It’s been forty years since this photo shocked Americans:
Do you know the story behind the photo? I tell it in this article at PJ. Some of what you read may surprise you.
[NOTE: I’ve written about the photo before, in a different context. See this and this.]
…have been digging pretty deep lately, and this sort of thing seems to be all they can come up with.
I can’t quite imagine that it will turn the tide. In fact, it could make Romney seem a bit less like a stuffed shirt.
Because he’s colorblind.
…should Obama be more like LBJ?
Perhaps he should have asked, “could Obama be more like LBJ?” But either way the answer is (drum roll please): NO, because the question is absurd.
This is like asking should (or could) a cat be more like a dog. Or water more like fire. Or a planet more like an atom. Or whatever strange combination of dissimilar things one could think of. Because like both LBJ and Obama or hate them both, or like just one and hate the other (doesn’t matter which, for the purposes of this discussion), or think it would be a good thing if Obama resembled LBJ or think it really doesn’t matter much (the latter seems to be Drum’s take), it’s hard to think of two more dissimilar people in temperament, skill set, or experience than Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barack Obama.
Obama couldn’t be like LBJ if he read every book ever written on him, interviewed all the living people who’d ever encountered him, took classes in how to resemble him, and listened to all the tapes in the LBJ library with that purpose in mind.
LBJ was probably the nation’s foremost authority on how Congress operates. Obama is not. LBJ knew exactly how to work people. Obama does not. LBJ knew how to wield power most effectively on the personal level and to strategize. Obama does not. LBJ had a ribald, over-the-top sense of humor and an inexhaustible fund of earthy stories (and earthy behavior, too). Obama does not. LBJ was hot; Obama cool. And on and on and on.
Similarities? They both were tall, they both were president, they both were Democrats, they both were married to one person (although LBJ was famously unfaithful, in his heart it was Ladybird all the way), and they both had two daughters.
Walter Russell Mead reflects on the same topic I talked about yesterday, when I discussed a piece by John Nichols in The Nation and spoke of the left’s reaction to its drubbing in Wisconsin. Mead zeros in on one in the WaPo by Katrina vanden Heuvel, who’s (not coincidentally) the editor and publisher of The Nation.
The Nation is a perfect example of the thinking of the movement that likes to call itself “progressive”—which is the large segment of the left that doesn’t overtly call itself something scary like “socialist” or “communist” but is still quite far out there. The Nation has a long and proud—and paradoxical—history. Founded right after the Civil War by abolitionists, it was for the rest of the 19th century a vehicle for classical liberal thought, which is closer to what we now call conservatism. But in 1900 a new owner (son of the previous one) took a new editorial direction, in fact a 180 turn:
[New owner] Oswald Villard welcomed the New Deal and supported the nationalization of industries ”“ thus reversing the meaning of “liberalism” as the founders of “The Nation” would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard’s takeover prompted the FBI to monitor the magazine for roughly 50 years. The FBI had a file on Villard from 1915. Villard sold the magazine in 1935. It became a nonprofit in 1943.
Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard’s time to the 1970s was looked at for “subversive” activities and ties.
So it’s no surprise that, as Mead points out, current editor vander Heuvel is taking the long view, and asking her simpatico readers to do likewise. She seems to be aware that the blow landed in Wisconsin was a powerful one, although she voices the oft-repeated remedy—more money (a funny thing for a leftist to empathize, but hey, that filthy lucre’s being used in a good cause, right?).
I have the urge to quote almost all of Mead’s article. Although it’s pretty much what I was writing yesterday, Mead’s an excellent and insightful writer, so he probably says it better than I did (and here I go, quoting the bulk of it):
The left’s analysis of its loss in Wisconsin resorts to some classic tropes: it is despair masked as defiance in order to avoid deep introspection. The rhetoric of resistance is employed to describe the substance of collapse in an effort to insulate conventional pieties and beloved assumptions from withering critiques…
Contemplating the imminent defeat in Wisconsin, [Nation editor vander Heuvel] titled her article “Wisconsin gives progressives something to build on.” She is clear about the nature of the threat:
By attacking labor unions, flooding Wisconsin with outside cash and trying to cleanse the electorate of people who don’t look, earn or think like him, Walker has taken aim at more than a single campaign cycle or a series of policies; his real targets are the pillars of American progressivism itself.
But contemplating the likelihood of defeat, she calls on her allies to take the long view. The very long view. They must contemplate history with the eyes of faith.
