Yesterday, for the third time in four years, the Supreme Court rebuffed the Bush Administration's handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay (a strategy which has amounted, basically, to denying detainees the normal protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution), stating, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
The majority opinion in this case, Boumediene v. Bush, written by Anthony Kennedy, asserts, "Security subsists, [in addition to use of a 'sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our armed forces to act and to interdict'], in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief [ie, a person's right to go to federal court to demand that the government either justify their detention or set them free] derives.
"Our opinion does not undermine the Executive's powers as commander in chief. On the contrary, the exercise of those powers is vindicated, not eroded, when confirmed by the Judicial Branch.
"Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person.
"Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention. Their access to the writ [of habeas corpus] is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek...." (emphasis mine).
Good stuff - kudos to the Court, and Long Live the Constitution and the principles of Freedom and Liberty for which it stands.
The scary thing about the case, though, is that it was decided just 5-4. Who are these people who would dissent from the right of people to ask why the government is detaining them - some for as long as six years without due process?? It's one thing when justices disagree on more mundane things, but when we're talking about the most fundamental principles underpinning our entire Nation - i.e., Freedom, Liberty, Due Process of Law – one really has to wonder.
All the more reason it’s imperative that Barack Obama is elected president – with such a razor-thin margin on the Supreme Court, America cannot afford a president who would nominate another justice like those in the dissent here (Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas). This Court already contains, by one measure published in U.S. News, four of the five most conservative justices to sit on the Supreme Court since 1937.
With a President John McCain, we are in danger of losing the most cherished principles of Liberty that we’ve held dear since the Nation’s founding (McCain “expressed concern” about the Court’s opinion in Boumediene; and has stated in the past he would use John Roberts and Joseph Alito as models were he to nominate a Justice.)
By contrast, a President Barack Obama would try to nominate a Justice who supports the majority opinion. Responding to yesterday’s decision, Obama stated, “[The decision is] a rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo…. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.”
One final note: Justice Antonin Scalia's hypocricy was exposed yet again in his dissent, with his claim that the decision was based not on principle, "but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy." Next time Scalia writes or signs on again to an opinion striking down, for example, a state law of the sort passed by California in Raich v. California (where the California legislature had acted well within its authority in giving state citizens even greater liberty than the minimum required in the federal Constitution when they passed a law allowing medical use of marijuana), one must demand of him, "What about 'inflated notions of judicial supremacy' now??"
Contrary to the claims in Scalia's cramped sophistry, the framers’ true vision was of an expansive individual Liberty vis-à-vis a controlling Government.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
What "Obama" Means Around the World
Last November in "Obama the One?" I posted the following, discussing one aspect of Barack Obama's appeal: the rehabilitation it would do for America's image abroad.
In that post I quoted from an article in the Dec.2007 issue of The Atlantic, "Why Obama Matters," by Andrew Sullivan:
"Consider this hypothetical," Sullivan says. "It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."
Sullivan continued, "the fundamental point of his candidacy is that it is happening now. In politics, timing matters. And the most persuasive case for Obama has less to do with him than with the moment he is meeting. The moment has been a long time coming, and it is the result of a confluence of events.... At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable."
Come now June 2008, now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee after a testing primary battle, and we're starting to see the prescience of these words.
In today's New York Times, in his OpEd "Obama on the Nile," Thomas Friedman comments from Egypt: "Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations....
"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years."
Friedman relates, "I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: 'Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?' And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, 'no.' It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.
"These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a 'pro-American' reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends."
This is all fascinating - and very heartening - in a larger sense as well, in that it demonstrates that America still "has it" (or at least has the potential for "it") - i.e., the ability to behave in ways that give hope to freedom-loving people around the world; or, as Friedman puts it, "it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the 'idea of America' — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies."
This "idea of America" has existed from the time of the nation's origins. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in 1844, "America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations."
Friedman concludes, "That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings."
There's hope, there's hope.
In that post I quoted from an article in the Dec.2007 issue of The Atlantic, "Why Obama Matters," by Andrew Sullivan:
"Consider this hypothetical," Sullivan says. "It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."
Sullivan continued, "the fundamental point of his candidacy is that it is happening now. In politics, timing matters. And the most persuasive case for Obama has less to do with him than with the moment he is meeting. The moment has been a long time coming, and it is the result of a confluence of events.... At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable."
Come now June 2008, now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee after a testing primary battle, and we're starting to see the prescience of these words.
In today's New York Times, in his OpEd "Obama on the Nile," Thomas Friedman comments from Egypt: "Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations....
"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years."
Friedman relates, "I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: 'Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?' And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, 'no.' It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.
"These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a 'pro-American' reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends."
This is all fascinating - and very heartening - in a larger sense as well, in that it demonstrates that America still "has it" (or at least has the potential for "it") - i.e., the ability to behave in ways that give hope to freedom-loving people around the world; or, as Friedman puts it, "it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the 'idea of America' — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies."
This "idea of America" has existed from the time of the nation's origins. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in 1844, "America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations."
Friedman concludes, "That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings."
There's hope, there's hope.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Stop McCain: "I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too"
Democrats have taken to dubbing a John McCain term as "Bush III," and word just out from the McCain campaign suggests this moniker has some merit, at least when it comes to McCain's position on Executive Power.
Wired.com reports that in a statement released by his campaign Monday, McCain "reserved the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight."
Here's the campaign's statement: "N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]
"We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution."
As wired.com continues, "the Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001."
This sort of expansion of the executive authority was not imagined by the framers when they set up the constitutional separation of powers for the very purpose of limiting the power of any one branch.
If this is John McCain's view, he needs to be defeated. We have seen too well the damage a rogue presidency (what the New York Times, among others, are characterizing as "the most disastrous presidency of modern times") can do to our core constitutional principles.
Wired.com reports that in a statement released by his campaign Monday, McCain "reserved the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight."
Here's the campaign's statement: "N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]
"We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution."
As wired.com continues, "the Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001."
This sort of expansion of the executive authority was not imagined by the framers when they set up the constitutional separation of powers for the very purpose of limiting the power of any one branch.
If this is John McCain's view, he needs to be defeated. We have seen too well the damage a rogue presidency (what the New York Times, among others, are characterizing as "the most disastrous presidency of modern times") can do to our core constitutional principles.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Bush and the Loss of Reason; What Happened
Commenting on former Bush-Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new tell-all book, "What Happened," detailing the lies and duplicity of Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc, Maureen Dowd pinpoints what's so maddening about Bush:
"It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut. Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned. It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous…."
As Dowd comments, "We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it."
"It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut. Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned. It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous…."
As Dowd comments, "We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it."
The Debaters - "An Unjust Law Is No Law At All"
Last night I watched Denzel Washington's and Forrest Whitaker's "The Debaters," the true story about the tiny all-Black Wiley College (Texas) debate team that went undefeated for ten years (~1935-45) against the likes of Harvard, just out on DVD - highly recommended.
One St. Augustine maxim, quoted in a debate scene by one of the leads in support of Civil Disobedience, stands out: "An Unjust Law is No Law At All."
Majorities sometimes pass oppressive laws; and it is the right, or even the duty, of fairminded people to resist, whether (to paraphrase the closing lines in the movie's debate argument) "by violence, or by civil disobedience. You should pray that I choose the latter."
. . . . .
This line of thought speaks to the proper role for courts in the constitutional system: it is the courts' judicial role, through judicial review, to protect minority and individual interests from oppressive impulses of the majority.
One St. Augustine maxim, quoted in a debate scene by one of the leads in support of Civil Disobedience, stands out: "An Unjust Law is No Law At All."
Majorities sometimes pass oppressive laws; and it is the right, or even the duty, of fairminded people to resist, whether (to paraphrase the closing lines in the movie's debate argument) "by violence, or by civil disobedience. You should pray that I choose the latter."
. . . . .
This line of thought speaks to the proper role for courts in the constitutional system: it is the courts' judicial role, through judicial review, to protect minority and individual interests from oppressive impulses of the majority.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Politics in Classroom?
Law professors are generally a pretty opinionated lot, and there's always a question of how much to bring one's own views into the classroom. This is especially true in a class with as many charged issues as constitutional law.
My classroom approach is to try to avoid proselytizing, on the rationale that the class isn't about me - it's about the Constitution.
Just the other day I received an anonymous e-mail from one of my students confirming this is the proper approach, at least for me. I'm grateful to this student for sharing the e-mail with me - this is about as good as it gets for a teacher....
With that person's permission, here's the e-mail:
"Now that the semester and finals are over I wanted to take a moment and thank you for your teaching methods this semester in Constitutional Law II. When I refer to your teaching methods, I am referring to your ability to stay politically neutral. Before I took your class this spring I was very concerned about your position on the political ideology scale. I had read your blog a couple times and to say the least, you and I are on opposite sides. Or to sum it up better, you despise President Bush and I believe that he is doing what he believes is best for our country. With Constitutional Law already being such a politically driven subject, I was actually considering not taking the class with you as the professor. In the past, throughout undergrad and lawschool, I have had an overwhelming majority of “liberal” professors and many (most) of them have in some way or another tried to persuade the class to believe as they do, and many of those were business classes which have no real political influence.
