Iran’s leaders demonstrate their contempt for hopey-changey dialoging. Can anyone blame them?
Obama and Bush: when is a lie not a lie?
Tom Bevan analyzes Obama supporter Bob Herbert’s startling admission that “I have not spoken to anyone, either on Capitol Hill or elsewhere, who believes that [Obama’s pledge that his health care plan will not raise the deficit a dime] is doable.” Nevertheless, Herbert asserts that Obama believes that it is.
It’s worth reading Bevan’s whole piece, but the gist of it is that old question: what does Obama think? Herbert says Obama believes what he says about health care reform being deficit-neutral. But Herbert also observes that Obama is virtually alone in that belief. That would make Obama a fool, one who ignores the fact that the vast and almost unanimous preponderance of evidence is against what he’s asserting about the plan’s effects on the deficit.
But I suppose that it’s better for a supporter to believe Obama a fool than a liar. And remember, if Herbert had called Obama a liar, he’d be guilty of racism. That would be especially upsetting because Herbert himself is black. It’s all so very confusing, isn’t it?
Bevan helpfully points out that when George Bush believed that Saddam had WMDs, he was backed up by most of the experts in the world. But when Bush and those experts turned out to be wrong (and despite evidence that Saddam could have reconstituted his program, and planned to do so once sanctions were lifted), Bush’s opponents became unremitting in accusing the president of having lied. Having been mistaken wasn’t enough.
This double standard is part of the shrieking hypocrisy of politics. Like Humpty Dumpty, Obama’s supporters get to define “lie” exactly as they wish. They don’t think they need to worry about being consistent, if they are effective.
[ADDENDUM: On the other hand, Jim Miller offers the notion that Obama doesn’t even think about whether what he’s saying is true or not.]
Wilson: to be censured for “breach of decorum?”
House Democrats are planning to censure Joe Wilson for “breach of decorum” for yelling “you lie!” during Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress.
We all know how deeply devoted to decorum our Democrat representatives were back in 2005, when Bush addressed Congress on the issue of Social Security reform and they booed:
Perhaps the House Democrats will even retroactively censure themselves for that act, so dedicated to decorum are they.
[NOTE: The possibility that this action will backfire on House Democrats probably will do nothing to stop them. But it’s interesting to me that Michael Kinsley, a man of the Left (although a relatively moderate one), has requested in this WaPo opinion piece that the Democrats cease and desist in their hot pursuit of Wilson.
Kinsley’s argument is a pragmatic one; he’s not calling the Democrats out as hypocrites, nor does he defend or approve of Wilson; if fact, he criticizes him in no uncertain terms. But still, Kinsley’s is a voice of comparative reason (and even humor) compared to so many others in the Democrat camp:
If [Wilson] won’t apologize on the floor, [House Democrats] want a resolution officially declaring that he’s “it” or he has cooties — or whatever the appropriate language is under House rules.
…The more times [Wilson] is required to write “I will not call the President a liar” on a special blackboard set up in the well of the House, the bigger hero he will become to a large chunk of the population. And, of course, forcing him to grovel will not help to convince him or his supporters that the president is not a liar…
Wilson is obviously a bozo. (I can say this because I’m not on the House floor.) But all the attention is making him more popular within his own constituency, not less so. Why can’t the Democrats be the class act here and just drop it? Sticks and stones, and all that.
Kinsley asks a good question. I’ll make a stab at an answer: because they can’t help themselves. Power has a tendency to encourage people to overreach and overdo, and most politicians have a head start on that sort of behavior anyway, as well as a vast serving of hypocrisy.
There’s also hubris, and then there’s nemesis. We’ll see whether these ancient laws will play out and the tables turn. It’s interesting, as well, to note that among the offenses featured in the original ancient Greek definition of hubris was the “humiliation of a defeated foe.” Hmmm.]
[ADDENDUM: I further commend Kinsley for writing that entire WaPo piece without once calling Wilson or his supporters racists. How refreshing.]
