Once again, a post that is doubleplusgood.
The depressing thing to me is that in a democracy you can change policy but aesthetics belong to the people.  So we will have withdrawn from Iraq long before we change the security aesthetic that, for example, equates "saving the nation" with "making it difficult for you to get into a Florida Marlins game".

Those things do have an appeal...

No, they do not; not to a healthy individual. In this case they do have an appeal, but only to a bunch of white middle-class Americans with their brains eaten out by decades of relentless cold-war propaganda.And now it's relentless WOT propaganda. But this can't go on forever, it'll have to end eventually.

The short version:  the Democrats are suffering from a Kitsch Gap.

The long version:

"Burke says, rightly, that this lacks class. And nothing's less classy than a pervasive aesthetic of kitsch, which is more-or-less what you get from this administration. It's the faux-populist posturing of clearing brush in 100+ degree Texas weather even though nobody would ever actually do that."

Faux-populist posturing is a large part of what successful politics is all about.

The brush clearing works.  It's directly stolen from Ronald Reagan, and it worked for him too.  More fundamentally, a certain sort of lack of class works - specifically an anti-class, anti-elitist posturing.  There's a reason Bush the Elder claimed to prefer pork rinds to whatever he actually liked to eat.

These things aren't war kitsch.  They are class kitsch.

And with the notable exception of Bill Clinton eating Big Macs, no Democratic nominee in a generation has had the slightest idea of how to navigate class kitsch.

"My roommate is a real art critic and he maintains that bad aesthetics and bad morals are connected."

The real problem is that your roommate's feelings are shared by far too many Democrats.  The Democratic intelligencia and Democratic activists are turned off by kitsch.

I've been telling folks the good news of John Edwards for a couple of years now, and I've seen people repeatedly respond with some variant of "He's too corny."  The corniness is part of the point, of course, but Democrats endlessly yearning for Adlai Stevenson don't see it that way.

Democrats like sophistication as a rule.  They see the image-making of a successful administration as somehow dishonest.  It's no accident that the GOP runs actors and the Democrats don't.

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Matthew gets this sentence dead right:

"Those things do have an appeal, and that should be faced up to directly..."

But then he goes off the rails with what follows:

"...But it should be seen as an aesthetic appeal that has no place in the policy arena. The proper aim of the government is to make things better for people, not more beautiful or more meaningful."

Policy should rarely be entirely divorced from politics.  You can only make things better for people if you have their support to give you power.

The appeal of national greatness is that it politically enables government to take steps that would otherwise be too painful politically.

In a sense Matthew is tautologically correct in saying that has nothing to do with the policy arena.  National greatness is a concept that could be used to sell either very good or very bad policies.

But in a deeper sense, the choice of the politics creates the universe of allowable policy.  For example, the Bush administration sold the Iraq war as requiring no sacrifice.  By doing so, they ensured that they would be boxed in if the war ended up requiring sacrifice to win, as turned out to be the case.  

Symbols and politics are inseparably intertwined with policy.  But kitschy symbols and politics in no way demand bad policy.  It's easy to marry bad taste to good policy.  And Democrats need more bad taste.

"I think you're confusing what Matt means by "kitsch" with something else.  He's talking about not being genuine, not leveling with people."

You could be right, but I don't think so.  I think he really is talking about kitsch and bad taste, while you are talking about insincerity and inauthenticity.

And to unfairly use you as a strawman, a large part of the Kitsch Gap is that the Democratic intelligencia and activists who determine our candidates have valued authenticity while the GOP has valued stagecraft.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

--Andy Warhol, 1975

Your roomy is a snob, he probably knows that, and there is nothing wrong with that, as all societies need snobs to ridicule and question and get people thinking: is his way really better? His job is to look at culture, including pop culture and suggest what's wrong with it. He expressing the thoughts of his echo chamber milieu and he plays an important role doing that.

High culture in Western society, since the Industrial Revolution when the middle class (yeah, bourgeoisie) started to get power of the purse and education, plays the role of an important anti-democratic and anti-rule-of-the mob curb. The iconoclastic challenger to prevailing mass culture is prized by high culture. Artists don't play this role in most other societies; indeed, those considered the best ones are often fawns of a patron elite, the elite plays that role.

