The New Politics Continuum
One thing I have consistently found objectionable about the Bush administration is its either/or thinking and its use of false choices to advance a policy or strategy. Bush does this all the time and he gets away with it all of the time. It is in part against this background that Barack Obama’s new politics has resonated with so many.
What we have witnessed in the dueling Democrats is a clash between old politics (slash, burn, character assination, exaggerate a perceived gap, exploit a minor misstep, mischaracterize a policy nuance, and let surrogates do their damage before stepping in to suggest a correction, etc.) and new politics. Now new politics is not pure nor a science. It is an emerging art form of public discourse that is much to my liking. There are kinks in it and we get anxious about it when a more familiar old politics way appears to be better way to go. But it is working. As some have done here and elsewhere, I don’t confuse not giving a response to old politics with choosing not having a response to give. The former is stupidity and the latter is strategy, part of the new politics.
Hillary Clinton is a master of old politics. There is nothing she likes about new politics and her campaign against John McBush will be old politics with a revenge. Obama’s campaign against McBush will be new politics, knowing full well that the stakes are higher in the general election. But here is the continuum. McCain is a maverick. Or better said, he cultivates a reputation as a Republican maverick. (In the political sense of the word, Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat maverick, and Independents are by definition not mavericks.) What ever he is or is not, he is a man of honor, and he has cast himself that way. He is selective at times, but this is a genuine part of him. All of this puts him closer to the new politics and distances him from the old politics. He has already demonstrated that his style is different, not pure old politics, not fully new politics, somewhere in the middle.
So an Obama vs. McCain clash is not likely to have the same venom as we are witnessing now in the primaries. The hugh differences on policy will go a long way to ensure a different kind of debate in the general election. And the call for change will be much, much clearer. McCain is a survivor, but so far we are seeing that Obama is a survivor as well.
Posted: April 28th, 2008 under Best of the Blogs.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Nosebetter
Time: April 28, 2008, 9:35 am
Obama needed debates for Texas and Ohio because he was behind. He is ahead or even in NC and Indiana so he doesn’t want to debate. He can only lose; Hillary is behind so she could gain. Obama is same old, same old , same old politics we have always had. Candidates have been running on the change theme since Jefferson and Adams.
Comment from timr
Time: April 28, 2008, 9:42 am
Josh, I think that you might be way out on a limb and sawing it off when you say that st john is both a maverick-repig type, and honorable. From what I have been reading, st john is neither. One example comes from what I read just this am. St john says that rev wright and Obama are legitimate targets-old politics here, what?-and I have also noticed that any critical story on st john-his truthiness(yes that is what I wrote-truth unencumbered by fact), honesty, flip flopping-gwb tax cuts-2001 and now-torture-2005 and now-immigration-2004 and now-his ignorance of economics-admitted in 08, then denied- comments on tearing down 9th ward-claimed 3 days after he made comment that he never said it. continuing misstatements on Iraq-who are alQaeda, sunni/shia- and finally using his surrogates to slime Obama-see what the wing nut radio host/warm up said after st john threw him under the bus last month-and the NC repig potty and its Obama slime ad. St john is an old time pol, if you check his voting record, you find that he voted the gwb way over 95% of the time. His retoric might lead one to assume that he is a repig maverick, but one good look at his actual voting record shows that to be a lie.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 28, 2008, 10:38 am
“So an Obama vs. McCain clash is not likely to have the same venom as we are witnessing now in the primaries.” Dream on. McCain himself may not choose to engage in “old politics” personally, but his Rove-directed Pug network of cheapshot artists is going to lynch Obama at every turn. I use that word specifically.
The concern here, and I’m by no means alone in this, is that if Obama cannot handle Hillary, for whom he seems to have no answer other than to run out the clock, what is he going to do in the face of a full-force Pug onslaught? To think that because McCain is some sort of new politic hybrid that the smear isn’t going to come, is foolish. To think that lofty high road speeches that appeal to our better angels are going to be enough to counteract that onslaught denies the past 20 years of politics in the country and is incredibly naive.
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Time: April 28, 2008, 10:54 am
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Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 28, 2008, 12:24 pm
The point I am making is either not clear or Timr and Lefty, you have missed it. I’m talking about the individuals, not the committees. For example, when McCain was asked if Obama was elitist, he answered with one word after a short pause. He said, “No.” He then went on to make some observations about what Obama said. Clinton would never respond that way. With regard to Rev. Wright who is kicking some press ass today, McCain has been all over the lot. But he is not implying that Obama is unpatriotic or a Muslim, as Bill Clinton and Hillary have both done.
And Lefty keeps creating the big-bad-wolf theory of the Pug party, painting Obama as a Little Red Riding Hood in drag, instead of seeing the obvious: The Clinton machine is as mean as it gets. Just because their racism is more subtitle does not mean it is any less acceptable or effective. If she is so smart why isn’t she the nominee: in short, because her Rove shit isn’t working. And there is now emerging evidence that significant voting blocs are looking past this crap. New politics, yet to be crowned, is taking hold more than we know or at least more than we have given it credit.
