The Old Is New Again

by: Chris Bowers

Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 15:37


I am loathe to write this, since it smacks of growing old and crotchety. However, to a certain extent I can understand some of the insider exacerbation with the arguments coming from some Obama supporters. Specifically, the ideas put forth by the Obama campaign on a wide range of process issues such as how to defeat Republicans and how to successfully govern are not new ideas from Democrats, but the sort of thing that many Democrats have been saying for at least twenty years. Where the Obama campaign has had the most success so far is not when it incorporates an original strategy or original rhetoric, but instead when it executes extant ideas and rhetoric more successfully than earlier campaigns. Consider all of the following:
Chris Bowers :: The Old Is New Again
  • A campaign message built on hope? As Matt has noted, Howard Dean did exactly the same thing back in 2004. Hell, back in 1992, Bill Clinton's convention acceptance speech ended with the line "My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me- I still believe in a place called Hope."

  • A campaign message built on change? Bill Clinton's first inaugural address used the word "change" 11 times. It was, in fact, the central theme of the speech.

  • An army of small donors? Obama's numbers are certainly impressive on this front, but once again he wasn't the first. John Kerry had two million small donors in 2004. Howard Dean had bunch before him. Al Gore, Bill Bradley, John McCain, and Ralph Nader and all had a bunch back in 2000 before Dean.  The numbers keep getting bigger, but it is a matter of degree, not a seismic paradigm shift.

  • Obama doesn't call himself a liberal, but is still championing liberal ideas? I've heard that idea is every Democratic campaign since 1988. Dukakis refused to call himself a liberal. Clinton refused to do the same. So did Gore and Kerry. Hell, Howard Dean refused to call himself a liberal, and said that we should find non0ideological solutions to promises. This is an old refrain, and I have heard it many times before.

  • We need to reach out across the aisle, and be bipartisan rather than partisan? I heard that as a campaign promise as recently as 2006 when the Democratic congressional leadership repeatedly promised to be "bipartisan" and reach out across the aisle once in the majority. In fact, I'm pretty sure that every single Democratic candidate for President in 2008 promised to do the same thing. Every Democratic candidate says this.  Some Democrats might promise to fight corporations or other special interests, but every single major Democrat always promises to reach out across the aisle. And they do so in every single election.

  • Attracting new voters to the party, or bringing old ones back? If I remember correctly, that was the entire purpose of the DLC when it was founded in the 1980's. Everyone promises to do that. If there is a difference, it has been that so far in the campaign, Obama has simply proven better at actually pulling it off.

Every single major Democratic candidate in the last twenty years has promised hope, called for change, eschewed ideological labels like "liberal," said s/he would reach out across the aisle, and talked of the need to bring new voters into the Democratic Party. Most of them have also had large small donor bases, with the overall totals increasing with new each campaign cycle. None of this is new, it is just very well executed. We have been hearing exactly the same refrains for at least two decades. It is possible we have been hearing these refrains for even longer than two decades, but the 1988 election was the first one to which I paid close attention (I was 14).

So there--I am now growing old and crotchety in public. I have heard this all before, and it doesn't strike me as new. It does strike me as well-executed, and Obama strikes me as a good delivery vessel. The small donor numbers are also very impressive and will probably reach record-breaking levels, but that does not make the concept revolutionary. Also, the "change" message was well-timed for this election cycle, given the extremely low right direction / wrong track numbers nationwide. Further, the low job approval rating that rank and file Democrats give to their own establishment leaders also helped Obama in an election where a Clinton was Obama's main opponent. It is all very well done, and the sign of an impressive, effective campaign operation. However, it is kind of grating to hear some of Obama's supporters, or even Obama himself, call these longstanding ideas new or revolutionary:

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.

Democrats are perpetually trying to reach out across the aisle in Congress. This idea is about as new as wearing flannel, listening to Nirvana, and hanging out in coffee houses. It doesn't necessarily mean that these are bad ideas, it just means that these ideas are not new. If Obama becomes the next President, it won't be because of original ideas, it will instead be because his campaign did a good job of executing on longstanding ones.  