"Although a conflicting political viewpoint should never be a reason to avoid someone, if you are in a position to avoid it, most do. During this semester our class had many different discussions over many different topics and you did an amazing job as a mediator. Some professors believe that if they throw in a joke about both sides it clears the air about who they are really attacking, but most of the students in the room know what is really going on. You on the other hand did not do this a single time, you did not voice your opinion on any major controversies, and even with most trivial subjects you avoided giving the class your point of view. You allowed and encouraged class discussion on both points of views on every subject.
"This type of control is very hard to come by with any person, let alone a very political person teaching a very political class topic. Sorry for the rambling, but I am just trying to make sure you realize how much I appreciated you throughout the semester. You allowed me to focus on Constitutional Law, and not my personal objections to your beliefs and because of this, I feel I was able to grasp the content of the class. Even if in the end I did not do well on the final I believe that I understood the subject, and would recommend your Constitutional Law class to anyone.... Thank you again.
MSU Law Student, Constitutional Law II, Spring2008"
My classroom approach is to try to avoid proselytizing, on the rationale that the class isn't about me - it's about the Constitution.
Just the other day I received an anonymous e-mail from one of my students confirming this is the proper approach, at least for me. I'm grateful to this student for sharing the e-mail with me - this is about as good as it gets for a teacher....
With that person's permission, here's the e-mail:
"Now that the semester and finals are over I wanted to take a moment and thank you for your teaching methods this semester in Constitutional Law II. When I refer to your teaching methods, I am referring to your ability to stay politically neutral. Before I took your class this spring I was very concerned about your position on the political ideology scale. I had read your blog a couple times and to say the least, you and I are on opposite sides. Or to sum it up better, you despise President Bush and I believe that he is doing what he believes is best for our country. With Constitutional Law already being such a politically driven subject, I was actually considering not taking the class with you as the professor. In the past, throughout undergrad and lawschool, I have had an overwhelming majority of “liberal” professors and many (most) of them have in some way or another tried to persuade the class to believe as they do, and many of those were business classes which have no real political influence.
"Although a conflicting political viewpoint should never be a reason to avoid someone, if you are in a position to avoid it, most do. During this semester our class had many different discussions over many different topics and you did an amazing job as a mediator. Some professors believe that if they throw in a joke about both sides it clears the air about who they are really attacking, but most of the students in the room know what is really going on. You on the other hand did not do this a single time, you did not voice your opinion on any major controversies, and even with most trivial subjects you avoided giving the class your point of view. You allowed and encouraged class discussion on both points of views on every subject.
"This type of control is very hard to come by with any person, let alone a very political person teaching a very political class topic. Sorry for the rambling, but I am just trying to make sure you realize how much I appreciated you throughout the semester. You allowed me to focus on Constitutional Law, and not my personal objections to your beliefs and because of this, I feel I was able to grasp the content of the class. Even if in the end I did not do well on the final I believe that I understood the subject, and would recommend your Constitutional Law class to anyone.... Thank you again.
MSU Law Student, Constitutional Law II, Spring2008"
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Dems' Day of Reckoning
So today is the Democrats' (latest) day of reckoning - this time in North Carolina and Indiana.
As the race for the nomination continues, we're getting a clearer picture of the character of candidates Clinton and Obama, and what we might expect if either are elected President. As David Brooks puts it in today's New York Times:
"Th[e] contrast between combat and composure defines the Democratic race. The implicit Clinton argument is that politics is an inherently nasty business. Human nature, as she said Sunday, means that progress comes only through conquest. You’d better elect a leader who can intimidate. You’d better elect someone who has given herself permission to be brutal.
"[By contrast,] Obama’s campaign grows out of the longstanding reform tradition. His implicit argument is that politics doesn’t have to be this way. Dishonesty and brutality aren’t inevitable; they’re what gets in the way. Obama’s friend and supporter Cass Sunstein described the Obama ideal in The New Republic: “Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning and accommodation."
"That’s regarded as naïve drivel in parts of Camp Clinton.
"Campaign issues come and go, but this is a thread running through the race. One believes in the raw assertion of power, the other the power of communication."
Brooks offers the rivals' differing appearances on last Sunday's talk shows as Exhibit A:
"Hillary Clinton went on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” incarnating her role as the first Democratic Rambo. The Clinton campaign seems to want to reduce the entire race to one element: the supposed masculinity gap. And so everything she does is all about assertion, combat and Alpha dog dominance.
"A few questions in, Clinton rose from her chair and loomed over Stephanopoulos. The country hasn’t seen such a brazen display of attempted middle-aged physical intimidation since Al Gore took a walkabout on the debate stage with George Bush. It was like watching someone get elbowed in a dark alley by their homeroom teacher.
"But her attempt to take over the show was nothing compared with her attempt to dominate the truth. For the first 30 minutes, she did not utter a single candid word, including, as Mary McCarthy would say, “and” and “the.”
