Shelby Steele’s must-read column in the Wall Street Journal correctly notes that there is more going on in the country than a rejection of Obama’s “grandiose, thoughtless, and bullying” policymaking. It is a reaction to Obama’s pose as distinct from, and often in opposition to, fellow citizens and American values. At home, he treats fellow citizens as sociological case studies. On the international stage, he views his job as rising above provincial interests (i.e., ours and those of our closet allies). Steele explains that while there is an “otherness” about Obama, it has nothing to do with his birthplace or religion:
Barack Obama is not an “other” so much as he is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new “counterculture” American identity. And this new American identity — and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned — is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture American identity. When he bows to foreign leaders, he is not displaying “otherness” but the counterculture Americanism of honorable self-effacement in which America acknowledges its own capacity for evil as prelude to engagement.
Obama is, as many of us on the right have argued, a cookie-cutter leftist, enamored of the mindset cultivated in universities and among liberal intelligentsia, among whom he repeatedly chose to work and live. The telltale signs are all there — an aversion to projection of American power, a hyper-critical stance toward America’s record on civil rights, a disdain for Wall Street, and, most of all, a fair amount of contempt for average Americans. Or, as Steele puts it:
Among today’s liberal elite, bad faith in America is a sophistication, a kind of hipness. More importantly, it is the perfect formula for political and governmental power. It rationalizes power in the name of intervening against evil — I will use the government to intervene against the evil tendencies of American life (economic inequality, structural racism and sexism, corporate greed, neglect of the environment and so on), so I need your vote.
And Obama, the liberal intelligentsia never tires of telling us, is as sophisticated and as hip as they come. The results of all this are inevitable:
The great weakness of bad faith is that it disallows American exceptionalism as a rationale for power. It puts Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a fallen nation, rather than leading a great nation. They bet on America’s characterological evil and not on her sense of fairness, generosity, or ingenuity.
When bad faith is your framework (Michelle Obama never being proud of her country until it supported her husband), then you become more a national scold than a real leader.
And what is more, it puts the president in the position of assuming that opposition stems from ill motives, nefarious funding sources, racism, Islamaphobia, and ignorance. We don’t appreciate him because we are confused and scared. We are, in this view, recalcitrant children at best and an unhinged mob at worst.
No wonder he didn’t care what we thought about ObamaCare. What do we know? There’s just one hitch in his approach: Americans get to vote.
Trust Fund Jennifer Rubin is so desperate she distorts and lies with impunity. Colin Powell’s endorsement is not about race, only a racist would automatically assume that it is. Rubin and the neocons are too rich to care about your job or your house payment, John McCain even wants to tax your health benefits.
Rubin and the other neocons only care about Israel, don’t be fooled, we need change.
Commentary needs, obviously, a registration system and/or moderators unless they want more Jew-bating filth like #1 to post at the site.
Yeah, Jennifer, it was the rollout of Palin that was botched. It was not that she has the intellect of a squirrel, without any of the curiosity. It was not that McCain didn’t vet her well enough to understand that she is a typically crooked pol, happy to use her position to enrich herself and settle political scores. To this day, she is deemed too incompetent to go on Meet the Press or have a grown-up’s press conference.
And what would it say about Palin’s fitness if she were “mishandled.” It says she not a strong, competent adult who calls the shots in her own life. The very idea that she is being “mishandled” acknowledges that she is merely a prop and without the backbone to stand up for herself. Is this the kind of take-charge person you want to be president? Where does the buck stop?
As a holder of high office, Palin is a joke. No amount of handling, no rollout strategy, no amount of cramming could have changed that. No amount of lipstick can hide the pig.
I have left a note to “service” asking them to initiate a registration system; along with a copy of the #1 comment above.
Also, I think they should consider that being so open means that the more knowledgeable trolls will attempt to infect the site with “malware” and etc.
Another note: it is accepted opinion that Obama may be an object of attack by vicious white racists, ie, Doris Lessing.
However, given the completely unnerving hatred directed at Sarah Palin, I am very happy to note that she is surrounded by cold eyed security guards.
“When you see a headline reading “Polls in 8 countries show wide Obama support,” do you wonder if ACORN has overseas offices?”
No, rather it seems to evidence that your blogs, in particular, have a high readership in these countries.
Please stop referring to the NY Times as the Gray Lady. The old prostitute is a more apt description.
“Commentary needs, obviously, a registration system and/or moderators unless they want more Jew-bating filth like #1 to post at the site.”
How about Rightwing Conservative Andy Martin as moderator?
Sam Schulman’s own effort is noble but unavailing. If you grew up in most places outside Manhattan, you understand that the average American isn’t fixated on the “class” difference between doormen and building occupants that seems to be so important to the urban building occupants.
I’m not sure how to make it clear to the punditry elite. No hinterland American thinks, “Gee, if I lived in Manhattan, I’d be a doorman. And gosh, so would Sarah Palin! But, by golly, she’d be a NOBLE doorman. More noble than the people she opens doors for.”
The actual America out there, as opposed to the one imagined by insular Manhattanites and Beltway dwellers, is one of simple egalitarianism. Class distinctions involving butlers, doormen, and cocktail waitresses are features of an exotic mindset. They don’t resonate with people; they don’t even irritate people, really. They just seem silly and irrelevant, something to give a quizzical chuckle over, and ignore.
“Please stop referring to the NY Times as the Gray Lady. The old prostitute is a more apt description.”
Is that what the problem is: Rightwing Conservatives don’t like to pay for getting serviced because it smacks of wealth redistribution?
A few points FWIW: First, it obviously remains to be seen how doctrinaire-conservative someone like Palin would actually be as a “grass-roots” president. My guess is, not too consistently. There’s a strong social-libertarian as well as an economic-populist streak there. Second, WFB-style conservatism was very High-Churchy. That was all but inevitable given WFB’s personal quirks, his seminal role in the movement and the contemporaneous need to counterbalance the self-consciously high-brow urban-academic left-liberalism of the Adlai era with something equally rigorous and refined. Once leftism itself degenerated into neo-fascist theatrics, conservatism had only itself for a sounding board. That’s a prescription for intellectual atrophy. Finally, the case for old-fashioned eclectic American political empiricism is hard to make on paper. McCain-Palin would probably practice it in rhe real world, but it doesn’t lend itself to fancy formulations — and if it did, those two would probably be the last ones I’d look to for help. Look at Huckabee: His personal theology is plain enough, but beyond that it’s all improvisation.
Jennifer:
There is a great article that just came up by John Kass at the Chicago Tribune on Joe the plumber. I highly recommend it.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-bd-plumberoct19,0,237337,print.column
‘Joe the Plumber’ in media cross hairs
John Kass
5:13 PM CDT, October 18, 2008
Joe the Plumber is the new Linda Tripp.
Come November 5th, he will be the first– in what I suspect will be a long line– of little guys who will be chewed up for the benefit of his betters. Mark my words. I’ve seen this movie before.
Absolutely correct in respect of Palin. Douthat does have a point that she will need advice from insiders and she will have use very good judgement indeed to identify the best suggestions from various people. I trust she will have the good sense and judgement not to listen to David Brooks, his many merits nothwistanding.
On balance, and given appaling mishandling of her rollout she has done remarkably well in the context of hew newness to the scene and violent intensity of the barage against her. As best we can tell she had generally displayed great judgement in governing Alaska. Let’s hope she develops and continues to use that judgement when she does, if we should be so lucky, become President.
I am pretty sure that if you look at the photographs in this link, you’ll see poster number 1 in one of them…maybe more.
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/18/attention-joe-biden-meet-anti-america-america/