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The Old Is New Again | 57 comments
Organizing (4.00 / 3)
Arguably one new thing is the effort expended and resulting quality of the organizing. I've had contact with many campaigns, and the Obama campaign here in WI was by far the most professional and eager to bring on volunteers. There have been other movement candidates, but none in my experience with the organizing competence of BHO, which should serve us well in both electoral and governance modes.
Really? (0.00 / 0)
I thought that they were kind of bad with follow-up in a lot of ways.  
[ Parent ]
Just personal experience (0.00 / 0)
They held a good rally/meeting for volunteers at the downtown Madison office, called to follow-up on assignments, showed up with the right, well-organized canvass materials (with good GIS-generated maps).

Maybe I've only encountered dismal campaigns before. When I canvassed with DCCC, for example, they handed me a map from a gas station with a list of addresses and told me to do my best. They'd hired a few homeless people to help. The homeless guys bailed out immediately. The other volunteer and I found many but not most of the houses on the list....

[ Parent ]
Old Man Bowers (4.00 / 8)
Chris, you are undoubtedly correct that several of the larger themes of the Obama campaigh--change, hope, bi-partisanship, openness, rising above silly labels--are themes that go back twenty years.  But you are wrong to think that these themes have been limited to Democrats for the last twenty years.

They are themes that have been touched upon by politicians of all stripes going back to the founding of the nation.

These themes are as broad as the literary themes of "man versus nature" or "the garden and the wilderness".  Of couse they are not new.  Politicians are seeking a job, elected office, and they must convince voters of essentially two things: (1) I will change the things that are bad, and (2) I am the best person to do things that are good.  These two positions take forms as varied as "I bring change" to "throw the bums out" to "experience counts" to "I am competent."  

Politics, like music or good literary works, are variations on themes.  Barack Obama's campaign touts broad themes just as Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Wilson, Roosevelt, Pierce, Polk, and Adams touted broad themes, and many are the same.  

I don't know if Obama has ever claimed to be the candidate of new ideas (he has said repeatedly that his policies are dramatically similar to those of Senator Clinton's).  He has simply picked up themes others have built campaigns on.

As has been said before: He's playing the same song as others before him, but where they hit chords, he makes music.    

I'll get off your lawn now.  

that sounds about right (0.00 / 0)
It isn't that it is new--it is that he is making it work. Perhaps it is a revolution in competence, at least so far.  
[ Parent ]
Reaching out across the aisle (0.00 / 0)
The Republicans never compromise. Their minority in the Senate has already set a record for filibusters, and when they had a small majority, all we heard was up and down vote, up and down vote.

Obama can reach across all he wants, all he will get back is a stub where his hand used to be. Unity is a good campaigning slogan, but it's not a real governing strategy with the current crop of right wingers.

by no means (0.00 / 0)
Have I drunk of the Obama flavoured sugary drink that may or may not contain poison, but I think the idea is not to reach across to the Republican senators but to pull so many Republican voters that we sweep in a tide of new Democratic senators so as to render the obstructionists impotent.

Whether 55 or 60 Seats in the Senate is feasible in 2008 or 2010 is of course a fair point of debate but Obama's stance is a little more grounded than hoping that the various Scrooges in the US Senate will get visited by 3 ghosts on Election night in November.

[ Parent ]
a little more grounded (4.00 / 1)
then Unity is not really unity, but the necessity of having a super majority to get things done? perhaps Obama will get first hand experience of the Clinton presidency.  
[ Parent ]
it was always such (4.00 / 1)
The US senate is on purposed designed to be chalk full of aristocrats holding off the masses from making changes for the benefit of all.  Think the New Deal or Great Society would have got through without 2/3+ Majorities being Democrats?

I don't know about Obama or his supporters generally but I have little illusion that if there are still 41 Republican senators left standing after the election, a lot of any Democratic agenda will have to wait for 2010 to sweep out a few more.

[ Parent ]
so it's Yes We Can, if we have 60 in the Senate (0.00 / 0)
Think the New Deal or Great Society would have got through without 2/3+ Majorities being Democrats?

Yes, I've read Paul Rosenberg. The other side don't need a super majority to get their agenda through. But hey, we obviously rather have a unifier than a fighter.

