The Cynic Speaks
What Barack Obama failed to address in his remarks, however, is that some political disagreements are real — grounded in principle, or differences in judgment, or varying emphasis on different priorities, or the inescapable fact that human beings have different preferences.
This is why the claim that we only care whether government “works” or not, and supposedly do not care about its scope or size, rings false every time. This is the pragmatism or competence dodge that annoys some of Obama’s supporters as much as it annoys me. As they understand correctly, a dedication to competence does not tell you what is important, why something should be done (or not be done) or why it should take precedence over other things, but at best leads to the best way to achieve a certain end. The competence dodge involves pretending that we all want the same thing–a government that “works”–and assuming that we all agree on what the government ought to be doing and not be doing. The pragmatist of this sort cannot explain why the President should not have the power to detain suspects arbitrarily and hold them without trial for years while subjecting them to torture, except perhaps to say that torture does not work (if it did, the pragmatist would have nothing to say about it). If warrantless wiretapping “works” to some degree as a means of counter-terrorism, why should the pragmatist care whether it is illegal?
This is the most frustrating thing about “pragmatic” rhetoric–at best, it obscures the real differences and so suffocates the debate under the pretense that we all want the same things, and at worst it severely narrows the range of the debate to two marginally different status quo alternatives and thus deprives most of the country of real representation. This is the political universe in which bipartisanship is the highest virtue, because if we all really want the same things the only thing that can thwart political action is random partisan rancor. Even though Obama knows and we know that he knows that he holds certain principles, and these principles define the role of government and the appropriate limits of state power, and we also know that his definitions vary greatly from those of conservatives, it is as if he cannot mention them. This is not his famous aversion to ideology, but more basically an increasing reluctance to espouse political principles that he has already publicly embraced earlier as he comes closer to wielding executive power.
I can understand why some of his supporters would find this irritating. It is the reverse of the problem conservatives have had with Republican Presidents: the latter often paid lip service to limited government, and some of them, including Bush, stressed the importance of strict constructionism (!), but not one of them really ever governed as if they were serious (because they weren’t). Obama offers the opposite combination: a President who will probably carry out at least some of the policy agenda that progressives want while studiously avoiding all language that suggests that the policy has anything to do with progressive ideas. Perhaps that is the more tolerable combination, but it is still weirdly limiting. One of the advantages in getting a politician to adopt your rhetoric is that it may force him in certain directions in which you want him to go; the danger is that it simply associates you with him publicly and tars you with whatever he ends up doing.
I am fairly sure I have heard him say that he believes health care is a right, so he must believe that it is a matter of justice that everyone have some insurance or access to care and that it is therefore not only appropriate but necessary for the state to intervene to ensure that no one is “denied” his “right” in the future. That has huge implications for public policy, obviously, and it derives from fundamentally different views of what government is for and what citizens should have as a matter of right. So it is not just a matter of finding what “works” and disagreeing about how best to achieve that end, but it is a mattter of disagreeing whether or not justice demands that the government do anything. This is repeated again and again in many different areas of policy. For instance, does the so-called “responsibility to protect” oblige our government to intervene in the affairs of basketcase, ruined states such as Zimbabwe, or is that far beyond the proper responsibilities of our government? Does the “responsibility to protect” extend to members of other polities at all? Saying that we all want a government that “works” answers none of these questions, but prompts many more: to do what? for whom? for how long? A pragmatist must love the “surge” and all associated tactical plans, because these are the sort of small-bore cases of problem-solving that pay no attention to strategic goals or national interest. Rather than ask why we are still in Iraq and what possible purpose the war serves, focus on whether a given tactical plan “worked” and pretend that this resolves the debate. That is where an emphasis on pragmatism and competence leads–to what Sammuelson once described as the “sanctification of the status quo.”
The one part of the Inaugural that I found simply absurd, the only part that caused me to laugh out loud, was when the President said this:
and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
In other words, thanks to the extensive use of coercion and power in our history, we know that other people can also be broken and forced to submit to new, more uniform political orders. Our common humanity shall reveal itself through still more coercion, and we shall make a desert and call it peace. Or is that too “cynical” of a reading?
Perhaps we should open a Swill Chapter of the Friends of Barack.
Seriously, you CAN overanlyze this stuff. In context, he’s expressing the hope that tribal hatreds will become a thing of the past. He’s talking about what, in Madariaga’s phrase, the Russian bear prayed for–a universal hug of good fellowship. He’s not about to command all our troops abroad, like Alexander’s, to marry Mesopotamian and Trans-Oxanian women.
It’s Inauguration Day, not a seminar on social or cultural identity. Give the man a few days to start screwing up policy. Then we can p**s and moan for real. But let him have his party. He’s embarking on a tough job.
Not cynical but totally bassackwards. It is obvious from the context that the President was explicitly saying that those things DO NOT WORK, hence him occupying his current office despite their application in the past. Aside from external intervention by the Arab League and/or the UN to force Israel to make peace with the world while the Palestinians work on organizing themselves (which Israeli actions have consistently acted to inhibit, so they can claim no partner with whom to negotiate), what Palestine needs is a master tactician of the Gandhi or King ilk, to break the cycle of atrocity and achieve the quickest fairness with the least human damage… which happened both here and in India despite overwhelming force on the side of the oppressor.
When Mr. Bush said absurd things in the Second Inaugural, it wasn’t considered poor form to point out that he said absurd things that had dangerous implications. Old hatreds don’t just pass away–someone compels people to change. That is the lesson from the last century and a half. The “lines of tribe” do not just “dissolve”–someone uses power and ideology to erase them. When the world becomes smaller, so to speak, people do not become more aware of common humanity but are typically more inclined to be paranoid about foreign threats.
This is either woolly-minded nonsense (very possible), or it is very dangerous for what it says about what Obama doesn’t understand or about what he hopes to accomplish. Government is force, and when the executive officer of that government says things like this we should not ignore them because it isn’t in keeping with a party mood. I’m not spoiling his party; his party will go on just fine regardless of what I say. It is a tough job, and it will be made harder if he goes about it under the assumption that ethnic difference and historic resentments just vanish over time. Most of the things in the speech were reasonable and unremarkable; this passage stood out as ridiculous.
I suspect that in some parallel universe, the government never took over the provision of fire services from private insurance companies, but governments did take over the provision of medical services. An inhabitant of such a universe would take for granted that protection from fire should depend on a homeowner’s ability to afford insurance, and that a decent society will provide most medical services to all people equally. Many Americans make just the reverse assumptions. I have never seen a really coherent explanation for this.
Two comments: as far as I can tell, the age of hatreds and grievances tends to get exaggerated. While some conflicts (cough Ireland cough) have relatively ancient roots, others, such as that between Arabs or Muslims and Jews have originated, or at least intensified, relatively recently. And whether relatively new or old, it inevitably takes both moral example and the hope of practical improvement to end hatreds. Military force sometimes keeps sides separated, but it does not solve the problem. Only moral example can effect moral change.
Honestly (and possibly unreasonably), I heard that passage as much as a rebuke to the Rethuglican hate machine. Try reading it in that context and see if I’ve got anything real to go on.
I agree with your point about real policy differences, but I think this post is unusually nitpicky from you. Which is fine, it’s your blog. But if you wonder, yeah, I think it’s a bit too cynical. Or rather, just seems to be trying too hard to be. Not that all your points aren’t good food for thought, mind you.
By the way, I don’t know that healthcare is a right, but protection from the racket of modern healthcare certainly should be. (Just like access to loans shouldn’t be a right, but protection from usury should be.)
If you interpreted him literally, the remark is quite silly.
The disappearance of such boundaries is neither likely nor desirable, and were they to disappear somehow, new ones would emerge. Anthropologists like BHO’s mother often romanticize such differences, at least if they are sufficiently exotic, and lament the coming of “Cocacolonization” to the more jungly places. On the other hand, to a person of mixed origins such as BHO, contemporary differences of this type may account for a feeling of not having a place in the world. Hence the vision of their disapperance may have a certain personal appeal.
Still, I think a fairer reading is that, poorly articulated, he was calling for the end of the bloodier manifestations of tribalism, rather than for a world of undifferentiated, weighed, measured and counted consumption units.
Reminds me of a joke:
Radical speaker: “Come the revolution, we will all eat strawberries beneath the willow tree.”
Heckler: “But I don’t like strawberries.”
Speaker: “Come the revolution, you will eat them and you will like them.”
Let’s hope BHO does not deprive us of the right to detest strawberries.
[...] Spanish-American War will be repealed? Well, if Obama is sincere praise be. Larison has a good response for  all the “cynics” out [...]
On the main topic – good post Daniel. Whenever I hear people trot out pragmatism as the ultimate or sole criterion, I think of (at least incipient) fascism – making the trains run on time and all that. A kind of impatience for action without reflection, in which the cynical agenda of elites and the unruly patience of the mob threaten to combine into tyranny. Not imminent, I expect.
In other news – Locutas’ post asks for an explanation of why government should provide fire insurance and not health insurance.
I have no expertise on the history of this, and I’m sure many a libertarian could push the argument the other direction by arguing vigorously for privatization of fire departments, but one factor to consider is the tendency of fires to spread and hence threaten the common good (including public buildings, lands, roads, etc.), sometimes in a dramatic way.
The natural rejoinder – that diseases spread and threaten the common good as well – is valid, hence there is by analogy a legitimate (and very real) role for governments to curb the spread of infectious diseases.
But in both cases (so I and other conservatives might argue), the role of government should be limited to (a) curbing serious and immediate threats to the common good – the blazing fire, the epidemic; (b) facilitating the common good through a degree of regulation – building and zoning codes, drug purity and efficacy oversight.
But (the conservative argument continues) routine maintenance or major repairs for either a private dwelling or an individual’s health are the responsibility of the owners, not the government, and individuals should be free to strike the balance between investment, risk, maintenance, and insurance, as they see fit. So, the lack of free government homeowner’s insurance and the lack of free government health insurance are consistent with this same underlying principle, and there’s no right to either, on this view, just a prudent protection of the common good by the state.
Of course consistency isn’t the only criterion, and there are many differences between bad health and decrepit but non-burning buildings. For example, the provision of emergency care even to the uninsured means they eventually impose (unnecessarily inflated because postponed) costs on the insured via higher premiums, to cover emergency room care. That suggests efforts to make catastrophic health care affordable, but not necessarily socialized, to contain costs for everyone. There’s lots of room for policy debate on that, but it’s a far cry from claiming a right to health care.
“Old hatreds don’t just pass away–someone compels people to change. That is the lesson from the last century and a half.”
No, it isn’t. If anything, the lesson is that trying to compel people to let go of old hatreds only makes them hold to them more strongly. Obama was not, I think, endorsing a program of compulsory non-hatred. That would be akin to Bush’s program of violent invasion as a way to establish freedom-loving democracy. It tends to be counterproductive. Obama is referencing the civil rights movement, which had a very low level of compulsion, and appealed to a moral sense in us all for its success, which of course is what has brouught Obama to the Presidency.
It’s not as if the civil rights movement involved no compulsion whatsoever – the integration of schools, the voting rights anti-discrimination laws in work and housing, affirmative action, etc., all involved some degree of government compulsion, but not usually in an ham-fisted or authoritarian manner. The transition to a fairly racially tolerant society, one that could elect Obama, has occurred with a minimum of violence and compulsion. So Obama is merely suggesting that a similar approach can work in the world at large, over time, with other entrenched social and cultural hatreds, by appealing to our better angels, so to speak. It’s not even unrealistic, given the vast communications networks that now exist, and the moment in world culture that seems drawn to this sort of approach. We shall see how it actually works out, but it would appear there’s a real constituency around the world for this sort of thing.