Elections are over in a matter of hours, but movements are made of weeks, months and years. The Declaration of Sentiments was issued at Seneca Falls in 1848, yet women did not gain the right to vote until seven decades later. The Civil War ended with a Union victory in 1865, yet the Voting Rights Act was not passed until a century later. Auto workers held the historic Flint sit-down strike in 1936-37, yet the fight for a fair, unionized workforce persists 75 years later.
Victory is inevitable, though perhaps not for another two generations. Build the movement; fight the fight. The message at once consoles the faithful and acknowledges the scale of a historic defeat. When she tries to sound positive about what the long, expensive, draining, bitter, losing fight in Wisconsin accomplished, she waxes eloquent but not, I think, convincing:
Just as the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt motivated people around the world, including in Wisconsin, the occupation of the Madison statehouse helped inspire the occupation of Wall Street a few months later.
This seems at once grandiose and hollow…And the fight in Wisconsin gives us an example, she enthuses:
”¦in the last 15 months, Wisconsin’s progressives have shown us that the battle against bankrolled austerity can be bravely waged by an army of dedicated people committed to protecting working families. They’ve reminded us that good organizing is our only chance to withstand the blitzkrieg of corporate funded advertising ”” and better yet, leave a lasting mark. Their movement, with thousands of new Wisconsin activists mobilized, energized and educated, can be permanent ”” and it can keep growing.
Yes, they can do all that, and they can lose. Big time. They can fail to get their favorite candidate nominated by the Democratic voters, they can fail to move public opinion on the core question of the Walker labor reforms, and they can fail to move the state or the country towards their point of view.
Vanden Heuvel’s analysis of why the left lost in Wisconsin is simple, and if it is true, the left looks doomed. The answer is money, she says, reflecting a very widespread line of analysis. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the right is able to outspend the left ten to one, ensuring that the left can never win.
If the argument is correct, then this really is a “Seneca Falls” movement ”” and the left is doomed to generations of marginalization or, as The Nation would more optimistically put it, “struggle.” If the right can “flood the zone” with dough, the left will never be able to win enough presidential and senatorial contests to reverse the Supreme Court’s trajectory. If the American people are really so stupid and clueless that they docilely follow the big bucks and the deceptive campaign ads of their clever class enemies on the right, then the right is pretty much set for a long spell of power.
The reality is more complicated. For one thing, the left had more money on its side in Wisconsin than many reports acknowledge; $20 million from labor groups, according to this estimate. More importantly, money does matter in politics, but money alone is rarely enough, especially on an issue which voters care deeply about. When the left ”” or the right ”” can summon popular passion and energy to its side, it can not only put up a noble fight. It can win. This actually happens quite a lot in American politics: poorly funded campaigns with charismatic candidates tap into some deep reservoir of popular sentiment and they deal out bitter defeats to the pallid, colorless but well-moneyed Establishment candidates. This has been happening relatively frequently in Republican politics of late. There have been times in American history when it happened also on the left. Milwaukee, Wisconsin has had Socialist mayors.
The left’s problem in Wisconsin wasn’t that the right had too much money. The left’s problem is that the left’s agenda didn’t have enough support from the public. Poll after poll after poll showed that the public didn’t share the left’s estimation of the Walker reforms. Many thought they were a pretty good idea; many others didn’t much like the reforms but didn’t think they were bad enough or important enough to justify a year of turmoil and a recall election.
The left lost this election because it failed to persuade the people that its analysis was correct. The people weren’t a herd of sheep dazzled by big money campaign ads on TV; the Wisconsin electorate chewed over the issues at leisure, debated them extensively, considered both points of view ”” and then handed the left a humiliating, stinging and strategic defeat.
But although I admire Mead tremendously, and obviously agree with a lot of what he says here—since I’d written much the same yesterday, before I’d even read it—I have a caveat. I think he is being too sanguine.
I could sum up my attitude in one sentence: Do not underestimate the seductive power of the left. Not only does the left take the long view, but in the long term it may win (at least for a while, and perhaps even longer) if the right is not eternally vigilant.
There are many ways this could happen. One is demographics. Another is the decline of education; if the left continues to hold the reins of academia they can shape minds, and then those minds go on to shape other minds. Same for media. Another is the slippery slide down the increasing entitlement slope, and the growth of that segment of the population that depends on handouts. Yes, all that can’t go on forever (as Europe and the Soviet Union have both proven, in different ways). But it can still go on for quite some time.
So although I think some joy is definitely in order after Wisconsin, the danger is in the right’s letting down its guard. Rest assured that the left never will.