Senator Susan Collins of Maine breaks with Obama on the “trigger” proposal
Even more astounding is that, by taking such a stance, Senator Collins is breaking with her political twin sister, Senator Olympia Snowe. The two RINOs from Maine vote together so often they seem joined at the hip, and the “trigger” has been Snowe’s baby so far.
But of course: it’s racist to accuse Obama of lying
Maureen Dowd sets a new low for herself. In case you don’t believe that would be possible, take a look at this:
Surrounded by middle-aged white guys ”” a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club ”” Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
Well Maureen, if you say Obama didn’t lie, that’s certainly good enough for me. And of course, Wilson’s accusation was about race; why didn’t I see that? No discussion of the issue of health care reform and illegal aliens necessary (but on the off chance that you happen to want one anyway, see this).
And lest my readers think I shouldn’t be wasting my time paying attention to what the deeply shallow (is that an oxymoron?) and frivolous Dowd says, my answer is that I pay attention because Dowd is hardly alone in her accusations. The race card has always been Obama’s ace in the hole. It has been freely used innumerable times by many of his supporters, as well. Since the amount of actual, overt racism expressed towards Obama is miniscule, the Obamaphiles must conjure up covert racism, and Obama himself fans the flames by demonizing his opposition as being “against” him rather than being principled and well-meaning opponents who merely disagree with him over policy.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama was very explicit in accusing his opponents of racism, even using the clever but pernicious ploy of predicting it from mainstream Republicans even when it hadn’t happened:
It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
Now that Obama has become president, he relies almost entirely on his willing minions—people such as Dowd—to take up the gauntlet and make accusations of covert racism as being the secret motivation for those who are against Obama’s policies. So, in addition to the unvoiced “boy!” that Dowd heard, Wilson’s outburst convinced her that, “Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”
I would have thought it would have convinced Dowd that Wilson thinks Obama is a liar. But I guess I’m just a simpleton. And no doubt I’m a racist too, as so many trolls coming to visit here see fit to point out, despite the fact that I think Obama’s race is one of the few pluses about him.
Even though I didn’t and still don’t like his policies, and thought and still think he’s a liar (because of the fact that he’s actually done a lot of obvious lying), when Obama was elected I was pleased that a black person had attained the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, that achievement gave him and his supporters a new tool never before available to a president: the ability to accuse opponents of being motivated by covert racism, a charge against which it’s virtually impossible to defend oneself.
Updike on war and the intelligentsia
[NOTE: Today, when framing a comment, I came across this previous post of mine. I think it’s so important—and so relevant to another heated discussion we had recently on this blog, that I decided to repost it.]
I first read John Updike’s Vietnam War essay “On Not Being a Dove” in 1989. That’s when his memoir Self-Consciousness, the book in which it was included, was first published.
At the time the essay seemed to me to be a curiosity, a slight work of little import. After all, so many years had passed since the turmoil of the 60s and early 70s, with their fevered and nearly endless arguments about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War. Updike was a reluctant hawk—or, rather, a non-dove—back then, and he explained why in the essay. But it had no particular resonance for me then, so many years after the fact.
My, the times they have a-changed. On reading the essay now, newly republished in Commentary, I find sentence after sentence to be not only extraordinarily insightful about what was going on back then, but remarkably relevant to what this country has just been through regarding Iraq. Not only that, but Updike’s description of his discomfiture in attempting to explain his more conservative stance on Vietnam to his liberal literati friends contains echoes of my own experiences with political discussions in the last few years.
In looking back from the vantage point of 1989, Updike quotes a letter he wrote in 1967 in response to a NY Times book review:
Anyone not a rigorous pacifist must at least consider the argument that this war, evil as it is, is the lesser of available evils, intended to forestall worse wars. I am not sure that this is true, but I assume that this is the reasoning of those who prosecute it, rather than the maintenance of business prosperity or the President’s crazed stubbornness. I feel in the dove arguments as presented to me too much aesthetic distaste for the President”¦
Updike is writing about the dislike for Johnson. I cannot help but notice that the dislike for another, more recent, Texan president is also at least partly aesthetic in nature (in fact, I compared Bush and Johnson in this respect in an earlier post).