Your takedown of the competence dodge smacks of straw-man fisticuffs. The short version of the response is simply this: that competence, the ability to make things happen in an uncertain and contrary world, is necessary but not sufficient to the accomplishment of goals. And while it is true that a pure devotion to pragmatism provides very little in the way of moral compass (no matter what Bentham said), it is certainly true that those who lack pragmatism and competence will surely never bring their visions to pass.
It may be that our new President is something of an ideological cipher; it is certainly true that for many of his fans and followers he has provided a perfect empty vessel into which they might pour their hopes and desires. And while he seems to be mostly Progressive, at least in his general outlook and goal-set, it is his pragmatism that gives the grownups of the world their greatest measure of hope.
To put it bluntly, shit’s fucked up. Eight years of hardline conservative ideology have hamstrung the effectiveness of the government of the United States, to the point of actively sabotaging not only the apparatus itself but also the operations it can and does carry out and the goals and moral ends which they are meant to serve. This is what happens when people who do not, at bottom, believe there should be an effective government are allowed to run one. The non-response to Hurricane Katrina was the wake-up call, when the curtain was finally (if too late) pulled back and the Wizard revealed in all his banal pitifulness. But there are many example which could be cited, and which I will refrain from rattling off for purposes of brevity.
In short, even those who disagree with our current President’s ideology are currently hopeful, precisely because he is willing to put aside the blinders which that ideology might put over his eyes. He has said many times that it doesn’t matter whose idea a good idea is, what matters is that it’s a good idea, and any- and everybody who’s got one oughtta put ‘em on the table and let them fight it out. Given the seriousness of the many problems we currently face as a nation and a people, any other response would be cause for concern.
This is what America is supposed to be about. Put all the ideas (and people) on a level playing field, and the best ones will rise to the top, for the good of all. So, while I largely respect your intellect and the peregrinations it takes you on, I can’t help but feel you’re being, at best, disingenuous here. After all, an architect can design a beautiful building, but if the guys that actually swing the hammers and drive the forklifts don’t know what they’re doing, at the end of the day the beautiful building is going to fall down and become a not-so-beautiful pile of rubble.
Also, an addendum, as I really couldn’t let this pass without comment:
Old hatreds don’t just pass away–someone compels people to change. That is the lesson from the last century and a half. The “lines of tribe†do not just “dissolveâ€â€“someone uses power and ideology to erase them. When the world becomes smaller, so to speak, people do not become more aware of common humanity but are typically more inclined to be paranoid about foreign threats.
This is exactly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it makes me wonder whether you’ve taken a stroll outside the Ivory Tower lately. Power and ideology have never dissolved “lines of tribe.” Never. In fact, the application of power and ideology have never done anything but strengthen the divisions between different kinds of people. What dissolves these lines, what makes people realize their common humanity with people who neither look nor think nor act like them is exactly the shrinking of the world. It is only when the Other comes and lives among us that we realize he is not so Other after all. The reason homosexuality is decreasingly stigmatized is that everybody knows someone who’s gay. Cosmopolitan cities are always more tolerant of others than homogenous small towns. It is only when the Other is far away and out of sight (i.e. the world is larger, the horizon further away, the map ending in the nebulousness of ‘Here be Dragons’) that he can be demonized, turned into something less than human, and despised for being who and what he is.
Seriously, man, there was a cartoon about it back in the day. Just google The Great American Melting Pot. The song is super-catchy.
This is exactly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it makes me wonder whether you’ve taken a stroll outside the Ivory Tower lately. Power and ideology have never dissolved “lines of tribe.â€
Compulsory public education + liberalism + multiculturalism have succeeded quite fine.