…is gone:
[Bradbury] attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college–instead, he read and wrote voraciously. “When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week,” he said in an interview with The Paris Review. “I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.”
His book Fahrenheit 451 makes even more sense knowing that, doesn’t it?
RIP, Ray Brandbury.
Last night I was listening to some talking heads nattering on about the results of the Wisconsin recall. What it means for Obama, what it means for public sector unions, what it means for Democrats, what it means for Romney. I noticed that the heads on the left were making so many excuses that I began to wonder whether they actually believed any of them.
I’ve read quite a few articles by liberal pundits about yesterdays results, too, and I have yet to find one that really deals with the actual issues that were at stake, the ones that the voters may have thought they were considering. Here’s an article by John Nichols that nicely encapsulates the gist of the arguments offered by the left to explain what happened in Wisconsin, and apparently it wasn’t about issues. Walker won because he spent eight times more money than the challenger. He won because the Democrats weren’t as good at “messaging.” And this just might be my favorite, because it seems to make no sense at all:
Yet, against overwhelming odds, Wisconsin’s recall movement fought its way to a dead heat, losing only narrowly in its effort to remove a “right-wing rock star” whose reelection became the top priority of the Republican party, the conservative movement and the 1% billionaires who made Walker’s reelection a national priority.
So now a 7-point spread is known as a “dead heat”? What twisted logic can lead to a conclusion like that? Is that something like 1984‘s O’Brien’s two plus two equals five if the party says it does?
So, do the talking heads and pundits such as Nichols, author of the Nation piece, actually believe what they’re writing? My answer would be “yes and no, simultaneously,” if that makes any sense (and see this for an in-depth discussion of how that can work). It serves them to believe it, and even if they are also aware on some level that there might be deeper problems that explain their loss, it’s too threatening to acknowledge that—to the public, and perhaps even to themselves. And of course they’re also acting as cheerleaders for the left, rallying the troops.
If you think (or want to think—which isn’t exactly the same but can have a similar effect) that elections can be bought by throwing enough money into them even if the policies you advocate don’t resonate with the majority of voters, then all you need to do is raise more money rather than change your message. If you think elections can be won by framing the pitch better, even if the underlying principles you’re advocating go against what the majority of people believe is right, then all you need do is hire better media consultants to manipulate them. And if you think a 7-point spread is close, neither you nor the rank and file need despair.
The alternatives may be too difficult to contemplate. They might require having respect for the fact that most people can actually think. They might require accepting the fact that the majority of people, even in a liberal state like Wisconsin, aren’t on the same page as you ideologically. Nor are they mere putty in your hands, who would come over to your side if only you had enough money and skill to say it properly.
Nichols takes it as a given that the electorate of Wisconsin was manipulated by the right into thinking, as Nichols says, that “up was down, right was left,” and to believe the right’s “fantasy and fabrication.” If you see your opponents as having no valid substantive message, that their entire campaign has been built on convincing the public of a fantasy, then all you have to do is create and sell a better fantasy.
Strategy and money are all very well and good in politics. They are necessary. They are influential. But they are not everything. Perhaps they are not even all that important above a certain basic threshold that is necessary to get the message out to the public. But if the message doesn’t resonate with people, they’re not going to buy it no matter how much you advertise.
[NOTE: Even Nichols’ assertion that Walker outspent Barrett 8-1 may be a self-deluding (or public-deluding? or both?) fabrication. As this commenter points out:
They are comparing Walker and all the independent PAC money on his side to the money that Barrett had left for his campaign after a tough primary. They’re excluding all the dough that the unions spent collecting recall signatures with their paid, out-of-state operatives. The union money that paid for GOTV efforts and advertising also isn’t counted. Nor are the expenditures from the progressive PACs. If you include all this money spent on the left, it goes a long way towards bringing this back to parity.
If that’s true, and the money amount spent by each party wasn’t all that different, then what good does it do you to fool yourself into thinking that the financial disparity was the cause of your defeat? Maybe you’re more interested in saving face than in actually winning next time.
The whole thing reminds me very much of the Scott Brown victory (what is it about these Scotts?), The Democratic Party denied and made excuses for that one, too. Look where that got them—the election of 2010.
None of this is to say that propaganda and lies don’t sometimes work. They certainly do. But hopefully, in this day and age, they don’t work as well or as effectively or as often as they used to. “You can fool some of the people…”—well, you get the idea.]