Aesthetics have only a little to do with that role in Western culture, though. Remind your roomy of the great divide in 20th-century art between conceptual and aesthetic (one which many art historians also try to stretch backwards to the 18th and 19th century.)

America is wierd with this, though. Here this whole program gets confused. That because there is little aristocratic tradition to begin with, and iconoclasm is from time to time prized in pop culture. Pop culture here is anti-aristocratic from the start. Go read DeTocqueville again.

I'm sticking with what I said several times before: America has deeply libertarian roots more than any other defining factor, and the Clinton years are a good picture of both the good and bad sides. And I think destor23 did a good follow-up on that with his Bowling is Stupid thread, whether intentional or not. There has always been a minority that wants a "national greatness" meme and shared moral (and aesthetic) values. But hey, most of us don't know the words of the national anthem beyond the first verse, and only put flags on our houses when the country has been attacked.

I think this is what liberals don't get just as much as those conservatives. Americans don't want "national greatness." They want to do their own thing. They don't want solidarity of the people, all for one one for all just as much as they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into Europe's wars. They don't want to put their imprint on other countries, most their families came from those other countries and don't want to know from that stuff. They'd rather that the other countries envy them and imitate them of their own volition.

When conservatives play to the some libertarian ideas, they win. When they play to "national greatness," to impose shared values, they play to their base only. When liberals play to some libertarian ideas, they win. When they try to do social engineering for "the good of the people," to impose shared values, they play to their base only. And when the liberals bring out the political correctness police or dis TV culture, they harm themselves, the elitist label is death. I can't stress how much I believe this, I believe it so much that when I see liberals or conservatives complaining about values, I think: sheesh, you really should find another country, this one is not for you, you have some hopeless dreams about your fellow citizens that you will certainly not see change in your lifetime; the majority will tolerate your minority views, but they will not vote for them.

Side note as to taste, that goes with my argument here, you can't force culture change, but you can change it slowly through communication and trade. Martha Stewart single handedly did a great deal to change the taste of the majority in this nation over a couple decades, I watched it happen. Example: In the 1980's most working class neighborhoods at Christmastime looked like Tiajuna, Mexico. By the 1990's they are almost all tasteful twinkling white lights. You can't get those giant baby Jesus neon guys without a trip to Tiajuana. If you went to any discount or department store in the 80's looking for 'tasteful' dinnerware, you'd be real frustrated. Now we have Tar-shay. She finally accomplished what the industrial designer dreamed of doing outside Detroit. In the U.S., any culture we have is democratic in that you vote with your dollars and your remote control. The "People's Choice Awards." The poor don't get much of a vote, but neither do the rich nor the aesthetes because their numbers are few.

The true irony in all of this is that European high culture often shows adoration for American pop culture. Traveling around the mythical west Rt. 66, taking pictures of cheesy motels and diners, looking for Larry Clark scenarios and idolizing Quentin Tarantino and Jerry Lewis How soon we forget that whole thing since Bush was elected. American trash was still real cool only in 2000. They liked Bill Clinton's bubba background; in another era he would have been an "ugly American" rube.

"John Edwards may be corny in his delivery, but he talks about actual problems that require recognition that America "

Can we get off the Edwards bandwagon? Joh Edwards is nothing but kitsch. George Bush became president because of irony, because his audience understood that "compassionate conservatism" was bullshit, because we all knew beneath the superficial guy who loved Jesus was an a complete asshole.

There is no depth to Edwards.

Petey, snobbism is definitely one of the Dems' many Achilles' heels (heh).

But the issue Matt raises goes much, much deeper. Take John Kerry (please). Snobbish? Whoo boy, you betcha.

But look at his real problem, especially on Iraq. How can you say Iraq is a clusterf**ck and that we need to change course without calling into question the fact that "America is #1! America is #1!" People don't generally want to deal with that sh*t. All George Bush had to say in response was "clap louder!" while wearing phony military garb. Oops there I go again with that taste thing.

Do you know what the Republicans are handing out at tomorrow's rally? Fake dog tags. Dog tags.

Maybe I'm a librul elitist. But Jesus Christ, that's not only a fashion faux pas. That's an f'in sick joke.

