Parabasis

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

The result of the Democratic primary should be no surprise.  The victorious candidate strictly adhered to the propaganda techniques recommended by Hitler in Mein Kampf.  The loser only dabbled in Hitler’s prescriptions, inconsistently employing the techniques that so well served her opponent. 

At the height of the primary, the Obama/Clinton contest was reduced to a battle between two otherwise completely arbitrary words – “Change” and “Ready” – bringing to mind the following nugget of Mein Kampf wisdom:

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.

Obama unveiled his slogan early, declaring in his candidacy announcement that “the ways of Washington must change” and “in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it,” and “This campaign has to be about… realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.”  He hammered this point straight through to last Tuesday’s victory, when he declared that “Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized,” and “there are many words to describe” McCain, “but change is not one of them.” 

Clinton kicked off her campaign without once using the word “Ready.”  She began with a completely different message rooted in the fact that “the conversation in Washington has been just just a little one-sided lately,” distinguishing herself by declaring “Let the conversation begin.”

“Ready” developed over the course of 2007 as Obama emerged as her principal rival.  The highlight was the summer of 2007, when Clinton dubbed Obama “irresponsible” and “naïve” and suggested he lacked rudimentary knowledge like “you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president because it has consequences across the world.” 

She pushed on well into 2008.  Even while tearing up in New Hampshire, she repeated the familiar mantra:

Some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some of us know what we are going to do on day one, and some of us haven’t thought that through enough…

Painting a moral dichotomy, she heeded Hitler’s following advice:

The function of propaganda is… not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for.  Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.

After Super Tuesday, though, the slogan began to morph, and Clinton’s message suffered from the resulting diffuseness.  She attacked Obama from various angles, tearing him down in ways that didn’t necessarily feed the “Ready” scheme, with detrimental effects predicted by Hitler when he wrote:

As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

She began to neutralize her well-crafted morally dichotomic rhetorical framework, stating proudly:

…you know, no matter what happens in this contest -- and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored… Whatever happens, we're going to be fine.

Hitler specifically cautioned against this when he wrote:

As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid.

As Hitler predicted, the results of Clinton’s following attacks were weakened.   When she exclaimed “Shame on you, Barack Obama,” the intended effect was cancelled out.

Even if Clinton had adhered to “Ready,” the strategy had a fundamental flaw.  “Ready” functioned similarly to the Central Powers’ World War I propaganda, which Hitler condemned:

… [I]t was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridiculous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound to arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results were devastating…

Similarly, Clinton struggled to explain Obama’s appeal in light of his alleged naiveté and unReadiness. 

Obama’s strategy, on the other hand, mimicked the more successful Western Powers’ WWI propaganda that Hitler praised:

…[T]he war propaganda of the English and Americans was psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments.  After this, the most terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy…

The Obama camp demonized Clinton, implicitly and explicitly painting her as a “monster” who was “stooping to anything.”  Clinton’s anti-Obama attacks seemed only to confirm the notion that “She was running a 100% negative campaign,” which she was allegedly “all too comfortable with.”  She apparently represented all about “Washington politics” that required “Change.”

Obama rode these tactics to electoral victory, just as the Western Powers rode them to military victory almost a century earlier.  Clinton, however, fell victim to nearly every trap Hitler warned about, and now stands humbled in the shadow of her opponent’s victory.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Since last week’s Iran analogy was so well-received, I thought it might also be fruitful to examine the other popular analogy regarding Iran: The Cold War.

Like the Old Cold War with the Soviet Union, the New Cold War with Iran has deep historical roots. 

The Old Cold War resulted from the historical drive of Russian expansion.  Russia’s imperialistic urge erupted instantaneously after it broke free of the Golden Horde in 1480, as it sought to dominate the power vacuum left by the Horde’s demise, and recapture the glory of 9th Century Kievan Rus.  Invasions of Lithuania and Poland commenced, followed by intervention in modern-day Estonia and Latvia, and clashes over the Ukraine with the other great power interested in European expansion: the Ottomans.  Finally in the 1940’s, with Europe in turmoil and the Ottoman Empire a distant memory, Russia was able to push as far as Berlin.  But the glory would prove ephemeral, and the thousand-year-old dream was crushed by the fall of the Soviet Empire.  Eastern European NATO membership is a spear in the side.  And just to make sure, the US pushes for Ukrainian entrance into NATO, upon which “Russia's imperial aspirations are essentially nostalgia,” to quote Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Similarly, the New Cold War has ancient origins. 

