My buddy Ben Calhoun put together a great story for WBEZ on why Obama’s political success has had everything to do with choosing Hyde Park as his Chicago home. It does a nice job of answering one of the key questions left open by James Merriner’s “Friends of O,” (Chicago Magazine) and Andrew Ferguson’s “Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood” (The Weekly Standard).
Rick Perlstein, yesterday:
Nearly every conservative has some version of this–some way of saying that if self-identified conservatives fail or fall short, it’s because they’re not “really” conservative. But the standards of what is a “conservative” are subjective, shifting, self-contradictory, and always self-serving. A conservative will always give himself the out of saying “conservatism has never been tried.”
What always gets me about this defense is that it’s a page straight out of the old Marxist playbook. Criticize Marx for what the Soviet Union had wrought and you got a standard answer: don’t mistake “actually existing Communism” for “true” Communism.
I suppose in general that this rhetorical ploy is one every utopian movement needs for that inevitable moment when history refuses to cooperate with the best-laid plans of mice and men. (And don’t for a second doubt the utopian subtext of the conservative movement.) As Perlstein says,
This single blunt fact cannot be overstated: here was the first chance in the modern era conservatives have had to prove themselves. And they failed. Imagine if somehow Leon Trotsky had survived and was restored to the leadership of the Kremlin, after generations of “Trotskyists” had built an entire culture around the notion that if only they were in the Kremlin, the revolution would have succeeded. But their reign proved to be shit from start to finish. The psychic wounds would be profound. The disarray, mutual recrimination, confusion, anger, are only to be expected.
But Perlstein’s little thought experiment encourages the thought that there might be something more direct (and less metaphysical) than historical irony at work in the conservative parroting of a central Marxist apologia. The thought, for instance, that they actually did learn it from Marxism.
1/ From Michelle Cottle’s “External Flame,” at The New Republic this week:
[T]his alliance may be an even shrewder move for [Caroline] Kennedy Schlossberg than for [Barack] Obama. It’s been 45 years since the fall of Camelot, and the family brand has begun to fade. A growing portion of the electorate was born after the deaths of John and Bobby and has a tough time relating to the Kennedy fixation of its elders. Under such conditions, what’s a committed custodian of the family legacy to do? Hitch her clan’s wagon to the hottest political star in decades. With a little luck, even as that old Camelot magic rubs off on Obama, the candidate’s energy and relevance will help sustain the Kennedy brand for a little longer.
2/ From my February Chicago Tribune article (PDF) on the Kennedy Obama endorsements:
The Kennedy name is the gold standard in Democratic politics, and it will remain so as long as John Kennedy’s assassination is a part of living memory. But the youngest people to vote for him in 1960 are 68 today, and seven out of eight Americans are too young to remember him as anything more than a historical figure, no more or less real than Roosevelt, Lincoln or Jefferson.
Edward Kennedy himself is 75. Besides his son, no third-generation Kennedy holds national office.
And thus, when Kennedy said Obama would not be trapped by the patterns of the past, it might not be because he was comically or tragically unaware of his own or his family’s position. It might be exactly the opposite: Perhaps he was too aware of that position. If that’s the case, then last week’s endorsements should be seen as an acknowledgment of just how fragile the patterns of the past can be.
By midnight Tuesday [i.e. February 5], after more than 20 states have weighed in on the Obama-Clinton race, we’ll have a better sense of how the Kennedy calculus affects the election in the
short run….But in the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised if the endorsements do as much to help the Kennedys as they do to help Obama. Casting Obama in the Kennedy mold offers him authority, but it also offers the Kennedys a future, a way to keep the mystique alive.
QUICK UPDATE (7/1): Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me.
1/ Gen. Wesley Clark, from last night’s Verdict on MSNBC:
2/ Andrew Bacevich (who contributed to this piece) in “What Hath Bush Wrought” in the Boston Globe:
The burden of identifying and confronting the Bush legacy necessarily falls on Obama. Although for tactical reasons McCain will distance himself from the president’s record, he largely subscribes to the principles informing Bush’s post-9/11 policies. McCain’s determination to stay the course in Iraq expresses his commitment not simply to the ongoing conflict there, but to the ideas that gave rise to that war in the first place. While McCain may differ with the president on certain particulars, his election will affirm the main thrust of Bush’s approach to national security.
The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.
By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration’s entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country’s vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.
Lured by the opening reference to Leo Strauss, I uncharacteristically managed to make it through William Kristol’s extraordinary Times column this morning. Here’s how it begins:
Half a century ago the philosopher Leo Strauss remarked that the passage in which the Declaration of Independence proclaims its self-evident truths “has frequently been quoted, but, by its weight and its elevation, it is made immune to the degrading effects of the excessive familiarity which breeds contempt and of misuse which breeds disgust.”
What’s extraordinary about the column is that Kristol doesn’t misuse Strauss. Most people who cite that quotation from Natural Right and History cite it as evidence of Strauss’s goodwill toward American democracy. But of course it’s nothing of the kind; in fact it’s the opening salvo in a long, dense, and often deceptive attack on the philosophical and political justifications of democracy itself.
Which is why I found it fairly amazing to see Kristol follow the Straussian line through to its nasty anti-democratic end, right there in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times:
Tumbling on the heels on that last story is this item from the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department: it turns out that Andy Martin, the original promoter of the Obama Muslim smear, has now decided to smear… that’s right, the person who called him out in the Washington Post: Danielle Allen.
Here’s some highlights from the ridiculous press release that Martin put out today. If you have any questions about the talents, intelligence, or reliability of Prof. Allen, I happily direct you here and here and even here.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled buffoonery:
“In so far as my contact with the Post,” Martin will state, “Mr. Mosk accurately reports my role and, as far as I can remember, correctly reports our interview.
“But Mosk produced an incomplete form of journalism. He writes a long article about Danielle Allen, but she is a very suspicious character to say the least. (more…)
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