Paradoxically, Andrew Sullivan’s profile of Barack Obama in the
December issue of The Atlantic manages to be
simultaneously hagiographic and not all that flattering. Sure, on
one hand, according to Sullivan, the self-appointed Mayor of Purple
America, currently moonlighting as a senator and presidential
candidate, is the lone man on the horizon prepared to save us from
a “nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time
the world needs it most.” On the other, not only is the “logic
behind the candidacy of Barack Obama…not, in the end, about
Barack Obama,” but, further, “it is only when you take several
large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama
presidency stares directly — and uncomfortably — at you.”
It’s a strange mix. In the end, Sullivan’s case for “Why Obama
Matters” — not likely a question a presidential candidate is happy
to still hear bandied about seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses —
seems to revolve around his age, his race and his inability to
generate any excitement for his policy proposals. Hence, the
following passage:
Earlier this fall, I attended an Obama speech in
Washington on Tax policy that underwhelmed on delivery; his address
was wooden, stilted, even tedious. It was only after I left the
hotel that it occurred to me that I’d just been bored on tax policy
by a national black leader. That I should have been struck by this
was born in my own racial stereotypes, of course. But it won me
over.
Some have yet to be won over. Many of this number, unfortunately
for Obama, are Democratic primary voters. Others of us who have not
taken Sullivan’s “several large steps back into the long past” are
uncomfortable, anyway. Uncomfortable with a man who feels he can
lecture us on the “politics” and “audacity” of hope, as if he’d
trademarked the term. Uncomfortable that a left-wing hyper-partisan
can simply say he is above it all and the establishment media
repeats the claim as if it were gospel, a trick it would have been
fun to watch, say, Pat Buchanan try in 1992. Primarily, though, I
am uncomfortable because so many serious people buy into this
shtick.
“He is among the first Democrats in a generation not to be
afraid or ashamed of what they actually believe,” Sullivan writes,
the esteemed journalist’s skepticism bound and gagged in the
corner. Unsurprisingly, Obama agrees with this assessment. During a
recent New York Times interview, Obama, after taking several veiled
and not-so-veiled whacks at Hillary for being less than forthright
with voters, said, “I don’t want to get in the habit of stretching
the truth during a political campaign because then, I think, you
get in the habit of stretching the truth when you’re running the
country.”
Nevertheless, the truth has been stretched and Obama is coasting
along on a reputation as a post-partisan truth-teller without much
tangible proof, basking in the positive media glow even as he
violates the standards he must hold Hillary accountable to for the
sake of own political career.
LET’S LEAVE ASIDE ANY CRITICISM of Senator Obama’s plan, as laid
out during an appearance this past Sunday on Meet the
Press, for reaching out to the evangelical community (“We’ve
got to be able to get beyond our comfort zones and just talk to
people we don’t like”), the charm of, I’m reaching out to you,
despite the fact that I don’t like you. Can I get an, ‘Amen!’?
remaining unclear. To be especially magnanimous, let’s even allow
Obama’s haughty retort when Russert pointed out the discrepancy
between his anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the big dollars he’s
accepted from lobbyists (“Well, Tim, look, I have said repeatedly
that money is the original sin in politics and I am not sinless”)
to slide.
Instead, let’s turn to the issue Obama has staked his claim to
president-worthy judgment on: His opposition to the Iraq War.
Russert pointed out that in July 2004 Obama had said of the vote to
authorize the Iraq war, “What would I have done? I don’t know,”
and, further, “There’s not much of a difference between my position
on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.”
“Now, Tim, that first quote was made in an interview with a guy
named Tim Russert on Meet the Press during the convention
when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both
of whom had voted for the war,” Obama bristled. “And so it, it
probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case
against our party’s nominees’ decisions when it came to Iraq.”
To openly admit on national television to not simply hiding but
out-and-out sacrificing one’s convictions on behalf of John Kerry
and John Edwards is no small thing. Perhaps Obama believed the end
of electing John Kerry would justify the means of adopting the
mantle of George W. Bush’s Iraq War policy for a few days in July
2004. (This seemed to be his
tack on gay rights issues during a Howard University debate
back in August as well.) Among Democrats such as excuse might be
plausible, perhaps even defensible, if they could even be bothered
to ask the question. Alas, the senator’s oscillation did not end
with the defeat of John Kerry.