Iran is driven by a desire for regional domination that stretches back to the 6th century BCE days of Cyrus the Great.  Once Cyrus’ empire was established, Persia stretched its arm as far west as possible, until the Greeks slapped it back at the Battle of Thermopylae.  Persia retreated to Asia, where it has remained ever since, pursuing the more humble ambitions of regional power.  Whenever possible, it acts on its urge for western expansion.  It battled the Ottomans a time or two for possession of Baghdad and overall Persian Gulf dominance, but generally the Ottomans and their successor nation-states were successful in checking the Persian expansionist urge.  Thus the genesis of the New Cold War, explained by Robin Wright in the Washington Post last year:

The roots of Cold War II lie in the Bush administration's decision to remove regimes it considered enemies after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first two targets were the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- coincidentally, both foes of Iran that had served as important checks on Tehran's power. The United States has now taken on the role traditionally played by Iraq as the regional counterweight to Iran.

Cold War echoes can now be heard, in both rhetoric and strategy.

Iranian rhetoric toward Israel is evocative of Reagan’s rhetoric toward the Soviet Union.  Ahmadinejad’s statements that the Israeli government is a “stinking corpse” and that the “regime is on its way to annihilation,” and that the Israeli government must “vanish from the pages of time” (or whatever translation you prefer), seem rhetorically derivative of Reagan’s statement on the “decay of the Soviet experiment” and his proclamation “that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last -- last pages even now are being written,” and that “the march of freedom and democracy… will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.”

Also, as in the Old Cold War, actors pursue success via consolidation of power blocs.  As Robin Wright wrote:

The Bush administration is now adapting the tactics of the last Cold War to the new one. In the 1940s, the Soviet Union lowered its Iron Curtain to shore up communism in Eastern Europe and prevent penetration from the West. The former Kremlinologists now running U.S. foreign policy, such as Rice and Gates, are trying their own version, with a Green Curtain designed to cut off the bloc of Iranian-linked radicals and protect U.S. allies in the Middle East.

The American bloc is currently “weak,” “feckless,” and “divided,” as Thomas Friedman tells us, which presents a conundrum for our presidential candidates.

Democrats offer a relaxation of tensions as a solution to America’s relative weakness.  This alternative extends the Cold War scenario - though tensions will be relaxed, goals will still conflict.  Republicans offer regime change via propagation of the notion that the Iranian government is illegitimate.  This alternative solves the Counterbalancing Iran problem by advocating Iran’s eventual destruction.  Both proposals have problems, and neither presents a path for transforming Iran’s imperial ambitions to nostalgia. 

If we believe Iran’s leaders, a nuclear weapon will have no effect on its quest for regional dominance.  As Ali Larijani (now Iran’s parliament speaker) has said:

The root of regional power is not from the bomb. For example Pakistan: it didn't have nuclear weapons before, now it does. How much did its influence in the region change? Therefore, from a point of view of realities, there's no reason for us to pay the cost and go after it.

Thus voters should carefully examine the moral and Realpolitik realities lurking quietly beneath Iran policy campaign rhetoric.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Comparisons between our current situation and 1930's Europe seem valid – I’m just not sure which side is supposed to be Hitler.

There’s certainly a case that it’s Iran.  Hitler felt “sympathy for our brother nation in Austria in its trouble and distress” as the Iranians do now for the Palestinians.  Also, Saeed Jalili, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, apparently “specializes in monologue,” which brings to mind Neville Chamberlain enduring “several hours of Hitler’s ranting about the alleged mistreatment of the Sudeten Germans” in 1938 (as Henry Kissinger recounts in one of his many books).  And while Hitler claimed he wanted to move toward “radical disarmament” for Europe, Iran now claims "We should move towards a world free of nuclear weapons.”

But there is one glaring contrast.

Hitler’s rhetoric appealed to the fundamental unjustness of international law.  As Kissinger wrote, Hitler used a “pretense of rectifying injustice,” “ruthlessly exploit[ing] the democracies’ guilty conscience about the Treaty of Versailles,” and ultimately convinced the western governments “that the Versailles settlement was iniquitous.”

Hitler’s task was to undo the international order, which he accomplished successfully, systematically overturning the Treaty of Versailles, right down to the War Guilt Clause, declaring in 1937:

I solemnly withdraw the German signature from the declaration, extracted by force from a weak Government against its better judgment, that Germany was responsible for the War.