Kierkegaard said one's morality may be aesthetic (Achilles), ethical (Socrates), or religious (Christ).

Perhaps, when one bleeds into the other, kitsch is, perforce, the result. 

"But look at his real problem, especially on Iraq. How can you say Iraq is a clusterf**ck and that we need to change course without calling into question the fact that "America is #1! America is #1!" People don't generally want to deal with that sh*t."

Sure.  I'm with you entirely on this one.  And it's why I think Matt's entirely correct policy decision for withdrawal is a tone-deaf political decision.

Anti-war is always wrong politically, even when the war is unpopular.

It's not always wrong politically. Germany's Schroder won elections on being anti-war a few years ago and he just may do it again - and on the same anti-war rhetoric; they have a healthy society. It's only wrong when a half of country's population are complete idiots.

Fair enough. Still, some are inclined to fight wars more than others.

I understand, and can agree with, the notion that politics in its pandering aspect is necessarily crude, and maybe aesthetically offensive (though it can have an upside - the energy of philistine vulgarity that that old aristo Nabokov liked in the US, for example).  But the Bushies and the National Greatness crowd go beyond pandering - they operate on not just bad taste, but bad faith, and are unapologetic about it.  There seems to be nothing they will not cheapen, and we are all marks in their little carnival.

"Well, I guess we need to start calling for more troops, then, and finish the job.  That's a winner."

My mom and dad wasted 2000 American lives and $300 billion in Iraq and all I got was this snark.

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You don't need to go fully to the Curtis LeMay position of "let's finish the job".  But anything which points out that Bush is losing the war is good.  And calling for more troops that we all know don't exist could certainly be part of that.

If you want to examine the handiwork of folks who have carefully translated forward thinking Democratic strategic objectives into rhetoric, check out recent speeches on the war by Joe Biden or Wes Clark.

"Moral behavior is always good politics."

Too funny.

Moral behavior is often, but not always, good policy.  Politics, on the other hand, exists in a moral-free zone - hence the success of folks like Karl Rove and Dick Morris.

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"I've read Clark, as we all have here. His ideas are great, and will never be implemented by the Bushies..."

I've bolded the crucial part on your statement.

Since anything the Dems propose will never be implemented by the Bushies, we're freed from having to worry about policy concerns, and can fully concentrate on the politics of the matter.

If Dems were making policy, withdrawal is the correct answer.  Since we're only able to do politics, the Biden/Clark positions are the correct answer.

Well, I'm glad you think the moral case for withdrawal is "funny."

If I respond to your other points, we're going in circles, so I'll leave it alone.

No, the reason the good guys don't win is that there are no good guys.

Rarely do I see moral behavior. I mostly see politicians beholden to corporate special interests.

Both sides of the aisle.

My theory is the morally correct political position is withdrawing our troops, which would in turn lead to winning elections, hence good politics.

You think it would lose elections.

We'll agree to disagree.

Paintings of big eyed kittens, Elvis portraits on black velvet, Ronald Reagan’s “Shining citadel on a hill” (had to be a citadel, couldn’t just be a regular old city) all this is unmitigated kitsch to be sure. I like cats, got nothing against Elvis, I am not sure what is making that citadel shine, but what is it all about?

Conformity versus non-conformity, rugged individuals like the Marlboro man who died of cancer, Rin-Tin-Tin, the Lone Ranger, and “Hi-yo-Silver!” General Patton got his mother of pearl six-shooters, but what is it all about?

Why do Selmer Mark IV vintage saxophones sell for 8,000 bucks and new saxophones that play just as well or better sell for only 3000 bucks? Why do vendors of 4 wheel drive vehicles make ads of their trucks sailing through the air with water, snow and mud spraying in all directions when the only time the vast majority of these vehicles leave the road is when you park them in your driveway?

Do people believe this stuff, apparently, because otherwise we would not be subjected to this assault on our reason.

A truly great blog Mathew, and I think your last statement that it has no place in government brings it all back down to earth, common sense does not solve all problems but it is sure great to see it occasionally.

Thank you!!!

Morality is relative. The country is full of nationalists to whom your 'morally correct political position' sounds like 'blame America first' abomination.

So, you can probably run for mayor in Berkeley and win, but on the national level they have to deal with the population that they have.

