Webb As Symbol
Posted on May 27th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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I take all her points, but it seems to me that the meme that is strongest against Obama is the usual Fox-Rove culture war stuff, a way to make Obama seem un-American. Webb destroys that meme and remakes the landscape of the race in ways that hurt McCain.
That is one way to view it, I suppose, but more likely the selection of Webb validates the attack on Obama by acknowledging that there is some sort of liability or vulnerability that Obama had to balance out by choosing Webb. Choosing Webb is another way of saying, “Yes, Democrats must have a military veteran with culturally conservative attitudes on their ticket in order to demonstrate their fidelity to the United States, which is otherwise suspect.” Selecting Webb and selecting him specifically because of what he represents, rather than what he can do, accepts the judgement that Obama’s patriotism and American-ness need bolstering. This has the risk of being every bit as self-defeating and embarrassing as John Kerry’s “reporting for duty” moment at the national convention.
Filed under: politics
With the exception of JFK, all our Presidents have been white Protestant men, many with military backgrounds, including the infeliz Carter. Now we may have a mulatto, metrosexual Protestant with foreign antecedents. A Scots-Irish guy with a bit of a swagger, a war record and a national security background as VP might be reassuring to some for whom this breaking of precedent creates anxiety.
To the extent that mass democracy has its own logic, this selection would be consistent with it.
There is something to this, but the same logic that makes Webb the right or even necessary choice is the logic that ensures that Obama cannot prevail. Webb as VP or not, it will still be Obama who will be in charge, and if that is something that causes anxiety or worry it is not going to be assuaged by Webb playing second fiddle. On the contrary, the symbolism of it might feed the anxiety. If, as you hear from so many of these anti-Obama Democrats, there is a fear of the government subordinating whites to minorities there is some chance that the selection of Webb would not appear as an act of inclusion or solidarity but as proof of this coming subordination. Everyone makes use of what these politicians are supposed to represent, but they only want to contemplate how the symbolism might be interpreted positively. Viewed more skeptically, Webb would not shore up Obama’s support with these voters but would confirm their worst fears. In some way, there will be no pleasing the voters who are intent on finding reasons not to vote for Obama; the Webb selection is misguided in part because it is trying to win voters who are already unreachable at the expense of those who can be won over in the suburbs and elsewhere.
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Name one election where the Veep has made one iota of difference — I don’t think you can. No Veep can make up for perceived weaknesses in the numoro uno candidate. People vote for one major candidate against another, that’s all.
Daniel,
Regarding your pretty consistent objection to Webb as VP that he’d only validate the right’s misgivings about the likely Dem nominee, my sense is that you’re overthinking the matter. Disclosure: I’m a Webb enthusiast and a big fan, btw, of David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, a cultural history of the four British subcultures in North American. (Webb wrote a fine book on one of these subgroups, the Scots-Irish–or Ulster Scots, in his Born Fighting.)
Anyway, Fischer makes the memorable point that most US presidents have been of Scots-Irish descent, reflecting Americans’ cultural default in the voting booth to what they view as the quintessentially American frontier ethic espoused by this subgroup, which does produce its own elites like Andrew Jackson and Jim Webb. George Bush, scion of Yankees (another subgroup), picked up politically useful back-country affectations while sojourning in Midland, Texas, thus basically ensuring him the presidency.
My point? Given his half-African ancestry, Obama can’t pull off the same necessary sleight of hand. Although by all reports, Obama has been able to adapt rather well in other settings and to connect rather effortlessly with a range of people, from multicultural Hawaii to Indonesia, to college in California then Columbia and finally Harvard and the south side of Chicago to Iowa and so on. But passing as Scots-Irish in the uplands of Alabama is, of course, a bridge too far.
Enter Webb, who can take that bridge for Obama. Sebelius can’t. Napolitano can’t. Hagel and Blooomberg can’t. Daschle can’t. Edwards can’t.
Will Webb convert everyone? Nope. Webb won’t win the haters or other intractable types. But imho he will convert those in Appalachia who long for change but are afraid of change that looks like Obama.
As to your larger point that putting forth Webb concedes the right’s point. Well, yes. So concede it already and anticipate it and answer it, for god’s sake. Don’t pretend it isn’t there.
“Name one election where the Veep has made one iota of difference”
It certainly didn’t help the Democrats in 1972 and 1984. They would have lost both anyway, but maybe not by such huge margins. It definitely mattered in 1960, but that was somewhat unusual. These selections tend not to matter if they’re done well, but they can be a drag on a ticket if the wrong person is brought on board. We keep talking about VP selections as if they were assets, when we should be thinking of them as possible embarrassments. They add little or nothing, but they can take away a significant amount. If they’re competent, on-message and qualified, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and if they aren’t one of those things they are distractions and burdens.
As for the question of overthinking, I probably am overthinking this matter. Arguably, any thought about VP selections is too much, but it’s what we do. If they concede the point on national security and accept a definition that automatically puts them on the defensive for the entire campaign, they lose. Once Obama is seen to admit, “Yes, I am weak on national security,” and allows his positions to be identified with *weakness* he has consented to play the game according to rules that will prevent him from winning. You don’t “pretend it isn’t there.” You take the initiative and insist that you have a better understanding of national security policy. The Democrats have to stop the military tokenism if they ever want to be able to persuade anyone that they have the better policies. Tokenism sends a signal that you have no credibility on the relevant issues and that you’re trying to make up for it with symbolism. If the Democratic nominee cannot claim that he has a better record on national security after eight years of George Bush, it will never happen. The only way to get out of a defensive crouch is to stand up, and the idea that they are contemplating picking Webb or Nunn tells me that they don’t know how to stand up yet.
Sure, tokenism is bad. I agree. Obama shouldn’t appoint a military token to shore up a perceived national security weakness
But suggesting that Webb would be a token VP is to misunderstand the man (h/t Ezra Klein) and minimize his other virtues.
But back to Obama. My sense is that Obama is fully prepared to take the initiative across the board on national security–is fully prepared, in short, to rebut the usual calumnies from the Right.
But can’t Obama both take this intellectual initiative AND choose Webb as VP as part of a larger political vision for the Democratic party?
My strongest argument for Webb, in short, is not that he provides national security street cred–although he certainly does that–but that Webb can speak an economically populist, culturally apt language to voters whom the Dems have been hemorrhaging since the Civil Rights Act was passed.