In terms of its nuclear program, Iran appeals to the justness of international law.  The NPT is an “international covenant” according to former SNSC head Ali Larijani.  And though the case can be made that Iran has itself violated the NPT, Iranian rhetoric is rooted in the sacredness of the treaty’s provisions, among them Article IV, which grants “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

This is the exact opposite of Hitler’s tactic.

And though Iran may seem like Hitler to America, America looks equally like Hitler to Iran.  Chomsky paints a vivid portrait, putting us in Iran’s shoes:

It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites -- nuclear and otherwise -- in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans).

Additionally, the veil of benign intent (a Hitlerian staple) is used by both sides.  Regarding Israel, and general Middle East policy, Iranian and American proposals are rhetorically rooted in the same principle: democracy promotion.  As Ahmadinejad said of Israel, “our path to a solution is elections.”  As Ayatollah Khamenei said of Iraq, "The first step to resolve the instability in Iraq is the withdrawal of occupiers from this country and the transfer of security responsibilities to the popular Iraqi government."  One might think Iran would like to stand alongside America “in this young century” and proclaim “liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof,” to quote Bush’s second inaugural, except that the two nations strive for entirely antithetical versions of the vision. 

Ultimately, though, this discussion should lead to a decision about whether the U.S. should engage in high level talks with Iran (i.e. should we vote for Obama or McCain).  The McCain-Bush strategy is similar to what the Nazis believed would have defeated them.  As Goebbels said in 1940:

In 1933 a French premier ought to have said (and if I had been the French premiere I would have said it): “The new Reich chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that.  This man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity.  Either he disappears or we march!”

However, Goebbels’ proposal was impossible then and is now.  The U.S. is restrained from military action by public opinion (foreign and domestic), just as the western governments were in the 1930’s.  “We would literally have no one on our side” if we attacked Iran said Flynt Leverett (who served on Bush’s National Security Council).  A glance past Iran’s western border reveals insight into whether unilateral military action, if it were possible, would be likely to succeed. 

Leverett also explained that Bush views the Iranian government as “fundamentally illegitimate” and won’t “do a deal that lets the regime off the hook, even if that deal would solve our problem with them over the nuclear issue.”  It is clear to see where this path leads.

Not talking to Iran seems more like appeasement than talking.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Last month we learned that Iran is pursuing a Lebanization strategy in Iraq.  This week we learned that America, by funding a militia that represents a democratically elected political party, is pursuing a Lebanization strategy in Lebanon.

Furthermore, in many ways, America’s current Iraq strategy resembles its 1980’s Lebanon strategy.  John McCain wrote extensively about the Reagan administration’s Lebanon intervention in one of his many books.

According to McCain, the Reagan administration “saw that Lebanon had a weak central government and army” and believed that “Until that was remedied, the country couldn’t be unified or pacified.” Hence the US employed a strategy in which “marines’ duties came to include training and equipping the Lebanese army, while the United States employed its diplomacy to strengthen the Lebanese government.”

McCain also outlined the consequences of withdrawal, which eerily resemble those we now face in Iraq:

…it would be more than an embarrassment.  It would sow doubts in the minds of our friends and enemies that America had the stomach for world leadership.  It would encourage all the usual delinquents in the Middle East tinderbox to start playing with matches.  And, of course, it would consign Lebanon to the ash heap of history.

So did McCain believe that it “would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from” the Lebanese, “and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal,” as he says now of Iraq?

Did he argue that critics of the intervention were advocating a “morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities,” as he does now of Iraq?

On the contrary, as a freshman congressman, in the first of many acts that would earn him the label ‘Maverick’, McCain stood on the House floor and opposed the military intervention:

The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave.  We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon?  The same as will happen if we stay.  I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave.  I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt.  But I firmly believe this will happen in any event…

I do not see any obtainable objectives in Lebanon.  I believe the longer we stay, the more difficult it will be to leave, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of our withdrawal.

When the US finally did withdraw, the results were far from pleasant.  McCain described them eloquently:

We left behind a disintegrating Gemayel government, a defeated Lebanese army, Syrian, Palestinian, and Israeli forces.  We also left behind a growing contingent of Iranian Revolutionary guards bent on gaining new recruits to their political-religious doctrine of terror from a seemingly endless pool of willing converts.  Lebanese factional fighting continued apace, further damaging our reputation as a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East.  In the months ahead, many Americans who bravely chose to stay in Lebanon, embassy personnel, a CIA station chief, members of the UN peacekeeping forces, academics, journalists, relief workers, and clerics, were kidnapped, and some were murdered, by men who somehow find harming innocent people valorous.  We left Lebanon to the Lebanese and anyone else crazy enough to want a piece of it.  Those responsible for the killing of our marines escaped punishment.  And to this day we are living with the ramifications of our defeat.

