Fourth Wave, Part 1: My history of feminism

Over at Reclusive Leftist, they (formerly “we”) are discussing how to define the fourth wave of feminism. I have to admit I was a little out of my depth over there. My view of United States feminist history pretty much goes like this:

First, there was Abigail Adams who wanted her husband to help the ladies out a little when the Constitution for the new country was written. He didn’t.

Then, way back before the Civil War, there were women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stoner who thought it would be nice if women could at least vote and, hey, maybe even own their own property and not be beholden to men for every single thing in their lives. They made the mistake of diverting some of their attention from the struggle for Women’s Rights to the Abolition Movement and boy did they get the short end of that stick. Women finally got the right to vote in 1920, fifty-five years after abolition. This is now called “first-wave” feminism although I have a sneaking suspicion those involved sincerely hoped it would be “only wave needed” feminism.

In the early part of the 20th Century, we had flappers, who were independent young ladies but seemed to be mostly about drinking in speakeasies and dancing on tables. Then came the Great Depression when men and women were equally poor. This was followed by Rosie the Riveter who did everything a man could do and more but when the War ended she was consigned to suburbia and told to have 3 children and buy a station wagon. This is how we got the 50’s.

In 1963, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published and the phenomenon I personally know as The Woman’s Movement began. I was too young in 1963 to understand what had happened but the echoes of the book rang down through my teenage years. Then the first issue of Ms. magazine appeared in January, 1972, halfway through my freshman year in college and I was in.

I did consciousness-raising groups, one all-woman, one men and women together. Since I came within an inch of marrying one of the guys in the mixed group, I think in retrospect that the group did not exactly do what it was supposed to. The all-woman group, however, was a fabulous experience and whatever fourth-wave feminism turns out to be, I hope consciousness-raising groups are once again part of the the movement. Anyhow.

I was seriously, actively feminist all through my college years, reading, agitating for the Equal Rights Amendment, rejoicing at Roe v Wade, all the usual stuff. Then came graduate school and feminism faded into the background. I was still a feminist but feminism wasn’t really front and center in my life. My time and my mental energy were more than accounted for by my class work.

Somewhere in here I read Games Mother Never Taught You by Betty Lehan Harragan and found it amusing, helpful, and fascinating. I also read John T. Molloy’s Women’s Dress for Success Book and it made perfect sense to me. Men had a uniform - suit, tie, shoes - that signaled they were to be taken seriously in the business world. Molloy’s thesis was that women should develop their own uniform that signaled the same thing. To me, these were both “feminist” reading which I guess shows pretty clearly that I was not really interested in changing how the world worked - I just wanted to play on equal terms.

After graduate school came my first serious full-time job which also took all the time and energy I had, then being a partner in my own company, ditto. I was still a feminist but I didn’t read about feminism, interact with other feminists, or participate in feminist causes. It was just what and who I was. I didn’t even know that the era of feminism I personally experienced and participated in was known as “second-wave” feminism.

As I said, I remained a feminist through all this. The core of my feminism consisted of two pretty simple ideas:

1) Women’s professional, political, social, and personal lives should be a consequence of their circumstances, interests, and abilities - not their gender.

2) Women should have each other’s backs. That doesn’t mean women should never criticize each other. It means sexist criticism, sexist slurs, sexist attacks against any woman should be unacceptable to all women. Situations pitting one group of women against another for the benefit of a man or men should be unacceptable to all women. When one woman is attacked, insulted, denigrated, or shamed because she is a woman or because she is a particular kind of woman, all women suffer. Sisterhood is powerful.

Sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s I found myself involved professionally with Incredibly Large Megacorp and it occurred to me, looking around, that it might be a good idea to sort of brush up on my feminism. I accordingly bought an issue of Ms. magazine. Imagine my shock at discovering that while I hadn’t been paying attention, the magazine had switched its focus from supporting women’s rights to supporting Third World peoples who had been oppressed by the Western European patriarchy. It had apparently escaped the notice of the editors at Ms. that an uncomfortably large number of oppressed Third World countries were run quite ruthlessly by men who not only oppressed their fellow countrymen but treated their fellow countrywomen far, far worse than any Western European patriarch would dream of doing.

Recovering from my shock at what had happened to Ms., I started taking notice of the wider feminist arena. Some feminists no long considered pornography or even prostitution anti-woman. I promptly swooned. When I revived, I noticed that a number of professional women - especially the female news anchors on cable TV - had clearly abandoned any type of universal female professional dress code. (Or, as an extremely liberal friend of mine put it, “Why do all the women in cable TV news shows dress like hookers?”) Much of feminist discussion now seemed to revolve around including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered concerns as an intrinsic part of feminism. Much of the rest of it seemed to revolve around, “Oh, goody. Sex!”

The idea that supporting pornography and prostitution had a place in feminism was anathema to me. The fact that large numbers of professional women were dressing to accentuate their sex appeal rather than their professional standing was disturbing. Sure, the idea that there’s nothing wrong with being attractive and people should be treated with respect regardless of how they dress sounds great. But I didn’t see lots of male newsmen showing up on camera in tight white T-shirts and tighter black jeans.

Sharing GLBT concerns is one thing but including those concerns as an intrinsic part of feminism gave me pause. Were women once again making the mistake of diverting some of their attention from their own struggle to that of another disadvantaged group? Or, given Ms. magazine’s current focus, the even worse mistake of diverting all of their attention to the struggles of every single disadvantaged group on the planet except women? As for sex, my generation of feminists liked sex, too. We just didn’t think that the single most important thing the Women’s Movement accomplished was letting women screw around as much as men did.

So all in all, it never occurred to me that what I was witnessing was third-wave feminism. It didn’t really seem to have anything to do with feminism and to the extent I gave it any thought, I viewed it as young women kicking over the traces - something they had the freedom to do because my generation of feminists had knocked down so many barriers for them and, beyond that, because Susan B. Anthony’s generation of feminists had knocked down the most important barrier for all of us. After all, I was old(er) and rather curmudgeonly and if this was what women wanted to do with their lives, so be it. If they wanted to call it “feminism”, perhaps that was an homage acknowledging their debt to those who had gone before.

Then came the Clinton administration. I’ve written before about my distress with women who were happy to support a man who facilely divided women into his own modern Madonna and whore groups: well-educated professional women who were honestly respected as colleagues and and less-educated pink-collar women who were sexual prey. Sisterhood was indeed powerful but now that power was mobilized against other women to benefit one man. Not exactly what I had in mind all those years ago.

As far as I was concerned feminism was dead, killed by the Clintons and the legions of women who were perfectly happy to attack other women, provided those women could somehow be labelled as “other”. I was still a feminist but my feminism had little to do with what I came to think of as Institutional Feminism, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Instead it was just me and my beliefs.

Then came the 2008 Presidential campaigns. Hillary Clinton’s grace and grit in the primaries awakened the more tribal aspects of my feminism and watching other women rally around her made me hope that perhaps my version of feminism had merely been sleeping rather than being dead and gone. Unfortunately, that hope didn’t last long, killed by (mostly) young women who thought the misogyny directed at Clinton by the Obama campaign and by Obama’s lickspittles in the media was just fine because, OMG, Barack Obama is just so dreamy. My distress soon turned to horror as I watched the blitzkrieg of misogyny unleashed against Sarah Palin by women young and old who did the bidding of their Democratic masters, brutally attacking a woman simply because their men told them she was the enemy, not really their kind, “other”.

My heart broke. When I first became a feminist, we fought a fierce battle against the idea that women could be divided into two groups. One group, the good girls, were protected by society, treated decently, and allowed to live well. The other group, the bad girls, had no claim on society’s protection, were treated like dirt, and lucky to be allowed to live at all. Feminism would sweep that all away. We understood this division was just a way of keeping women in their place: bad girls were a warning of what would happen to women who didn’t toe the line. In order for women to be free to choose their own path, we had to protect bad girls as well as good girls. After all, bad girls were just good girls who didn’t do what they were told and every feminist on the planet was not doing what she had been told.

