Getting Burned By The Boilerplate
Posted on October 6th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Elsewhere I have said that language is the first casualty of war, but it is also part of the collateral damage of political campaigns. Peter Lawler advises McCain to hit Obama on foreign policy, “showing, from the record, that Obama is actually pretty much of a McGovernite.” I have to assume that here McGovernite does not refer to any identifiable foreign policy views that Obama actually holds, and certainly does not refer to any views that McGovern held. You would be hard-pressed to find any meaningful similarities between what McGovern was offering in 1972 and what Obama offers today. McGovern called for us to come home, while Obama tells us to go deeper into Pakistan, wants us to give security guarantees to Ukraine and possibly bomb Iran. What does McGovernite mean in this statement except “something I don’t like”?
Meanwhile, at C11 Laurie Kendrick informs us:
Fear not, America is completely ready for its first Black President; we should be more worried about his being a Democrat because Democrats are notorious for whittling away at defense.
So, what can we expect if Obama wins?
Massive cuts in defense spending. The military will just have to do the best it can.
One wonders when the euphemism “defense” to refer to power projection to the other side of the world will be abandoned, but until we find that out it might be useful to remember that Obama promises to expand the size of the Army and Marine and to increase Pentagon spending considerably. In this election, Democrats are notorious for “whittling away at defense” in the same way that Republicans are famous for competent management and fiscal responsibility, which is to say that they aren’t.
Then there was this:
Thanks to “democrafting”, the words Bush and Republicans are now synonymous with failure.
All those occasions when Bush and the Republicans failed also help.
I’m not quite sure why anyone feels the compulsion to return to these tired, irrelevant accusations that last made sense c. 1988, and it’s not clear how denying that Bush and the former GOP majority were failures is going to remedy anything. It might be more interesting to consider whether the DoD budget actually needs to be increased or whether we might be wiser to reduce the number of our commitments and deployments around the world. Instead of implausibly painting Obama as a foe of the Pentagon, his critics could question how he can pay for his massive domestic spending plans and his increases to the military budget in the straitened circumstances of the next few years. If you want to attack Obama, it could be more useful to criticize Obama for his overreaching, hyper-ambitious foreign policy rather than try to define him as a McGovernite. Whether or not such criticism will be effective in defeating Obama, at least his critics will be able to say that they made credible arguments against him.
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25 Responses to “Getting Burned By The Boilerplate”
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I’m not quite sure why anyone feels the compulsion to return to these tired, irrelevant accusations that last made sense c. 1988
Because the GOP is defined entirely by resentment, particularly about things that happened before Obama was ten years old. Reality has nothing to do with it. And, in fairness, they have reason to believe that this sort of thing can work.
Beyond being pro-life, though, there is no policy content to the emotions that undergird GOP loyalism.
Let’s see:
GOP talking points from the 70s and 80s:
* Smaller government
* Fiscal prudence
* Competent and creative diplomacy
* Constitutional restraint
GOP performance since the 80s:
* Expansion of government (drug benefit, No Child, etc.)
* The worst deficits in history
* Tired hegemonist rhetoric, diplomatic incompetence
* Torture, “unitary executive,” VP in neither executive nor legislative, &c
Better to conjure zombie slogans than to defect the record, methinks. Can “twenty years of treason,” “the party of Bolshevism and sodomy,” if not “Rum, Romanism and rebellion” be far behind.
Freudian slip, though not bad. Not “defect the record,” but “defend the record.”
“Massive cuts in defense spending”
Indeed, we might witness large cuts in spending all over, as those nations that finance our debt put stricter limits on our national credit card.
They rely on caricatures and stereotypes to win because they are ideologically bankrupt. They have nothing different to offer than the last eight years other than culture wars and an increase in identity politics. They want to scare people into voting, not thinking. There is no evidence that they will perform any differently. Even though there are stark differences between McCain’s approach to the economy and Obama’s approach, they prefer to smear and play guilt-by-association claims instead of explaining how McCain’s approach is supposedly better. And on foreign policy, it’s just easier for them to make $#!+ up about Obama’s positions (e.g., invading Pakistan) than to hammer home McCain’s positions. It’s insane.
‘I’m not quite sure why anyone feels the compulsion to return to these tired, irrelevant accusations that last made sense c. 1988′
Because it works, because people reflexively believe all the bad stuff said about democrats. Why? Because of what I’ve been saying since 03 and what you and others have recently said, people treat politics like they’re following their favorite sports team and the democrats are on the other team.