However, McCain recognized that victory was impossible, the consequences unavoidable.  He recognized that the Reagan policy “confused symptoms with causes” and that there “was no peace to keep” because “there could be no strong central government recognized as legitimate by all governed.”  He recognized that there were “factions within factions” including “Muslim sects” that “hated other Muslim sects” and that it was a “quagmire.”  Even now he maintains that the Reagan administration “had made a terrible mistake.”

Perhaps the early McCain would agree with Juan Cole’s perspective on the Lebanon analogy:

What if Iraq has been lebanonized, but not in the sense that Ambassador Crocker alleged, of heavy Iranian influence?... What if the US is playing the Syrians here, and the Iraqis the Lebanese?

In this analogy, the war is not ended by foreign occupation troops. If anything, the Syrian policies just keep the pot boiling.

It is ended by a conference at the resort town of Taef in Saudi Arabia among the big Lebanese politicians, who make key compromises with one another and begin practically disbanding militias.

Maybe the Iraqis need to be left on their own militarily, and maybe what they need is a big conference at Taef.

The current McCain would label such a proposal “reckless,” “irresponsible,” and “morally reprehensible.”  Even after five years of military occupation, and gains that are at best described as “fragile” and “reversible” by those in charge, McCain alleges that any scenario involving withdrawal without military victory would leave “a stain on our character as a great nation”. 

As for this “stain on our character as a great nation,” to quote the early McCain, “I firmly believe this will happen in any event.”

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

The current Democratic rhetorical platform is reminiscent of 1964.

On foreign policy, Johnson stated in 1964 that “peace comes not through strength alone, but through wisdom and patience and restraint” and that there was “no place in today's world for recklessness.” 

Flash forward to Obama stating that Iraq resulted from “a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism” and “The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics.” Or in Clinton’s words, “The command decisions were rooted in politics and ideology, heedless of sound strategy and common sense.”

Similar “intelligent restraint” versus “ideological recklessness” arguments, right?

The other two planks of Johnson’s rhetorical platform represent the different strengths of the two Democratic contenders.  Firstly, Johnson inspired Americans with a dramatic message of hope and unity that would now be called Obama-esque:

…tonight the contest is the same that we have faced at every turning point in history. It is not between liberals and conservatives, it is not between party and party, or platform and platform. It is between courage and timidity. It is between those who have vision and those who see what can be, and those who want only to maintain the status quo. It is between those who welcome the future and those who turn away from its promises.

And:

The needs of all cannot be met by a business party or a labor party, not by a war party or a peace party, not by a southern party or a northern party.  Our deeds will meet our needs only if we are served by a party which serves all our people.  We are members together of such a party, the Democratic Party of 1964.

Secondly,  Johnson’s campaign rested on a potent fear card comfortably replicated by Clinton. 

Even if by some chance a dream ticket would afford the Democrats both possibilities, Clinton and Obama both use foreign policy rhetoric rooted in reason and pragmatism, which has never been successfully used to campaign for the end of the war. 

Eisenhower used the opposite tactic in 1952, when he won the presidency by promising to end the Korean War. 

In his “I shall go to Korea” speech, he attacked the Truman administration’s restraint.  In Eisenhower’s assessment, America was at war “for the simplest of reasons: Because free leadership failed to check and to turn back Communist ambition before it savagely attacked us.”  The lesson Eisenhower drew was, “To vacillate, to appease, to placate is only to invite war, vaster war, bloodier war.” 

And he concluded with the following audacious declaration:

We are united and devoted to a just cause of the purest meaning to all humankind… victory can come only with the gift of God's help.  In this spirit, humble servants of a proud ideal, we do soberly say: This is a crusade.

Far from reason and pragmatism, his aggressive ideologically justified foreign policy rhetoric lead to a landslide victory.

Hope and reason didn’t serve Hubert Humphrey well during the tumultuous Vietnam War election of 1968:

I do not intend to appeal to fear, but rather to hope.  I do not intend to appeal to frustration, but rather to your faith.  I shall appeal to reason and to your good judgment.

And in general, Democrats struggle to woo Americans from ideology to moderation.  Michael Dukakis, Democratic loser in 1988:

…this election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence.