So, Petey is quite correct: you can get out of politics and keep your morality, or you can stay in politics but then - forget you ever had morality.

I'm not sure I agree with Petey's assertion that anti-war always lose, though.

Fabulous post and comments; lots to think on more.

I have one point about war kitsch. The depth of its popularity can be overstated. George H. W. Bush, to be sure, had 90 percent approval ratings coming out of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but he was not only soundly defeated by a candidate perceived as somewhat antiwar, but trailed Ross Perot (talk about kitsch) when he first emerged on the scene. This record suggests that war kitsch can often be overcome by policy proposals more relevant to the present moment's problems offered by a candidate who credibly projects a persona of leadership, whether by personality or biography (ideally some of both).

If the aura of war were irresistibly compelling, I think Bush '41 would have been reelected. Personality, seen as a template for leadership style, tends to pack a more powerful punch than the referencing of crisis alone. For that reason, I think it's somewhat misleading to explain the current president's reelection by reference to his being a wartime president.

It's an acceptable shorthand and contains some truth, but just as there were things called "Clinton fatigue" and "compassion fatigue", there is probably something called "war fatigue", which by definition would include those who had favored a war in the past (and may have voted based on that issue). There are many compelling visions of leadership, and simplistic hawkish ones will not necessarily win out. There's good reason politically, then, not to imitate the hawks for political reasons, especially when voters can have a real hawk rather than a pseudo-hawk .

The country is full of nationalists to whom your 'morally correct political position' sounds like 'blame America first' abomination.

There are very little of them left. Americans have realized the President cannot be trusted, we should never have invaded Iraq, and we must get home now.

I get your point about morality, but when the President lies us into a war, the morality is pretty clear cut for all but the most ideological and ignorant believers.

Well, I strongly suspect that there are tens of millions of them - ideological and ignorant believers.

Maybe this country is just too big and diverse for a single democratically governed entity, I don't know. I just don't feel that folks from Eastern Massachusetts are any more likely to get along with folks living in rural Alabama than people from Tikrit with Kurds in Kirkuk.

P.S. Want to thank you, though, for taking the discussion in this direction, because it helped me clarify my thoughts.

And my thoughts now are that this, from Yglesias's original post

My roommate is a real art critic and he maintains that bad aesthetics and bad morals are connected.

is a very very dangerous way to think.

And Andy Warhol looks righter all the time. If there is any greatness in America, that is part of it. Long live kitsch and the appreciation of it.

And God save us from whatever the aesthetes of the day decide that the correct 'morality' currently is. (Isn't imposing taste standards part of 'empire'?)

Ah, you are making a crucial mistake confusing kitsch coming from the people's own tastes and an attempt to create a replacement for that by totalitarian regimes, to keep people from expressing themselves, to teach them a pre-approved taste, the only one allowed.

Is exactly same thing going on with the Chinese Propaganda Ministry right now which I cited above! Sister Lotus is kitsch, people's kitsch, dangerous individualism gaining power via capitalist sales! That scares them, individualistic expression getting power, they lose control of the culture, they lose control of everything. This happens to be why I disputed the original post

Yes, the Nazi art style, that's because they were trying to make a complete pre-formed culture. The Soviets did exactly the same thing.

And in actuality, this is never 100% successful, the reality is far more nuanced with the Nazis and with the Soviets. Not all of the work done during the Nazi era is kitsch.

The avant garde is discouraged, on purpose, and an approved style is dictated to artists and craftsman, and the people are supposed to imbibe that. (As I said above, avant garde in Western capitalist society since the industrial revolution serves a purpose that you do not see in other cultures, to challenge the prevailing taste and ideas and mores of the masses and the bourgeoisie. There is no avant-garde in many other cultures, the elite sets the taste and selects the best to work for them.)

