In Part 1, I took note of the reportage casting Fox News as "populist" highlighted by Kargo X, and wrote:
While the notion of Fox News as "populist" is a ludicrous rightwing perversion in one sense, it is quite accurate in another sense we dare not ignore--and that is, quite simply, that it reflects the truest test of elite power--the ability to define the essential contours of populist thought, and to cast someone else as the dreaded "elite".
In this diary, I want to dig back into history, and uncover some key turning points that brought us from the economic populist solidarity of the New Deal to the sorry state we find ourselves in today, where the Democratic Party is still virtually clueless about how to respond to such outrageous lies. A key figure in this story is the pivotal Republican President of the past 75 years--Richard Nixon.
While Barack Obama and legions of his supporters insist on seeing Reagan as his hagiographers have painted him--as a trascendental transformative figure--the simple reality is that he was nothing of the sort. He was the beneficiary of an enormous amount of high-power myth-making. But Nixon was the one who made it all possible.
I've argued elsewhere about why 1968 was a de-aligning election--ending the "New Deal" Fifth Party System, in which Democrats dominated Congress and the presidency as thoroughly as any party has ever dominated a party system, and ushering in the only party system in American history in which the dominant "party" is divided government. Now, in an excerpt from his new book, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Rick Perlstein provides a striking snapshot of how that deeply split 1968 election sent down much deeper splits into the bedrock of American politics. The excerpt, "Then No One Would Be a Democrat Anymore" (at American Prospect Online) describes the progression of blue-collar anti-anti-war violence, rioting, and eventual mass marching that thrilled Nixon with the prospect of a vast political realignment:
Nixon had tried to talk to the student demonstrators. He concluded he preferred the hard hats. "Thinks now the college demonstrators have overplayed their hands," Haldeman wrote in his diary, "evidence is the blue collar group rising against them, and [president] can mobilize them."
New York construction workers now took every lunch hour for boisterous patriotic demonstrations. So did hard hats in San Diego, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Some of the rallies were not entirely spontaneous: "Obviously more of these will be occurring throughout the nation," White House staffer Stephen Bull wrote in a memo to Chuck Colson, "perhaps partially as a result of your clandestine activity." Peter Brennan, the combative head of the Building Trades Council of Greater New York, accused of organizing the "hard hat riot," defiantly denied it -- then showed what he could do as an organizer: one hundred thousand marchers on May 20, complete with a cement mixer draped with a LINDSAY FOR MAYOR OF HANOI banner. Signs read GOD BLESS THE ESTABLISHMENT and WE SUPPORT NIXON AND AGNEW. Time called it "a kind of workers' Woodstock."
Yesterday, Spencer Ackerman published an important article on Barack Obama's foreign policy at the The American Prospect, " The Obama Doctrine," which had as one of its main themes the role of "dignity promotion" in Obama's thinking. Ackerman's focus is on Obama's foreign policy advisors (including the recently-departed Samantha Power, whose importance in understanding where Obama is coming from remains undiminshed, as she, unlike his other advisers, has already worked closely with him, serving in his Senate office for a year)/ All the adivisors share something in common-regardless of where they come from, all opposed the Iraq War, and weathered absurd, wrong-headed criticism as a result.
What Ackerman's article does-reason enough to set it well above anything similar-is take the next step and ask, "Where does this lead to next? What are the common factors underlying being right about Iraq, and how do they prefigure a different approach to foreign policy in the future?" The answers to this show significant promise that Obama's foreign policy thinking appears most similar to Clinton's only in the short run, if withdrawing from Iraq is the whole enchilada. But when the focus broadens, and turns to the future beyond Iraq, the differences become much clearer.
"Dignity promotion" is, to me, far and away the most promising aspect discussed, but it is far from the sole focus. Still, it represents a vital departure from current thinking. The question remains, however-how serious would it really be? There were, after all, strains of such thinking in John F. Kennedy's foreign policy (the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps), as well as Jimmy Carter's (human rights). Focusing attention on this promise now, and making it part of a wider dialogue is one way we can strengthen the possibility that it will really take root. To that end, let's take a look at some passages in Ackerman's article....