[ Parent ]
Right (4.00 / 2)
He can go over their heads to the voters that put him in.  Especially of they lose 6-8 Senate seats and 20-30 House seats.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
[ Parent ]
No, sorry, he can't (0.00 / 0)
do that if he persists on running a largely contentless campaign of personal adulation.  Yes, I KNOW he has position papers, but he's not been running on them.  If he wins this way, he will have no mandate to do squat.

I'm encouraged that he seems to be putting a little more content into his campaign and hope his secret plans he hasn't shared with us peons include ratcheting up the policy content of his campaign.

But just because he convinces some disillusioned Republican voers (and trust me, babe, it won't be very many Republican voters) and low-info independents to vote for him doesn't mean they will back him against their GOP reps when he tries to do something the GOP congresscritters don't want to go along with.

Even on the progressive blogs like this one, everybody has their own idea of what Obama really means or really stands for or really intends to do.  If we can't even figure it out for ourselves, what can those ambivalent or low-info voters be thinking he means to do or intends to do or really stands for?  Most of them haven't a clue, and they aren't going to back him on anything the don't agree with, whether they voted for him or not.

Look at his buddy Deval Patrick in Mass. for an example of what happens when you try to do something difficult once you get into office without having run on it.

[ Parent ]
Bonus points (4.00 / 1)
for most excellent usage of word 'crotchety.'
And he would have gotten away with it too... (4.00 / 8)
...if it weren't for you meddling kids.

I think there's a mix of new and old at work here, and I do think the the scale of small-dollar investment and grassroots activism suggests at least the potential for something really different.

To me, Obama is executing the kind of campaign most Dean supporters hoped for: a widespread grassroots organizing campaign (backed by the internets), coupled with a highly professional media campaign. He's not confrontational in the way that Dean was (and which ultimately doomed the media end of that effort), but beyond that they're pretty similar.

But the exciting part of all that Dean stuff wasn't really about running an all-new kind of campaign. It was the idea that such a campaign would win, and the follow-on implications for governance -- transparent, participatory, innovative and high-funcitoning -- were what drove a lot of the interest.

Me | My Work | Future Majority

I agree completely n/t (0.00 / 0)


Former Edwards Supporter, Obama Supporter since January 30, 2008
[ Parent ]
Good Points (0.00 / 0)
Hmm, I hadn't recognized this, Chris, and it's good to know. Nonetheless, I still would argue that Obama IS revolutionary in his organization of people, not just in number but also in strategy. As kos points out in that post, the things Obama is doing in Early Voting, especially in organizing voters at rallies, are revolutionary ideas, and are working to give him quite the advantage.

Former Edwards Supporter, Obama Supporter since January 30, 2008
But... (4.00 / 1)
Is that a revolution, or just being more effective? I think Obama is taking a lot of the revolutionary tools that have been around for a while, and proving to be the most effective user of those tools. So, it isn't a revolution so much as competence. Or, perhpas it is completing the revolution set in motion in recent decades. Hard to tell.  
[ Parent ]
Being effective isn't everything (0.00 / 0)
It is just the only thing that matters.

The liberal wiki
Send an email to [email protected]
[ Parent ]
It's only revolutionary (0.00 / 0)
because technology make it possible.  I give him and his campaign huge props for waht they've done, but it doesn't give them genius or sainthood status.  Other candidates of the past have done very much the same thing to the extent that technology enabled them.  Obama's campaign mainly just has better tools and people who know how to use them.

In the "old days," the best campaigns did the same things, only using index cards and obsessive handwritten notations, so obviously couldn't be anywhere near as comprehensive and effective at it.

It's not that nobody ever thought of this before, we did, lots of us.

[ Parent ]
-- but where they hit chords, he makes music. (0.00 / 0)
And there is a new band too. Soooo thats the end of that metaphor.

Yes Obama is reaching out, to republican voters, and finding ears and then hands, and more to the money, those young people.

The young you old sour-puss.
In every town and village, every college and University, every state red or blue, the young are organizing to save America from their terribly confused parents. They are also driven by the need for saving the planet and democracy. This is the most fully engaged generation since --
well I was going to say the sixties . . . But DOH can argue that I won't.

