| Key One: Simple Joy In Testing Himself Against Those Who Disagree With Him.
Dionne:
There is, first, his simple joy in testing himself against those who disagree with him. Someone who knows the president-elect well says that he likes talking with philosophical adversaries more than with allies.
This part of him was once the detached writer and professor who could view even his own life from a distance and with a degree of abstraction. Seen with perspective, after all, the ideological differences in the United States are rather small. We have no major socialist party, and when it comes down to it, even conservatives are reluctant to dismantle our limited social insurance and welfare programs.
This explanation starts off innocently enough, but quickly shifts into pure Versailles sophistry and mendacity--and Dionne is, all things considered, one of the good guys. But how anyone can have lived through the past 8 years and concluded that "the ideological differences in the United States are rather small" is utterly beyond me. The ideological differences in Versailles may be rather small--for example, both Democrats and Republicans agree that Republicans should never be punished, but they differ on how much Democrats should be punished--but this is certainly not the case about America at large. And while it's true that we have no major socialist party, the claim that "even conservatives are reluctant to dismantle our limited social insurance and welfare programs," is misleading at best, if not downright false. Certainly the likes of Grover Norquist are not shy about discussing the matter, it's just that (a) there's a stiff political price for trying, and (b) there's a lot more money to be made simply by subverting social welfare systems into corporate cash cows.
Delusional as all that may be, it's only one side of the coin. If it actually were true that our ideological differences were minimal, then (a) what the hell has everyone be fighting over the last 30-40 years? and (b) what the hell is so special about Obama not wanting to fight?
In fact, a much more realistic view is that (A) US ideological differences are intense and extreme, but truncated on the left, due to intense, long-term demonization. (B) US elites have moved sharply to the right over the past 30-40 years while the American people have not. (C) Obama's detached manner has long represented the extreme left position of acceptable political engagement in academia, and is entirely unremarkable, far less the exception than the rule.
Consequently, either (A') he must be a courageous bridge-builder, or (B') the differences aren't that large, or (C') the differences are largely illusionary--and he is a courageous bridge-builder for challenging the appearance of conflict, when the differences aren't really that large. This latter seems to be his position, which sheds a good deal of light on his behavior, in ways that Dionne's remarks do not.
Let me elaborate. Because the differences are largely illusionary, Obama can argue with conservatives, and show by his manner that they have little to fear from him, and everyone can just be friends. However, those on his own side can potentially challenge his "illusionary differences" rap in ways that are a good deal more uncomfortable for him, which is the real reason Obama is less interested in talking with them. Not everyone on his own side will challenge him, of course. Those who simply agree--or more recently, adore--are just intellectually boring, however, and need not be considered at all. The ones who count are the ones who refuse to have their concerns finessed, and these are simply no fun at all for Obama to talk with. He'd much rather debate with Rick Warren, even though--or perhaps even because--Rick Warren cheats.
Some will doubtless find the above discussion difficult to stomach. It depends on social observations and judgments that are clearly both contestable and contested, but it needs to be stated because of the sense of psychological realism (even if mistaken) that comes with it. In contrast, the next "key" simply makes no sense on its own--it is an easily dismissible argument, and precisely because it can so easily be dismissed, we stand in need of some other explanation--such as that just proffered above. And thus we turn to key number two.
Key Two: Being Empirical Is In The Progressive Interest
Dionne:
But Obama's anti-ideological turn is also a functional one for a progressive, at least for now. Since Ronald Reagan, ideology has been the terrain of the right. Many of the programs that conservatives have pushed have been based more on faith in their worldview than on empirical tests. How else could conservatives claim that cutting taxes would actually increase government revenue, or that trickle-down economic approaches were working when the evidence of middle-class incomes said otherwise?
Thus the second key: Right now, being empirical is in the progressive interest. Note that data show that the parts of the stimulus package most congenial to liberals (increases in unemployment insurance and food stamps; fiscal aid to the states; government spending on public projects) are also the parts with the most economic bang. In other words, progressives don't need ideology to make their case.
In this respect, at least, Obama is rather like Franklin D. Roosevelt, who dismissed the conservative economic doctrines of the 1920s. "We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature," Roosevelt said, directly countering the central premises of orthodox economics. "They are made by human beings." Thus did Roosevelt make pragmatism and experimentation enemies of conservative ideology. Obama, wearing a smile as he stands on a mountain of data, is doing the same.
This gets everything wrong in at least three fundamental ways: First, it posits ideology and empiricism as mutually exclusive. Second, it reiterates the long-standing Democratic delusion that facts and ideas can just sell themselves. Third, it completely mangles the comparison between Roosevelt and Obama. Let's take these one at a time.
First, positing ideology and empiricism as mutually exclusive This is only true in general of the right. Indeed, as far back as ancient Greece, conservatives have stood on the side of myth and emotion, while liberals have stood on the side of reason and empirical evidence. As Eric Alfred Havelock explained in The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics, the conservative myth of decline from a past golden age was challenged by natural philosophers who empirically observed developmental phenomena, and developed a general theory of evolution that included natural phenomena as well as human skills, both technological and social, up to and including the evolution of societies. Thus, liberals had an over-arching narrative--a narrative of progress--that was every bit as sweeping, inclusive and ideological as the conservative narrative of decline and decay. The only difference was, it was founded on observation and reason.
Modern (post-Renaissance) liberals substantially under-appreciate the importance and significance of framing narratives, even though they, too, are motivated by the narrative of progress. (I'll have more to say about the contradictions involved in a separate diary.) This background contradiction plays itself out in various ways, and one of them is Obama's contradictory impulses toward centrism and progressivism.
