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Yesterday, I wrote three diaries about different high-level Obama nominees--Admiral Dennis Blair for Director of National Intelligence, Sanjay Gupta Surgeon General , and Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education. In all three cases, one could have raised objections about their positions or policies they had backed, but such arguments have long been deflected with any number of handy tropes. Instead, by one means or another, I questioned the basic rationale that Obama, his apologists and applauders have raised again and again--the rationale of competence. Is Admiral Blair really competent if he disobeyed orders and continued encouraging the Indonesian military in its last-stand massacres in East Timor in 1999? Is Sanjay Gupta really competent for the post of Surgeon General, if he mangles facts and outright lies in attacking Michael Moore's Sicko, doesn't have a public health background, and has questionable conflicts of interest? Is Arne Duncan competent for the post of Sevretary of Education if he has no background at all as a classroom educator, and only a so-so record as a city-level "education reformer"?
In short, Obama's rationale of making appointments based on "competence" not ideology falls apart when examined carefully. This is not to claim that all his appointments are incompetent for the posts they are selected for. It is only to claim that the rationale does not hold across the board. Something else must be going on, and the obvious candidate for that is, rather obviously, insider politics-as-usual. Where competence is compatible with insider-politics-as-usual, we get competence as a special bonus. Where it is not, we get bupkis.
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| Obama's myth of competence is just one of three related myths used to rationalize the marginalization of progressive forces within his administration. Another is the myth of "dialogue". It's important, we are told, to "bring people together" to "be inclusive" and to "engage in a dialogue," though the reasons for this--beyond the fact that David Broder says so--remain obscure, to say the least, particularly given how badly Republicans have screwed the country up over the past three decades, but especially the past 8 years.
But again, to really debunk this myth, we need to demonstrate its absense, or, perhaps more precisely, its presence as pretense rather than reality. Here, Rick Warren is "Exhibit A". For all of Obama's reaching out to Warren, there is no sign whatsoever of a true dialogue ensuing. Indeed, as I've noted before, Warren has a history of rejecting dialogue, where others, supposedly much more hardline, have engaged in it. Jerry Fallwell met with Mel White and Soulforce, while Warren refused to. More recently, Warren has both lashed out and lied in response to criticism of his invitation to a place of honor at Obama's inaguration.
Finally, there is the myth of "post-partisanship." Again, we see talk about it. But where is the reality? On several occassions, I've raised the question, "Can't we have post-partisanship without lies?" This would be the true test. I've suggested that an excellent approach would be to appoint former Reagan Administration Justice Department official Bruce Fein as a Special Prosecutor to investigate Bush Administration crimes. The GOP has obviously suffered politically as a result of the Bush Administration's deep unpopularity. Why shouldn't they welcome such an opportunity to put all that behind them, make a clean break, and give themselves a real chance to reinvernt themselves?
Well, of course no one expects for a moment that they would ever do that. But the very unthinkability of such a course merely serves to underscore how ludicrous any talk of "post-partisanship" really is. The only meaning "post-partisanship" has is Democratic surrender. That's it, pure and simple. It could change, of course, if Obama were to decide that true "post-partisanship" required honesty and truth. But until then, rotsa ruck.
None of the above is meant to suggest that I've abandoned criticizing Obama--or anyone else--on the basis of policies and their outcomes. But if these are rhetorical tropes of Obama's own choosing, then he should not get off scot free simply by mouthing them. We need to take them seriously, and show just how hollow these phrases actually ring. |
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