Organized young people, becoming better organizers with every passing day, Ready to slog, ready to knock, making code, making calls, making art.


--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

Get off my lawn!! (4.00 / 2)

Only when (4.00 / 2)
you get off mine. And stop using my pool!  
[ Parent ]
Yeah -- it's frustrating (0.00 / 0)
I'm 30 and very much an Obama supporter, but a fair amount of the people I know personally who support him had checked out of political engagement before he came on the scene. I live in a state that Kerry and Gore won but I can't help but think that if some of the people who fit into this category had participated more deeply in the political conversation in 2000 and 2004 the world would be a better place. For the same reason, I welcome them warmly now.  
It's True! (4.00 / 1)
Saying you've got something new is the oldest trick in the book.

In fact, it's the reason the book was invented in the first place.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

A weak criticism perhaps... (0.00 / 0)
Well, I certainly think that "but he executes it better than any of those failed candidates did" isn't exactly the strongest criticism I've seen leveled at a candidate.

We have a bias towards success when evaluating things.  We see one person or group succeed at something, decide that it was due to X, and then waste time and money focusing exclusively on X even though we may not be able to execute on it nearly as well as the original group did.  e.g. Just because triangulation worked for Clinton doesn't make it the proper approach after Clinton.  (It doesn't even make it the right approach during Clinton...)

It works the other way as well though.  Sometimes perfectly good strategies and ideals fail because of the imperfect people attempting to execute on them.

I'm not claiming Barack Obama is perfect - obviously he isn't - but he is obviously better at executing these strategies than the vast majority of those who have come before.

Attracting new voters to the party, or bringing old ones back? If I remember correctly, that was the entire purpose of the DLC when it was founded in the 1980's. Everyone promises to do that. If there is a difference, it has been that so far in the campaign, Obama has simply proven better at actually pulling it off.

I think that this trivializes what he's done.  He is pulling it off.  That is important.  That is vital.  That shouldn't be the sixth bullet point down.  This is the most important statement in the entire list - and it applies to essentially every bulleted point.

Yes, hope and change are in no way new political concepts - but if they are standard political weapons, he is using them more skillfully than any Democrat has in my lifetime (born in 1980, so no Kennedy comparisons please!).

He isn't the first to use an army of small donors - but when you combine the internet fundraising with the internet grassroots organizing on a national level, there's a level of distributed execution here on a scale that is simply unprecedented.

He isn't the first to claim bipartisanship - but he's one of the first (that I can remember) with the talent of talking about liberal policy positions in such a way that the hedge fund managers start nodding along right with the factory workers.

Yes, maybe the talk of the strategies here being revolutionary is overblown.  But the ability to execute on the strategies cannot be underrated.  For all of Hillary's "experience" and "readiness on Day 1", I don't think she's the better executive.  And honestly, I don't think it's even close.

No, he isn't (0.00 / 0)
"bringing people into the party."  He's getting some disaffected Republican voters and a larger number of so-called independents to vote for him in the primaries.  It's really important to remember, if we're going to be the "reality-based" community, that it's not the same thing, not by a long shot.

The vast majority of those voters have no clue what his positions are.  And Web site me no Web sites.  They don't know because he really hasn't told them forcefully.  That vagueness is very clearly a core part of his electoral strategy.  The fact that so many of them are cheerfully deciding between voting for McCain or Obama in the primaries tells an important story we (and Obama) ignore at our peril.

And I'm sorry, but if hedge fund managers are nodding away, it's because they've been left to imagine what he intends in practical terms, and I guaratanee you it ain't the same thing you and I are imagining.

I agree entirely, as an unhappy HRC supporter (after Edwards dropped out) about HRC's campaign.  My assumption of her managerial savvy has been shot full of holes by her dismal, dismal, awful campaign execution.  Obama's people have my strong admiration for their performance.  But effective campaigning simply does not translate directly to effective governance.