Madonnas and whores, the pedestal and the gutter. With the attacks on Sarah Palin we were right back where we started and once again being a good girl meant being a woman who did what she was told by men - in this case the men running the Democratic party - and being a bad girl meant being a woman who had the guts to forge her own path. Little Miss Attila put this better than anyone else I’ve read. She begins by writing about the Letterman attacks on Sarah Palin and her daughters but is making a broader point (emphasis hers):

They will rationalize what they are doing, and say that this is not American Sharia law: after all, we only enforce our notions of sexual purity when it comes to Republican women, or women and girls related to Republican women. [snip]

This is American Sharia, assholes. The practitioners of Sharia in Muslim countries are at least consistent in their contempt for women and in their practice of gender apartheid: you, on the other hand, want sexual slavery for some women in this country; others, whose opinions you prefer, can live in relative peace and freedom. You will allow it.

If you are giving women and girls the “gift” of not being badgered for being female, and threatened with misogyny and sexual assault, they are not truly free—only living in a state of grace, contingent upon performing the right tricks, spouting leftist verbiage like seals at Sea World, balancing balls on their noses in the hopes of getting fish thrown into their mouths.

This is what feminists knew all those years ago when we fought to so hard to support all women. In 2008 women claiming to be feminists, claiming to wear the mantle of their foremothers, tossed that hard-learned knowledge aside in their eagerness to please their owners; in their willingness to sell their souls for a seat at the table; in their fear that if they spoke up, talked back, didn’t play along, they’d be treated just like Palin and any other woman who dared deviate from Democratic political orthodoxy: thrown off the pedestal and into the gutter.

I had been correct back in the 90’s: feminism was dead.

Now it seems there is stirring in the underbrush. Fourth-wave feminism is lurking, not quite visible but clearly closing in. The problem is, no one seems to know exactly what’s out there. This is the question Reclusive Leftist is trying to answer: How would you define the fourth wave of feminism? Since she states firmly that the fourth wave “started last year with the auto de fe of first Hillary Clinton and then Sarah Palin” I hope, of course, that the fourth wave will re-establish the principle that women do not participate in or consent to misogynistic attacks on other women. I also hope that the fourth wave will be more inclusive, more willing to detach itself from liberalism, no longer tied to the Democratic party. A large part of this will be acknowledging that a vast array of positions, on everything from equal pay to abortion can be viewed completely differently by feminists who are also liberals than by feminists who are also conservatives.

I’m not sure what the final outcome will be with regard to reconciling the views of liberal and conservative feminists; sadly my experience in the discussion at Reclusive Leftist has dimmed my hope with regard to abortion. But that’s a story for the next episode.

*****

Reading:

The Feminist Awakening: Hillary Clinton and the fourth wave: This whole article is interesting - note that it was written before Clinton finally lost the primary campaign and long, long before Palin appeared on the scene. I was particularly struck by the discussion of how to dress on page 4. If women had taken Molloy’s advice all those years ago, we’d have a standard “powerful professional woman” dress code established by now and we could all stop worrying about what to wear when running for President.

How Feminism Became the F-Word: By Amy Siskind, one of the founders of The New Agenda, an attempt to define the fourth wave as uncoupling feminism from the Democratic Party and from a hard-line pro-choice stand. This is worth a look just for the contrasting Ms. magazine covers but do read the whole thing.

One small quibble: Ms. Siskind wants to know where the outrage is over “the fact that women still earn 78 percent of what men do” or “the fact that our representation in politics, academia, and corporate leadership tends to hover around 16 percent.” Perhaps if women had taken Harragan more seriously and learned to play the games necessary to get ahead instead of expending energy demanding the rules be changed to suit us, we’d be earning more money and accruing more power. Furthermore, it’s been a while since I read Games Mother Never Taught You but I seem to remember that part of Harragan’s argument was that if women learned to play by the rules we would eventually amass enough power to change them. (I expanded on this topic and ended up with about a gazillion words. This current post is long enough so I’ll leave that expansion for a future episode.)

How Will We Know When The Fourth Wave Has Begun?: Written in response to Siskind, this piece explicitly rejects any move away from “the Democratic, pro-choice agenda that has furthered the movement in many substantial ways.” To which I am inclined to reply: For what is a woman profited, if she shall gain the whole world, and lose her own soul?

A Fourth-Wave Manifesto: A fairly random selection to give a little flavor of how much the idea of what fourth-wave feminism should/will/can be varies.

From there to here: Cast adrift

I said previously that my conversion from a (mostly) liberal to a (mostly) conservative state of mind began with the realization that the sources I trusted to tell me the straight story - Huffington Post, MSNBC, and most of all Andrew Sullivan - were so biased that no hint of evenhandedness existed. In my last post, I talked specifically about my disenchantment with the Huffington Post as I realized it committed the very sins it regularly accused the Republicans of: silencing dissent and believing dishonesty was justified as long as HuffPo was “right”.

At the same time I was reading - and becoming disenchanted with - the Huffington Post, I was also watching a little MSNBC and reading a lot of Andrew Sullivan. My gradual awareness that they also were not entirely straightforward completed my alienation from the liberal side of the political process.

I never spent as much time with MSNBC as I did with HuffPo. I was terribly upset about the telecomm immunity in FISA (you remember - that immunity Obama swore he’d filibuster) and I found Keith Olbermann’s views about that right up my alley. Still, though, he always yelled too much and Chris Matthews always seemed awfully sure about topics I felt were more a matter of opinion than fact. In these aspects Olbermann and Matthews also exhibited that unwillingness to believe there could possibly be any “virtue or truth” on the other side I found so distressing in Jean Rohe’s HuffPo post.

At the same time, there was the whole Bush thing. MSNBC loathed Bush and considered him stupid and evil or - in their more sophisticated moments - merely stupid and thus a pawn of the evil Cheney. As I’ve said, I was not - and am not - happy with Bush’s attitude toward the Constitution. Nonetheless, he was the President and some part of me - perhaps those same long-buried attitudes that made me unable to see police officers as the enemy - wasn’t entirely comfortable with the level of vitriol being heaped on him. In particular I cringed every time Olbermann insisted Bush was a fascist. Still all my friends were convinced Bush was a cross between the village idiot and the ultimate evil so my discomfort never really surfaced; it just pricked me a little when the guys at MSNBC would start frothing at the mouth about the President. Between MSNBC’s certainty that all virtue rested on their side and their viciousness toward the President, I could never become a big MSNBC fan but I still thought myself enough in sympathy with many of their positions to feel both horrified and betrayed when they jumped on Obama’s misogyny bandwagon.

Once I’d left HuffPo behind and realized I was not entirely comfortable with MSNBC, my primary blog read was Andrew Sullivan. I suppose this fit with the shifts taking place below the surface of my world view: when I began reading him he presented himself - with some justification - as a conservative. Plus he was already anti-Bush and anti-Iraq War when I first encountered him and I agreed with him there. His admission that he had supported both Bush and the War before realizing his error helped me believe he was someone who would honestly present both sides of an issue regardless of how he felt about it. Stupid of me I know.

It’s not like the signs weren’t there. I figure I agreed with Sullivan about 60% of the time but even when I didn’t agree with him, I found his arguments rational and I could understand why he believed what he did even though I believed differently. Or at least that was the case most of the time. There was always that 10% of his arguments that made no sense. Then it was as if he had a huge blind spot and simply, literally could not see something directly in front of him. The clearest example of this was his attitude toward the Catholic Church’s decision that homosexuals were not to be priests, period. I could certainly understand Sullivan’s distress over this decision but his writing never so much as hinted at the fact that there was an even larger group of people who were banned from the priesthood by inborn characteristics: women. His blindness reached its apex when he posted a letter from a reader whose partner was losing his Church because of its decision that homosexuals could not be priests (emphasis mine):

And so Benedict, supposedly a man of God, pushes away good people from this church. I have no doubt in my mind that what Benedict is doing now is a crime, a crime against God. If this were discrimination against Jews or blacks or any other group, it would be classed as fascist bigotry, and eventually the perpetrator would be brought to task by society in an appropriate way and exiled from their institution. Pope Benedict cannot get away from this crime against humanity. Whatever his or others' personal views against homosexuality, to discriminate against a group in an institutional form is apartheid, is Nazism, is fascism, and nothing less.