Here is Updike in 1989:
The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of Johnson by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world.
There is more; much more. Updike considered himself a liberal Democrat. But his basic intelligence and drive to be honest, both with himself and others, compelled him towards quite different conclusions than most of the people with whom he hobnobbed. And to speak up about it:
I would rather live under Diem (or Ky, or Thieu) than under Ho Chi Minh and his enforcers, and assumed that most South Vietnamese would. Those who would not, let them move North. But the foot traffic, one could not help noticing in these Communist/non-Communist partitions, was South, or West, away from Communism. Why was that? And so on.
I wanted to keep quiet, but could not. Something about it all made me very sore. I spoke up, blushing and hating my disruption of a post-liberal socioeconomic-cultural harmony I was pleased to be a part of.
Updike’s fame was gained primarily as a writer of fiction; he was neither a politician, historian, nor statesman. In his essay, he asserts that writers’ views on the subject of the Vietnam War have no special authority. That is true. But his depth of thought, and the clarity with which it is expressed, creates its own authority:
My thoughts ran as follows. Peace depends upon the threat of violence. The threat cannot always be idle”¦ It was all very well for civilized little countries like Sweden and Canada to tut-tut in the shade of our nuclear umbrella and welcome our deserters and draft evaders, but the United States had nobody to hide behind. Credibility must be maintained. Power is a dirty business, but who ever said it wasn’t?…
The Vietnam war””or any war””is “wrong,” but in the sense that existence itself is wrong. To be alive is to be a killer; and though the Jains try to hide this by wearing gauze masks to avoid inhaling insects, and the antiabortionists by picketing hospitals, and peace activists by lying down in front of ammunition trains, there is really no hiding what every meal we eat juicily demonstrates. Peace is not something we are entitled to but an illusory respite we earn. On both the personal and national level, islands of truce created by balances of terror and potential violence are the best we can hope for.
Updike loved this country and the comfortable and pleasant life he had carved out for himself within it. He never sought to become a pariah within the literary establishment; he wrote that “it pained and embarrassed me to be out of step with my magazine and literary colleagues.” But he could not embrace a position which he believed to be wrong—even if it was wildly unpopular—merely for the sake of convenience.
So, what did Updike think about the Iraq War? After all, he only died a few days ago; he was alive and kicking for most of it. After a quick Googling I was unable to find anything he wrote on the subject, but I think that this is very revealing. It’s a report by a blogger on a talk Updike gave back in 2006, in which he was asked his opinion of the war in Iraq. The questioner made a specific reference to Updike’s earlier views on Vietnam (the interviewer was Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker):
Goldberg points out that John Updike had been one of the few literary figures of the 1960’s to express support for the Vietnam War, and asks him to talk about George Bush and the war in Iraq. Updike accepts the comparison and acknowledges that, as in the 1960’s, his current feelings are mixed: the war is going badly, but the Bush administration faced hard choices and deserves some sympathy for the frustrating position it’s in.
Updike is clearly a principled moderate, and it’s brave of him to insist on ignoring the popular delineations between red-state and blue-state dogmatism”¦
Yes, indeed. Not that it got him much praise, then or now. Last night, for example, as I was watching a Charlie Rose tribute to John Updike that featured a panel composed of Updike’s editor Judith Jones, former New Yorker editor David Remnick, and New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, the latter casually mentioned, amidst the praise and reminiscence, that “of course, Updike was on the wrong side about the Vietnam War.”
Of course. Anybody who’s anybody knows that.
It’s Tea Party time in DC
Today’s the big day for demonstrations against the spending spree in Washington.
I’m wondering, though, what are “tens of thousands?” Is it closer to ten thousand or closer to ninety? One thing’s for sure, there will be some disagreement about the number of people who show up, depending on who’s reporting. And another likelihood is that the MSM won’t cover this much if at all, and if they do they’ll emphasize the “angry lunatic” angle.