But it isn’t working. No one outside the echo chamber believes it.
It was enough to scrape by in 2004. It works well enough, why not try again?
“It was enough to scrape by in 2004. It works well enough, why not try again?”
The DJIA under 10000 and two flailing wars have a way of focusing people’s attention.
I’m sure the McCain camp is well aware that 2008 is quite different than 2004. But what else do they have at this point? Short of hoping for a miracle (and what form would that miracle even take at this point? I can imagine only one possibility - a serious, credible NEW scandal regarding Obama), this is all they really have - or, perhaps, all they have left themselves, since it is possible in retrospect to imagine a different, better campaign by McCain (though the message discipline and focus that would have been required for such a campaign may well be dispositionally impossible for McCain), but it’s too late now for such an approach.
I am a little surprised that they aren’t playing the partial birth abortion card. As deeply misleading as I think the “pro-life” take on that issue is, I think it is easy to make an emotionally effective attack ad on the issue, but much harder to make a simple response (I think there is a completely valid response, mind you, but not one that provides a compelling sound bite).
Yes, Adam, but when you play the culture war and say that he’s not one of us and can’t be trusted… well, it works better than it should. As evidenced by the polls. You’d think this would be a runaway election but it’s not.
@LMaggitti -
I’m also somewhat surprised that the both PBA and Obama’s “born alive” votes aren’t getting more play. The latter is certainly brought up a lot in the socon blogosphere, but the campaign as such doesn’t seem to be making any real attempt to raise the profile of abortion-related issues (other than to some degree by emphasizing SCOTUS appointments).
The only explanations I can think of are:
1) (most likely in my humble and ignorant opinion, though still not that easy to believe) The campaign’s polling tells them that the swing voters they’re trying to target are sufficiently “mushy middle” on abortion that raising the salience of abortion is a losing issue (remember that for many in the mushy middle, the topic of abortion is very conflicted, so psychologically those voters will respond negatively to messaging which forces them to look at their own inconsistencies).
2) For those voters for whom abortion is a primary issue but who are still voting for Obama (or third party), e.g. Bacevich and several frequent contributors to CrunchyCons, raising the issue risks reminding those voters just how damnably little the Republican party and its apparatus have actually done to reduce abortion rates.
3) The campaign is concerned that raising the issue too intensely might scare off some of the remaining “libertarian” GOP voters.
Thoughts?
“As evidenced by the polls.”
Well, it’s much too soon to say for sure, but there is SOME polling evidence that it isn’t working this time, as Obama today has again increased his lead in the polls. Particularly significant: very reliable Rasmussen at +8 for the first time, and long time McCain outlier GW/Battleground Tracking at +7 Obama.
Maybe not quite as significant, but astonishing in its own way, SUSA has Obama +10 in Virginia.
“You’d think this would be a runaway election but it’s not.”
Obama is leading or threatening in Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida; deep red states. I’m not sure what “runaway” means but we’re getting pretty close to my defenition of runaway.
bayesian,
I think all of that may well be true. I would add (recognizing that this intersects with some of your suggestions as well) that the dilemma here is this: while a good emotional argument can be made on PBA and “born alive” (again, IMO unfairly, but not easily answered by a sound bite), raising the issue at all risks reminding people that the “official” Republican position on abortion (i.e., the party platform position) is toxic for swing voters - most of whom reside in that “mushy middle.”
If the Republican party took a mildly restrictionist position on abortion, I do think that (unfortunately from my point of view) abortion could turn into a good “swing” issue for them. But they can’t make that transformation, for obvious reasons.
“You’d think this would be a runaway election but it’s not.”
Actually, the fact that it isn’t speaks far more to Obama’s weaknesses than McCain’s strengths. The GOP never liked McCain very much. Obama was welcomed as a savior.
I’m voting third party this year because I don’t see much difference between them. Neither of them has a plan that will work for the economy.
Carter ushered in Reagan. Hopefully Obama will usher in a Buchananite.
‘But it isn’t working. No one outside the echo chamber believes it. ‘
You must think the echo chamber is small. EVERYONE I know who identifies as conservative or republican is voting for McCain without hesitation. They believe EVERY word from the right about Obama. Not one person has said anything positive about McCain accept for the mavericky talking points, it’s anit-Obama all day all night. The RNC is using these tricks because there are people who are looking for this ‘information’ so they can feel good about the decision they were making anyway. They want a reason to run from Obama and the reason doesn’t have to be deep, just truthy.
