Where’s the change?
“Where’s the beef?” was not only a famous ad slogan of the early 80’s, it figured in the Democratic campaign for President in 1984:
[Gary] Hart had moved his candidacy from dark horse to the lead over [Walter] Mondale based on his repeated use of the phrase “new ideas”. When Hart once again used the slogan in the debate, Mondale leaned forward and said, “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?'” The line got a great response from the audience.
Some people are wondering what will happen if Obama gets elected and fails to deliver the sun, moon, and stars, as expected. Will his followers feel betrayed and ask some modern-day equivalent of “where’s the beef?” Will they turn on him if he fails to somehow change the world?
I have decided the answer is “no.” And that is because, in the eyes of his supporters, he will already have delivered change, merely by the act of becoming President. His election is itself the change they seek. It would proves to them that this nation has become truly multicultural and has managed to transcend its history of racism, a task that’s been going on almost since the nation began. In Obama’s candidacy, race has a strange double role: he is a viable candidate both in spite of and because of his race.
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There is plenty of beef just for the reading on the Obama website.
For those interested in historical accuracy, read on:
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Denver Post Opinion
Where’s the beef?
By Dan Haley
Article Last Updated: 01/05/2008 07:18:54 PM MST
Shuffling through some old files in the office last week, I stumbled upon a yellowed clipping from The Futurist that someone from The Past had tucked away in a manila folder.
The piece was titled “The Future of the Democratic Party,” and was dated December 1981. Democrats had just weathered the Reagan Revolution. Not only was a Republican elected president a year earlier, but Democrats lost their generation-long grip on the Senate.
They were searching for answers.
“Democrats need . . . to regain their own positive political vision,” wrote then-Sen. Gary Hart, who was settling in to his second Senate term and scratching out the first of two presidential bids.
“Clearly, we can’t do this by focusing first on the Republicans and then designing our own agenda in reaction to them. The party’s future lies in the creation and articulation of a positive – not reactive – agenda.”
Sounds like good advice for today’s Democrats and Republicans.
The Hart piece was a fascinating read, given that we’re now officially mired in high political season, where too often glitzy campaign ads, celebrity stumpers and soaring rhetoric substitute for substance and new ideas.
His piece was incredibly prescient, predicting exactly the issues we’re faced with today.
The essay dropped, literally, onto my lap on the eve of the Iowa caucus. Ironic, since it was in Iowa 24 years ago that this unknown senator gained a national foothold by finishing a surprising second to front-runner Walter Mondale.
He did it by pitching new ideas that he thought would drive the country forward – an ingredient too often missing from today’s Iowa debates.
With more than four days between Iowa and New Hampshire back then, Hart was able to use that momentum to upset the veep in N.H., shaking up the race for good. Mondale, though, somehow got away with criticizing Hart’s ideas as empty, vague rhetoric. “Where’s the beef?” Mondale deadpanned, proving, again, that easy slogans can win over substance.
The beef was there, had anyone looked. Hart outlined three issues in his essay that the United States would face in the 1980s: national defense, energy and economic revitalization.
While he whiffed on defense, considering how the Cold War would end – “We must never cease reminding Americans that an unrestrained nuclear arms race makes us weaker, not stronger” – his words on energy and the economy were striking.
He called energy independence a national security issue: “We cannot regain a clear vision of America’s role in the world until we free ourselves from dependence on oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region,” he wrote. “Until then, we risk being drawn into a vain, futile war for oil.”
He backed an aggressive conservation program, and investment in renewable energy sources.
He also spotted the rapid growth of the country’s high-tech sector: “We have concerned ourselves with shoring up aging industries . . . Our tax policy rewards investment in physical equipment, yet offers no similar incentive for investment in the human capital that drives our ‘information economy.’ ”
Reading it begged the question: Is there a candidate out there today with such a clear vision of the future? And could he or she even articulate such a vision in our world of sound bites and slogans?
Hart couldn’t do it 1984, but at least the more drawn-out process then allowed him to campaign all the way to the convention floor, where he would seal his front-runner status for a later bid.
