinion) be your guide. Here’s what he said today in responding to the McCain attacks:

OBAMA: Before we begin today I want to say a few words about the latest made-up controversy by the John McCain campaign. Now what their campaign has done this morning is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad because they know that it’s catnip for the news media. Some of you may have, I’m assuming you guys heard this watching the news. I’m talking about John McCain’s economic policies. I say “this is more of the same. You can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig.” And suddenly they say, “Oh, you must be talking about the Governor of Alaska.” See, it would be funny. It would be funny except the media all decided that was the lead story yesterday. They’d much rather have the story — this is the McCain campaign — would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future. This happens every election cycle. Every four years this is what we do. We’ve got an energy crisis. We have education, we have an education system that is not working for too many of our children, and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We’ve got two wars going on. Veterans coming home not being cared for. And this is what they want to talk about. This is what they want to spend two out of the last 55 days talking about. You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It’s not the Democratic candidate. It’s not the Republican candidate. It’s you, the American people. Because then we go another year or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you. Enough! I don’t care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough!

This is the question we should be asking ourselves and everyone else: Do you love your country enough to care about whether the right-wing slimeballs “take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics”?

Because this election is about patriotism.

And here’s another question we should be asking: What happens if Obama loses? What this will prove to many liberals is that campaigns based on cynical, nasty smears and lies win, and campaigns based on messages of “hope” and “change” and talking about this country’s future lose.

If Obama loses, Democrats will learn their lesson and when the Democratic primary heats up again in 2011, Dems won’t be looking for a candidate who can inspire with his hopeful rhetoric about uniting the country and working for a more peaceful, prosperous and secure future. No — if Obama loses, Dems in 2011 will be looking for a candidate who can spew lies and smears and venom better than any Democrat they’ve ever seen before. If Obama loses, 2011 will be the year of the Democratic demagogue, the Democrat who isn’t afraid to paint the Republican party and Republicans in general as evil incarnate.

Because if Obama loses, it will prove (or seem to prove) that nastiness always triumphs over real leadership in presidential politics. This will be bad for the country.

So here’s the question: Do you love your country? Do you love your family, your friends, and the Americans you see passing you on the street on your way to work? Do you want to subject them to a more bloated deficit, a more dangerous world, more poverty, less health care, more despair, less hope, etc., etc.? And do you want to subject them to a political season in 2011 that is more about “lipstick” and “sex ed for kindergartners” than it is about our future?

Then here’s what I suggest: read Obama’s comment above and take it seriously. Because this “lipstick” madness is how we lose our country.

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.

As McCain has experienced his post-convention bounce in the polls, I have been asking myself a few questions.

Why, if George Bush is so hideously unpopular, and if we so hate the Iraq war, does anything McCain say have traction with the American public?  Why would McCain’s selecting a running mate who resembles no one more than George W. Bush–an inexperienced, “compassionate conservative,” vetted on foreign policy by hawkish neoconservatives–improve the Republican ticket’s chances of victory?  Why is Barack Obama’s huge money advantage not translating into more votes?

I ask these questions out of genuine ignorance.  I think I suffer from living in a fairly insular world where everyone more or less shares my political values.  The reasons not to vote for McCain are so obvious and transparent to me and many people I know that I literally can’t conceive of how anyone would find his brand of “maverick” politics in any way convincing.  It’s not clear how a Republican candidate can run as a “reform” candidate, when it is his own party that has been in complete control of the US government for five years, until 2006.

I tend reflexively to blame Democrats for their own failures.  The Democrats spent two years, following their 2006 Congressional victories, studiously avoiding any significant challenge to George W. Bush, on the war, on torture, on illegal wiretapping.  The Democrats did not arrest Karl Rove when–ignoring its subpoenas–he refused to testify before Congress.  The Democrats did not even make minimal or symbolic gestures toward impeaching Bush, a move Republicans took against Clinton for far less significant offenses.

And now Barack Obama and his surrogates call McCain an honorable man whose military service we must respect with whom Democrats have a few policy disagreements.  Not a bad guy, you see, just out of touch.  John McCain and his surrogates imply, meanwhile, that Obama is an unpatriotic, elitist, arugala-eating, vaguely exotically foreign, arrogant, radical, dictator-appeasing, quasi-terrorist-lover.  Sarah Palin, McCain’s surrogates say, had more experience on day one as mayor of Wasilla than Obama and Biden put together.  And it works.  The charges stick.  Obama’s numbers drop.  And Republicans surge ahead.

