Since the point of an election campaign is for the candidate to say "vote for me and not the other guy" the tendency is for differences to become exaggerated, especially as the partisans of one or the other candidate start drawing lines in the sand. But I think my former editor Harold Meyerson nails the fundamental similarity between Barack Obama and John Edwards, arguing that the former is running more like an early twentieth century Progressive while Edwards is running more like a Populist, but "Obama is a rather populist progressive, a onetime community organizer who understands the power of organized popular protest. And Edwards is a progressive populist, heir to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, not William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long." Which isn't to say that are no differences in the Democratic field but rather, as Meyerson says, that it's a far cry from some of the hotly contested Democratic primaries of yore when large ideological choices were clearly on the table.
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Variations on a Theme
02 Jan 2008 09:46 am
Comments (16)
Matt pushes Obama by saying he's really the same as Edwards.
Just like Obama pushed his healthcare plan on MTP this Sunday by saying it was really the same as Edwards' universal healthcare plan.
It's odd to watch when folks try to make the case for a campaign that doesn't really stand for anything in particular.
For another perspective on this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/02leonhardt.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
Scrolling down, I see you've discussed this. My bad.
Petey, the President is not a dictator in our system. It hardly matters what the exact details of Obama's and Edwards' health care plans are during the election campaign. Any plan they propose as President will get dissected and reconfigured as part of the legislative process. Odds of successfully passing any legislation barring Democrats winning 65 or so Senate seats this November are tiny in any case. What's important is that both candidates want major health care reform while their eventual Republican opponent wants either nothing or a phony tax credit that won't help anybody who actually needs helping.
Anyway Matt has said he favors Edwards, so it's hard to see where you are getting the idea that he is "pushing Obama".
I really don't consider Obama a progressive anymore after the positions and tactics he's taken; he's shown himself to be much closer to a proto-typical DLC-type candidate.
I'll be glad when it's over. I'm tired of all the exaggerations and obnoxiousness. Clinton is a safe bet for a good enough president who almost surely wouldn't try anything great. Obama and Edwards are riskier choices. Either might end up great or a frustrated mediocrity. The differences between Obama and Edwards are too small to judge. My heart says Obama, but my head says oh shut up already.
It hardly matters what the exact details of Obama's and Edwards' health care plans are during the election campaign. Any plan they propose as President will get dissected and reconfigured as part of the legislative process.
I think you're partially making Petey's point here, Ron. The point is that, programmatic details aside, there is a difference between the candidates.
Meyerson's assesment makes one ask the question as to which approach is more appropriate to winning and governing in 2009: the progressivism of Al Smith and TR or that of FDR. Sorry, but I find the answer fairly obvious.
Frankly, one very real concern I'd have with an Obama presidency is who would actually be running it...
I'll admit I haven't been following the Democratic primary with the intensity of various other commenters, but as a casual observer it seems to me that Obama's running a pretty vacuous campaign.
Newcomer candidates who get elected by running vacuous campaigns are relatively easy pickings for experienced political "takeover artists". And the neocons are exceptionally experienced takeover artists. For example, virtually all of them opposed Bush in 2000 and backed McCain instead, hence they were almost completely shut out of the Bush Cabinet appointments, their highest level appointment being Wolfowitz as Deputy Defense, yet within 12 months they'd gained near-total control of the Bush Administration and its policies. Even I was totally astonished by this.
Now consider Obama. Once he arrived in the Senate, he became very close to Lieberman, and a strong supporter of AIPAC, despite his previous contrary positions while in Illinois. More recently, Brooks and some of the other leading neocons have written very friendly things about him, Kristol and the rest will surely do the same if he's nominated, while Obama's people have bitterly feuded with Krugman, probably the most prominent anti-neocon columnist in America.
Admittedly, Obama has a grab-bag of foreign policy advisors, many of whom are anti-neocon, but nearly ALL of Bush's foreign policy advisors fell into that same category and it made absolutely no difference. By contrast, the big unions and perhaps the trial lawyers constitute major anti-neocon political power-center for Edwards, rendering a takeover much more difficult. Offhand, I can't think of any particular "power-centers" in the Obama camp, since he basically seems a media creation more than anything else.
I'd hope to be proven wrong, but I'd suspect that a neocon takeover of Obama would be pretty easy compared to the far more astonishing neocon takeover of Bush.
It's odd to watch when folks try to make the case for a campaign that doesn't really stand for anything in particular.
Yglesias has said he liked Obama before he knew anything about his policies or his politics. That suggests that the various excuses Yglesias makes for Obama from day to day - defending his policies as superior one day, claiming there's no difference between Obama's and his rivals the next - don't mean all that much. Yglesias likes Obama, period, regardless of the substance of Obama's policies, and MY's arguments for an Obama presidency change on a daily basis to reflect that.
"their highest level appointment being Wolfowitz as Deputy Defense"
You're forgetting Dick Cheney, who appointed himself.
You're forgetting Dick Cheney, who appointed himself.
Actually, not. Prior to the Bush Administration, absolutely *no one* regarded Cheney as a neocon. Instead, he---together with Rumsfeld---were universally regarded as almost the archetypical examples of non-neocon Ford/H.W. Bush-type Republicans. Note the astonishment of O'Neill, who's known Cheney well for thirty years.
How the neocons took over Cheney is a very important puzzle, which many people have long pondered. Obviously, having control over the people closest to him---Libby and Lynne Cheney---was a necessary, though probably not sufficient condition.
I think that "more like" is big enough to sail an aircraft carrier through. Neither one of them is much like an early 20th century progressive. Edwards, from time to time, sounds like a Hubert Humphrey liberal and Obama implies that he's kin to Hubert Humphrey liberalism, but that's about it. (HRC is, of course, from the Boss Tweed school of liberalism.)
RKU: Lieberman was assigned to Obama by the party leadership to show him how the Senate works. All freshman senators are assigned a longtime senate member to do the same.
"How the neocons took over Cheney is a very important puzzle, which many people have long pondered."
I don't understand the obsession with the neocons. Was it the neocon's idea to invade Afganistan - for a pipeline(!) - and further the Zionists' interests?
I am disappointed with Meyerson if he believes that Obama is a progressive. Here is a brief summary of Obama's position:
1. War with Pakistan
2. School vouchers
3. Let's fix social security because it's broke
4. In 2004-2005 deferred to Bush in supporting the war in Iraq
5. Attacks Rovian style anyone who opposes him
If it were a blood test the result would positive for Republican. And I didn't know that all my life I was a progressive but also a Republican.
Comments closed January 16, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Matthew,
I wonder what your thoughts on this is...
Hillary Clinton’s Recent Meteoric Rise in Wealth Pictorial Graph
The link
http://thememlingindex.com/hillary_clinton_net_worth-wealth.html
Posted by Onslow | January 2, 2008 9:57 AM