I am not terribly interested in saying that much more about Obama and Wright, so here are some final comments.  It has been talked to death, and Obama has finally made his public break with the pastor.  For a lot of people who have turned sharply against Obama since March, this is too little and at least six weeks late, while for many others it will seem as if he has sold out, but what I find more troubling about the latest episode of this sorry soap opera is that Wright has gone from being the virtual family member whom Obama could not repudiate to being just some guy who makes outrageous statements.  When the media seemed to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, Wright was a “part” of him, and now it is as if he is a stranger.  It’s not clear to me how Obama can get credit for a lot of what he said in Philadelphia and get credit for what he said today, since the strong declaration that he could not disown Wright has been flatly contradicted by the fact that he just disowned him.  Having likened disowning Wright to disowning the entire black community (similar to the identification with “the black church” that Wright employed in his own defense in the last few days) and his grandmother, he now disowns him.  But it doesn’t interest me to dwell at length on this contradiction.  Suffice it to say when the media accepted a mild rebuke, Obama gave a mild rebuke, and when the media expected a more forceful repudiation he delivered what was expected.  I find the whole scene rather pitiful.

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. ~David Brooks

Yes, he did everything, except offer those voters some concrete proposal that seemed likely to address their concerns and serve their interests.  Brooks’ column does a good job showing the divisions created by differing levels of education, and he could push this idea further in talking about the cultural fragmentation encouraged by the sheer variety of modes of communication that now exist.  It isn’t just that different demographics are cultivated by marketers, but also that ever-narrower niche groups are being self-selected and reinforced through increasingly isolating habits of treating compatibility and similarity as the essential requirements of any relationship.  Yet social identity is not “everything,” as Brooks claims for rhetorical effect, and would not count for nearly as much as it does if the cultural divisions between more and less educated people did not align so closely with different views on policy and different rhetorical styles.  Brooks’ own assessment of Obama’s campaign in Pennsylvania is itself an example of the divide Brooks is describing: Obama did everything on the level of symbolism–eating cheesesteak, bowling, and so forth–that someone like Obama or Brooks thinks might make the candidate more acceptable to the voters in question, assuming that this kind of consciously adopted symbolism will persuade people to back a candidate who does not otherwise seem to represent their interests.  That doesn’t mean that symbolism can’t lead people to vote for candidates who, in fact, don’t represent their interests, but it needs to be employed consistently and regularly to have the desired effect.  When you see stories and columns detailing how affected and calculated the deployment of this symbolism is, the symbolism doesn’t work as well.   

Despite his fairly humble origins, Obama speaks the language of the elite and the highly educated (or at least the thoroughly schooled), which he uses as a marker of the status that he has acquired; despite their more privileged backgrounds, McCain and Clinton are more comfortable speaking in a lower register, or at least have accustomed themselves to speaking this way, because they have nothing to prove and no need to reinforce their right to belong to the elite.  It may be relevant that some of the Democratic candidates over the years who have been derided as elitist, “out of touch” or lacking in some patriotic enthusiasm are the children or grandchildren of immigrants–Kerry, Dukakis and now Obama–so that the very signs of assimilation to the norms of the political class are taken as evidence of a lack of connection to other Americans, when, of course, the retention of visibly ethnic or foreign habits would be considered equally disqualifying in an election. 

Of course, it’s true that McCain and Clinton are immensely wealthy, and Obama is only modestly and very recently so, but it is actually because of how recent his success and wealth are, because he came from that single-parent family and came up from poorer circumstances, that his adoption of the “creative” class’ attitudes and the political class’ assumptions makes him seem somehow especially elitist and allows his rivals, who are every bit as elitist as he is and possibly more so, to exploit this as a wedge.  What you see with the entire controversy over Obama’s elitism is those who are already well-entrenched as part of the elite using the very imitation of elite tropes and attitudes that makes Obama acceptable as part of the political class against him.  Of course, if he did not embrace these attitudes as fully as he has, he would be ridiculed as an arriviste and a gate-crasher, or worse yet he would be denounced by elite commentators with the only insult that they regard as more politically damaging than “elitist,” which is, of course, the name of populist.  The difference in the degree of hostility from most commentators is this: rivals and pundits mock you as an elitist to damage you, but it is still a sign of acceptance that you are a competitor who belongs in the arena with them, who are in reality equally elitist, while the charge of “populist” is intended to stigmatise you and your ideas as dangerous or crazy or both. 