What is wrong with us?

By us, I mean those of us who prefer Obama to McCain.  Why do we take this abuse–why do we let ourselves get punched in the face–again and again, then hit back by saying that our opponents are out of touch, they don’t get it, etc.?  Why does MSNBC cave in under the mildest of pressure from the American right-wing establishment, pulling Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from regular coverage of the election, while someone like Britt Hume gets to keep hosting his right-wing news program on Fox News?  Where is the call for John McCain to be interviewed by Olbermann or Rachel Maddow in exactly the same way that Obama was interviewed, after months and months of the most scurrilously biased coverage, by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly?  Why isn’t the Democratic party slamming Fox News every single day, at every opportunity, using some of its money to start “Fox News Watch” or a similar website?  Olbermann is MSNBC’s top-rated host, but the network’s brand is supposedly, in some mysterious way, “damaged” by its biggest cash cow.  The same cowardice in the face of the right-wing was evident during the run-up to the Iraq war; Phil Donahue, one of the only antiwar voices on American television, not to mention MSNBC’s highest rated host, was sacked by MSNBC as the war began.  Apparently, speaking out against the war was politically incorrect.

Do we believe in our own politics?  Do we genuinely believe that this is a life or death election?  Do we not think, whatever Obama’s flaws, that his election will represent a non-trivial improvement over the last eight years, let alone over a McCain-Palin administration?  I’m just asking, because from everything I see, we act as if we don’t believe any of these things.

John McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis says in an interview with Chris Cillizza that “[t]his election is not about issues… This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

Tyler Cowen, meanwhile, writes:

There is one biographical fact about Palin’s life that the critics (Drum, DeLong, Yglesias, Klein, Sullivan and Kleiman are among the ones I read) are hardly touching upon.  I mean her decision to have a Downs child instead of an abortion.  This is the fact about her life and it will be viewed as such from now through November and perhaps beyond.

What’s wrong with these people?

The notion that the general population of the US is not interested in issues and policies, but is interested instead in the biographical storylines associated with each of our candidates for president, presumably what Davis means by a “composite view,” is deeply frightening.  More so because there are radical differences between the two candidates who are running for president, differences which matter to the lives of every American.  One of the most significant differences is the stance of each candidate on the EFCA, a law that would “change Americans’ lives more than any legislation since the New Deal brought us Social Security,” according to Mark Weisbrot.  McCain opposes the EFCA and Obama actually cosponsored it.

Though I do not always agree with Barack Obama on every position he has taken–and I advocate taking a skeptical stance toward everything he says, as we should with every politician–I give him credit for increasingly trying to focus this election on policy issues.  More and more, he has shifted from a candidate who has spoken (during the primaries) fairly abstractly (though policy details were always available on his website) to a candidate who can be, as of the convention, very specific about what he wants to accomplish.  His is, to be sure, a more centrist agenda than I would personally prefer, but no one can accuse him of being nonspecific or running on his “authenticity.”

The Republicans and more generally the Far Right, meanwhile, want to make “authenticity” and the “composite view” the deciding factor in this election.  (Do you want to have a beer with the candidate?)  They do this because, if polls are to be believed, they simply can’t win by running on the issues.  The vast majority of the American population consists of what George W. Bush called today in his speech, broadcast from Washington to the RNC, the “angry left.”  We want out of Iraq.  We want universal healthcare.  We like Social Security just the way it is.  We hate torture.

It is also fascinating that Republicans want to make this sort of authenticity the central focus of the election, but also cry foul when their candidates are attacked for character flaws and personal failings.  Governor Palin gets to run as an “authentic” “hockey mom” who lives up to her principles because she bore a child with Down Syndrome–meaning, in essence, that she is willing to use her newest child as a political bludgeon against her opponents–but also gets to complain about indecent personal attacks when (admittedly idiotic) pundits critique her “mothering” skills.

As I have stated, I think digging into Palin’s personal life is deeply immoral, but as a corollary I also think that her using her family as an example of what a wonderful candidate she is is equally, if not more, odious.

If we fall for this–again–what’s wrong with us?