[ADDENDUM: Well, at least CNN is certainly covering it. They’ve got a live feed here.
Meanwhile, Obama continues his relentless battle against strawmen. Earth to Obama: Republicans aren’t suggesting we retain the “status quo” on healthcare. But of course you already know that.]
Life: the many stages of stuff
Our lives can be divided into stages according to our relationship to stuff.
In the early years, stuff is temporary, ever-changing. We have clothing, but we can’t keep it for long, because we’re always outgrowing it. Likewise, toys and books. Even the bed keeps changing: first a crib, then a little bed, then a bigger one. And all of this stuff is really owned and paid for by those indispensable others, our parents.
We’re happy to leave it all behind when we go off to college or emancipation through work. We take a bunch of clothing and books, and a few electronics, and we’re off into our new and exciting life. But we still don’t have all that much stuff, not till we get an apartment—especially that first non-student, non-furnished apartment, one of our very own, or even of our (as in a couple) very own. Then we enter the age of stuff-amassing.
For myself, this era began shortly after my marriage, when after a year of living with in-laws my husband and I moved into a small rented house. We unpacked the wedding-present stuff that till then had been stored in boxes in the attic of my parents’ house. We got some hand-me-down stuff from my late grandmother, furniture and pictures and well—stuff. And we finally bought some new stuff of our very very own.
We started small. A couch, an inexpensive one at that. Brown, in classic 70s style. Some cookware. Posters to be framed (couldn’t afford any real art). A bed, naturally.
Now, we could walk through those stores in Boston and not just be window-shopping. We’d be buying, and even though we were limited (and always remained so) by an adequate but relatively modest income, we could look, and dream, and make decisions based on what we wanted, not just what someone’s hand-me-downs dictated.
It was a fun time, not the least of the reasons being that we were young and had most of our lives still ahead of us. We were developing our style, which is always an “interesting” experience for a couple, because there’s not necessarily a meeting of the minds on that score, and unless one member of the couple defers to the other, it can be the stuff of bitter stuff-battles.
My new husband and I were lucky: we tended to agree on things like that, and a lot of other things besides (unfortunately, not on everything, since we ended up getting divorced well-nigh thirty years later, which I think is a pretty good run). Our only real stuff disagreements were over some raggedy curtains (husband liked them, I didn’t), a certain pencil drawing (husband won; we purchased it) and our flatware (I prevailed—and then received a small vindication when we split the flatware in half at divorce time because we both had grown to like it so much).
Those years of stuff were years of growth. We probably had an average amount, as stuff in America goes. Our son, when he came along (and don’t get me wrong; I’m not putting him in the “stuff” category) received his requisite portion of ever-changing stuff, and then later some of our hand-me-down stuff for his first apartment.
As he entered his teen years and then left home for college, we were in what one might call the steady-state of stuff. Nothing much needed to be bought, but not a whole lot was weeded out, either. We didn’t even realize that’s where we were. The signs, in retrospect, were that stores featuring furniture or the latest kitchenware or knickknacks held no charms any more, not even for window-shopping. We’d sail right through them as though they carried equipment for some esoteric pursuit, like scuba diving, one in which we weren’t interested.
And then, not too long after that (and somewhat coinciding with our divorce), we entered the casting-off time. Moved into smaller places, and had to get rid of things because the storage just wasn’t available. And that’s where I remain today.
The first castings-off feel modest and liberating. But it’s also an odd feeling to sense that one is on a different side of the life-hill’s slope, the downside. I only have to look at my mother to see where it leads—if we’re fortunate enough to live that long, that is. She went from a house to a large apartment, then to a smaller independent living place, and now a single room (albeit a large and airy one) in assisted living. I sincerely hope the nursing home room is not in her future, but I’ve seen other relatives go there, reduced to just a few personal items and a lamp and picture or two. And of course, I don’t have to describe the next step, except to say that it proves you can’t take it with you.