In my diary earlier today on Ron Paul, I noted how he fell among the 0.2% of people totally opposed to federal social welfare policies--a remarkably far-right fringe position from which to launch a campaign that even seeks to appeal to progressives distressed with the Democrats' inept and confused response to the Iraq War. While Ron Paul stands zero chance of being elected President, he is doing a bang-up job of expanding the rightwing extremist base of influence, which is what a hegemonic cultural warrior ought to be doing. Too bad he is on the other side.
Now I want to flip to the other side, and take a look at how a much better positioned progressive candidate--Barack Obama--has managed to do the exact opposite: take a majoritarian position and cut it to pieces. He, too, will probably not be President. But unlike Paul, he is doing virtually nothing to build influence for ideological base. In fact, he's doing the exact opposite: his funciton is to divide and sometimes even demonize that base.
My points of reference here are how Obama himself has characterized the divisions in foreign policy as he sees them, and how he responds.
In a MyDD diary last December, The Two Obamas and Me, Part One, Chris contrasted the principle-driven Obama who first inspired tremendous netroots support with the compromise-driven Obama were seen since, who often seems intent on demonizing the very people who helped get him his start. Chris cited this example:
In town-hall meetings, when those who opposed the war get shrill, Obama makes a point of noting that while he, too, opposed the war, he's "not one of those people who cynically believes Bush went in only for the oil."
Chis followed up:
Did anyone with any power every say that? Did any leading Democrats ever say that? Did any progressive or liberal of any public stature ever say that? If they did, I'd love to see the quote.
In 1981, Obama arrived at Columbia University, where he majored in international relations. He wrote his senior thesis on the North-South debate on trade then raging as part of the demand for a "new international economic order." But he says that he was never much of a lefty. Obama offers himself as the representative of a new generation, free of the dogmas that still burden the Democratic Party. "The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam," he said to me on the campaign plane, "which means that either you're a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you're a Tom Hayden Democrat and you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework."
The cut points that Obama makes are, I will argue, fundamentally misguided and destructive. Even if the dividions were accurate, the only reason to focus on such divisions in the first place should be to heal them, not simply highlight them. Besides, Ron Paul's example clearly shows that the most effective strategy is not even to talk about divisions. But I don't want to simply be negative. I want to illuminate what the real cut points are, and why it makes so much more sense to focus on them realistically in forming our policy.
This diary combines two streams of thought. One comes from Chris's diary yesterday, "The Mutual Distrust Of Insider and Outside Rebellions", dealing with Obama's support among the foreign policy rank and file, the other comes from my ongoing series, "The Political Duality of Rep v. Dem" and its current sub-series "Questioning vs. Reinforcing Conventional Wisdom." I've already posted a diary ("The Elite/DFH Progressive Foreign Policy Split") more directly oriented to following up on Chris's discussion. This one seeks to draw on both streams.
I'm in basic agreement with Chris's view:
for the rank and file of professional, progressive foreign policy types who were opposed to the Iraq war from the start, the Obama campaign is the equivalent of the 2002 Nancy Pelosi leadership, 2003 Howard Dean presidential, and 2006 Ned Lamont Senate campaigns were for much of the activist rank and file. However, while this rebellion is analogous to those earlier rebellions of an anti-war rank and file against a pro-leadership, the cultural gap between wonks and hacks, between insiders and outsiders, and between professionals and the grassroots have prevented it from gaining the same traction as those earlier campaigns.
There is, however, something more that's missing. Quite simply, Obama is missing a counter-hegemonic position that challenges the "war on terror" narrative. He is not the leader here. Edwards was the leader in challenging the narrative frame, and Richardson was the leader in making a decisive commitment to withdraw from Iraq. This is not a minor matter. While the "war on terror" is a disastrous policy, one that does much more to help our enemies than ourselves, Democrats cannot run successfully against it without have an alternative vision-which they do not yet have. They have alternative strategies, but this is not the same thing.
On the flip, I go through a rapid-fire review of some examples in recent history of missed opportunities for challenging foreign policy hegemony at the level of vision, in order to give a better sense of what the missing elements might look like, and thus, what is needed.
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