Today’s front-loaded caucus and primary system seems only to benefit the candidate with the money and organization, not the big ideas.
Where’s the beef?
We may no longer have the time, or patience, to find out.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
His followers will simply blame the Republicans if Obama fails When it is so easy for Palestinians to blame Israel, why should Democrats adopt such a winning strategy for power?
That and electing a dem will be change to the same people.
Then again, you can poke holes in change claim with moderates and independents the same ways Mondale did with ‘ideas’. Some of Obama’s ideas on change sound odd to non leftist ears. Just list them off and say ‘this isn’t the change I think most of the people want’…
Obama is definitely going to bring change, all sorts of jingling change which are the sad remains of my paycheck after he is through collecting.
Where is the pork!
Has he tried looking under the sofa cushions for change?
Obama’s popularity is much like that of John Kennedy. Kennedy did not deliver much while he was President. In fact, he was just an average President. That is not the way he was viewed by all those who idolized him. Just seeing him in the Whitehouse made his admirers feel better.
I have a brother who still believes the world would be a much better palce if Kennedy had lived. Siiighhh!
Obama might be heading for a train wreck much bigger than “where’s the beef?”, though it admittedly hinges on how much the political media can temper their attack dog instincts.
Once he finishes off Mrs. Clinton (say, this time tomorrow), he’ll start furiously tacking right, charmingly distancing himself from all those primary leftie sentiments. I expect this will work for awhile as McCain will be loathe to look like too much of a meanie (read: racist) — basically the same timidity that sank Clinton.
So at least up to the convention will the MSM give Obama a pass? Very likely, but as they report on his rapid wheeling to the center I expect there will have to be a few whoppers even the most ardent Obama-worshipping reporter can’t swallow. There just isn’t enough there with this guy; constantly chanting “hope” for eight months won’t do it.
I have a brother who still believes the world would be a much better palce if Kennedy had lived. Siiighhh!
I certainly believe that had Kennedy lived, Vietnam might have turned out differently. Certainly it might have been better than Johnson’s incompetence.
The key things to use in judging Kennedy would have to be the Bay of Pigs and why he made the choices that he did. Also the Cuban Missile Crisis as well. Those are the only two, that I know of, that Kennedy presided over that could be used to judge Kennedy’s worth and character.
I rememebr an author was on the Dennis Prager show , his book was about how the Left became deranged as a result of the JFK assainination. How they fell into a blame-America mentalitiy and prone to believe in conspiracies , as well as, denying their own responsiblity for things.. or those allied with them.
For example, the Left’s refusal to accept that a COMMUINIST killed JFK , and instead they protray him as a victim of the American right-wing.
I forgot the name of the book.
Here’s something timely about Gary Hart…
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0CB93526-B9E9-42CC-B5D1-E544E21F48AA
British Intelligence is Smarter than Ours
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Anyone who doubts that Iran is determined to develop deliverable nuclear weapons should not be in position of decision making or influence. The evidence is as clear as can be, despite the “fog of peace” artificially constructed by the recent National Intelligence Estimate issued by our government’s collective intelligence agencies. It may be true, as the estimate concludes, that in 2003 the Iranian shifted from a single track approach to a duel track approach–from taking direct steps toward building the bomb to taking indirect steps that have both civilian and military applications. But it does not follow that either the goal of the program, or even its schedule, has changed significantly.
As I demonstrated in a blog positing on Huffington post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/stupid-intelligence_b_75663.html), nothing has really changed with regard to the Iranian nuclear threat since 2003 except that Iran is closer today than it was then to developing a nuclear bomb.
Yet our intelligence community seems to have fallen for Iran’s version of two-card monte. Either that, or they are deliberately trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public in order to discourage what they believed was a drum-beat for a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
One prominent public figure who seems entirely willing to pull the wool over his own eyes, and those of his readers, is former senator and former presidential hopeful Gary Hart.