Obama ought to be attacking conservative ideology for being at war with reality. That's what's been going on for the past four decades, and liberals have not been doing anything remotely similar. Attacking ideology per se unfairly blames liberals for the sins of those who have been slandering them for forty years. Yet, lacking a clearly articulated ideology of progress, Indeed, it is Obama's attempt to steer a middle course between liberals and conservatives that drags him into the murky realms of pseudo-science and pseudo-facts, with fantasies such as "clean coal" and "tolerant" bigots such as Rick Warren.
Second, the passage above reiterates the long-standing Democratic delusion that facts and ideas can just sell themselves:
Thus the second key: Right now, being empirical is in the progressive interest. Note that data show that the parts of the stimulus package most congenial to liberals (increases in unemployment insurance and food stamps; fiscal aid to the states; government spending on public projects) are also the parts with the most economic bang. In other words, progressives don't need ideology to make their case.
Remarkably, this appears to be a delusion not just of Dionne's accounting, but of Obama himself--despite the fact that Obama is quite facile at framing issues, and obviously understands in action that facts and ideas don't just sell themselves. Now, of course it's possible that Obama is just being deliberately disingenuous, using a "no frame/just the facts" frame to frame his argument. But this simply doesn't square with the way he and the Democrats generally are failing to dominate the stimulus debate, as Digby observed in the diary I cited last night, "'Serious People' Part XXVI", in which she quoted a portion of Lou Dobbs show, and then remarked:
You try to untangle that rats nest because I couldn't. Apparently, the 8 trillion dollar Iraq war failed to fix the recession so Obama needs to get the private sector to create more jobs because Bill Clinton's hundred thousand police jobs didn't solve the crime problem and the jobs were lost. Oh, and the New Deal was a bust and everybody hates bailouts.
This is a particularly ugly example of the economic ignorance among the punditocrisy, but there is very little I've heard that sounds remotely convincing from our side anywhere. That is why bringing up "entitlements" and the deficit is such a threat to any successful recovery --- it's something about which people have been throughly indoctrinated and they can easily understand it. Nobody has bothered to educate them about liberal economics in decades, so when they are confused they turn to familiar refrains about how the government screws everything up and how it should be run like a business and how taxes are too high etc. Even the professionals don't know how to make a convincing case for government action in a crisis and they really need to.
The belief that this stuff just sells itself after 40+ years of intense ideological warfare by the right is beyond naïve. It is willful denial of reality.
Third, and finally, the above passage it completely mangles the comparison between Roosevelt and Obama. The Roosevelt quote--"We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature, they are made by human beings."--is quite misguided, though trying to make a valid point, that there are ideological choices involved in shaping economic reality, which is a taken, not a given. This is precisely the opposite of Obama's passive attitude, which Dionne richly conveys when he writes of "Obama, wearing a smile as he stands on a mountain of data." After all, "data" means "given", not taken. It is inherently passive, and that passivity is precisely what Roosevelt rejected as biased against what was needed--a spirit of experimentation to strike out in new directions.
While Roosevelt's spirit was right, his description was not. It was not the basic economic laws we could rewrite. In fact, the problem was that we didn't know the laws, we only thought we did, and so we had to experiment to find our way. Either that, or listen to Keynes, who was several steps ahead of everyone else. We're in a very different place today, facing different unknowns, but ideologically ignoring important things that now are known. And Obama is certainly not doing the same as Roosevelt did. To the contrary, with his support for the bailout and tax-cuts he's playing halvsies between Hoover and FDR.
All of which brings us to Dionne's third key.
Key Three: Obama's Anti-Ideological Talk Is Not Just A Vehicle For Progressive Inclinations But The Real Deal
Dionne:
But in a third respect, Obama's anti-ideological talk is not just a vehicle for progressive inclinations but the real deal. Obama regularly offers three telltale notions that will define his presidency -- if events allow him to define it himself: "sacrifice," "grand bargain" and "sustainability."
To listen to Obama and his budget director Peter Orszag is to hear a tale of long-term fiscal woe. The government may have to spend and cut taxes in a big way now, but in the long run, the federal budget is unsustainable.
That's where sacrifice kicks in. There will be signs of it in Obama's first budget, in his efforts to contain health-care costs and, down the road, in his call for entitlement reform and limits on carbon emissions. His camp is selling the idea that if he wants authority for new initiatives and new spending, Obama will have to prove his willingness to cut some programs and reform others.
The "grand bargain" they are talking about is a mix and match of boldness and prudence. It involves expansive government where necessary, balanced by tough management, unpopular cuts -- and, yes, eventually some tax increases. Everyone, they say, will have to give up something.
First off, I just have to ask--How is this not ideological? Any decision about who wins and who loses is inherently ideological, and one that makes a "balanced" decision after decades of wild imbalance clearly intends to consolidate--rather than challenge--the ideological direction that has preceded it
In short, the problem with this proposed direction is (1) it follows on 35 years of sacrifice from the bottom 80%, (2) it proposes a "grand bargain" with a bunch of swindlers, and (3) it promises "sustainability" in the face of a rapacious foe who will rip it to shreds at their first opportunity, given their past track record. It is, thus, not only inherently conservative because it accommodates past conservative gains, it is doomed to fail on it's own terms, because it is oblivious to how conservatives actually operate.
And how pragmatic is that?
Now, of course, critics will rightly point out that this is E.J. Dionne interpreting Obama, this is not Obama himself. But Dionne is a considerable Beltway influence--a conscious person's David Broder, as it were--and his interpretation of Obama's modus operandi and rationale is integrally related to how they will be construed in Versailles. Given that Obama's "no ideology" ideology is intellectually incoherent from the get-go, a social construction is almost bound to be as good as it gets--at least until a whole lot more pressure is brought to bear on Obama to explain and justify himself. With his approval ratings as high as they are now, we shouldn't expect that anytime soon.
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