Defeatists and Pessimists
If Obama’s biography and appeal affect global opinion and therefore foreign policy, the subject should be on the table - as a weapon in pursuit of national self-interest. If we cannot have a debate in a democracy about this impact without fostering xenophobia, ignorance and fear, then democracy cannot work. Which, I suspect, is partly Larison’s point. I’m not as defeatist - and it’s telling that many criticisms of Obama - Carole Simpson’s for example - fall into this trap. ~Andrew Sullivan
There’s not really a question whether the subject should be on the table, but whether, having been raised, it works to the advantage of someone like Obama. We can have the debate, but what I want to stress is that if the debate is framed as it has been those who are perceived to be less nationalistic are going to lose. I do not consider this to be a desirable or healthy development, given my objections to nationalism, but I think it does describe political reality. My point was more that ignorance is an unavoidable part of mass democracy, as is identitarianism, so that a politician whose candidacy is defined to some large degree by connections to the rest of the world and his unusual biography is going to be at a special disadvantage. The larger point is that I don’t think democracy works the way Obama’s supporters assume it does, and that they will view a repudiation of Obama to some extent as evidence of a breakdown or failure of democracy, while I take it to be the natural and logical expression of what democracy is. Perhaps this is a pessimistic view of democracy, but I am a pessimist and someone who sees a great many flaws in mass democracy.
Filed under: politics
This issue reminds me of 2004 when the Guardian newspaper in an act of hubris encouraged its readers to write to Americans in Ohio pleading with them to vote for John Kerry and spare the wider world four more years of Bush. Quite rightly the Americans that received the letters made their irritation known at the prospect of a foreign newspaper trying to influence their election.
With Obama we have a similar situation, his election would he hugely popular abroad but as you say, how would his campaign illustrate this fact without causing major problems? Richard Nixon would have had a field day.
John McCain talks of repairing alliances and working with other nations, and apart from depicting McCain as a continuation of Bush and offering a fresh start that’s really all Obama can say as well. Maybe Obama can try and invent some sort of subliminal campaigning as a way to avoid saying ‘vote for me the Brits, the French and the Iranians will love it.’
Andrew Sullivan hopes America has grown tired of divisive strategies and such ploys will not work this time around. I hope he’s right. But how Obama would frame the discourse on this issue without appearing as a foreign policy deus ex machina and avoid the inevitable charge of arrogance is a tough one.
Are there any particular changes to our current system of democracy that you think would improve matters?
It will be interesting to see if Obama can reframe this issue to his advantage. It’s certainly not impossible, but it requires selling Obama as someone whose foreign poliby will take a very different track than the Bush-McCain approach. On second thought, maybe this isn’t so hard as it might seem, and something we shouldn’t be so pessimistic about. How about a foreign policy that creates friends and allies, rather than one that loses them? Can xenophobia be so strong as to reject that?