So, in a strange way, Obama has been fortunate to be described as an elitist, and not as a populist.  Elitists are at least allowed to reach the general election; populists must be stopped or politically crippled long before that.  Of course, there is some real relationship between what the candidate proposes to change and the use of the different names: those who actually threaten the status quo in some meaningful way are deemed populists and driven to the margins, while those who represent an acceptable alternative are merely elitist.  People who are a little too visibly elitist are not desirable for other members of the elite, because it reminds everyone else of the disparities and concentration of power and wealth that exist, while people whom they deem populist represent, or at least seem to represent, a real danger to their position.

There is, however, somebody who would fill that bill and therefore be a near-perfect pick for McCain: Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. ~Stuart Rothenburg

When I was in Washington for CPAC, my colleagues were talking about the possibility of McCain-Lieberman, and I laughed at them.  I believe my exact words were, “That would be insane.”  So, right away, you can see that it is something that McCain might actually do.  Even so, it is such a bizarre idea that I don’t know why it keeps being circulated.  Of course Weekly Standard folks are going to talk it up, as they have done before, since it would represent an ideal one-two punch of mindless jingoism (a.k.a., “centrism”), but who actually thinks that this would be a winning combination?  What reasons does Rothenburg give?  He writes:

Lieberman’s selection to McCain’s ticket would send a clear message about bipartisanship and about McCain’s desire to change the way things are done. While the Democratic nominee surely will talk about bringing people together and “change,” a truly bipartisan McCain-Lieberman ticket would trump any and all Democratic rhetoric.

The selection of Lieberman would have particular appeal to independent voters, who are likely to be a key swing group later this year.

But choosing Lieberman is as good a symbol as any that you don’t want to change how anything is done.  Lieberman and McCain both stand for continuity with the policies of the last eight years, at least as far as foreign affairs are concerned.  If selecting Rice would be politically crazy for demonstrating a close connection to the Bush administration, how is it any less crazy to choose someone who has been so supportive of the administration’s Iraq policy such that his own party no longer wants him?  Does Lieberman actually bring any more independents to McCain that McCain wouldn’t already get?  That is doubtful, and Rothenburg offers no evidence beyond the conventional assumption that Lieberman is a “centrist.”  I have already said what I think about that idea. 

Besides, the conventional wisdom, which happens to be right, is that McCain still needs to shore up conservative support.  Obama is losing Democrats left and right in general election match-ups, but McCain isn’t exactly unifying the right behind him, either.  To choose Lieberman would be the final straw for millions who are very grudgingly accepting McCain’s nomination.  It might not drive many people to vote third party, but it would depress turnout in swing state after swing state.  It would confirm every pro-life, conservative critique of McCain, it would validate every progressive attack on Lieberman as a sell-out, and it would drive home the message that the priority of the GOP is nothing but the war.  There are theoretically worse choices (Tommy Franks!), but few would have more negative political consequences than selecting Lieberman.  

What about the negative reaction to this selection?  According to Rothenburg, this is some kind of advantage:

Third, selecting Lieberman would anger both conservatives and Democrats. In other words, it’s a “two-fer” for McCain, who seems to relish those moments when he can stick it to people he doesn’t like. Just think how McCain would chuckle at the thought of annoying both ends of the political spectrum.

Yes, he would chuckle all the way to a ten point loss.  I can think of nothing that could better energise Democratic voters than the prospect of beating McCain and rejecting a turncoat.  This is the kind of thing that might even make me vote for the Democratic ticket just to punish the other side for being so remarkably stupid.

While it does betray a certain intellectual bankruptcy, the mainstream conservative fixation on Wright is so strong because Wright offended against Americanism, which is far more serious to this sort than anything to do with race one way or another.  Incidentally, this is also why I think the charges of “race-baiting” in ads being played in local and House elections are overblown–the message is not to associate local Democrats with a black man as such, but rather to associate them with the “anti-American” sentiments of Obama’s former pastor.  (But remember, when Democrats complain that their opponents impugn their patriotism, they are supposedly hallucinating.)  Most of the same people who now obsess about Obama’s associations used to give Obama enormous praise because he said the sorts of nice, saccharine, inoffensive things about American goodness that they find most agreeable, but Wright (and Obama’s refusal to repudiate him entirely) changed all of that by saying critical things about America, added together with his loopy conspiracy theories, and they have chosen to identify Obama with these sentiments, rather than the ones he actually expresses on a regular basis. 