Unless, of course, the group being discriminated against is women. So long as we were the group banned from the priesthood this reader’s partner’s “love for his religion [was] great.” And so, apparently, was Sullivan’s.

Still, as maddening as I found Sullivan’s ten percent worth of blind spots I didn’t stop to consider that the rest of his writing, which I believed to be thoughtful and even-handed, might also suffer from blind spots, in those cases blind spots to which I myself was subject. Then came Barack Obama.

I don’t remember becoming suddenly aware that Sullivan was heaping a lot of praise on Obama. Through most of 2007 everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and I was unhappy enough about that so any slaps Sullivan took at Clinton in favor of Obama would have seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Two things happened at the beginning of 2008 to change my perceptions. First, I was without access to a computer from early January until about mid-March. That meant I was getting my news primarily from a daily newspaper in the South. While the news was much the same, the editorials tended conservative. So I was both removed from Sullivan’s filtering of events and exposed to a slightly different filter. I wasn’t aware of it as it happened but those different filters meant I was getting not just different viewpoints but somewhat different facts.

Second, I began to feel more supportive of Clinton and thus became more sensitized to the way so much of the media was out of line in their depiction of her. And when I returned to my computer and started reading what I’d missed while I was away it became clear that no one was more out of line than Andrew Sullivan. The contrast between my reaction to Clinton crying and his floored me. I knew there were those who claimed her tears were fraudulent but Sullivan’s sheer ugliness was breath-taking.

From that point on, Sullivan became literally unbalanced: everything Clinton did was at least wrong and probably pathological; everything Obama did was right - and if Sullivan couldn’t make it right, he just ignored it. Most distressing to me was Sullivan’s willingness - eagerness - to misrepresent the views of others to further his agenda. This wasn’t just a blind spot; it was deliberate data drop-out.

Some examples of this were small. Sullivan quoted Dave Barry in a way that made it sound like Barry was making fun of Clinton crying. Read Barry’s full article and the picture looks different. Sullivan quoted a snippet of a John Derbyshire article but only as far as the line that reads:

By this standard, this campaign has offered us two inspirational political futures: Barack Obama’s, and Ron Paul’s.

Read Derbyshire himself and you find the next line is:

Obama has nothing for a conservative to like, and the passions he has aroused are inexplicable to me.

On the other hand, some of Sullivan’s judicious editing was not small at all. The most egregious example involves Clinton’s RFK/June comment. On May 25, 2008, Karl Rove appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. When Stephanopoulos referred to Rove as an informal adviser to the McCain campaign, Rove denied that level of involvement but Stephanopoulos insisted “informal adviser” was in fact the correct label. Andrew Sullivan created a post called, “Keeping Them Honest” which thanked Stephanopoulos for making sure Rove was correctly identified. Sullivan’s post contained a brief clip from This Week containing the relevant exchange.

What Sullivan’s post did not mention was that immediately preceding the introduction of Rove, Stephanopoulos was interviewing David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager. In that segment, Stephanopoulos hammered Axelrod over the Obama campaign circulating Keith Olbermann’s contemptible Special Comment about Clinton’s RFK/June comment to the press corps at the same time Obama was “forgiving” Clinton for the remark.

It wasn’t just Clinton about whom Sullivan was unbalanced. There was also the way he wrote about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism versus the way he wrote about Obama’s ties to the Reverend Wright. As Ed Morrissey put it:

Let’s make this clear. [According to Sullivan] Romney had a responsibility to explain the racism of the Mormons, which they themselves repudiated in 1978, including “self-criticism” for being a Mormon during that period. However, with Obama belonging to and supporting a church in which his self-described “moral compass” preaches that the US created the HIV virus to commit genocide and calling the nation the “the US of KKK-A”, Obama gets a pass because … he writes so beautifully of the faith he found through Jeremiah Wright?

Uh, sure.

I wasn’t the only person who was beginning to wonder about Sullivan. During a liveblog of the April 16, 2008, debate, Commentary’s John Podhoretz referred to him as “Andrew ‘Someone Give Me Barack Obama’s Shoe So I Can Lick It’ Sullivan. By August 31 (as the Palin wars began) a reader at The Corner expressed what I had been thinking for quite a while:

at this point I can't see him [Sullivan] as anything other than a total Obama partisan. His blog's purpose has gone from discussing politics from a conservative perspective to simply trying to get Obama elected. I can't see any other explanation for his recent contradictory posts. Conspicuously absent from his blog have been any posts devoted to analyzing Obama's policy proposals - e.g. can we really pay for everything that Obama is promising in domestic entitlements by simply taxing "the rich" a bit more? It's simple questions like this one - and the answers may even be in Obama's favor - that have no place in his posts anymore. Instead, we get vacuous posts praising Obama's rhetoric and oratory skills. It's been sad, actually, because he is a really intelligent guy. I'm amazed he has allowed himself to lose all his credibility as a conservative writer simply to get Obama elected.

I had stopped reading Sullivan before that fateful weekend so I didn’t see firsthand his eagerness to spread the truly hideous rumors about Governor Palin, Bristol, and Trig. For that I am profoundly grateful.

Still, I had hung in there for quite a while. It’s difficult and more than a little embarrassing for me to admit just how very much I wanted Sullivan to come to his senses, start treating Clinton decently, and stop worshipping at the feet of Obama. I don’t think I consciously acknowledged to myself that if Sullivan was as biased and unbalanced as he now appeared then I would have to re-evaluate a lot of what I believed but I’m pretty sure my subconscious was well aware of that. I can remember feeling almost ill when I read Sullivan, hoping each time that he would finally do a post admitting he’d been blind and biased and would now play fair with Clinton and with anyone else who had the misfortune not to be Barack Obama. After one particularly egregious post about Clinton - I think it was one of the ones where he quoted from Animal Farm - he suddenly announced he was taking a vacation, he needed a break. Thank goodness, I thought. His editor or his spouse or his friends have managed to make him see that he’s gone off the deep end. He’ll chill out for a while and come back sane. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

The last straw for me with regard to Sullivan came in June of 2008. It was a small matter, perhaps hardly worth noting, but it did two things. First, it finally convinced me there was no hope Sullivan would return to his senses. The Andrew Sullivan I had been reading either was gone for good or - more likely - had never really existed. Second, it made me face the fact that the vitriol Sullivan heaped on Clinton was the same vitriol he had heaped on Bush. And if I knew he wasn’t playing fair with Clinton, how could I now believe he had ever played fair with Bush?

Sullivan was talking about Obama’s proposal to jack up Social Security taxes on those making more than $250,000 and concluded:

There's no point in disguising this: Obama will punish those who succeed in order to funnel benefits to those who haven't. Yes: he's a liberal. But Bush never dealt with the fiscal reality - preferring to borrow the money from the Chinese. In that sense, these hikes are Bush's hikes as well.

In other words, the Devil made Obama do it.

I had hit my limit.: Sullivan was now clearly, undeniably, irredeemably irrational. I was going to have to accept that everything I thought I knew about the politics of the last seven years was - if I had learned it from him or MSNBC or HuffPo or anyone who agreed with them (and that’s a lot of anyones) - open to question.

I was adrift on the sea of world views without so much as a compass. I started paddling.

Wait! Obama has a speechwriter?