"She peddled her sham gas-tax holiday and repeated her attempt to blame Indiana’s job losses on outsourcing and Nafta. Stephanopoulos asked her to name a single economist who thinks a tax-holiday plan would work, and the daughter of Wellesley and Yale took the chance to shove the geeks into their lockers: “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.” ...
"Barack Obama gave off an entirely different vibe on “Meet the Press.” His campaign has been in the doldrums for the past few months. He’s never come up with an explanation about how he would actually transform politics, and his conventional substance is beginning to overshadow his unconventional style.
"But, as Sunday’s contrast made clear, Obama still seems like a human being. He still seems to return each night to some zone of normalcy where personal reflection lives. He wasn’t fully candid when answering questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but there are some inner guardrails that prevent the spin from drifting too far from the truth. Thoughtful and conversational, he doesn’t seem to possess the trait that Clinton has: automatically assuming that critics are always wrong.
"Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria. His astounding composure has come across as weakness in the midst of combat with Clinton, but it’s also at the core of his promise to change politics. He vows to calm hatred and heal division." ...
"Still, amid the storms of the presidency, their basic worldviews would shape their presidencies. Obama is instinctively a conversationalist and community-mobilizer. Clinton, as she says, will fight and fight. If elected, she’ll have the power to take the Hobbesian struggle she perceives, and turn it into remorseless reality."
So Democrats, and all Americans, do have a real choice - and having seen the candidates' behavior in this hotly-contested race, we'll get what we deserve.
As the race for the nomination continues, we're getting a clearer picture of the character of candidates Clinton and Obama, and what we might expect if either are elected President. As David Brooks puts it in today's New York Times:
"Th[e] contrast between combat and composure defines the Democratic race. The implicit Clinton argument is that politics is an inherently nasty business. Human nature, as she said Sunday, means that progress comes only through conquest. You’d better elect a leader who can intimidate. You’d better elect someone who has given herself permission to be brutal.
"[By contrast,] Obama’s campaign grows out of the longstanding reform tradition. His implicit argument is that politics doesn’t have to be this way. Dishonesty and brutality aren’t inevitable; they’re what gets in the way. Obama’s friend and supporter Cass Sunstein described the Obama ideal in The New Republic: “Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning and accommodation."
"That’s regarded as naïve drivel in parts of Camp Clinton.
"Campaign issues come and go, but this is a thread running through the race. One believes in the raw assertion of power, the other the power of communication."
Brooks offers the rivals' differing appearances on last Sunday's talk shows as Exhibit A:
"Hillary Clinton went on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” incarnating her role as the first Democratic Rambo. The Clinton campaign seems to want to reduce the entire race to one element: the supposed masculinity gap. And so everything she does is all about assertion, combat and Alpha dog dominance.
"A few questions in, Clinton rose from her chair and loomed over Stephanopoulos. The country hasn’t seen such a brazen display of attempted middle-aged physical intimidation since Al Gore took a walkabout on the debate stage with George Bush. It was like watching someone get elbowed in a dark alley by their homeroom teacher.
"But her attempt to take over the show was nothing compared with her attempt to dominate the truth. For the first 30 minutes, she did not utter a single candid word, including, as Mary McCarthy would say, “and” and “the.”
"She peddled her sham gas-tax holiday and repeated her attempt to blame Indiana’s job losses on outsourcing and Nafta. Stephanopoulos asked her to name a single economist who thinks a tax-holiday plan would work, and the daughter of Wellesley and Yale took the chance to shove the geeks into their lockers: “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.” ...
"Barack Obama gave off an entirely different vibe on “Meet the Press.” His campaign has been in the doldrums for the past few months. He’s never come up with an explanation about how he would actually transform politics, and his conventional substance is beginning to overshadow his unconventional style.
"But, as Sunday’s contrast made clear, Obama still seems like a human being. He still seems to return each night to some zone of normalcy where personal reflection lives. He wasn’t fully candid when answering questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but there are some inner guardrails that prevent the spin from drifting too far from the truth. Thoughtful and conversational, he doesn’t seem to possess the trait that Clinton has: automatically assuming that critics are always wrong.
"Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria. His astounding composure has come across as weakness in the midst of combat with Clinton, but it’s also at the core of his promise to change politics. He vows to calm hatred and heal division." ...
"Still, amid the storms of the presidency, their basic worldviews would shape their presidencies. Obama is instinctively a conversationalist and community-mobilizer. Clinton, as she says, will fight and fight. If elected, she’ll have the power to take the Hobbesian struggle she perceives, and turn it into remorseless reality."
So Democrats, and all Americans, do have a real choice - and having seen the candidates' behavior in this hotly-contested race, we'll get what we deserve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)