Hart defends the National Intelligence Estimate and castigates me for questioning its Poliana-ish conclusion. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/the-nie-iran-report-and-a_b_75894.html) He compares those who are concerned about Iran with old-time cold warriors who are trying to fight “the Cold War all over again.” He went so far as to call my concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions “not only hysterical but almost catatonic” (He must mean “paranoid” since catatonics manifest their illness by immobility and inaction.)
Well, now my concerns about Iran have been echoed by the British Parliaments’ Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Chief United Nations nuclear inspector.
Here is how the British Committee’s chairman put it, following a visit to Iran and based on the extensive evidence received by the group:
“There is a strong possibility that Iran could establish a “breakout” nuclear weapons capability by 2015.” A “breakout capability” is the ability to manufacture a nuclear device within a short period of time by virtue of its nonmilitary nuclear technical capabilities and assets.”
Precisely what I, and other critics of the National Intelligence Estimate have been saying! Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, seems to agree. Last Friday he boasted that Iran “will have the final victory in the nuclear arena.” This doesn’t sound he’s talking about a peaceful nuclear alternative energy source in his oil-soaked nation.
Last week the chief United Nations nuclear inspection provided new evidence, including video from Iran’s own military laboratories, showing work “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon.” The Iranian representative shouted out that the new evidence consisted of “baseless fabrications.” No one believed him.
No one except Gary Hart, who has a clear conflict of interest when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program. For years now, Hart has been a mouthpiece for the former Soviet Union, especially in the area of alternative energy. He is a founder of the United States-Russia investment fund. It is Russia which exports much of the material necessary for Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran were forced to end its nuclear program, Russia would suffer and so would Gary Hart.
Despite this obvious conflict of interest, which Hart failed to disclose, he has the temerity to accuse others of harboring hidden agendas. This is what he wrote:
“The real question is this: What is Professor Dershowitz’s agenda here? Many bloggers automatically assumed is has to do with Israel. But Professor Dershowitz does not say so and, having known and respected him for many years, I presume if he is angry because the intelligence report undermines his broader purpose, he would have the courage to simply say so.
Until he does, one must shake one’s head in sadness at a fine mind longing for the Cold War, or for a new villain to justify a wrong-headed empirial militancy in the Middle East, or who knows what.
Perhaps now is the time for everyone to put their cards on the table.”
Well my cards are on the table. Yes, I worry that an Iran with nuclear weapons, that it has already threatened to use against Israel, would become the first nation in the mid-East to use its nuclear arsenal, not only against Israel but against American interests. I worry that if Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other mid-East nations will feel it necessary to go nuclear as well. I worry that Iran may hand off nuclear material to its surrogates, including Hezbollah. I worry that the deeply flawed and misleading National Intelligence Agency will make a preemptive attack against Iran more, not less likely, because it will weaken the case for sanctions, as it already has, and embolden Iran to move even more quickly toward developing nuclear weapons. I strongly prefer diplomacy and sanctions to a preemptive military strike. That too is why I am so critical of the highly politicized and misleading National Intelligence Estimate. I am certainly not a cold warrior, that too is why I don’t want to see a nuclear Iran. A cold war with a nuclear Iran would be even more dangerous than the one we had with the Soviet Union, because of Iran’s suicidal and apocalyptic leadership.
So Gary Hart, my cards are on the table. Now let’s see yours!
Tomas Says:
“March 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
There is plenty of beef just for the reading on the Obama website.
For those interested in historical accuracy, read on:”
A: Yes there is more detail on Obama’s website. But are the ideas ‘change’ or just the
same old leftist tropes?
B: historically accurate about what? He had the hot topics pegged, but the article doesn’t list the ‘beef’ or solutions. Were they any good? Re: What was, say, the idea about how to have energy independence? Ethanol? Considering we still don’t have the technology today, I wonder what viable plan he had back then…
Agree with commentor Ymarsakar.
It will NEVER be Obama’s fault that he couldn’t deliever on his Marxist vision. It will be the evil right wing fascists. And somehow, it will be Bush’s fault as well.