Punching at a Whirlwind

Of all the sins of all the pols who have derided Barack Obama as a vapid rhetorician -- as an inexperienced newcomer of "talk versus action," "speeches not solutions" and "an eloquent but empty call for change" -- none has been more lethal than their misreading of the present, based on an utter lack of comprehending inexorable historical currents.

For the election year of 2008 is likely to rank as another 1932 or 1960, when bottom-up calls for change -- something, anything but what preceded -- of transcendent, almost spiritual dimensions were uppermost in the electoral mind. Uppermost and demanded for sure, yet Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy -- two others derided in their times as speechifying phonies -- were almost singularly tuned in among the political class.

On occasion they had what some may regard as unlikely help. In 1960 Henry Kissinger, for example -- who was born, it seems, a hardened veteran of realpolitik, both foreign and domestic -- took Kennedy-adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr. aside and urged this timely wisdom:

We need someone who will take a big jump -- not just improve on existing trends but produce a new frame of mind, a new national atmosphere. If Kennedy debates with Nixon on who can best manage the status quo, he is lost. The issue is not one technical program or another. The issue is a new epoch. If we get a new epoch and a new spirit, the technical programs will take care of themselves.

It is today's overshadowing yearning for a "new national atmosphere" that Hillary Clinton, above all others in the Democratic fold, missed. Armed with reams of wonkish policy proposals, she lulled audiences into a state of stupefaction, conflating the detailed introduction of "technical programs" with spirited leadership.

But the nation was one step ahead, sensing, as did Kissinger, that the technicalities of change would "take care of themselves." What is needed, rather, is a unifying voice of inspiration to get us from here to there -- to first change the uninspiring "mindset," as Obama once put it, that got us here to begin with.

By itself a call for change is fine and dandy -- that's what elections are all about -- but if the nation senses that you're dragging the uninspirational past into the present, then you're doomed.

And that, Hillary could not shake. Nor did she seem to try very hard. Instead she took the easier but ultimately suicidal route of merely deriding Obama's "rhetoric," which, it so happened, was precisely what the nation needed, and knew it needed.

Obama understood this. He is, as well, a quick study. He's capable of exploiting necessary change in himself. As a recent Washington Post article noted, friends told him after his 2000 congressional-race loss that it was largely the result of his rhetoric being "too wonkish and Ivy League." So he adjusted. Four years later, in his U.S. Senate bid, "Instead of ... dwelling on the details of welfare or health-care policy, he tied them to themes of 'hope and change and the future.'"

Yet another four years later, he was exploitative enough, which is to say smart enough, to get "informal advice from Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen." Meanwhile, Hillary was dwelling on microtrends and "technical programs." Ouch. She completely missed the national macrotrend that was swirling about her.

And, I'm happy to report, it seems that John McCain & Co. is well on its way to making the same, suicidal mistake.

For it further seems that the GOP indeed understands the vast appeal of Obama's siren song, but hasn't a clue as to how to combat it. Except, of course, by deploying the same, tired, wearisome tactics of the past.

If, say, Cincinnati talk-radio host and audience warm-up jackass Bill Cunningham is any indication of what's to come -- the mindless repetition of Barack Hussein Obama as a "hack," a "fraud from Chicago" who wishes to schmooze with "world leaders who want to kill us" -- then Obama is sitting pretty. Eight months is a self-excruciatingly long time to campaign against a man's middle name and a Kennedyesque rhetorical "fraudulence" for which the nation hungers.

It's true, as one of Obama's law-school classmates recently observed, that some "people are commenting increasingly on the disjunction between the elevated and exceptionally fine rhetoric and the rather pedestrian policy proposals that form the Obama platform." (The classmate is also a "former Bush counsel," by the way.)

But that -- a charge leveled against FDR and JFK, too -- just doesn't matter. Because a lot more people are in the mood for something else. And the GOPers, constrained by their own ideology of the rejected past, can't offer it. Even Henry Kissinger could tell them that.

***

NOTE: I am delighted and honored to announce that beginning Monday, March 3, my column will appear exclusively on BuzzFlash.org. You will also be able to access it through BuzzFlash.com, front page, if that's your regular reading habit. So, see you there!
--P.M.