A man named Jon Favreau hit the news a couple of weeks ago when the Washington Post identified him as “President-elect Barack Obama's immensely talented chief speechwriter” and reported that:

... some interesting photos of a recent party he attended -- including one where he's dancing with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of secretary of state-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and another where he's placed his hand on the cardboard former first lady's chest while a friend is offering her lips a beer -- popped up on Facebook for about two hours. The photos were quickly taken down ...

Some observers were quite outraged and I believe correctly so. You can read Anglachel for a round-up of feminist objections and for her own deeper analysis. Reclusive Leftist has some pungent thoughts on the sight of three men on a news program telling women to get over it. And in the “politics make strange bedfellows” department, the Washington Times is disgusted and furious.

My first reaction however was surprise. I thought only Sarah Palin needed an immensely talented speechwriter to “repackage” her. Surely I read in Time magazine that Obama writes his own speeches.

Oh, I see. Now that Favreau’s been spotlighted - or maybe just because Obama is safely elected - we’re hearing that Favreau had a bigger role in endeavors like the Philadelphia race speech and the convention acceptance speech than previously reported. (In fairness to Time, they did mention Favreau in their article about “How Obama Writes His Speeches” - although they equated him with Axelrod in terms of influence - and they did say Obama “delivered” his Philadelphia speech - silly me for thinking they were implying he wrote it himself.)

In all seriousness, only total idiots ever believed Sarah Palin used speechwriters and Barack Obama didn’t. What is sad about the whole "Favreau groping a Clinton cutout" incident is Hillary Clinton’s response:

... Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines cast the photos as evidence of increased bonhomie between the formerly rival camps.

"Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application," he said in an e-mail.

I certainly agree with Anglachel that no purpose would have been served if Clinton had acted out some type of revenge fantasy in response. But there’s a lot of working room between going ballistic and letting it slide. As I said in response to Anglachel, Hillary Clinton could have said something like:

Mr. Favreau is quite young so perhaps he does not understand how disrespectful he was being to me, to women in general, to the Office of the Secretary of State, and to the man who chose me to represent the United States to the rest of the world. I trust that Mr. Favreau’s supervisor will explain the penalties for sexual harassment in the workplace and that there will be no more incidents like this.

Instead Clinton chose to dismiss Favreau’s behavior as essentially a high-spirited prank. By doing so, she undercuts all the feminists who have been expressing outrage over the sexist attacks launched by the Obama campaign and Obama supporters against her (and against Sarah Palin for that matter). If it’s acceptable - even cute - for the President-Elect’s anointed White House Director of Speechwriting to grope a cardboard Clinton, then isn’t a Hillary Clinton nutcracker just a clever gag gift?

I’ve written before about my disgust with Hillary Clinton's willingness to abet her husband’s sexist approach to women of the “wrong” class and about how I nonetheless slowly and grudgingly began to respect her during the Democratic primaries. Unfortunately her willingness (there’s that word again) to laugh off Favreau’s actions brings me right back to where I started with Hillary Clinton: she has no problem enabling sexist behavior as long as doing so benefits her and hers.

*****

Reading:

Fresh blood for the vampire by Camille Paglia. I love this article for many reasons but its relevance here is this sentence:

Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

Admit it! You’re jealous of Jon Favreau!. This is Ann Althouse’s take on the the Washington Post’s recent story about Favreau as speechwriter. Althouse on the cardboard cutout incident is here.

So What If Sarah Palin Used a Speechwriter? by Betsy Newmark. Writing immediately after the Republican National Convention, Newmark points out that all politicians use speechwriters and concludes: “Big whippety doo.”

Qualmish

Every so often during the past endless year of campaiging, I have felt vaguely queasy about Barack Obama. His policies worry me and his misogyny enrages me but I was having a hard time tracking down the source of that low-level nausea. I felt it again a couple of days ago and I’ve now got a pretty good idea what’s bothering me.

Greg Mankiw has up a post which includes the following quote from the “America Serves” section of Obama’s Change.gov presidential transition Website (emphasis Mankiw’s):

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

I highly recommend Mankiw’s post for content but my roiled stomach was caused by his update:

Update: The presidential transition website to which I linked above no longer uses the word "require." The passage quoted above was copied and pasted from that website (with bolding added by me). But within a few hours after I posted it here, the wording changed to "setting a goal."

I am delighted to see this blog having so much influence on the policies of the new administration. That's change I can believe in!

He is correct. Obama’s Change.gov Website now says (emphasis mine):

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

I realize changing positions is not new for Obama but this really creeps me out. It feels less like Obama’s famous flip-flops on telecom immunity in FISA, public campaign financing, and NAFTA and more like the Universal Mortgage Credit modification, another small issue that made me feel a little green around the gills.

Why does this make me queasy?

First, the language was changed after it was publicly criticized. (Mankiw wasn’t the only person writing about this.) This feels less like correcting a misstatement that someone has spotted and more like shifting ground to avoid being held accountable. As Holtz-Eakin put it when talking about the Universal Mortgage Credit changes, trying to pin Obama down is like “trying to pin Jello to the wall.”

Second, Obama’s previous statements on community service for students have been ambiguous enough to support either version. In a July 2 speech Obama described his plans to integrate service into learning:

I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we'll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we'll require 100 hours of public service.

In this formulation the community service for middle and high school students sounds like it’s going to be required: if Federal funding is contingent on “service programs” then schools will require service. Unless, of course, the schools are only required to “offer ... service opportunities” and will get their Federal money regardless of how many students avail themselves of those opportunities.

The college community service sounds totally voluntary, just a nice way to offset some of the costs of higher education.

Meanwhile the Obama campaign Website says:

Obama and Biden will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year. They will develop national guidelines for service-learning and will give schools better tools both to develop programs and to document student experience. [snip]

Require 100 Hours of Service in College: Obama and Biden will establish a new American Opportunity Tax Credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.

In this formulation the middle and high school service sounds more voluntary - there is no mention of tying Federal funds to community service - although the “set” part of “set a goal” is pretty ambiguous. Meanwhile the description of the American Opportunity Tax Credit here is virtually identical to the description from the speech but the heading before the description clearly says “Require 100 Hours of Service in College”.

A third source, the campaign National Service Plan Fact Sheet, says (pages 3-4):

That plan [school funding] conditions that assistance on school districts developing programs to engage students in service opportunities. Obama and Biden believe that middle and high school students should be expected to engage in community service for 50 hours annually during the school year or summer months. [snip]

Require 100 Hours of Service in College: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university. Recipients of this credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of public service a year, either during the school year or over the summer months.

At the middle and high school level, we’re back to Federal funding being contingent on schools “developing ... service opportunies” while student community service is now “expected” - whatever that means. Meanwhile the college community service still sounds voluntary - you only do it if you want the Tax Credit - but the label still says “Require”

The upshot of all this is that Obama’s campaign positions on integrating service into education can be cited to support both the original “required” policy on the Change.gov Website and the new gentler version that has replaced it. Which brings me to:

Third, the new gentler version doesn’t actually mean the original “required” version isn’t accurate. The new version doesn’t say anywhere that community service won’t be required. It just no longer says that it will. In other words, it reintroduces the ambiguity that we’ve seen on this issue throughout the campaign.

So why does this kind of maneuvering make me queasy? Because it does away with accountability both in campaigning - which is irrelevant now but will be important in four years - and in governing. In campaigning, an opponent cannot make a charge against Obama stick. If that opponent says, “Obama is going to require community service,” Obama can reply, “You are misrepresenting my position. I simply want to encourage students to participate.” On the other hand, if that opponent says, “Obama is going to give schools money to develop community service programs but the schools can simply take the money and do nothing,” Obama can say, “A typical Republican smear. I make it perfectly clear community service is expected from schools in return for Federal funding.” (No wonder Obama was afraid of those ten town-hall meetings. The more time he spends talking without a script the harder it is for him to get away with this sort of “nuance”. An answer he gives in Dayton in July can be used against him if attempts the opposite answer in Pittsburgh in August.)

More crucially, such maneuvering will make it almost impossible to hold President Obama accountable for what candidate Obama promised. If four years from now eleven-year olds are still playing video games rather than picking up trash in parks, Obama can tell voters who are disappointed that he only promised to encourage community service and it’s not his fault that American children didn’t answer his call. On the other hand, if Obama marches fifth graders off to help with ACORN voter registration drives he can tell those who object that he said he was going to do just that before he was elected.

No wonder everyone who supports Obama can see exactly what they need to see when they look at him. And no wonder I feel queasy from time to time.

First word after the election

I would never have been completely happy that Barack Obama won the Presidential election. Given my concerns about his policies and his inexperience, I would always have preferred a different result. All the same, I would have liked to be able to wholeheartedly rejoice in the fact that his victory has provided incontrovertible proof of how far the United States has come in healing racial wounds and has thus meant so very much to so many people.

Yet I cannot. I can appreciate the abstract importance of his election and honor the meaning it has for so many African-Americans. But I simply cannot be even the slightest bit glad Barack Obama has won the Presidential election. The misogyny unleashed by Obama, his campaign, and his supporters has been disastrous for women. While it has left parents of all races, ethnicities, and religions more able to honestly tell their sons that any little boy can grow up to be President of the United States it has also left them far less able to tell their daughters the same is true for little girls. Obama has asked all Americans to believe that "[our] dreams do not have to come at the expense of [his] dreams" but his own philosophy is quite different. He believed achieving his dreams required vandalizing women’s dreams and he was perfectly willing to do just that.

So I am not happy that Obama won and I am not likely to be. Nonetheless he will be my President after January 20 and I will support him when I believe he is right and oppose him respectfully when I believe he is wrong. And I very much wish him a wildly successful Presidency - we desperately need one.

Final word before the election

On August 3, 2008, Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry appeared on “Meet the Press”. This was just a few days after Barack Obama had made a series of stump speeches in which he said:

Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.

I deeply admired Senator Lieberman's response to that:

I want to say just a word about the, the racial question here. And I, I speak personally. In the first place, the McCain campaign is, to use Barack Obama's words, raising the question is he a risky guy? But it has nothing to do with his name or his skin color. It has to do with his lack of experience and bad judgment, his unreadiness to be president. When you use the expressions that Senator Obama did three times this week, you're making a personal insult to John McCain.

I, I know John McCain. I've been with him for 20 years, private and public. This man does not have a bigoted bone in his body. His wife and he adopted a baby from Bangladesh, who, who they love. It's just wrong for Senator Obama to have done that. It was right for the campaign to call him on it. Let me just add a final word, Tom. In 2000, Al Gore gave me the extraordinary honor of being the first Jewish-American to run for national office, and Al Gore said he had confidence in the American people that they would judge me based on my record, not on my religion. And I urge Barack Obama to have the same faith in the American people that they will judge him on his record, or lack of record, certainly not on his name or his race.

Why I would never vote for Obama

Misogyny

RFK/June

I am about to say the sooth

During my Italian class Thursday evening the teacher spent some time talking about a long-ago trip to China. Finding this irrelevant to my desire to learn Italian, I amused myself by jotting down what I believed would be the undesirable international consequences of an Obama Presidency. Before I got around to posting them I found that Ralph Peters had covered many of the same issues and done so in a far more interesting fashion that I can. Nonetheless, given the name of my blog I feel compelled to prophesy and after all there's absolutely no downside to being totally wrong.

International prophecies

Taiwan will fall to Mainland China. This will probably not happen militarily but without a United States strongly committed to Taiwan’s independence the move into China’s control will be inevitable.

As part of the drive to cut defense spending by 25%, Obama withdraws troops from South Korea. Once the United States tripwire is removed, South Korea realizes it is wide open to attack from the North. It must choose between accepting protection from and control by China or fighting a bloody and probably unwinnable war against North Korea. It is possible Japan will be sufficiently alarmed by the drawdown of United States troops and the opening this gives China to extend its sphere of influence that Japan will decide to remilitarize and offer South Korea Japanese protection. That would inflame China; consequences are unpredictable.

Obama will give Iraq a choice between fully funding the United States military presence in Iraq with its oil revenues and losing United States troops. If Iraq’s government chooses the former, the resultant financial upheaval and resentment will breathe new life into al-Qaeda’s efforts which will destabilize the government and permit Obama to either declare Iraq a lost cause or declare the Iraqi populace wants the United States out. Either way he will withdraw the United States troops. If the Iraq government instead chooses to lose the United States troops rather than pay for them, Obama will claim he is simply bowing to the will of the United States Iraqi government and withdraw the troops. Once the United States military is gone, Iraq will devolve into chaos until another strongman ruler arises from the conflict.

Despite his current claims that Afghanistan is the real center of the war on terror, Obama will be unwilling to mount a major military endeavor there and will pull all United States troops out of Afghanistan. The country will return to Taliban control. Pakistan will be left to deal with the Taliban as best it can. Odds are Taliban control will spread into much of Pakistan and perhaps take over the central government there as well.

Iran will achieve nuclear weapons. This might happen under a McCain Presidency as well but the consequences under an Obama Presidency will be more devastating. Israel will credibly fear a nuclear strike by Iran and request that the United States commit to full-scale retaliation against Iran if that happens. Obama instead turns to the United Nations. Realizing the futility of depending on the United Nations for protection, Israel immediately launches a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Iran retaliates and at that point the best the United States can hope for is that the war does not engulf the entire Middle East thereby making its oil unrecoverable. (In the extremely unlikely event that Israel does not actually have nuclear weapons, Iran will launch a nuclear strike against Israel as soon as Obama turns to the United Nations. Israel will be annihilated.)

With the urging of the United Nations, the United States will commit troops to areas in Africa facing genocide. The United Nations will cheer lead but will provide virtually no support. Fighting alone, the United States will be bled dry of troops and money.

Meanwhile, suffering in the rest of Africa will increase. Obama will shut down George Bush’s disease-fighting initiatives and funnel all American help for Africa through the Global Poverty Act. Whether provided to governments of poor nations or funneled through the United Nations, most of the money appropriated under this act ends up sticking to the fingers of bureaucrats before it ever gets to those who need it most.

With defense spending cut by 25%, all new defense projects cancelled, and troops and money gobbled up by unwinnable wars, the United States is increasingly perceived as less and less powerful internationally. The less committed the United States is to its own best interests in the global arena, the stronger this perception grows. Seeing no advantage to a close association with a weak and self-destructive United States, allies drift away. The United States receives more favorable press internationally but becomes more and more isolated.

Domestic prophecies

The Employee Free Choice Act becomes law. Secret ballots for unionization become a thing of the past.

A new Fairness Doctrine becomes law. Much First Amendment litigation ensues.

As part of his drive for renewable energy, Obama turns to the Pickens Plan. Millions of people in the wind corridor from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border lose their homes to eminent domain. Bats die in large numbers, felled by pulmonary barotrauma. Pollination suffers while insect populations explode. Food production nosedives and food prices at home and abroad, already driven up by Obama’s ethanol subsidies, rise still higher. Obama blames global warming for agriculture's woes and increases the amount of land given over to wind power.

It’s a bad time to live in Alaska. Federal regulators and investigators flood the state while Federal money goes elsewhere. Alaska Democrats make it clear to the voters that if Palin is re-elected governor in 2010 this situation will continue. Palin wins overwhelmingly.

Confirmation bias

Let’s take a look at an article on ABC’s Political Radar blog, dated October 31, 2008, and headlined, “Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights”. The article begins:

ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

The article is referring to this interview. Palin’s one-sentence quote is taken from a longer exchange that can be found at the beginning of “Chris Plante Interviews Sarah Palin Part 2”:

Host: And of course Rashid Khalidi is not the only radical that Barack Obama’s associated himself with over the years and you also have been kind of out there on the pointy end of the spear talking about William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to a lesser extent perhaps but William Ayers and once again the role of the news media in this campaign when it comes to Barack Obama’s relationships over the years with Rashid Khalidi and William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and Father Pfleger and all of these other people. Is, is the news media doing its job, are you getting a fair shake, the Republicans getting a fair shake this year?