…is not like the others:
The above photo was taken at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration on June 3. On the left, the Queen; in the middle, Camilla (aka the Duchess of Cornwall—it’s been a long and winding road for her to reach this point, hasn’t it?); and on the right, Prince William’s wife Kate (aka the Duchess of Cambridge).
I don’t like to count too many chickens, but Fox is projecting Walker as the winner.
Pretty nifty.
Very good news. And I want it to be a blowout.
President Obama commits the gaffe of calling Romney by Mitt’s father’s name, George:
During a speech at the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square, the president mixed up his Republican opponent with former Michigan Governor George Romney while contrasting their economic policies.
“We are not going back to a set of policies that say you’re on your own and that’s essentially the theory of the other side. You know, George Romney,” Mr Obama said.
Gaffe, or canny political move? After all, one of the consistent Obama campaign ploys has been to paint Mitt Romney as Retro-Man, a Don Draper-ish troglodyte caught in the outdated 60s. What better way to do this than to call him by the name of his father, a famous 60s politician?
I bring you Draper, Mitt, and George (in that order, in case you can’t tell the difference):
What other associations might Obama want to conjure up in the mind of the listener by calling Mitt “George”? Well, there’s an obvious one:
I’m being somewhat tongue-in-cheek in this post, but not entirely. Slips of the tongue are sometimes much more complex than they appear.
And while I was doing the photo research here, I noticed how much Mitt resembles his father posturally. They share an unusual way of dipping their heads down when in earnest thought or observation, and a certain way of holding their shoulders. A fine example of the phenomenon is in this photo of the youngish Mitt with his dad (See, son—someday all this will be yours!). They actually are looking down here, so it seems more natural, but they both do it very commonly under other circumstances, too:
ADDENDUM: Here’s a recording of the slip. Now that I actually have watched it, I am leaning more towards the idea that it was deliberate.
In addition, it doesn’t really make sense as a slip of the tongue. It would make sense if Obama was of an age to remember George Romney as a politician. But he’s not. He was just a little child in George Romney’s heyday, and lived nowhere near Michigan. If it is a slip, it’s a mighty odd one.
Unless the voters in Wisconsin decide to surprise us all [today], the trouble in the Badger State means trouble ahead for public sector unions across the country. A Scott Walker victory would reshape not just Republican politics but Democratic politics as well; leaders like Andrew Cuomo in New York and Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago will be paying attention. If Walker wins handily, more Democrats will see the writing on the wall: Support for public sector unions simply isn’t the political winner it once was. This could presage a larger post-blue shift in the Democratic party for decades to come.
One caveat: if Walker wins, some portion of the vote—and I’m not sure how large or how small that portion would be—might also represent voters’ hesitation to submit elected officials to endless recall possibilities. Only nineteen states allow recall of state officials, and there’s probably a reason for that. The traditional remedy for egregious wrongdoing is impeachment, and for less severe problems it is failure to re-elect. Many states appear to believe that governors should not be subject to the whim of a bare majority in their every act as governor, and that the bar for removal should be set higher than Wisconsin’s.
In fact, Walker is only the third governor in the US ever to endure a recall vote. And quite a few residents are none too happy about the brouhaha that’s ensued there:
“It’s going to be a big one today,” said Lois Altmann, 83, a volunteer poll worker, as she taped maps of the county on walls inside the garden’s visitor center where voting booths were being erected. “Soon we can stop hearing about this.”
For months, Wisconsin residents ”” those on both sides of the debate ”” have complained that this fight has changed what was once mostly a gentle, civil political climate and turned friends and neighbors against one another.
“I’m looking forward to this being over,” said Adam Crandall, 45, who declined to say who he was backing, but stressed the need for Wisconsin to balance its budget and attract new businesses. “Frankly, I’m disappointed for the state of Wisconsin that we had to go through this, but it’s time to move forward.”
If Walker keeps his job today, most of the voters—perhaps even some who voted to recall Walker—will see the recall effort as a futile and unproductive waste of time and money. Of course, the left won’t be giving up on this sort of endeavor, but it may have a bit more trouble raising as much money for the battle next time.
[NOTE: It goes without saying—and so I neglected to say it—that today’s recall vote also has some significance for a guy named Barack Obama. The Democrats have been backtracking on that idea, and some creative souls are even flipping it upside down by saying a Walker victory might mean that people want to stick with the status quo (including Obama in November, who’s become the candidate of No Change). But it’s still the case that if Walker stays in office it probably isn’t a good sign for the president’s chances.]