Of course, the correct conclusion to take away from Obama’s campaign is that he is entirely too boosterish when it comes to talking about America’s role in the world.  Naturally, mainstream conservatives feel obliged to portray him as a new McGovern, even though coming home is the furthest thing from Obama’s intention with respect to American deployments around the world.  They likewise want to insist that he is a bad Americanist, when he basically shares the same triumphalist vision and progressive nationalist interpretation of American history that they have.  They wish to portray him as someone who is “pessimistic” about America (because he acknowledges that there are problems and failures), when he is the most irrepressibly optimistic candidate of the last fifty years, and I don’t say that as a compliment.  They have to keep emphasising how far away from them, the mainstream conservatives, he is supposed to be, because otherwise people would begin to notice all of the assumptions that they share with him, which would either make him more viable or reveal them to be further to the left than they would want to acknowledge.       

P.S.  It will be an interesting test of the down-ticket effects of an Obama nomination if Childers, who held the plurality of the vote before the run-off, ends up losing in the wake of this ad.  You also have to marvel at the phoniness of the suburbanite Greg Davis posing with the farmer by his tractor, when Childers is the overwhelming favourite of the rural and small town voters.  Of course, because Childers’ base is exactly the kind of people likely to be insulted by Obama’s San Francisco remarks the ad may be unusually effective.  We shall see.

As the descendant of “communitarian Yankees” and “unsophisticated” Scots-Irish alike, I found this Michael Hirsh item whining about the alleged Southern domination of American politics (no, this is not a joke) to be one of the worst things I have read all year.  Here is the Yankee-as-besieged-enlightener morality tale:

This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants–the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics [bold mine-DL]. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers–and cultural weight.

Where to begin?  One might note that Scots-Irish are also a Celtic people, which makes the designation of Irish Catholics as Celtic rather redundant.  Nowhere in this does Hirsh seem to consider the possibility that despising the Eastern elite was, is, a good idea.  The “communitarian Yankee” sensibility is not really waning.  Indeed, I would argue that it remains disturbingly strong despite its long history of doing great harm to this country. 

Every foreign war or foreign policy leading to involvement in war since 1898 has largely been supported and waged by the “diplomatic, communitarian Yankee” set.  Who wanted us to go to war with Spain?  Overwhelmingly, it was Northeasterners who fueled the frenzy and a Midwesterner who presided over it.  Who took us to the edge of war with Great Britain over a Venezuelan boundary line?  A New Yorker named Cleveland (who was otherwise actually quite sound on foreign policy).  Who wanted us to enter WWI?  Liberal Protestants and Anglophiles from the Eastern Establishment.  Wilson was from the mid-Atlantic region for almost his entire life, and eschewed the Jeffersonian restraint in foreign affairs of the land of his birth.  Who urged entry into WWII?  The same people as had urged entry into WWI, and often for the same reasons.  Southerners, Westerners, fundamentalists, the “unsophisticated” of the land were overwhelmingly against involvement in European wars.  Panama, the Gulf War, Kosovo–all were the products of “realists” and internationalists.  No doubt Hirsh thinks involvement in those wars, which grew out of the internationalism and/or economic interests of the Easterners, was desirable,. but he cannot pretend that America has usually gone to war because of the Scots-Irish.  The Scots-Irish typically are unenthusiastic about the war, but serve disproportionately in the military because they believe patriotism and duty require it.   Meanwhile, the preachers of American nationalism were typically Northerners, whether we trace it back to Webster and Clay (correction: as has been pointed out in the comments, Clay was a Kentuckian, so he doesn’t really belong in this sentence–I regret the mistake) or consider Lincoln as one of its main proponents or look to T.R. and FDR.  Who has given us the Iraq war?  Bush may have lived in Texas for a while, but he is by background and education as thoroughly a product of the Eastern establishment as anyone alive.  Do the so-called “Jacksonians” tend to support the war more than others?  Yes, but not always enthusiastically or zealously; they support American wars because they believe, sometimes mistakenly, that it is their patriotic duty to do so.  It takes Easterners, particularly those reared in the “realist” and “internationalist” schools and weaned on Wilsonian fantasies about democracy and self-determination, to come up with the sort of interventionist and ideologically-motivated crusading of the last twenty years.  Middle Americans will support wars they believe are waged in self-defense or for the sake of national security; it takes Easterners to concoct preposterous theories of targeting potentially hostile states with “preventive” invasions.  The unsophisticated yokels of the backwaters, as Hirsh would see them, do not, would not, imagine such elaborate nonsense. 

No one can look at American politics today, seeing the main presidential candidates who are now running for the White House, and conclude that the South has triumphed in any meaningful way: we have two out-and-out Northerners and a transplant whose ancestors may be Scots-Irish but whose loyalties are to the central state and the status quo and who has immersed himself fully in the culture of the capital.  The South has become the most populous region, and yet it still wields vastly less cultural power than the major urban centers of the East Coast and California.  Hirsh is free to prefer the urban, Eastern liberals, but he should give up on the idea that the power and influence of Easterners are meaningfully in decline. 

