| The top of the "issues" section of Barack Obama's campaign website reads as follows:
Senator Obama has been able to develop innovative approaches to challenge the status quo and get results. Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success.
My first question is this: who or what is the cause of the "divisive ideological politics" and "partisan logjams" that Obama seeks to remedy once in office? Reading through his recent speech on energy, one can see that Obama offers some culprits:
Washington's failure to lead on energy is the failure of a President who spent most of his time in office denying the very existence of global warming - a President who put more faith in the spin of a science fiction writer than the science facts of real experts. It's the failure of an Administration that developed America's energy policy with a secret task force that opened the door to oil lobbyists and then shut it to every other viewpoint.
Bush and oil lobbyists are the problem on global warming, according to Obama. More:
We can't be afraid to stand up to the oil and auto industry when the future of our economy is at stake. When we let these companies off the hook; when we tell them they don't have to build fuel-efficient cars or transition to renewable fuels, it may boost their short-term profits, but it is killing their long-term chances for survival and threatening too many American jobs.
OK, so the automobile and oil industries are also the problem. But here is where real confusion sets in for me:
And it's also a failure of our politics that pre-dates the presidency of George W. Bush. We have heard promises about energy independence from every single U.S. President since Richard Nixon - Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans and Democrats are the problem? Actually, maybe Republicans aren't the problem at all:
So I decided to try something new. I reached across the aisle to come up with a plan to raise our fuel standards that won support of lawmakers who had never supported raising fuel standards before.
Apparently, Republicans will support progressive global warming legislation if you just ask them to do so.
This is a confusing, contradictory pattern in Obama's rhetoric that is causing a problem for his campaign. There are two interlocking contradictions at play here:
- A serious problem of division and caution is identified in Washington, which both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, vaguely blamed equally for this problem. However, when specifics arise, conservatives and Republicans are always blamed. In the abstract, he is blaming both sides equally, but in the specific he is blaming one side far more than the other. So, why doesn't he just say that powerful conservative interests are the problem in the abstract?
- After conservatives and Republicans are blamed for failing to implement solutions that would fix problems like global warming, we are then told that it really isn't that difficult for Obama to get Republicans to agree with him. So, we are told that there is a big problem with division and caution in Washington, but then told that the problem can be solved fairly easily. As such, is said divisiveness really that big of a problem?
It feels like Obama is identifying a problem, changing his definition of the problem in mid-speech, and then explaining the problem away by the end. First, we are told that our major national problems are going unsolved because of ideological and partisan division for which both sides are to blame. Then, we are told that, actually, Republicans and conservatives are to blame. After that, it turns out that Republicans and conservatives will work with you and become progressives if you just ask them. Um, OK.
Obama's rhetoric is both confusing and just plain wrong. The major national problems we face are not based in ideological or partisan logjams, nor are they based in a lack of communication. They are, instead, caused by the implementation of bad policy, not none at all. I mean, does Obama really think that partisan logjams and ideological divisiveness for their own sake are the source of America's biggest problems? Does anyone? Rather than politicians in Washington refusing to pass obvious solutions to major problems out of spite because no one is reaching out to them, the problem seems to be, much more obviously, that politicians in Washington are implementing policies that they think will solve our problems, but instead make those problems worse. Their beliefs lead to bad solutions and, as such, the politicians implementing them need to be replaced via elections, rather than having someone simply "reach out" to them. |