Palin: I don’t that that they’re doing their job when they suggest that calling a candidate out on their record, their plans for this country, and their associations is mean-spirited or negative campaigning. If they convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media. Look at Joe the Plumber, good old Joe the Plumber in Toledo, Ohio. He just asked a simple, straightforward question and the media started investigating and attacking him. So there is some fear there and in those terms, no, I don’t think that they’ve been doing their job in that kind of context.

Is Political Radar’s description of what Palin said accurate? Certainly the first sentence in the second paragraph is way off base:

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks.

Palin most certainly did not say “that her criticism of Obama's associations ... should not be considered negative attacks.” (Is there such a thing as a positive attack?) What she said was that it is not the media’s job to declare her criticisms of Obama “mean-spirited or negative campaigning”. In other words, the media does not get to decide what is and is not a valid criticism of her political opponent. (I believe that would be the job of the voters.)

There is nothing new about what Palin is saying in this regard: many who oppose Obama have expressed frustration that much of the media seems to consider virtually any criticism of Obama an irrelevant distraction at best and downright racist at worst. Palin is simply arguing that Obama has succeeded in getting the media to enthusiastically support his rules for the general election:

[Obama] can’t be called a “liberal” (“the same names and labels they pin on everyone,” as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can’t be questioned (“attempts to play on our fears”); his extreme positions on social issues can’t be exposed (“the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives” and “turn us against each other”); and his Chicago background too is off-limits (“pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy”).

After eliminating that sentence, what remains of Political Radar’s description is:

Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama. [snip] for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

The article has elected to confound two different points Palin made: her concerns about the First Amendment and her concerns about “our” being able to ask questions without fear of “attacks” by the media. Let’s separate these out.

The First Amendment concerns are the hook on which most of the commentary criticizing Palin for this interview has hung its hat. You can take a look at HuffPo (channeling Jeff Greenwald); ThinkProgress (which apparently feels no commentary is necessary - other than that picture - but does get full credit for providing audio - although not text - of the whole exchange); Daily Kos (channeling Alex Koppelman); Keith Olbermann (nope, not linking); The Young Turks; and a slew of other sources. The thrust of this commentary is that Palin is so stupid she thinks the First Amendment does (or should) protect her from the press when in fact the First Amendment protects both free speech by individuals and a free press from interference by the government. The Young Turks video provides the best summary:

She’s saying that the media is challenging her First Amendment rights when they say that she is lying or running a negative campaign. But the whole point of the First Amendment is freedom of the press. I mean, it’s in there. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Both things are in there. And second of all, it doesn’t negate your freedom of speech if someone else speaks. Third of all, you’re a politician. The whole point of the First Amendment was to keep our politicians in check.

(I’m not going to rant and rave about The Young Turks’ decisions to translate “mean-spirited” as “lying”. The whole discussion of what constitutes lying in a political campaign is a huge one that I suspect will become extremely germane if we end up with an Obama administration.)

Is Palin saying “that the media is challenging her First Amendment rights when they say that she is lying or running a negative campaign”? Maybe. It’s certainly one interpretation of what she said. However, I think that interpretation is most likely to occur to people who are already convinced Palin is stupid and doesn’t understand the Constitution. The very people, for example, who are (wrongly) convinced Biden wiped the floor with Palin when they discussed the Constitution during the Vice-Presidential debate.

There’s an alternative explanation that I find more likely. Oddly enough, I believe Governor Palin was agreeing with The Young Turks: “The whole point of the First Amendment was to keep our politicians in check.” You see, Barack Obama is a politician also. If the majority of the media goes along with his campaign’s desire to define his opponent’s criticisms of him as invalid then what keeps him in check? In Palin’s formulation, the press has not only refused to criticize Obama themselves, they have also delegitimized her attempts to do so. Palin is arguing - admittedly very sloppily - that when so much of the press is so supportive of one politician over another then the press is not doing the job envisioned for it by those who wrote the First Amendment.

Is she advocating somehow making the press do her bidding? I really can’t see that. So far as I know, Palin has not suggested anything like banning further interviews with a Florida station for raising unpleasant issues; ejecting non-endorsing papers from her campaign plane; or mobilizing supporters to flood WGN with phone calls for inviting a guest critical of McCain. In fact, despite her claims of mainstream media bias she hasn’t even proposed enacting a new Fairness Doctrine.

Rather Palin is using the power of the bully pulpit. She is stating that the press is not doing its job and expressing her concern about what the consequences will be if the voters do not realize that.

What about Palin’s second point, her concerns about asking questions without fear of the “attacks” by the media? Here Palin is talking about the chilling effect non-governmental actions - specifically media attacks - can have on ordinary people questioning politicians. Again I don’t think she’s advocating muzzling the press but is stating her belief that the press’ job does not include attacking citizens who challenge Obama.

The criticisms of Palin’s remarks have both sprung from and reinforced previously held beliefs about her: she is too stupid to understand the Constitution and committed to the “standard” Republican agenda of leashing the free press. Those beliefs have made it easy for the media - and those they inform - to focus on her reference to the First Amendment and ignore the full meaning of her remarks: the media are attempting to delegitimize not only her criticism of Obama but also any negative remarks leveled at Obama from any source. And should the full meaning of her remarks slip through, well, the “fact” that she is both stupid and thuggish renders her points invalid. After all, how could someone like her possibly have anything legitimate to say about anything?

I sincerely hope I’m alive twenty years from now when objective observers are able to take a long, hard look at the Sarah Palin phenomenon. The political analysis will be fascinating, of course, but even more interesting will be the sociological analysis of the class-based nature of Palin’s treatment by the media and the psychological analysis of how people so clearly saw exactly what they expected to see when they looked at Palin.

Missing the point

There has been a lot of chatter about what Barack Obama is really saying in that January 2001 radio show about “The Court and Civil Rights.” I think most of the chatterers - on both the Right and the Left - are missing the point. Unsurprisingly, the Left is understating how much the show reveals about the continuity of Obama’s commitment to spreading the wealth. I do not necessarily consider this deliberate. If you believe that Obama is a mainstream, moderate, liberal politician, it is quite easy to make the case that what he says in that radio show isn’t terribly significant. Equally unsurprisingly, the Right is overstating how much the radio show reveals about Obama’s commitment to spreading the wealth. More troublesomely, the Right is misstating - and I suspect misunderstanding - what the radio show actually does reveal.

The Right’s general argument has been that Obama wants to use the Supreme Court in particular and courts in general to redistribute wealth and that his comments in the radio show reveal his disappointment that the Warren Court did not do more to effect this redistribution. The Right-leaning commenters than go on to talk about how Obama will thus appoint Supreme Court Justices (and lower judges) that share his redistribution tendencies and how those appointees will then proceed to move money around faster than a roulette croupier at Monte Carlo.

As I explained, I believe this is a grievous misreading of Obama’s remarks. Furthermore because this misreading is easily rebutted by the Obama campaign simply pointing to what Obama actually said, interpreting Obama’s remarks in this way has blunted what could have been an effective Republican attack on Obama. Two examples of the argument the Right - and particularly the McCain campaign - attempted to make and the relatively easy push-back against that argument by the Obama camp can be found in a Washington Post Fact Checker article and a FOX News article. Both articles reported segments of McCain campaign spokesman Douglas Holtz-Eakin’s response to Obama’s remarks:

The American people continue to learn more about Barack Obama. Now we know that the slogans "change you can believe in" and "change we need" are code words for Barack Obama’s ultimate goal: "redistributive change." In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t been more "radical" and described as a "tragedy" the Court's refusal to take up "the issues of redistribution of wealth." No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench – as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it. Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change.