On the high art angle, by falling for an interpretation gleaned from that one documentary, you are missing a crucial point. Great art can still be produced in the style and under the regime. The Nazis used as inspiration came out of Art Deco and Italian Futurism. There is nothing wrong with Art Deco or Futurism, some really great artists worked in both. To enforce it on other artists as a group, you will get good pieces and you will get bad ones, simply because some artists naturally cotton to the government's style! (Examples: The great Mexican Diego Rivera worked in the same style as Soviet Realism, but he is not considered a Soviet hack; Leni Riefenstahl worked under the Nazis and propagandized for them, but she is still considered an important filmmaker; there are several of the Nazi sculptors that are becoming quite appreciated for their work--these are in Futurist style and have a Nietzchean iconography but are not specifically Nazi; there are many superb Soviet propaganda posters. Often greatness finds a way to express itself even within an imposed style.)

And on my references to Goering and Goebbels, this is what happens in totalitarian cultures that try to control the kitsch, the people's art--the elite still indulge in their own taste.

Second, back to topic. I can't stress enough how this is on topic. If you dislike the people's kitsch, if you think it is immoral, if you think someone should be improving our taste, then you are anti-American-culture, and also, coincidentally or not, on your way to totalitarianism, just like the Nazis or Chinese trying to keep the culture along a single line. Who defines what good taste is, hut? This is why the nationalism that Matt describes is also anathema to American culture.

It is at minimum, elitist, and at maximum, totalitarian, to suggest that kitsch and the taste of the folk is immoral, and it is anti-American to try to impose a old style nationalistic identity on a nation formed of immigrants like the U.S.A., Canada, or Australia. They are 'new' kinds of countries. Yes, hah, multi-culti works for me, just too bad it was co-opted by the p.c. police! The mulitude of voices is what it's all about. The Soviets tried it the other way, enforcing nationalist culture; it didn't work.

Indeed, if you can't appreciate what the elite high falutin New York art critics consider kitsch or bad art for its value to our society, and wish to impose those high falutin values, well then, you wish to impose an ethnic nationalism on the country. This is one of the reasons that government funding of art is so much more highly prized by countries like France. They want to keep their culture, their ethnic nationalism, and the Muslim immigrants must assimilate to it, rather than being allowed to change it over time.

Amerian culture is alwsys in flux and is many voices. That is the beauty of it.

Read this Garrison Keillor piece and compare with the Chinese Sister Lotus story.

We don't need no Propaganda Ministry and we don't need no "Greatness." If you want "greatness" that attempts to be democratic, try France.

Much of WPA Art is considered garbage by most high falutin' art critics and historians to this day (it would most certainly be considered garbage in a place like France!) and to this day it is collected mostly by middle class people who don't 'get" high art; it's an "ebay" and regional market, where it is sold with "antiques". There are only a very small percentage of artists who worked in the WPA program who are considered serious high artists today, like Yasuo Kuniyoshi or Dorothea Lange. Most are the equivalent of Soviet Social Realist painters; yes, kitsch, government-sponsored kitsch--you are right in that some very much got into the idea of a socialist ethos then, and tried to present that in art. But the majority of the public never went for it, see? Not to mention that famous tiff between Diego Rivera and Rockefeller over the Rockefeller center murals.

As to the 30's and 40's, I just think you might be seeing a 'solidarity' in that era and general purpose in Ameria that I think was not actually present in reality the majority of the population; your comment sounded to me a little like it was coming from the Hollywood and government and history text myths--the Rosie the Riveter posters. Probably the most truthful movie in the sense of trying to get across how people from the WWII era really were feeling was "Best Years of Our Lives," down to the mournful, melancholy scoring by Copland. There was no shared purpose, was just people doing what they had to do to cope.

Hitler's personal taste, as expressed in his own paintings was atrocious.

This is an interesting point to me precisely because it's neither here nor there. It doesn't mean anything unless you want to play the Hitler as failed artist psychology game.

Bill and Hillary Clinton's personal taste in art and music is pretty atrociious too according to any sophisticado. Just one example.

(Hitler's own art was not really art in most people's sense of the term, it was more like craft, and it's curiously lifeless, not even hyper-engineering like, not mathematical, just not intense in any way, shape or form, just just: stuff! These little dopey sketches of cities and towns with little people and trees. (Remember the white guy with the afro that taught painting on PBS? The one that would say: "let's put a little tree here! Let's have him live right here! And a little hill there...." :-) )

But the idea of crafting of and imposing a whole culture, well, yes that can definitely be given to Hitler. He believed it was already there in the ethnic genes, though; he thought he was just speeding it along with all the right stuff.