Comments

[banjobailey]

Congratulations on your acceptance as a Buzzflash regular!!! My essential site for all things political. So glad you will be there!
And, this particular column is spot on. Hillary missed it: the change, the mood of the country, indeed the necessity of the country to be "One America" again.

[magicmary]

Good article. I think we are all so tired of being at war with ourselves. Barack's elevated rhetoric is a powerful device which will help us all (with hope) to transcend our animosities and cynicism so that we can get some work done.

[Mike R]

Congratulations, Phil, an honor well deserved.

[commonsense]

Very nice analysis. However, the game, unfortunately, is not over. The Clintons have not really missed the macro-trends. Their sins are much greater than simply blindness to the truth. They are antagonistic to it. They are running against the macro-trends, despite the public's desire for change, in the face of our weariness with their phony wonkishness. Their hubris is NOT found in a failure to recognize the limitations of their own intelligence, but in their refusal to recognize any intelligence but their own and to push aside and suppress those who would disagree. The same people who found comfort in serfdom under Bush will find comfort in serfdom under Hillary. Many people are yearning for a way to throw off the chains of intellectual and political serfdom and take their country back from either the Clinton or Bush branches of the Soprano family.

[neoconned]

Your post today touches upon the very reason people like JFK and MLK and Bobby all suffered serious cases of copper-jacketed lead poisoning - that fostering new frames of minds and new national atmospheres affects the "happiness" and "well-being" of those who claim exaulted status and privilege. As such folk are greed driven, and that there is no excess too flagrant not to be used in the service of their deadly sin, there is no reason not to assume the worst when it comes to Obama's future.

Hillary's personality lends itself to character assassination, so they wouldn't have taken this path with her being the candidate. But strategy that isn't going to work when one's character isn't seen as false by the voters. At that point, there is only one course of action remaining for the greedy elites to utilize.

We HAVE all been here before. We WON'T be surprised again.

[Jason]

Hillary may have missed the macro, but you didn't, Phil. You've hit the nail on the head, here. Nicely put. Congratulations.

[Alex]

Congrats PM on your move to buzzflash. Though I am not liberal or conservative( I am Indy)I do go to buzzflash just about everyday. See you there!

[John]

What all the "talk versus action" critics seem to completely miss is that politcs in the end is ALL about talk. There are no mysterious actual "levers of power" attached to monstrous machines requiring hords of sweating bodies heaving fuel into their furnaces. Achieving anything in legislation in any system of government requires persuasion. That is why those with skill in rhetoric have historically been the most succesful. Lincoln, FDR, Churchill. The time must also be righ for a given theme but expertise without a skill in rhetoric acheives little. There are plenty of people with good ideas but few with the vision to lead and articulate a vision that paves the way for the policy wonks to fill in the detial. Strategically Churchill was no genius as Galipoli and Norway show but without his leadership and inspiration we in Britian would be Germans now. The Republicans have spent years trying to devide America with tiny wedge issues to coral opposition in to small disparite corners. Obama has shown these differences for the petty destructive nit picking they are and Americans realise that unity is strength, not division.

[Bobbie]

The Clintons must be seen as the standard bearers for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is, in essence, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. As such, their fate is inextricably tied to the maintenance of the status quo. Understanding this, it is clear why Hillary is apoplectic at the notion that the American people crave meaningful change in the political system itself, not just in particular policies. And her recent erratic behavior suggests that she is becoming slightly unhinged by the prospect of being rendered irrelevant, should the movement that Obama is leading succeed.

Excellent analysis and insightful comments. Whenever I heard Hillary tout her "experience", I cringed. To me, those words when spoken by a politician simply mean: same game, different color uniforms -- Business as Usual.

[Henry Doyle]

Congrats on the Buzzflash placement pm!

Your article is bang on. For the fate of the world, I hope and pray you are right!

Keep On Rockin' In The Free World!

[Mary H]

Sounds great but black Obama or white Obama (and he is both)is a chameleon. He professes to be the quintessential uniter, and as such aspires to satisfy the hopes and dreams of all factions of American society, each of whom see in him their champion. It is impossible to be all things to all people, therefore he will satisfy no one. Not the blacks, the whites, the young, the old, the Hispanics, the Republicans or the Democrats. In pleasing one faction, he will alienate another, possibly becoming more a divider that a uniter.