Leaving aside the fact that Holtz-Eakin got the date of the interview wrong (“The Courts and Civil Rights” aired on January 18, 2001; on September 6, 2001, Obama was part of another radio show on the same station called “Slavery and the Constitution”), he is making a case that simply cannot be backed up by listening to the January 2001 radio show. In fact, his case cannot be backed up even if all you listen to are the segments of the show that were made into a YouTube video attacking Obama. The Washington Post Fact Checker article makes this point quite convincingly. The FOX News article (which makes some very tenuous claims of its own regarding Obama’s remarks) included Obama spokesman Bill Burton’s effective push-back:

Here are the facts. In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of “redistributing” wealth. Obama's point -- and what he called a tragedy -- was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country. And so Obama's point was simply that if we want to improve economic conditions for people in this country, we should do so by bringing people together at the community level and getting everyone involved in our democratic process.

What could be more reasonable? Obama said the courts should not redistribute wealth. (Okay, actually he said they “could” not but I’m sure Burton’s huge change in meaning will be overlooked in light of the much more obvious errors made in Holtz-Eakin’s statement.) In fact, Obama is saying we shouldn’t rely on the courts to make things better but instead on the democratic process. It’s hard to argue with any of that and the McCain campaign made a huge mistake when they tried to do so.

However, there is an argument that could have been made from the January 2001 radio show. It requires more patient elucidation than simply saying “Obama judges will take your money” but it could have been made and it would have gone something like this:

In the January 2001 radio show, Obama is not advocating use of the courts to redistribute wealth. However, it is clear from listening to his remarks that he considers the redistribution of wealth to be a good thing. In particular, his comment that he is “not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts” demonstrates both of these points: redistributive change - in fact, major redistributive change - is desirable but the courts are not the appropriate venue.

Obama does make clear how this major redistributive change is to occur: through “the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” Given Obama’s career path - community organizer, State legislature, United States Senate, President - and his remarkable grass roots organization while pursuing that path, it is clear he is putting into practice what he talks about in the January 2001 interview. He is not pursuing major redistributive change through the courts but through the very “democratic process” Burton says he considers appropriate for such endeavors.

Although the January 2001 discussion of major redistributive change occurs within the context of a discussion on civil rights, Obama’s current campaign makes two things clear. First, he has maintained a continuity of purpose and still supports major redistributive change: his “tax cuts” for 95% of Americans and his comments about spreading the wealth make this crystal clear. Second, his current push for major redistributive change is not race-based: he promises to take money from the more successful of all races and give money to the less well-off of all races.

Although Obama will not appoint judges specifically for the purpose of effecting this major redistributive change, his appointments will nonetheless reflect his long-standing commitment to such change. In that same January 2001 radio show, Obama says “the Court can certainly be more or less generous in interpreting actions and initiatives that are taken by the legislature.” Given his desire to spread the wealth around, Obama will certainly appoint judges who are more generous in their interpretation rather than less generous.

Does this mean Obama is a socialist? That’s a meaningless question. Socialism is not a yes or no proposition. Here’s a reasonable definition of “socialism”:

An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. There are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise. All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists.

In other words, those who claim our economic policy already redistributes wealth or is already socialist have a point: there are redistributive, even socialist, elements in that policy. We do not have - and most of us do not want - untrammeled capitalism. For example, we want some government control over the production of goods by private enterprise in the form of regulations to keep us safer both physically and economically and in the form of intervention to prevent supposed competitors from conniving to manipulate the market. We want some government control over the distribution of goods in the form of safety nets for the less fortunate: we pay taxes to support Social Security and Medicare for the old and food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid for the poor. We want some government control over the distribution of goods in situations where that will benefit society as a whole: we pay taxes to provide college aid so all qualified students can go to college.

So, yes, the United States economy does have socialist elements but there are two important points to remember. First, in general we support those redistributive elements in pursuit of other goals. We tax ourselves to help the elderly because we don’t want them to suffer. We tax ourselves to help everyone attend college because we believe that helps our society as a whole. We don’t support redistributive efforts based solely on the idea that everyone should have the same or that those who have more should be forced to share.

The second important point is that degree matters. A society can be more or less redistributive, more or less socialist. So the question is not whether Obama is a socialist; the question is whether Obama’s proposals lead our economic system in a more socialist direction. The answer to that can only be “Yes”. By proposing a redistribution of wealth based on the idea that everyone should have the same, that those who are more successful should be forced to share, he is explicitly advocating changing the system so that the government has greater control over the distribution of goods.

Obama's proposals are neither un-American nor anti-American. So long as we are governed within the constraints of the Constitution, Americans can choose whatever path they want and that path is - by the very virtue of their choice - American. However, Obama’s approach does present voters with a remarkably clear choice of paths. Although Americans have chosen to tax themselves to provide safety nets and societal good, they have also been wary of too much drift toward socialism and have preferred to preserve capitalism, recognizing it as the engine of economic growth and economic freedom. Choosing Obama as President means choosing to move much further down the socialist path. Obama is quite correct in his belief that the democratic process is the right way to make the choice between his path and John McCain’s path but he is quite incorrect in his belief that his path is, in fact, the right choice to make.

There you are. The accurate and, I believe, persuasive argument that could be made from that January 2001 radio show. There are two problems in making it, however. First, my argument took about 900 words. That’s close to stump speech length but I don’t know what you could pull out of there as a sound-bite and I’m darn sure those 900 words would never fit on a bumper sticker.

Second, it is probably impossible for the McCain campaign to make this argument at this late date. Holtz-Eakin’s egregious misstatements in his first response frittered away the impact Obama’s words could have made if handled correctly. Any attempt to go back now and say, “Well, what we really meant about what Obama really meant...” is almost certainly going to be ignored and justifiably so.

Furthermore, I don’t have any sense that the McCain campaign has been making a continuous, coherent case against Obama on the economic front. The January 2001 radio show - like Obama’s remarks to Joe Wurzelbacher - have focused attention on this issue and provided specific Obama quotes to shore up McCain’s case against Obama’s economics. However, it’s not like this is news. Obama’s tax policies and spending programs - both those he has voted for in the past and those he is proposing in his Presidential campaign - are not new. The McCain campaign should have been making this argument all along. Than when the gifts of Joe the Plumber and a public radio show fell in their laps they would have been prepared to use them effectively.

Mommy, what does the Vice-President do?

I was looking for the full “Hardball” interview with Representative Michele Bachmann and while searching YouTube I found an interview Chris Matthews did with Bill Maher on October 21. Matthews began by asking Maher about Bachmann but before Maher could get his entire answer out, Matthews said

Can I cue you up another one? Here’s something fresh from today, fresh from the world of 2008 politics. This is the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Republican Party talking about her notion of what the Vice-Presidency holds for her.

He then proceeded to play a clip of an interview Governor Palin did with station KUSA in Colorado. Here’s a transcript of the clip Matthews played:

A Vice-President has a really great job because not only are they there to support the President’s agenda - they’re like the team member, the teammate to that President - but also they’re in charge of the United States Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes what will help make life better.

Matthews and Maher then had the following exchange (I’ve omitted the disbelieving nasal sounds):

Matthews: Wow! I heard this begin during the debate when her notion of the Vice-Presidency is she’s gonna run the United States Senate. I thought it was a formality to just break ties and sit up there. She says she’s gonna basically be in charge of the Senate, she’s gonna get through good policies, she’s gonna get in there and work. I guess she has to take a look at the Constitution before she, well, at least takes office.

Maher: Well that would involve reading, Chris. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. I was just gonna say before you showed the second clip is what I’ve been hearing about this Congresswoman is that she’s the only person in public office who’s actually dumber than Palin but I don’t know. After I heard that clip that you just showed me, that’s a tossup. That’s a real Beavis and Butthead we’ve got there.

I got curious and did some poking around and found the Palin interview with KUSA on October 20, 2008, which runs 8 minutes and 13 seconds.. (Warning: Make sure your sound is turned OFF when you start this. There’s a brief ad before the interview that is nothing but incredibly loud static. Turn the sound back on when Palin appears.)

