Do Americans believe in change?
"There have been a variety of national security questions," Matt writes, "from the initial decision to invade Iraq to Cuba, to Obama's occasional willingness to say something brave on the Israeli-Arab conflict, to approaches to non-proliferation policy, to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, to different ideas about engagement with rogue states -- that have arisen in the campaign and suggest that Clinton and Obama have substantially different approaches."
When pressed, though, Obama has often tried to elide those differences or speak in noncontroversial generalities. Nowhere is this more true than on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where his strategy has been to ape Clinton at every turn. That's understandable -- nobody ever wins elections by being more sympathetic to the Palestinians than his or her opponent -- but it kind of makes you wonder how brave he would really be if he won the presidency.
I also wonder: Just how much can a politician really move public opinion? In his book, Matt complains about Democrats in swing districts who routinely follow the Bush line on foreign policy. Are their constituents really open to new arguments, new approaches to foreign policy? Or is it more that Walter Russell Mead's typology of Hamiltonians, Jacksonians, Jeffersonians, and Wilsonians is pretty much set in stone, and such congressmen are simply supporting the foreign policy that their Jacksonian voters like?
Hang on -- when it comes to Israel/Palestine issues, is it fair to say that Obama is "aping" Clinton? I believe that groups like AIPAC view both Clinton and Obama identically. If that's true then he's not mimicking anybody, he and Clinton just happen to be on the same page.
So then the question comes down not to who's going to be brave or not but who has better judgment and will best implement policy.
As for whether or no a politician can change public opinion -- sure they can. But not always. And, they shouldn't always. I think we're looking for a balance between "lead us" and "do what we want you to do," aren't we?
April 24, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no question that Obama was offering substantially braver, less orthodox and more interesting positions on US Middle East policy last year. That was before he was targeted earlier this year by an intense media and internet campaign aimed at proving Obama was bad news for Jews. It was a loud and frightening shot across the bow for the Obama campaign. Since then, he has been backpedaling like crazy.
April 24, 2008 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
He was?
Perhaps you can enumerate.
I watched all the debates; read everything I could; and still I don't see a world of difference between these two candidates...
Serious question: Maybe you can point me to the answer.
April 25, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Dan K's got it about right, I'm afraid.
April 24, 2008 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should have finished reading before posting the first time, but anyway, I think it's wrong to think that anything is set in stone, at least in the realm of politics. The impression that certain foreign policy discourses represent the only possible set of alternatives is, I think, the product of an increasingly powerful and increasingly short-sighted and closed-minded elite, the representatives of which do their very best to give the impression that the meager set of options endorsed by themselves and their cohorts are, indeed, set in stone. That said, our political system and media structures are anything but conducive to substantial change on the level of these discourses, especially foreign policy, in which it is our wont to instinctively demonize aliens perceived as threatening, which in many cases limits the debate even further, to one between "moderate" and extreme degrees of violence.
April 24, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Obama will have substantially more freedom to start offering interesting positions once again when the Democratic race is over, and he can start tearing into McCain. Obama really is determined to challenge the Republicans by offering a very clear foreign policy alternative to McCain, and is eager to get into that debate. But for now, he still has to fight off Clinton, and that means he has to grovel for those last wavering votes from powerful Democratic constituencies, and not make any dangerous missteps as he closes out the nomination.
It is clear that Clinton is planning a very different approach to the general election campaign on foreign policy. She represents the pre-Iraq old school Democratic insecurity about foreign policy, and thinks the trick is to "match" John McCain in an area where Republicans are naturally dominant, and even to outflank him to the right from time to time. Obama, on the other hand, thinks Bush Republicans are extraordinarily vulnerable on national security and foreign policy, are saddled with a deeply ignorant and out of touch comic book view of global affairs, and are wrecking US national security with their blundering idiocies. He's eager to tear into McCain, and expose him for the dangerous ignoramus he is.
In other words, Obama represents a more confident, younger generation of Democrats who think the boy emperor has no clothes, know that they have strength and truth on their side, and take it for granted that they don't have to prove anything to anybody. They are wondering why older Democrats are so afraid of exposing the Republican poseurs - and why they are so afraid of everything for that matter.
April 24, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan K does have it about right with Obama, yet nevertheless I am swimming with the Obama tide for the time being, and would like to point out that for radicals who want REAL DEEP reform in both foreign and domestic policies, the Obama candidacy is a win-win situation for radical organizing: either the guy can fulfill his transformative promises, in which case we will be much further on the road to real reform than we ever expected, and we individually as activists may have chances to claw out "seats at the table" of media and political change;
OR, Obama gets elected and then fails in his promises, which validates our radical claims and opens the door for our radical, post-DLC political organizing (either with or beyond the Dem. party) and gives us OUR opportunity to be the transformative force in American politics.
We the intelligent radicals who demand a non-imperialist America must begin to organize now for 2012. Let me repeat a few long sentences from my previous post this afternoon, a few articles down under a Matt Y. thread:
I'm going to keep pounding. There are a million of us intelligent US residents who understand this. We must a strong organization for political action, backing candidates of existing parties, creating candidates and parties of our own, lobbying office-holders and educating the public: A DEMOCRATIC AMERICA CANNOT SURVIVE AN IMPERIAL FOREIGN POLICY. America needs to massively reform our imperialist foreign policies and foreign economic policies, and seek our democratic future safety in a world of international law, in which we welcome living by the same intelligent rules we would wish others to follow.