After all, who still has the real power?  Overwhelmingly, they and urban elites around the country do, while Middle Americans will express their displeasure only if these people openly mock or belittle their beliefs.  So long as the pandering and the charade of phony populism continue, Scots-Irish folks and Southerners seem mostly content to accept and even to support a system that consistently works against them, their history and their interests.

Following up on the last post now that I have a little more time, I think it’s important to stress that the close alliance with Georgia, the crazy desire to expand NATO into the Caucasus and points east and the general willingness to provoke Russia with unnecessary intrusions into what it considers its sphere of influence are products of a general, bipartisan consensus that all three major candidates evidently share (or at least feel compelled to embrace publicly).  This election is simply not a case where one candidate has a better or more sane policy towards Russia or better views concerning the pursuit of hegemony in Eurasia.  Over the long term, this shared view of U.S. policy towards Russia actually matters a great deal more than whether or not a candidate proposes to end the war in Iraq.  This is not an argument for McCain, who seems to loathe Russia at a visceral level in a way that the others do not, but a reminder that all candidates share the assumption that the U.S. should project power anywhere and everywhere and take on the risks and obligations of security guarantees to numerous states that have no connection to the national interest.

On the main blog, Freddy points out a piece of Obama foreign policy madness that had escaped my notice:

Saakashvili points out that Barack Obama was one of two co-sponsors of a recent Senate resolution in favour of Georgia joining Nato.

Can we agree now that this makes Obama just as reckless and dangerous in his foreign policy views as his rivals?

CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD,
TRAMPLING DOWN DEATH BY DEATH,
AND UPON THOSE IN THE TOMBS
BESTOWING LIFE!

CHRISTOS VOSKRESE IZ MERTVIKH,
SMERTIYU SMERT POPRAV
I SUSCHIM VO GROBEKH
ZHIVOT DAROVAV!

CHRISTOS ANESTI EK NEKRON
THANATO THANATON PATISAS,
KAI TOIS EN TOIS MNEMASI
ZOEN KARISAMENOS!

Let God arise, and his enemies be scattered: and let those that hate him flee before his face.

A sacred Pascha has been revealed to us today, a new and holy Pascha, a mystic Pascha, an all-venerable Pascha, a Pascha that is Christ the Redeemer, an unblemished Pascha, a great Pascha, a Pascha of the faithful, a Pascha that has opened for us the gates of Paradise, a Pascha that makes all the faithful holy.

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish, as wax melts at the presence of fire.

Come from that sight, you women, bearers of good tidings, and say to Zion, ‘Receive from us the good tidings of joy, of Christ’s Resurrection. Exult, dance and be glad, Jerusalem, for you have seen Christ the King like a bridegroom coming from the grave.

So shall the wicked perish at the presence of God; and let the just be glad.

The myrrh-bearing women at deep dawn came to the grave of the giver of life. They found an Angel sitting on the stone, and he addressed them and said, ‘Why do you seek the living with the dead? Why do you mourn the incorruptible as though he were in corruption? Go, proclaim it to his Disciples.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

A Pascha of delight, Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha, an all-venerable Pascha has dawned for us, Pascha. Let us embrace one another with joy. O Pascha, ransom from sorrow! Today Christ shone forth from a tomb as from a bridal chamber, and filled the women with joy, saying, ‘Proclaim it to the Apostles’.

On account of Pascha, for the rest of today and all weekend I won’t be blogging after this, except perhaps to put up some icons and troparia.  Besides being part of the greatest feast of the Church, the days leading up to Pascha are also very, very busy. 

Before I go, I wanted to respond to this post by Ross.  We agree entirely that Obama will disillusion a great many people.  I have said that the Obama campaign is a disappointment-generating machine, and it has already generated a fair amount during the campaign.  Disillusionment will happen partly because it is inevitable that a politician will disappoint some of his supporters on account of the constraints and pressures of governing and political pressure, but it will be worse in this case because Obama has cast himself as some great transformative leader and people have been drawn to him in large part because they expect him to practice the “new politics” he keeps talking about.  One of the causes of disillusionment will be that the “new politics” doesn’t actually exist and never will exist, so long as it is premised on the ideas that lobbying and partisanship are fundamental parts of the problem, when it is the lack of representation provided by the two-party system and the excessive concentration of power in government (facilitated through direct taxation) that protect the status quo.  In principle, lobbying is a necessary function of representative government; it is the power of government that lends lobbying its particularly sinister cast.  Partisanship isn’t blocking “solutions” from being enacted–bad policy priorities that are shared by members of both parties are the obstacle to making the desired changes. 