John Kerry, Democratic loser in 2004:

As president, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror.

It will be especially difficult against McCain, who already has a clever answer to where he falls on the reason/ideology spectrum:

…I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist.

Plus, McCain can more comfortably evoke fear:

We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world’s most terrible weapons.

And McCain is already setting stakes the same way Eisenhower did in 1952, echoing Eisenhower’s warning of a “vaster… bloodier war” by claiming that Democrats “are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date.”

It will be difficult for Democrats to use the “in your guts you know he’s nuts” tactic against McCain, since the American public is unlikely to be convinced that McCain’s election could lead to the end of modern civilization, as Johnson implied of Goldwater in 1964.

Even if the Johnsonian tactics are successful, though, as long as we’re talking about reason and common sense, after Johnson’s landslide 1964 victory, keep in mind where he was four years later…

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Hilary Clinton’s Lincoln-Douglas debate challenge to Obama gave many an opportunity to partake in an age-old American tradition: drooling at the mere mention of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  I quote Blake from Real Clear Politics:

…does anybody, when they really consider this, expect the Clinton-Obama debates to get anywhere near the the level of intellectual depth that was the hallmark of the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Lincoln and Douglas were debating slavery, but more specifically, the spread of slavery into new states, the intention of the founders with regards to slavery, and the future of the union.

In many ways, though, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were just as annoying as our current debates. 

One of the main issues of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate wasn’t slavery, but whether or not Lincoln attended a meeting in Springfield in 1854 that established the platform of the Republican party (the “Black Republican” party, as Douglas called it).  Lincoln said he wasn’t there.  Douglas implied that he was there.  Lincoln repeatedly interrupted Douglas in protest, breaking the rules of the debate, despite the pleading of the Chairman who exclaimed, “I hope no Republican will interrupt Mr. Douglas. The masses listened to Mr. Lincoln attentively, and as respectable men we ought now to hear Mr. Douglas, and without interruption.”  And yet Lincoln persisted as the spectators, deprived of the luxury of factcheck.org and politifact.com, never knew what to accept as truth.

The debate also touched on the Mexican-American War, which Lincoln opposed when he was serving in the House in the 1840s.  For this Douglas accused him of “taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.”  Lincoln replied that though he refused to “vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President… whenever they asked for any money, or land-warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.”

Sound familiar?

They played Gotcha.  Douglas Swift-Boated Lincoln, using the House Divided speech to paint him as an Abolitionist.  And most of the debates consisted of Lincoln trying to prove he was a moderate.  Or in other words, a racist.  Hence Lincoln’s defense of his racist credentials, proclaimed to thunderous applause:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

In the words of one historian:

…students of rhetoric have been more tempted than others to think of the debates as representing a high standard from which American culture has declined. Focusing merely on the manipulation of language to suit an audience makes it easy to overlook sobering historical facts: for example, that the Lincoln-Douglas debates preceded the worst political catastrophe in American history, the Civil War. The debates obviously had little utility in averting that disaster, and the doctrines expressed in them cannot be directly linked to the most worthwhile outcome of that war, the emancipation of some 3.5 million slaves. Seeking the roots of the Emancipation Proclamation in the speeches Lincoln delivered in 1858 has so foiled his defenders that they have often opted, instead, to compliment him for his rapid "growth" in statesmanship as president, years after the debates were over.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, the Clinton-Obama debates would register somewhere between “par for the course” and “comparatively enlightened.”  Perhaps our Lincoln-Douglas nostalgia, expressed through ridicule of our current national dialogue is unwarranted.  Perhaps more fastidious scrutiny is required before we can determine whether public discourse has undergone evolution, devolution, or elements of both.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

I’m pretty fascinated by the meta-debate that, to me, has overshadowed the actual debates over the course of this campaign.  Perhaps the biggest issue in the 2008 campaign is: How do we make this choice? 

The question was put to Obama last Monday by Jon Stewart.  “Do you think that the process of running for President... correlates in any way with the job of being President?”  Obama’s response:

There are a couple things that the process does do. Number one, it lets you talk and listen to the American people. And so it does give you a sense of the country… The second thing is, it is true you've got to put up with a little stuff when you're president… I think it does test how people handle stress, how they manage a big organization…

Slate agrees, but finds the process unacceptable. “[T]here's a fundamental flaw in the notion that a presidential campaign is a good gauge of a presidency,” a recent article argued.  “Campaigns test many things… But they don't answer the questions about a president—can he or she work with Congress? Deal with a political setback? Hold on to the public's trust?”