I’ve noticed that the amount of stuff each generation considers obligatory and/or desirable has gotten larger, especially in the kitchen arena. My parents were comfortably situated, although not rich, but their kitchenware was modest compared to that of later generations. Equipment was generic rather than specialized—who’d ever heard of a breadmaker or a Cuisinart, or even a crepe pan or fondue pot (those twin favored-but-useless wedding presents of the era in which I got married)? They had knives and bowls and even a meat grinder (has anyone got one of those these days?) But a little melon-baller, an ice cream scoop, and a simple electric mixer were about the extent of the specialized equipment.
I’m not knocking stuff, by the way. And in one arena in particular—electronic—my own stuff quotient has continued to grow. Computer. Then, computers. Cell phone. Digital camera. Ipod. Little thingee to play the ipod when not attached to the ear. And the chargers, the chargers, the ubiquitous and ever-tangling chargers!
9/11: eight years after
This year is an especially poignant year to remember 9/11.
Each year I write something about 9/11—or reprint something—on the anniversary of this terrible event. Here’s an excerpt from one of my previous posts, updated to reflect the passage of time:
Another thing that makes 9/11 feel more distant in time than eight years ago is the dissipation of the unity that seemed to unite us in the first few months afterward. I say “seemed” because there were always many dissenting voices, even from the start—voices that blamed the US for the attack, or said that the Jews had stayed home that day. Voices that suggested America deserved what it got. Voices that were against attacking Afghanistan, saying we would kill millions of people in that country.
Yes, 9/11 seems a long time ago. But in other ways 9/11 seems fresh and recent—and especially so on the anniversary, when documentaries revisit the pain and open old wounds…Viewing how events unfolded that day and knowing what we know now, the urge is to say: “Look out! Don’t go to work! Run away, fast! Don’t go up those stairs!” Or to think, “If only.” If only the people on the first planes had known what was in store, for example, they could have united to stop the hijackers the way those on Flight 93 did. If only the FBI and CIA had been allowed to speak to each other. If only. If only.
We look back to offer respect and remembrance, and to learn from the past. What do we learn from 9/11? We learn that Islamicist fundamentalist terrorists meant—and still mean—business, that we must continue the fight against them on all fronts. We learn that ordinary Americans are capable of extraordinary courage—but of course, we already knew that.
As I wrote above, the unity that seemed apparent for a short while after 9/11 was illusory. Now the divisions between the political camps in America are greater, and the anger more intense. In some ways this is just a progression of forces that were building even before 9/11; to find examples, just take a look at the proceedings around the impeachment of President Clinton, and the contested election of 2000.
But in other ways 9/11 did lead to even greater and more bitter disagreement than before, although this was masked at the start by the common task of grieving. It’s not unusual for a trauma—and make no doubt about it, 9/11 was a national trauma—to end up causing divisions. This isn’t just politics, it’s human nature.
When we have sustained a terrible blow from an outrageous and grievous attack, some people will get angry, some scared, some frightened, and some sad—or a combination of these feelings in differing proportions. This is true whether the event be a non-politically motivated crime against a single person or a large-scale terrorist attack such as 9/11. Some will place the blame where I believe it rightly belongs—on the attackers—and see the event as a call to action against them. Some will view it as a call for introspection, a need for soul-searching in order to understand where we went wrong. Some will blame the victims.
And some will want to forget, and pretend it never happened. They are likely to become angry at those who insist they remember. I believe that at least some of the rage directed at George Bush was due to this phenomenon. Not right away, not when the gaping wound was fresh. But for a long time afterward he insisted on reminding us, and on labeling the perpetrators as evil rather than misunderstood. He went after them with a single-minded and non-morally-relativistic focus. He didn’t want to forget, and he didn’t want us to, either, although he did want us to continue to go about our daily lives in the most normal fashion possible.
Now, eight years later, the country is riven by discord. And now we have a president who issued a proclamation to commemorate this day that manages, despite its 726 words, to mention terrorism only twice, and the perpetrators remain nameless, faceless, formless, countryless, and above all religionless.
Now 9/11 has been officially designated “National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Congress passed a bill to that effect back in April, in response in large part to the efforts of a group whose webpage is here. Some of its founders are family members of victims of 9/11, who wanted to do something positive in memory of their loved ones.
I have no beef with that; it’s a wonderful thing to do. But I do have a beef with the order of the words: how about “remembrance” coming first?
Some 9/11 families share my concern. It’s difficult to know how many feel this way, but Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon, says:
“When I first heard about [the new designation of the day], I was concerned,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon. “I fear, I greatly fear, at some point we’ll transition to turning it into Earth Day where we go and plant trees and the remembrance part will become smaller and smaller and smaller.”
The day is well on its way to being co-opted by causes that are essentially Leftist and progressive. This is no surprise; after all, our current president is dedicated to these causes.
9/11 should be a day of unity rather than division. But I’m not going to utter some pretty—and empty—words that pretend we have a unity that doesn’t really exist right now. The stakes are high, and the differences deep. That’s the way it is, on 9/11/2009.
[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that, in his proclamation for this day, Obama would have done well to have quoted one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln, who said on another occasion of remembrance:
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.]
[ADDENDUM: Ralph Peters says we have largely forgotten—and worse than that, have betrayed—the dead of 9/11. I tend to agree with him. (Hat tip: Tim P.)]
The AP fact-checks its own ass
How’s this for sophistry?
The AP’s Erica Werner begins her supposed fact-checking of the issue of whether Rep. Joe Wilson was right in calling Obama a liar last night with the unequivocal sentence: “Rep. Joe Wilson is wrong.”
But after a paragraph in support of Obama, in which Werner notes that there is language in the health care reform bill that explicitly prohibits illegals from receiving federal monies to purchase health care, she adds the following paragraph that indicates that Joe Wilson was in fact right:
For [Wilson] and other Republicans, the problem is not what’s in the bill, it’s what the bill leaves out. There’s no provision for how the prohibition would be enforced, or any requirement for people to prove they are citizens or legal residents before getting health care benefits. In fact, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees defeated Republican-offered amendments that would have required people to verify their legal status before getting care, with some Democrats saying such requirements would be unnecessarily burdensome for people legally entitled to coverage. Wilson cited the defeat of those two amendments Thursday when he discussed his outburst with reporters.
So tell me again, Ms. Werner, just what is it that Joe Wilson is “wrong” about?
But there’s even more to find fault with in her article. Just take a look at the paragraph that purports to give the reasons Joe Wilson is wrong and Obama is right [I’ve put the AP quotes in bold; my comments follow]:
The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage.
As stated before, the bill can’t actually prohibit this if there’s no enforcement. In this case, the means of enforcement proposed by Republicans has been purposely removed from the bill by Democrats.
Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now,
No one is proposing any change in this, Democrat or Republican, so this statement is fine.
…and they could also buy into a new government-run insurance plan if Congress creates one.
Obama claims this plan will be deficit-neutral and self-supporting. But very few people believe this is possible; it is certainly highly unlikely. Our tax dollars—and, for example, the penalties that will be paid by those who choose not to buy insurance (penalties Obama alluded to in his speech)—will in all likelihood be subsidizing any such plan. If this occurs, illegals will undoubtedly be able to buy into such a plan, which is presumed to feature lower rates than private insurance can offer (that’s the whole point, isn’t it?) Therefore, anyone on the public plan (including illegals) would be subsidized by others, through funds collected and disbursed by the federal government. Sounds like “federal money” to me. And since Obama also said in his speech that, “[A]n additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange,” it sure sounds as though he’s advocating just that.
But unlike legal residents, they wouldn’t get federal subsidies to help them. The bill’s exact language: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully in the United States.”
Nope, nothing will allow these payments. But I will repeat at the risk of redundancy that if there is no method of enforcement of the rule than it’s a meaningless one—in fact, it’s a lie embedded within the bill itself.
Health care legislation in the Senate is also being crafted to exclude illegal immigrants from coverage.
“Being crafted?” That’s not a bill in its present form. Obama is supposed to be talking about the bill as is, not as someone thinks it might be some day.
[NOTE: There’s a bit of a tempest-in-a-teapot aspect to the whole argument, by the way, because we all are currently paying for the health care of illegal immigrants through our subsidies of emergency room visits of the uninsured. I don’t know that there’s any great remedy for this; I’m not advocating that these people (or especially their children) be turned away. But although technically these are not federal monies, we are all paying for the health care of illegal immigrants now, and will continue to pay for them in the future. What’s more, my guess is that one of the next items on Obama’s agenda will be some sort of amnesty bill to make these illegals legal and thus render the whole argument moot. That would be rather clever, wouldn’t it?]
[ADDENDUM: Commenter “huxley” points out that in this article the AP actually does a fairly good job of fact-checking at least some of the misrepresentations Obama made in last night’s speech. Regarding the illegal aliens controversy discussed in this post, however, it repeats the “on the one hand on the other hand” points in Werner’s article, and is similar in beginning its discussion of that issue with the misleading statement, “The facts back up Obama.”]
[ADDENDUM II: Get the T-shirt here.]
[ADDENDUM III: And how did such a fair guy as this get a gig writing for CBS? It’s heartwarming.]
Listening with a critical ear
Back when I was in school, I was an inveterate margin-writer. When assigned a textbook to read, I would underline or use a big yellow highlighter to help me learn what I was supposed to. But I also often used my pen to write copiously in the margins.
What I wrote was sometimes approving: Great point! or Beautiful! But far more often it was a disagreement, part of a debate I had with what I saw as errors of fact or logic on the part of the writer. You might say we had a little dialogue going, except the author didn’t hear my side of it.
I was never taught critical thinking in any formal manner, but I seemed to have a natural drive for it. Or maybe I was just an ornery, critical sort.
At any rate, even as a teenager I found political speeches both boring and unsettling. The “boring” part was due to my problem with auditory processing; I’d much rather read them than hear them, unless the speaker happened to be Winston Churchill. But the “unsettling” part was my perception of the simplification and therefore distortion inherent in almost all political speeches.
The speaker is trying to sell something—ordinarily a policy or a plan—and presents it in the best light. All politicians do this. For the listener to perform the critical (in several senses of the word) task of filling in the blanks and realizing what is being left out, distorted, or even misrepresented, it requires a certain cast of mind and a fair amount of knowledge.
We rely at least partly on the written press to do this for us, and if it fails in that duty we are all in trouble. But in addition, to properly listen to and properly evaluate what a politician is saying requires something else: the desire to do so. We must listen with a skeptical mindset, even to politicians we are predisposed to like and agree with. This can be extraordinarily difficult.
But even if we’re listening to an opponent and are therefore motivated to find fault, the ability to evaluate what is actually being said also requires an ability to think critically while processing what is being heard, and to do both simultaneously. Of course, one can always refer to the text later on at leisure (especially now, with the internet). But how many people do this? How many even want to do this? In the end—especially now that the press is nearly worthless in this respect—we all have to rely on the ability of the American people to practice these skills. Otherwise, we fall prey to demagogues.
That has always been one of the problems I see in the Obama presidency. It’s not only that he’s so smooth in his delivery, it’s that he is highly skillful and really quite shameless in the practice of sophistry.
Obama offers straw men, contradictions, misrepresentations, threats, and omissions, all wrapped up in one attractive and articulate package (yes, I know he’s not especially articulate when speaking off-the-cuff, but I’m talking about prepared speeches here). And make no mistake about it, Obama is quite aware of this, and he is counting heavily on the American people to be unable to properly process what he is saying.
To take just a single example, there’s his oft-repeated statement that, under his health plan, if you’re happy with your current insurance you get to keep it. That’s technically true—for now. Obama conveniently ignores all the very convincing arguments that his plan will nevertheless almost inevitably cause private insurance to be squeezed out of the market in the not-too-distant future (see this, for example, for some details).
But more than any other president in recent memory, Obama knows he doesn’t have to answer his critics, or explain why their arguments might be wrong on a factual basis. The key to his assurance is his knowledge of how strongly the MSM is behind him, how eager it is to cover for him and not challenge him. He relied on this situation heavily during the campaign, and he relies on it still. And even though there are a few rumblings and grumblings and cracks in the solid support of the MSM for Obama, for the most part it has held, and there’s every reason to believe it will continue to hold.
Obama also counts on his personal charm. He has tremendous faith in it, and the trajectory of his life has borne him out so far. He also understands the difficulty people have with listening to a speech and critically evaluating it at the same time, especially if they are predisposed to like and trust him.
For far too many Americans, Obama merely has to assert that he is right, soothing the doubts and fears of the populace. That’s why he must characterize those who criticize him as liars and partisan hacks, and why he must “call them out” rather than merely debate them in a respectful and factual manner. If he did the latter, I believe he knows he would lose.
But he doesn’t think he needs to. Obama is betting he can get away with this, and he might very well be correct. In the final analysis, whether he will get away with it or not depends on the ability of the American people to arm itself with knowledge and to think critically.
That’s always been the case. But I believe that never before have we been so alone—so without assistance from the press or our educational system—in this endeavor.
And never before have we had a skillful president so determined to deceive us in so profound a way. Other presidents have deceived us, to be sure. But never about their core agendas or their essence, and I say this for presidents of the Right and the Left, Democrats and Republicans alike. But I have come to believe that this profound deception is exactly what Obama is trying to accomplish, and it is exactly what he meant when he promised us fundamental change without specifying what that change would be.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s some critical thinking from Ann Althouse. And remember, she voted for Obama. Note, also, that she’s responding to Obama’s speech as read, not as performed.]
Why did Obama give the speech?
Jennifer Rubin points out that Obama offered nothing especially significant in terms of new policy in his speech last night, certainly not anything substantially different from the previous umpteen-thousand speeches he’s made on the subject of health care reform. So why did he make it? Why bother?
I offer the following reasons:
(1) To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Obama’s favorite tool by far is the prepared speech.
(2) There is a crisis, but it’s not the one Obama talked about. We could indeed use some changes in the way health care is covered in this country, but there’s no pressing need to pass this (or any other) particular bill at this particular time (or to have passed it a couple of weeks ago, as Obama originally wanted). The crisis is in Obama’s presidency and approval ratings. He has staked his reputation on the passage of health care reform, and perceives that time is not on his side. Thus, the fierce urgency of now.
(3) There are several audiences here. But the first is Congress—after all, he could have just given another prime time speech to the American people, but instead he chose the rather unusual venue of the joint session. This guarantees greater TV coverage, and it also gives his speech greater gravitas and thrust. But some of his speech also featured an implicit chastisement of Congress itself—the Right for being partisan (that is, for failing to cave in to the demands of the Left without a whimper of protest) and the Left for not cutting him some slack on the public option. No, Obama didn’t exactly say those words, but that was the message.
(4) Obama wanted to be perceived as tough; he wants opponents to fear his wrath and his power. In connection with #3 above, Obama wanted to publicly chastise and threaten the Right; “If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.” But I think he also wanted to send a message of toughness and willingness to fight to the far Left—and I don’t just mean to fight for the bill, I mean to fight them, if need be. He wanted those on the Left who are wedded to a public option to understand that, if a public option must be dropped for strategic reasons and they don’t come on board anyway, there could be negative repercussions for them personally.
(5) Obama has been criticized as passive and lacking in leadership in this fight. This is his attempt to be seen as active and involved. That’s part of the reason why he talks so much about what he will do, what he will tolerate and what he won’t, how he won’t stand for this and he won’t stand for that. This is the sort of thing he mistakes for true leadership. You might call it leadership, Chicago style.
(5) For Obama, a speech is always another opportunity to set up strawmen and then shoot them down. He counts on the inability of the American people to use critical thinking when they are swept up in the music of his oratory [more about this in my next post].