We are not so wonderful or democratic or rich that we are going to be able to maintain a universal, eternal military superiority very much longer, and the effort to do so is actually the gravest threat to our future freedom and prosperity. We are spending more money on our militaries than ALL OTHER NATIONS COMBINED, why aren't we more secure than oall other nations combined?
We must begin the discussion and organization of this resolutely anti-imperialist political organization, to begin to change the discussion. There has to be a voice in the American landscape for sanity in foreign policy, a strong group able to run at least low-budget ad campaigns and compete for the attention of media and officeholders.
End of repeat from before, let me just end by saying that the threats and promises of American presidential candidates are very little guide to their future behavior. Whether it's Obama, Clinton or McCain, any of them could succeed tremendously or fail in a way painful to hundreds of millions of Americans, we just don't know and so much depends on media interpretations, their cadres of advisors and underlings, the nimbleness of judgement of the decision-makers.
Thus character does count and we all have to make our decision on that (in what we have left of democracy), I can entertain the argument that Barack is a different cool new cat and thus has a far higher likelihood of being that unexpected success than his D. or R. opponents.
Oh yes, and my car is adorned with a big red-white and blue sign: "McCain: not just any old warmonger, a confused, sold-out ANGRY WARMONGER !"
April 24, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Dan does tend to be right about this sort of thing.
But, what Obama has to deal with on mid-east issues, the kind of thing MJ Rosenberg has well documented, is ridiculous.
April 24, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
are we talking about foreign policy here or Iraq? They're not the same issue. McCain is digging in on Iraq and won't change. Obama is a little less emphatic about ending the conflict. He's not making a strong enough case to counter the arguments McCain makes. He needs to go beyond voicing our frustration to a clear picture of how we get out without the country disentegrating.
April 24, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
We negotiate with Iran and prod them to humanely fill the vacuum we are going to leave behind. They're going to fill the vacuum anyway, so why not try to enlist their help in preventing a post-withdrawal genocidal bloodbath. Perhaps we could engage Syria in some way too. And perhaps something on this order is what Obama has in mind when he "naively" tells us he will engage in a dialogue with our "enemies." History now gives Noxon the only high marks he has for normalizing relations with China. Who woulda thunk it before he did it?
April 24, 2008 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . how we get out . . . .
Ah, the old fantasy.
By the time Obama takes office we'll be so tied down -- up, around, and sideways -- in Iraq that no one'll be able to get us out.
And no, we're not about to leave Iraq to the Iranians!
April 25, 2008 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
What Dan K said, though I think it's even clearer through this prism: Hillary is still fighting over what happened in the 60s, just as every Democratic and Republican candidate has been doing for the past 40 years. If we had a Hillary vs McCain race, that's what it would center around. You can't really have that kind of a race with someone who was a little kid in the 60s...though they are trying. Hence the efforts to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, and to some great degree, the entire Rev. Wright "controversy" - Wright is of the 60s mold as well.
There's going to be great pressure in the general election to try to move the argument back to what happened in the 60s, because that's the only battlefield where today's Republican Party has a plan for winning. It's also the only frame of reference the current media has for interpreting partisan politics.
Brace yourselves, it's going to get surreal.
April 24, 2008 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
it's hard to find credibility in a politician who claims he will do things that he has had no history of accomplishing in his many years in politics.
He was going to "unify" the races. And claimed race would not be an issue in his campaign. A promise broken the second it suited him.
I can't believe the radio stations in NY. They are going full blast with anti Clinton rhetoric.
April 24, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hasn't Hillary struck out on her own with her "obliterate Iran" plan? Obama is certainly not aping Clinton on that. Right? Democratic Underground has excerpts of reactions from the press around the world. People are worried, to say the least, about her reckless attitude about a "nuclear response." This development is being ignored by the MSM. Why isn't this story being featured prominently here at TPM?
"Hillary's "obliterate Iran" stance reflects badly on the US. News from around the world."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5663533
April 25, 2008 3:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your ploy to frame Clinton as a war monger isn't going to work because
1. everyone knows Clinton was responding to a question. She isn't preaching Iran hate.
2. The Clinton years were the most peaceful in modern history. Any conflict or skirmish was resolved intelligently, in days, with minimum life loss.
The attempt to frame HRC as a war monger is nonsense, except for gullible kidz who follow the chic, and don't remember how good the middle class had it in the Clinton years.
April 25, 2008 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bill Clinton does not equal Hillary Clinton.
This is the problem with you Clinton fanatics, you somehow think that by electing someone with the same last name who happens to be in a loveless marriage with a former president we will automatically be transported to a different time in a different world.
April 25, 2008 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "change" Obama promises is mostly illusion.
April 25, 2008 3:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's increasingly clear that having an intelligent and honest debate about anything during a Presidential campaign is impossible. The only tactic that works is for a candidate to stay as uncontroversial as milktoast and raise as many doubts about the character of the other candidate as possible. Presidential campaigns have become nothing more than marketing campaigns--and since the winning strategy is a volume strategy, the goal is to keep the product as acceptable to as many people as possible and therefore as completely inoffensive as possible. This usually results in McDonald's cheesburgers for candidates.
April 25, 2008 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink