Labels
Posted inPolitics: National

Labels

Frustrated_Arizonans_Rejecting_Tea_Sanity_Rally
Labels in political discourse are incendiary and misleading. They are useful shorthand and inevitable. Yet today they are more challenging than ever.

Let me take a couple of examples. To label someone a racist, anti-semite, sexist, or homophobe immediately disqualifies their arguments. Some people undeniably fit those labels. Others may say something racist but they still deserve to be heard in the public square, offering positions that are more textured that the simple label would imply.

Another is the tart "limousine liberal." This was coined in the 1970s to identify, say, a liberal lawmaker who supported busing while sending his children to private schools. In other words, he was a hypocrite. This term resonated especially with the white working class, many of whom would become Reagan Democrats.

Lately on this blog we have had a debate on the admissibility of the term "sociopath." While we can argue over the precise clinical definition and the care needed to apply it to individuals, I think it's fair game.

Look at the behavior of the banksters, certain businessmen, and politicians, and they fit the bill. This is especially so in their contempt for the commons, for the public interest, and the things we do together as a civilization. Indeed, many of them not only have contempt for these things but they deny they exist at all, outside the fever dreams of bleeding-heart liberals.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Carter and Reagan

This is the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, an event greeted with armies of hagiographers and one heart-felt personal book by his progressive son, Ron Reagan. It's also the 30th anniversary of Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency and the end of Jimmy Carter's one failed term in office. Carter is seen as the most successful and admirable former president, but still a personal riddle, as a new Rolling Stone article explores. As if Reagan was not one: Charismatic to the masses, friendly in person (I met him once, as part of a group of other journalists), but utterly distant and opaque beyond that to everyone except, perhaps, Nancy. Some of this sounds like Barack Obama. Maybe there's a certain sociopathic streak that comes with modern presidents. Either way, we live in Reagan's shadow, whether it's for good or bad. But we also live in Carter's.

A few years before he died, Hamilton Jordon, Carter's White House chief of staff, befriended me. He was nothing like the scheming party boy I had been taught to imagine as a young Republican. Instead, I found a man of uncommon depth, intelligence and grace, tempered by a long fight with cancer. It's not giving up any confidences to say Jordan found his boss could be as frustrating as he appeared to us on the outside. My problem with Carter, aside from the Goldwater it took years to cleanse from my system, was his Baptist preacher sanctimony. And, with the Afghanistan invasion by the Soviets and especially the Iranian embassy hostage debacle, he appeared weak and willing to preside over American decline.

But of course the story is more complicated. Ask who started the deregulation movement, appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chairman with a real mandate to break inflation, pushed the MX Missile and modernization of NATO's nuclear forces, as well as presided over building the world's most lethal ballistic missile submarine class, and you'd likely answer, "Reagan." In fact, it was Carter. Ask which president was more pragmatic, most pushed the Soviet Union on human rights, grew to genuinely hate nuclear weapons and proposed banning all ballistic missiles, and whose life-ling hero was Franklin Roosevelt, you'd probably answer, "Carter." It was, of course, Ronald Reagan. The U.S. policy (quietly) invoked to justify both Persian Gulf wars and our huge military presence there is the Carter Doctrine.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Why the McCain house gaffe matters

President-elect McCain’s inability to recall how many houses he owns fits into a larger and more troubling pattern. The problem is not just that he is an out-of-touch rich guy.

This is the candidate who repeatedly confused Shiite and Sunni — all the while trumpeting his expertise on the Middle East. At one point, his sock puppet Joe Lieberman had to whisper the facts in his ear. He couldn’t tell Sudan from Somalia. He kept talking about a nation that hasn’t existed for years. Iraq and Pakistan share a border, the senator wrongly said, and the Sunni awakening happened ‘after’ the surge (edited out by CBS). He said he didn’t know much about economics, then denied saying such a thing. He spoke of a withdrawal timetable one day, then denied saying it later. He volunteered Cindy for a topless contest. Then there was the stupendous dead space and mumbling when he was questioned about claiming Obama was playing the race card.  He claimed he walked through Baghdad without body armor or protection, etc., etc. Most of this has been captured on tape.

What’s going on? Neither obvious answer is comforting. He’s either going senile as he nears 72, or he’s lying and unprepared on critical issues without realizing how easily this can be caught in a YouTube era. (Whether the duhs and ignos — those ‘undecided voters’ and angry Clintonites — will care, is another, depressing matter). Either one of these answers should disqualify  him for the White House, particularly because so many of his misstatements, confusions and subsequent lies come about issues where he claims superior experience and judgment.

But next consider all his flip flops, over torture, warrantless wiretapping, tax cuts, Social Security, abortion rights, engaging with Hamas, nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, offshore drilling, etc. Once the presumptive nominee, he said Social Security was "an absolute disgrace.’ His chief economic adviser and likely Treasury secretary called Americans a ‘nation of whiners’ and said the recession was in our heads. This from a rich man who helped deregulate banking, profited from it, then profited again from the current deregulated banking crisis. Soon after McCain reversed course to support drilling, oil industry contributions poured in.

The above is not a disjointed laundry list. When we combine it with McCain’s obvious mental fatigue, the really disturbing picture comes clear.

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