Finally, if McCain wants to play Hillary’s guilt-by-association game against Obama, it will backfire and all of McCain’s guilt by association will be fair play. And in the McCain case, Obama has no allegience to the Pugs, the Pug party, or to McCain as he does to the Dems, the Democratic party and to the Clintons.
I am concluding that some of you think there are only two Obamas: 1) Obama the mouth, the myth peddler, the change dealer; or 2) Obama the coward, the scarecrow. If you didn’t see Obama play baseball this past weekend, you missed a metaphor that I see. There is a yet to emerge third Obama that knows how to play the game, how to bring a team together, and how to make the shots that count. I for one plan to give him some slack rather than sell lynching tickets.
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 28, 2008, 1:13 pm
Timr, here is a further thought based on what I have just read. You have misread how McCain got involved this weekend on the Rev. Wright stuff. It was Obama, on Fox News on Sunday, who said that questions about Wright were “a legitimate political issue” and as I read it, McCain took his cue from there.
But the difference between what McCain is saying about Wright and Obama and what Clinton is saying could not be more different for two politicans who want to defeat Obama. McCain is taking more the high road, separating Obama from Wright, but Clinton is doing her gutter thing, her lynching thing.
And here is what McCain said about the NC ad, in writing: “The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats.” This was said before the ad ran. If it had been Clinton, she would have let the ad run for a few days and then said, tsk, tsk. Clinton only knows old politics. At least McCain is flirting with and fumbling with new politics.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 28, 2008, 2:43 pm
“The Clinton machine is as mean as it gets. Just because their racism is more subtitle does not mean it is any less acceptable or effective. If she is so smart why isn’t she the nominee: in short, because her Rove shit isn’t working. And there is now emerging evidence that significant voting blocs are looking past this crap.” Show me the evidence, Josh. Read Bob Herbert’s column in the NY Times yesterday and think again–Herbert is no Hillary fan, that’s for sure.
Mean as it gets? You’ve got to be kidding. Clearly you’ve forgotten how the Pugs behaved in ‘00 and ‘04. As for Clinton being the nominee, she’s run a shitty, tone-deaf campaign and should have been tossed off the island months ago. And yet she won Pennsylvania despite “new politics” and more importantly, being outspent by Obama by a minimum 2:1.
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 28, 2008, 4:39 pm
Lefty, go to the latest Gallop: Obama beats McCain first and Hillary is a distant third on every measure of electability. New Politics vs. Old Politics.
Bob Herbert does not a consensus make. I read him. And he is one of the classic Oreo cookies in the business. One day for Obama, the next against Obama. You must have loved the column by Bill Kristol today in the NYT: your kind of argument!
The evidence, subject of another post, is that young people and blacks, the bulk of the one million new registered voters in the Democratic primaries are for Obama. Unlike Howard Dean who attracked young supporters, they did not desert Obama. The Blacks, unlike Bill, are fleaing Hillary faster than rats on a sinking ship. Do you need numbers and links or is that enough?
Attacks on memory is not an effective way to carry on a dialogue. I will be the first, if you are the second, to admit the memory is selective. One person’s ceiling is another person’s floor.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 28, 2008, 7:58 pm
Try again Josh. Latest poll:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_el_pr/presidential_race_ap_poll_11
Comment from timr
Time: April 29, 2008, 10:35 am
Josh, I still believe that the MSM treats st john as if he was the second coming. His lies, flip flopping, and his-and the rnc-comments about the new dnc ad(aided and abutted by the ap no less) show me that st john’s main base is still the MSM-they always ask softball questions, and never never ask a followup or challenge anything he says. Yes, Obama made Wright a target, but did st john have to jump on it? If he were indeed, as you think, into the “new politics”, he would have ignored Wright as a side issue, and gone into the differences in policy between him and the dems. I have yet to see anything like that from him
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 29, 2008, 11:11 am
McCain had to make a remark given all the Wright news, but I reiterate, McCain did not link Obama to the remarks as Hillary has done. That’s the difference.
And Lefty missed my point again. His survey is a comparison of apples and carrots. The Gallup Survey was about traits, such as which candidate shares your values, who is trustworthy, who understands your needs, who is believable, etc. And on this score, most of the time Clinton trailed McCain who trailed Obama. Lefty’s “try again, Josh” survey was another preference survey making a different point. Try again, Lefty.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 29, 2008, 1:16 pm
Those are the only numbers that matter, Josh.
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 29, 2008, 1:56 pm
Well I’m glad you straighed that out. Maybe your survey was the one that picked Hillary to win a year ago and said McCain was finished five months ago!
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