David Brooks seemingly accepts the validity of our process.  He heaped praise upon the moderators of the ABC debate, writing “I thought the questions were excellent.  The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that.”

And let’s throw Doris Kearns Goodwin into the mix.  Here’s her on Meet the Press last year:

… instead of talking, as we too often do, about things like cleavage, things like sighs and shrugs, who gets the better in a debate, we should look at the past, look at history, see what have made the great presidents great. What were their strengths? And look for the past of these people to see have they revealed these strengths and what weaknesses, and are they able to compensate for their weaknesses… I think the questions in the debate should be different. It’s ridiculous to ask who has got a six-point, point program on health, and who has a seven-point program. What matters is can they mobilize the country to support the goals that they have?

But is her vision possible?  Here’s what one economist has to say:

[Voters] might try to make a judgment on the basis of character. But that won't get them far since most of what they know about the candidates' characters is the result of the theatrics we call campaigning. Voters get their impressions through the careful efforts of image consultants and media experts who make liberal use of focus groups.

Or as Chomsky would say, “The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste.”  In Chomsky’s view, we should base our decisions on candidates’ policy proposals, as 6% of Bush voters and 13% of Kerry voters did in 2004.  But as Slate notes, that still gives us no indication of how candidates will work with Congress to enact their policies. 

The Gas Tax Holiday issue exemplifies this problem.  Many rejoiced that finally we had a significant Clinton/Obama policy difference.  But as most articles noted about McCain’s proposal, “It's likely to face strong opposition not only from Congress but the states… In the past, such proposals for gas tax holidays have not fared well as lawmakers and state and local officials prefer not to see changes in their revenue source.”

Or as one editorialist put it, “Politically, of course, it might be a good bet. Especially since it will never happen (just the logistics of getting Congress to pass the necessary legislation in time for Memorial Day strike me as more or less impossible).”

So even that is just an irrelevant academic discussion.  Is there anything that can realistically be done by anyone that will indicate to the American public who will and will not make a good president? 

What about our Founding Fathers?  Can they offer us guidance?  Well, there’s Federalist Paper #68.  Here’s what Hamilton has to say:

…the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.  A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

Oh right, the Electoral College.  Average Americans are not to be trusted to make this choice.  But how are the electors supposed to decide?  And let’s say you’re Thomas Jefferson and believe the Electoral College is “the most dangerous blot on our Constitution,” how are we supposed to decide? 

This train of thought inevitably leads me to question our form of government.  After all, earlier this week I learned that America has the largest prison population of any country in the world and that according to one scholar, the problem results from “democracy… We have a highly politicized criminal justice system.” 

Jon Stewart is right to ask of our election process “is this like Donald Trump's The Apprentice where it just has no bearing on actual business?”  Winston Churchill was right to say “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried.”  But I’ll give Hamilton the last word: “[T]he true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.”

From this I extrapolate that the only way to tell if someone will make a good president is to elect him/her president and see how he/she does.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

There was a very interesting news story this past week. The media reported that two Ivy League educated millionaires disagreed on what economically disadvantaged residents of small towns do and do not find offensive.

 

To get to the bottom of whether Obama’s April 6 statement was, as Clinton claimed, “offensive to many people in Pennsylvania and around the country,” the media jumped on the story, interviewing small town residents to garner their thoughts.  Pennsylvania’s Patriot News found mixed results.

 

Some sided with Obama:

 

"He told the truth… I wasn't offended."

 

"It didn't offend me one bit… I felt like I could relate to it."

 

Some disagreed slightly with his phrasing:

 

“I don't think Pennsylvania is bitter… I think the United States in general is frustrated."

 

"As a whole, I don't think we're bitter, but there definitely are people who are…”

 

That was essentially the full spectrum of responses. AP interviewed some Clinton supporters. Here are some of their responses:

 

"I was not offended."

 

"Not just for the good of the Democratic Party, but for the good of the country, they need to make it less contentious."

 

And an independent voter from Shenandoah was apparently “more concerned about U.S. standing in the international community” than the exchange, and said, “Obama's remarks won't affect her decision.”

 

AP did find two Clinton supporters who “felt Obama was wrong to stereotype small-town voters,” and one other who found the comment “patronizing,” but concluded that “many more seem to think it was no big deal” and most were more frustrated with “the political slapfest that has followed.” The controversy was actually a “controversy,” as reflected by polling information.

