Monday, April 14, 2008 - Posts
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Dahlia, I think there's one important difference between Rush and Barack (well, one difference relevant to this conversation): location, location, location. Rush Limbaugh might be a kajillionaire immune to any economic downturn, but he's gotten that way by understanding his audience. He's in his listeners' living room or driving down the street with them, albeit virtually, listening to what they have to say and commiserating with them. Obama was talking at, and talking down to, working-class voters, from a room full of rich people in San Francisco.
Can you picture Obama uttering those same words while speaking to the monthly meeting of the Rotary Club, or at smoke-filled VFW hall? The thing is, what Obama said last week was not altogether different from a point that he made in his speech on race, when he said that "resentment builds over time" when whites "are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed." But in that speech, he was talking to all of us at the same time, and he was trying to mend our differences. In San Francisco, he came across as making assumptions about a group of people that probably almost no one in attendance could relate to.
Of course people should be able to, and should be encouraged to, weigh in on issues they haven't experienced. But if we're going to stop talking past one another, like you say, well, first we have to start talking to one another. I don't think there were too many union laborers or laid-off factory workers at that San Francisco fundraiser.
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Just to be clear then: When Barack Obama dares ponder the sources of small-town America’s bitterness, he’s an elitist snob. But when Rush Limbaugh devotes his every waking breath to ranting about it, well, he’s speaking truth to power.
I’m not saying Obama’s “cling” comment was smart. It wasn’t. But his real mistake lay in violating the cardinal rule of American political discourse: Thou shalt not proclaim upon any group of which thou art not a member. Nobody may voice an opinion about anything she hasn’t personally experienced without being in peril of that worst sin: condescension. No wonder liberals and conservatives just keep talking past each other. All we’re allowed to reflect upon is ourselves. Obama can wail, weep, and emote exclusively on the topic of Harvard-educated liberal elite bitterness. Dare to speculate about the sources of anger in any other group and you have become “supercilious” “elitist” and “condescending.”
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This "cling" flap just keeps getting worse. I was expecting some Obama redemption at the Christian school forum last night in Grantham, where each of the candidates had the chance to talk about their faith. Maybe not as moving as the Jeremiah Wright speech but something that felt at least a little real and helped us recalibrate what he'd said in San Francisco. Instead, we got just a lot of faith babble, mindless clichés that could have come from John McCain or Howard Dean or the president of Georgetown or anyone who's evading uncomfortable stares from true believers: "Religion is a bulwark, a foundation"; "trials and tribulations"; "I was in no way demeaning a faith." Blah, blah, blah. Answers like these suggest either great guilt or great arrogance. He either recognizes that he insulted wide swaths of people and feels badly about it, or he doesn't even see it yet, in which case we're in real trouble.
Hillary, meanwhile, is unbelievable. Her whole strategy at the moment seems to be Message: I Care, and a particularly cold, impatient form of it. "I went to church on Easter. I mean, so?" I mean, so? Is she high? Even Miss Jew here recognizes that so? and the resurrection of Jesus don't belong in the same sentence. And just to dissect further: “We have been working very hard to make it clear that we have millions of Democrats who are church-going and gun-owning,” she said. “And we are tired of having Republicans, or frankly our own Democrats, give any ammunition to Republicans because what happens then is Republicans take advantage of the situation.”
Note the: "We have been working very hard." In other words, none of this is natural. All this stuff I've said about my father taking me hunting and going to church is a political strategy, intended to keep ammunition away from the Republicans, and has nothing to do with what I actually care about or believe.
After Tim Kaine won the Virginia governor's race. I really thought the Democrats were starting to get their act together. Not that they were pretending to be religious, the way Howard Dean did, but that they were finding a way to integrate sincere religious narratives with what they actually believe. Obama has more potential to make this real than almost anyone. My true hope was that if he pulled it off, religion would sort of fade away as an election issue. It would no longer be an absolute requirement for candidates to bludgeon each other with the sincerity of their testimonies. And how they worshipped would no longer be a proxy for anything else. It would be possible to be devoutly Catholic and pro-choice, or an environmentalist evangelical. This is the way religion is headed anyway. And this might have the added benefit of making both San Francisco and Grantham, Pa., feel included. Let's hope Obama figures that out—quickly.
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Great framing, Rachael, and evidence that the real beneficiary of Obama's comment will be not Hillary but McCain, for whom it is a bag of bonbons to be snacked on all fall. Part of what's prompting the wincing and deep doubts, I think, is that Obama sounded like an anthropologist talking about objects of study to an audience that he assumed has the same disassociated point of view. He'd never have talked that way to a group of actual angry, gun-toting churchgoers, it's safe to say. The generous interpretation of his remark is that he can easily slip into the shoes of whomever he is talking to. The ungenerous one, courtesy Bill Kristol this morning, is that his mask slipped, and he revealed his inner patronizing elitist. My guess is some of both. I know all of this matters in terms of getting elected. I wonder, though, how much it matters in terms of how he would govern. What does it reveal on that front? I'm not sure much.
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Wow, Melinda, I don't think I could have put it any better. Like you, I hail from a small town whose most vibrant days are well in the past. Downtown was on life support long before Wal-Mart came to town seven or eight years ago; the schools aren't what they used to be; and the factories are gone, but the payday-loan industry appears to be thriving. Whatever else people in such communities might have lost, they still retain their pride and their self-respect. And so, no, they don't take kindly to a slick politician talking down to them from San Francisco, of all places. (There's a reason this South Park episode makes me laugh harder than most others.) A while back, I wrote that one of my biggest problems with Hillary Clinton is that she acts like she's knows what's best for us, and "we'll like it whether we like it or not." It's only a mite less annoying when a politician tries to explain to people why they hold the "mistaken" beliefs they do, and does so with a condescending little pat on the head.
But now, on to Hillary's response. When I saw the headline "Clinton Portrays Herself as a Pro-Gun Churchgoer," I thought, "Wait, doesn't that make her the kind of person Obama was just talking about?" And then I read that yes, that actually was the impression she was going for. Not a bad ploy, I suppose. But now that she's followed up by saying that it's not relevant when she last went to church or fired a gun, my BS detectors are buzzing loudly. Yes, it's possible for someone to believe the Second Amendment applies to individuals and shouldn't be messed with lightly even if they aren't a veteran hunter (I fall into that category myself), and no, candidates shouldn't have to release their church attendance records along with their 1040s. But, come on. You have to try a little harder.
So, voters in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and elsewhere now have an important choice to make. Is it going to be the condescender, or the panderer?
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