As Marc Ambinder reports in, “Teacher and Apprentice,” a feature
detailing the rift between Hillary and Obama in the same issue of
The Atlantic as Sullivan’s cover story, Obama’s reticence
to embrace his own “no dumb wars” policy from 2003 continued on,
literally, for years.
“We wanted to be mindful of our place,” Robert Gibbs,
[Obama’s] spokesman, told me. Even on the issue of Iraq, which
dominated 2005, Obama, an opponent of the invasion from the
beginning, passed up the chance to speak out. “He could have been
the moral voice, the moral authority on Iraq,” one of Obama’s
closest advisors told me. “But he was just a freshman senator. It
would have been presumptuous of him to take the lead.”
So, to recap: Obama’s speech opposing the Iraq War when he was a
state senator in Illinois is to be taken as an act of moral courage
and extraordinary foresight, yet to expect him to have followed
through on his convictions during his early years in the U.S.
Senate, when he actually had the power to affect the national
debate and the direction of the war itself, would be
“presumptuous.” Obama calls the war in Iraq a “tragic” mistake at
every possible opportunity. Is showing deference to an ongoing
tragedy audaciously hopeful or cynically pragmatic? It doesn’t take
a Clinton opposition research operative to recognize Obama’s
(presumably not presumptuous) re-adoption of outspoken anti-war
rhetoric roughly corresponded to the rise of public dissatisfaction
with the war.
Worse was a tedious, meandering discussion as to what would and
would not be on the table when President Obama saves Social
Security. It’s a typical Obama campaign moment: First, he accuses
Hillary Clinton, in the abstract, of being obtuse (“You don’t
present tough choices directly to the American people for fear that
your answers might not be popular, you might make yourself a target
for Republicans in the general election”) — I’m assuming when he
says “you” here, it is not referring to either myself, Tim Russert
or, well, you — proceeds to tout himself as a
straight-talking savior (“It’s not sufficient for us to just
finesse the issue because we’re worried that, well, we might be
attacked for the various options we present”), and then, finally,
finesses the issue presumably because he’s worried he’ll be
attacked for the various options he presents. What is Obama’s plan?
It’s to “convene a meeting” during which “we” — who? — will
“discuss all of the options that are available.”
Obama hasn’t presented the “tough choices” yet. He hasn’t even
presented any concrete bold options, although he assures us he has
“strong opinions.” He just promises one day he will present tough
choices and options. And this is different from what Hillary is
saying how?
IT’S A PROBLEM THAT stretches beyond the issues. When Russert asked
Obama about his wife’s recent statement that, “If Barack doesn’t
win Iowa, it’s just a dream,” Obama laughed, and then, while
acknowledging he does have to do well, he cautions against
taking any early primary state proclamation too seriously:
“Keep in mind when Michelle goes to New Hampshire or South
Carolina, I think she says — you know, she probably says the same
thing there.”
Certainly a candidate’s path to the nomination is much easier if
they are able to win all states, but this does have a
telling-the-people-whatever-they-want-to-hear flavor to it. Maybe
we’re all equally important. Or maybe some people need to think
they’re more important for a little while to allow Obama the
opportunity to save the country. Maybe when a war is unpopular,
we’ll be against it. Maybe when it’s popular, we wouldn’t want to
be presumptuous. What other presumptions is Obama hiding from us
now?
IN THE FINAL LINES OF THE prologue to The Audacity of
Hope, Obama writes of an encounter on Capitol Hill with a
friendly reporter who mentions she read Obama’s first book and then
muses, “I wonder if you can be that interesting in the next one you
write.”
“By which she meant, I wonder if you can be honest now that you
are a U.S. Senator,” Obama explains, adding, “I wonder, too,
sometimes.”
Finally, a question the Obama campaign has actually given us a
straight, coherent answer to.