 

Perhaps the lack of small town outrage was due to the fact that, as Bill Kristol wrote, Obama’s statement expressed “a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree,” including “many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century.” Perhaps many small town voters agreed with Kristol that the statement is “certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.” 

 

But why did the media continue reporting on the “controversy”? And why did Kristol use his above statement as a launching pad to deride Obama?  And why, despite the fact that a vast majority of small town voters thought it was "no big deal," was the "controversy" one of the first issues raised at Wednesday's debate?  Is it because, as one other Pennsylvanian interviewed by the Patriot News said, “[The media] like to play 'I gotcha'," adding "I'm more interested in the issues." 

 

Possibly.

 

But there can’t really be a substantive Clinton/Obama policy debate, can there? Which is why there wasn’t.

 

As one historian said recently, the Democratic primary does not resemble the bitter ideological battle for the Republican nomination in 1952, or the Democratic one in 1968. In 2008, “The differences are not ideological in the traditional sense or even really programmatic, but they involve gender and they involve race, which in some ways are even more combustible.”

 

But being that the media spent a week reporting on a controversy that was actually a “controversy,” a certain question naturally follows, and was posed recently by someone who many people do not like: “Can the press and pundits ever be serious if the people do not grab hold of politics and make them become serious about their pleas, their plight and their revulsions?”

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Much has happened since last I wrote.  The two major parties have whittled down their pool of potential nominees, leaving Americans with a de facto binary choice of policy.

In terms of Iraq, Americans must decide whether to send more troops or withdraw all combat brigades.  Other options have been removed from the debating table entirely, or relegated to the political margins of third party candidates and independents.  Increasing regional autonomy, as advocated by Biden on the left and Brownback on the right, has been eliminated from the realm of explicit discussion.  Removing all US troops and replacing them with UN troops, as advocated by Richardson and Kucinich, has been taken up by Nader. 

Oddly, all these options, as well as practically the entire organized political spectrum, are united behind an identical premise.  They all presume the necessity of a stable Iraq, as well as a US obligation, strategic and moral, to lead the effort.  Even the third party candidates and independents fully accept this, from Nader to the Libertarians, right down to John Taylor Bowles of the National Socialist Party, who believes we should “pull all troops out of Iraq and help Iraq rebuild its infrastructure.” 

The only party that may reject this premise is the Constitution Party, which believes Congress should “refuse to fund unconstitutional, undeclared wars” and shun the “bi-partisan interventionist policy of both Democrat and Republican administrations.”  Their official Iraq policy is unclear to me, and I guess it will be clarified after their convention in a couple weeks.  If they decide to reject Iraq assistance altogether, though, the party only represents a few hundred thousand people, about .1% of our population.

In this respect Americans are united.

Unfortunately, they are united by an unattainable goal, and viciously divided over which failed tactic to pursue.  Last year’s RAND study concludes that one strategic option could best lead to success.  This option hasn’t been seriously considered by any candidate throughout the entire presidential campaign, and is called Employ Overwhelming Force.  This option calls for roughly three times more troops (around 350,000 to 500,000 total). Though McCain advocates sending more troops, the RAND study outlines why he will be unable to escalate to an effective level.  The already strained US military, the reluctance of other countries to send more troops, the slowness of Iraqi troop training, and the lack of supportive US public opinion leads RAND to conclude that getting necessary forces is “an insurmountable challenge.”  These are also most likely the reasons why escalation is a “pretty remote thought” in the mind of General Petraeus, as we learned about earlier this week.

The RAND study recommends neither the Democrats’ nor the Republicans’ proposed strategy.  Of the McCain strategy, RAND concludes, “At increased levels below the ratios needed to forcibly pacify the country, it is unlikely that the United States and its allies would be able to quell violence; they may simply draw more of it on themselves.”

The report doesn’t even entertain the Obama/Clinton strategy.  It states that if withdrawal is employed, “The United States should not keep troops in any part of Iraq either to maintain control over oil fields, pipelines, and export terminals or to intervene in Iraq’s future affairs,”  which more resembles the Richardson/Kucinich/Nader plan.

So Democrats can easily criticize the Republican proposal, and vice versa, since both are deeply flawed and will most likely not lead to the desired result.  The situation naturally lends itself to candidates elevating their rhetoric and framing the choice in moral terms.  If both sides’ proposals will lead to mass carnage without achieving the desired goal, then both sides can be convincingly painted as morally bankrupt.