[Will B]

Good article.

Remember the "Man from Hope" in 1992? Amazing how people forget their roots....

[Mooser]

My hope is that the Democratic party may have found the man who can finally turn upon the Republicans the technique they have been using to such devastating effect on the Democrats; the technique of getting your opponents to marginalise themselves!
It doesn't help them (Obama's opponents) that they can't really see Mr. Obama. When they look at him, they see only the reflection of their own misconceptions and prejudices. Mr. Obama himself might as well be invisible to them. At that point, they begin to look into themselves, and begin projecting. And then it goes all to hell for them, as they reach for the darkest and most ignorant part of their souls.

[Mooser]

hopes and dreams of all factions of American society,

Not all, Mary, just a lot. Not everyone, not by a long shot, that would be impossible. But certainly enough.
Why, do you have any big objections to joining with them?
You are convinced Obama will act against your interests?

[Sparky]

Mary, Mary, Mary.
I was leaning towards Obama when I heard Hillary blame Saddam for removing the UN inspectors in '98; a blatant blame-deflecting falsehood reminiscent of everything we despise about the Bush regime. Now I'm solidly behind Obama. We are so tired of the lies and lack of accountability. What I and the people I interact with (regardless of skin color, age, political stripe, gender, income)yearn for is a candidate that can convince me that he or she has a solid moral center - some bedrock conviction of what democracy is that will, ultimately, return us to the rule of law - absent that, all the detailed plans and solutions are worthless. We have now an administration with nothing but contempt for the truth, the voters, the constitution (e.g. Iraq, caging, Plame, Katrina, FISA, PAA, you name it - the law and our lives mean nothing to the Bush regime). I have no illusions about Obama satisfying "all the hopes and dreams of all factions.."
but I have a sense that Obama offers all of us the genuine hope of a return to the rule of law, without which we are all truly screwed.

[Mickeyg]

P.M.:
Good post especially on the fact that if going on and on about Barack's middle name is the best these right wingers can do, well, we are in excellent shape!!! There is real hope! Welcome to the org & thank you, Phil!!!

[Bill Mac Bean]

I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in a neighborhood that was at least half black, so I never could understand the animosity some whites have for black people. An obnoxious jerk is the same in ANY color or hue. Same with good people. So, Obama's middle name is Huessain? So what? His father is a muslim? Okay. Barack is black? Okey dokey. Obama is an AMERICAN, and a damn good one at that. He's brilliant and actually CARES about our people. Quite a contrast to the chump-in-charge, wouldn't you say?

[Nannie]

No doubt all these posters are men who cannot bear the thought of a woman president.Or women who never made the grade themselves and are envious of those who did.Sour grapes.But just wait till your dreamboat gets the nomination and we will see who the whinner is.It will be either one of two scenerios;Karl Rove and the swiftboaters will destroy him;or he is really the republican party's candidate,and they will take down McCain.Either way Obama will be Rove's puppet.Cant wait to see the delusion revealed.

[Barack Head]

What's with all the Barack haters? Have you not had the conversation with yourself about possibly backing the other Democrat? Let's "Get Real". I'm for Obama all the way but I guess I'd have to back Hillary if she won(and monkeys flew out of my but) the least you could do is prepare yourself a little. Because ugliness doesn't look good on you.

This country was built on hope, by immigrants!

[Mooser]

your dreamboat gets the nomination and we will see who the whinner is
Nannie

Nannie, I cannot even begin to evaluate your comment until you tell me if you meant "winner" or Whiner". The meaning all depends on that.

[Bailey]

Congrats, PM! I enjoy your commentaries. They're usually spot-on; and Buzzflash is a great fit.

The Clinton camp is now threatening litigation in Texas (if the voting doesn't go their way). It's unreal how out of step they are with the times and the voters. I heard a reporter down in Texas this morning say that Texans aren't taking too kindly to the threat of a lawsuit. Hopefully Obama will win by such a large margin, the idea of a lawsuit will be met by widespread ridicule and scorn.

Republican for Obama!

[Bailey]

For more info on the Clinton camp's threat to sue over votes go here:
www.opeding.blogspot.com

McClatchy news has a good article on the current Clinton chicanery and the "Texas two-step" (primary/caucus).