[ Parent ]
Who brought new ideas to the White House? (4.00 / 1)
Near as I can recall, that would be Reagan. Well, not new, but so fringe as to seem new to those not paying attention. At this point, Obama has been vague enough about who he's reaching out to, and how, to justify some hope that he'll be about a new Third Way based on real progressive persuasion this time rather than capitulation wearing a mask of consensus. I don't see Obama as any different than any of his primary rivals except Kucinich when it comes to ideas. The way American politics works, it would require a Great Depression, World War, or credible threat of a societal meltdown to create an atmosphere where actual ideas would matter. In the meantime it makes sense to support the candidate who does the most inspiring job of slinging the same old hash.
Nothing wrong (4.00 / 1)
with being old and crotchety. Of course, I am biased on that score, being rather old and crotchety myself.
We should start (0.00 / 0)
an "old and crotchetcy" caucus, I think.

THere really is quite a generational split here.  What I don't know for sure yet is whether this crop of young'uns is any less delusional than we were at their age.

One major advantage of Obama as our nominee, and God willing, our president, is that it would be a helluva lot more interesting, if more perilous, IMHO, than HRC.

[ Parent ]
See Spartacus didnt want to be Emperor. (0.00 / 0)
He wasn't running to lead Rome, he was running away and freeing the enslaved, fighting to right a wrong.

Spartacus is not running to be Emperor.

Rome might get rid of the slaves but Spartacus will never be chosen as leader of Rome.

Obama is change and Presidential. But Presidential first. Being right isn't what people want they want to be safe in their homes and be able to plan for the future. If they don't have to loose their rights and kill innocents well so much the better. But first, lets make our village strong (no not that village).

That is the first lesson of politics, you are becoming everyones dad or mom. The one they can trust. The elect.

Somebody write a good book on Jungian politics. Me I'm all issues, but I swoon to a good speech, I'm sure its all intellectual, but you doubt my lack of emotion I'm sure.

Has anybody found a device that can measure "wooden" or "dull and dry"

Charisma was political when it was Jung.

All elections are the answering of one question. Gore won the last election, because he answered: does this shy nerdy wonk have what it takes to save us from the mistakes bush is making in this time of great crisis.

Remember it was stolen, and had to be stolen because America answered yes. And they answered yes to getting rid of a sitting president in the middle of a war. (Bad stupid illegal pointless filthy war). Gore did very well, but thieves stole the election, now we need to cover every base, all the time. The message of the new century is you cant sit on your ass for more than a few moments, the struggle will take every ounce of strength and smarts you have.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

Jungian analysis of 2000 election (0.00 / 0)
and the relationship to 9/11/01

Slightly tongue-in-cheek, maybe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

[ Parent ]
There is one aspect of the Obama campaign that is key (4.00 / 1)
and I am amazed that it has not been mentioned here.

Granted a superb orator with great personal charisma, granted a very impressive organizational structure....

....but in the end, the key to Obama's wide appeal is his lack of substance.  He is a Rorschach test for voters who are desperate for something, anything, different after what Chris has correctly identified as the "generational failure" of the last 8 years.  Based on comments by pro-Obama supporters here, I don't think people want to know more about his actual policies, they just want to believe that he is an agent of "change," in the most amorphous sense of the term.  

Perhaps Obama can carry this through the general, although you can be sure that idiots like Russert will be trying to tear down the Obama mystique.  In the end, I think Obama will win the GE, the GOP establishment does not want to share the blame for the very hard decisions that will have to be made in the next administration.

I am more concerned about what happens when Obama becomes President and actually starts doing things, and people start waking up from their dream.  I imagine it will look much like the first couple of years of the Clinton Presidency: an angry left constituency feeling betrayed, Obama not yielding to their pressure but instead triangulating with a more "centrist" agenda.  I expect healthcare to be an early casualty, since it is clearly not a high priority for him.  Big mistake.

Amen, Taylor (0.00 / 0)
Just, Amen.

[ Parent ]
school days (4.00 / 2)
"every single major Democrat always promises to reach out across the aisle. And they do so in every single election."

As my old 5th-grade teacher used to ask: "Now, girls and boys, what have we learned?"  

ROTFL (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Great post,, Chris (0.00 / 0)
I'm near maddened by the ambiguities here.  Thank God Openleft exists as a place to provoke thought, and will be here to thrash out what's going on and what it means after the election.

You guys are truly the best.

The Old Is New Again | 57 comments
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