So where does this leave the American voter?  On what basis are we supposed to make our decision?  I, like most people, made my decision a long time ago.  However, like most people, at least this is what I suspect, I’m so swept up in a perplexing societal system that I don’t completely understand how I arrived at my choice, or whether the premises that lead me there are legitimate.

The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

I’ll be at the Sundance Theater Lab developing a play of mine this summer, so The Weekly 2008 will be on hiatus.  A fitting time for abeyance, it seems, given the talk of September permeating the media.  Before my departure, though, let’s examine how a September policy shift may necessitate tactical changes in campaign strategies.

Currently, Democrats can be roughly classified into three broad Iraq policy categories.  One: redeploy most US troops, leaving some behind to train Iraqi soldiers and protect US interests (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Dodd).  Two: withdraw all US troops, replace with UN force (Richardson, Kucinich, Gravel).  Three: urge the Iraqi government to increase regional autonomy (Biden). 

The Republicans can be divided similarly.  One: general support for the surge, advocacy for a military solution (Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Gilmore, Huckabee).  Two: US troops should leave soon given certain conditions (Tancredo, Ron Paul, Hunter, Tommy Thompson).  Three: urge the Iraqi government to increase regional autonomy (Brownback).

This somewhat broad spectrum, when distilled to the frontrunner battle (Clinton/Obama/Edwards vs. Giuliani/Romney/McCain) resembles the elections of 1812, 1864, 1900, and 1952 – with one party urging a continuance of military engagement and the other advocating for the war’s end.  When September’s funding bill comes around, though, if the Democrats can garner the 9 Senate votes and 28 House votes they lacked in April, the campaign will become more complex.  With the end of substantial US involvement likely, trends will most likely resemble the chaotic Vietnam elections of 1968 and 1972 - both sides will have to present themselves as better able to secure the most effective peace.

The result could be detrimental for Democrats.  With some form of their plan enacted, Democrats would shift to the defensive, forced to illustrate progress and optimism during what will undoubtedly be a violent and unpleasant withdrawal.  Republican frontrunners, all with solid Terrorist Fighter myth personas, would be in a good position to project strength and faith in America’s supremacy in the face of withdrawal.  Democrats are favored more by the predictable current situation, in which they can campaign against Bush, effectively capitalizing on his unpopularity.

Some compelling illuminations come from the unconsidered political margins, being that they operate in relative independence from such concerns of salesmanship.  Green Party candidate Alan Augustson, for example, believes that the US should withdraw completely from Iraq, at which point, “If the U.N. wishes to phase in, to ensure no massive outbreak of civil war, great. If not, tough.”  Libertarian candidate Daniel Imperato believes the US should be legally entitled to a share of Iraq’s oil wealth.  And this conservative editorial states the belief that Bush should assume the authority to fire and appoint Iraq’s elected political leaders until he finds people that can create a cohesive country.

The ways in which these views fail to fit in to acceptable rhetorical structures illustrates our restrictive political realities.  The views of Auguston and Imperato, for example, don’t congrue with the notion that concern for the Iraqi people rests at the heart of our policy formulation.  The conservative editorial can be dismissed due to democracy promotion’s prominence in current rhetoric.  All the Bush administration’s justifications for invasion have been discounted, including that of democracy promotion, but paradoxically, none of them can be rhetorically abandoned.  All mainstream candidates must present themselves as deterrers of nuclear proliferation, strong fighters of terrorists, supporters of democracy promotion, but more importantly, must propagate the fundamentally flawed assumption of the initial Iraq policy – that Iraq’s interests could be in congruence with those of America.

It needn’t be an actual quagmire, only a rhetorical one, as we can cast off the flawed assumption, freeing ourselves to thoroughly examine the conflict in unrestrictive ways.  Perhaps we need a Murtha-like declaration that the balancing of Iraqi and American interests is impossible and should be unequivocally abandoned.  Such a shift, though, is unlikely, given its complete lack of historical precedence.  Consequently, all mainstream candidates are packaging their contrary policies in the same flawed assumption – a tactic that will most likely not change in September, and continue through to next November.

In Utah this summer, though, I’ll be immersed in issues more brutal and grotesque in nature - the pre-Westphalian nightmare of 15th Century Western Europe.  By comparison, current events seem G-rated – illustrating something nearly invisible – mankind’s long, slow trajectory toward civility.  It will be interesting to see how September’s decision fits into the gradual upward curve.