After watching the whole interview, I can report there are two problems with M&M’s take on Palin’s remarks. One is Constitutional, the other is contextual. Let’s take the Constitutional problem first.

The Constitution mentions the Vice-President in Article I which defines the Legislative branch of government and in Article II which defines the Executive branch of government. For our purposes, we need only be concerned with Article I. In Section 3 of this Article, we find the following:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

As you can see, Palin was Constitutionally correct in saying the Vice-President is “in charge of the United States Senate.” During the Twentieth Century the involvement of the Vice-President in the normal activities of the Senate has waned but I don’t see any reason why the Vice-President could not - if she wanted to - “get in there with the Senators”. She would not be able to vote or debate but as anyone who has tried to get work done in a committee or meeting knows, the person who runs things can wield a lot of power if he - or she - so chooses.

Do modern Vice-Presidents mix it up with the Senate? No. According to the Senate Website:

The first two vice presidents, Adams and Jefferson, did much to shape the nature of the office, setting precedents that were followed by others. During most of the nineteenth century, the degree of influence and the role played within the Senate depended chiefly on the personality and inclinations of the individual involved. Some had great parliamentary skill and presided well, while others found the task boring, were incapable of maintaining order, or chose to spend most of their time away from Washington, leaving the duty to a president pro tempore. Some made an effort to preside fairly, while others used their position to promote the political agenda of the administration.

During the twentieth century, the role of the vice president has evolved into more of an executive branch position. Now, the vice president is usually seen as an integral part of a president's administration and presides over the Senate only on ceremonial occasions or when a tie-breaking vote may be needed. Yet, even though the nature of the job has changed, it is still greatly affected by the personality and skills of the individual incumbent.

So while Palin is Constitutionally correct in her description of the Vice-President’s role in the Senate, as a practical matter the extensive involvement she envisions is rarely seen these days. I see no Constitutional reason why she could not involve herself as much as nineteenth century Vice-Presidents did but I imagine the Senators themselves would dislike that very much and their dislike would make life more difficult for a McCain administration.

Certainly, M&M could have used the “impractical” argument to make what Palin said sound ridiculous. They would have had to figure out a way to avoid making the Senators sound unconstitutional while making Palin sound like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington but I’m sure they could have managed it. Since they chose to use the “she needs to read the Constitution” argument instead, I can only assume they are far more clueless about the Constitution than Sarah Palin.

As long as we’re on the subject, let’s look at what was actually said in the Vice-Presidential debate, a forum that Matthews pinpointed as the beginning of what he apparently believes are Palin’s grandiose notions about the role of the Vice-President. Based on the New York Times transcript of this debate, the discussion of the role of the Vice-President begins when the moderator, Gwen Ifill, says, “But tell us now, looking forward, what it is you think the vice presidency is worth now.” Palin and Biden do a little back and forth about joking and then:

PALIN: No, no. Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are. John McCain and I have had good conversations about where I would lead with his agenda. That is energy independence in America and reform of government over all, and then working with families of children with special needs. That's near and dear to my heart also. In those arenas, John McCain has already tapped me and said, that's where I want you, I want you to lead. I said, I can't wait to get and there go to work with you.

IFILL: Senator?

BIDEN: Gwen, I hope we'll get back to education because I don't know any government program that John is supporting, not early education, more money for it. The reason No Child Left Behind was left behind, the money was left behind, we didn't fund it. We can get back to that I assume.

With regard to the role of vice president, I had a long talk, as I'm sure the governor did with her principal, in my case with Barack. Let me tell you what Barack asked me to do. I have a history of getting things done in the United States Senate. John McCain would acknowledge that. My record shows that on controversial issues. I would be the point person for the legislative initiatives in the United States Congress for our administration. I would also, when asked if I wanted a portfolio, my response was, no. But Barack Obama indicated to me he wanted me with him to help him govern. So every major decision he'll be making, I'll be sitting in the room to give my best advice. He's president, not me, I'll give my best advice.

And one of the things he said early on when he was choosing, he said he picked someone who had an independent judgment and wouldn't be afraid to tell him if he disagreed. That is sort of my reputation, as you know. I look forward to working with Barack and playing a very constructive role in his presidency, bringing about the kind of change this country needs.

So when Sarah Palin speaks of “working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies” she’s out of line but when Joe Biden says “I have a history of getting things done in the United States Senate. ... I would be the point person for the legislative initiatives in the United States Congress for our administration” M&M presumably have no problem with that. Personally, I don’t see a dime’s worth of difference between the intentions of the two candidates. Palin may intend to try to use her role as President of the Senate to accomplish what Biden would probably accomplish via personal contacts and, well, schmoozing, but the desired outcome is the same. Each plans to be the President’s liaison with the Senate.

The debate discussion continues immediately with (emphasis mine):

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

IFILL: Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the vice presidency?

BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

Oops! Let’s see how many errors we can ring up in Biden’s comments:

1) Article I defines only part of the role of the Vice-President, not all of it.

2) Article I defines the Legislative branch not the Executive branch.

3) The Vice-President has Constitutional duties in both the Legislative and Executive branches.

4) Constitutionally, the Vice-President can preside over the Senate whenever he or she darn well pleases.

5) Constitutionally, the Vice-President has as much authority over Congress (at least the Senate) as he or she chooses to exert. I simply don’t see any way the Senate could refuse to let the Vice-President run things if she showed up, gavel in hand, to do so.

6) The idea that the Vice-President is part of the Legislative branch is a bizarre notion invented not by Dick Cheney but by the Framers of the Constitution. Silly unitary power aggrandizers.

Call me cynical but I’m willing to bet a fair sum of money that M&M never had a little chuckle-fest over Biden’s understanding of the Constitution.

Okay, enough of the Constitutional problem with M&M’s tete-a-tete. On to the contextual problem.

Actually, there are two contextual problems, one immediate and one overarching. The immediate one is that the clip Matthews played is, shall we say, abbreviated. The whole exchange between the interviewer and Palin took about 45 seconds; Matthews played about 18 seconds worth. Here’s the whole exchange:

Interviewer: Finally, Governor, we’ve been trying to engage some local grade schoolers the last few elections cycles. We do have a few more questions from the third grade.

Palin: Good.

Interviewer: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

Palin: Aw, that’s something that Piper would ask me as a second grader, also. That’s a great question, Brandon. And a Vice-President has a really great job because not only are they there to support the President’s agenda - they’re like the team member, the teammate to that President - but also they’re in charge of the United States Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes what will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job.

Now Governor Palin sounds just a tiny bit simplistic in the clip Matthews played and her affect is definitely kind of cheery, for lack of a better word. Once you realize she is in effect talking to a ten-year old, though, she sounds more like a mommy than a lightweight.

The overarching context is this: the entire interview was just over eight minutes long. The 45-second exchange Matthews carved up and ran came at the very end of the interview. This would seem to mean that someone must have sat through the entire interview to find this little segment. Surely that someone could have found something newsworthy in Palin’s answer to the following questions:

1) Are you ready?

2) Are you surprised at the intensity with which some have gone after you?

3) Why should a voter who is struggling economically put his trust in you?

4) The First Lady of Colorado supports a tax increase to help children with autism, Down syndrome, and similar issues. Do you support that?

5) What Democrats would be a good fit for a McCain/Palin administration?

6) Why isn’t there more comment about oil shale extraction?

7) Is there such a thing as clean coal?

Palin was at least as impressive as Biden is in similar interviews. She knew her facts and marshaled them well. In fact, throughout the interview Sarah Palin was - if I may plagiarize Joe Biden - "articulate and bright and clean and ... nice-looking.” (Although I have to admit I wasn’t crazy about that red leather.)

Why didn’t Matthews play some of the earlier interview for Maher? We have so many possible explanations it’s hard to settle on just one. In the tank for Obama? MSNBC misogyny (aka, dog bites man)? Class prejudice? I know. How about “All of the above”?