Obama will necessarily disappoint those from the center and the right who think that Obama respects or appreciates their views, because he really doesn’t, and even if he did he isn’t going to do anything when setting policy that will offer any but the most meaningless nods to their concerns.  When most people say they want respect, they really mean that they want agreement.  (This is related to the habit of crying about intolerance when one is not accepted by others, as if tolerance and acceptance are the same.)  A lot of conservatives who mistakenly believed that Obama respects pro-life views have expressed shock that he is, in fact, an absolutely staunch pro-choice Democrat who takes the hardest line on this question of any of the remaining presidential candidate.  As I have said, his nods to other views are head fakes.  That’s not surprising, since it is in the interest of a left-liberal to make non-liberals believe that he is not as far to the left as he is, just as a very conservative politician would need to make some gestures that suggest he is not as far to the right as he really is.  It’s also not as much of a criticism as it sounds–head fakes of this kind help to throw the defense off guard and put them out of position, so they are politically smart things to do.  However, once your opponents recognise that they are intended as misdirection, you can’t use them as effectively.  So Ross and I view the enthusiasm for Obama from antiwar, libertarian and conservative people as a case of people setting themselves up for serious disappointment.  Indeed, should Obama win he will go from being broadly trusted to deeply mistrusted by almost everyone, as all will feel that Obama misled them in one way or another. 

However, Ross has incorrectly described the arguments of Kmiec and Bacevich, saying that they “have concluded that the Illinois Senator is a more conservative choice than John McCain.”  That is definitely not what either of them has said.  Both proceed from the assumption that the Bush administration has proved to be a disaster, and argue that McCain represents a continuation of the same disastrous policies.  Prof. Bacevich further argues that the GOP should not be given the benefit of the doubt about any issues important to conservatives after its record of failure or inaction, which he believes makes objections on pro-life or other grounds moot.  Ross disagrees quite strongly with this part of the argument, and now is not the time to go over that ground again, but at no time do Bacevich or Kmiec say that they think Obama is “more conservative” than McCain, even if Bacevich is arguing that McCain and the GOP hardly measure up to his definition of conservatism.  Bacevich backs Obama as the less terrible option, because he sees McCain as irredeemably bad on so many things, particularly the war, and so supports Obama in spite of acknowledging all the reasons why Obama is also pretty terrible.  In contrast, Prof. Kmiec wants to believe the best about Obama and so proposes ideas that Obama could use to show his good faith and willingness to bridge great divides over contentious issues, but as Ross points out today this hope is completely misplaced.  Even so, Kmiec has never said and presumably does not think that Obama is “more conservative” than McCain; his arguments for him do imply that he thinks Obama is more competent.

Also, following up on Ross’ old item from The Current, the Pennsylvania results drive home just how unrepresentative of general Catholic opinion about Obama Profs. Kmiec and Bacevich seem to be and the profile of his supporters does suggest that as academics they are drawn to Obama the academic.  They also cite particular foreign policy issues that have driven them towards him out of necessity, which underscores how atypical they are, since most voters are not voting on issues and very few issues voters are focused so much on foreign policy almost to the exclusion of everything else.  This is not a complaint about academics, a category of voter that Barone keeps flogging so much that it is becoming unrecognisable, and I obviously am not one to make such a complaint in any case, and it is not even one of my usual complaints about single-issue voters, but simply an observation that academics tend to support Obama so heavily because of the war and probably because they prefer his cerebral style to Clinton’s interest group laundry list and McCain’s apparently blissful ignorance of policy detail.   

P.S.  Worrying about whether or not Obama will disappoint people may be a futile exercise: Rasmussen shows a nine-point swing against Obama in Pennsylvania in the general election poll during the last two weeks.  He was leading by eight, and now trails by one.  Since everyone has been talking about Obama and working-class voters, this crosstab seems most significant: those making $40-60K back McCain over Obama 56-27.  Lower income groups back Obama, while they split the higher income voters ($75-100K back Obama, $100K back McCain), and the $60K-75K give McCain a seven point advantage.  If we don’t think that white working-class voters matter for Obama in the general election, it’s worth noting that he’s also currently losing independents in Pennsylvania 44-39.  The bottom line is that he has to poll better than 43-47% in states such as Pennsylvania if he is going to win the election, and that hasn’t been happening.