I am intrigued by the polls, but I don’t trust them. There is resistance to Obama for a number of reasons, some ideological, some thinking that he lacks experience, and some are just racially oriented. There are people who won’t confess their racism in polls and these kinds of attacks give them excuses to vote McCain, even though McCain is completely uninspiring. Just like the Muslim smear, which STILL has so much traction even after being debunked thanks to Rev. Wright’s verbal diarrhea. There are many a slip between the cup and the lip, as my mom says.
The last two elections have basically been photo finishes. Kerry was strong, Gore was strong. Obama being strong is not a predictor of the finish - he really needs a mandate or else Diebold may give the election away.
Whatever the context may have been for the comment attributed to Peter Handke, who in a recent protest against the NATO air-raids over Bosnia is reported to have observed that the first victim of war is language, it is hard not to wince at what seems extreme naivety and self-righteousness. Of course it is rather easy to ‘see what he means’; and the history of Europe in this century is full of those terrible events supposed to have traduced or contaminated language, along with those sorrowful bystanders, perched upon some peak of purity, who can bewail the loss of a model of rational, passionate and poetic discourse that would somehow resist the ruptures of historical process. But, how silly. Warfare between nations is most often waged across language-frontiers, as a fiercely linguistic event, even if often for reasons not fully conscious or not admitted into full public view; but the mounting up of a war programme, in advance of the hostilities and to justify their methods, is a concatenation of intensely linguistic processes, in which the whole identity and propensity of individual language-histories are worked into the deepest complicity. By the time that war ‘breaks out’, that is, is declared by one nation or tribal cohort confident of subjugating another, the cascade of positional alterations to language use has been largely completed.
Modern nation-states not yet ready for a war that they see looming, as a means of taking revenge for past defeats, seizing ascendancy within disputed power structures, annexing territory, annihilating traditional rivals, or ‘struggling for a new justice against corrupt oppressors’, commence to manoeuvre for advantage in matters of treaty and international support, and at the same time gear up their economy for re-armament and internal self-sufficiency. The promotion of a consciousness within the social order that will gradually align itself with these processes is set up by and through language more than any other medium. Yet if the as yet unfocussed idealism and variety of motivation within a populace is to be concentrated upon purposes that will inflict sacrifice and killing upon very many ordinary people, some high principles must be found that can bind the waverers into a unified purpose, to ‘totalise’ the cultural apparatus. Who can deny that, supplanting even religion in this respect, a national language in its loftiest and most inspiring forms does not mediate these purposes and provide totems for aspiration, the noblest expressions of national consciousness and history carried through into hearts and minds by the work of a nation’s writers and poets.
It may be resisted that true poets are patriots only to an ideal kingdom, of pure language and equally pure humanity; but enquiry shews this contention to be mostly false, because such purity is itself chimerical, often substituted for less admissible alternatives. The bread and butter that a man or woman eats (or even a poet) does not materialise like manna out of thin air. The emergence of nineteenth-century European nationalism, in the period of state-formation that composed the map for the start of the twentieth, was propelled by the intense development of national schools of culture and literature, by the locking up of international possibilities into the closed citadels of a national language, and by the poets who endorsed its ultimate separateness from the other languages all around its frontiers. No other art will do this so well, because music and painting are able to be more transparent to trans-national modalities; but writers proclaim the essence of their patriotic kingdom, and their work is most frequently enrolled into ideas of national identity by which one kingdom rallies its purposes against another. (As an aside, does this not re-emphasise the astonishing and exceptional defiance of Heine towards poetic, religious and national-political conscription; as a further aside, recall Bartok’s courageous note on folk-music transmigration, ‘Race Purity in Music’ [1942], in Béla Bartok, Essays, ed. Suchoff.)
Consider a few examples of historic complicity in diplomatic terms. After the first Austrian Republic had been proclaimed in 1918 the Treaties of Versailles and St Germain foresaw the danger of a new German ascendency in central Europe and in 1919 included an interdict against any future merger of Austria into a greater Germany. Yet after the preceding intense manoeuvres Hitler’s troops entered Vienna and in March 1938 the Anschluss was proclaimed, welcomed by the majority of the Austrian populace. When after the second war the allied powers recognised the second Austrian Republic in 1946, the interdict of 1919 was restated, as again in 1955. The languages of military aggression and diplomatic manoeuvre blend into seamless overlaps of blindness and complicity, as demonstrated by even more recent developments in Austria and foolish European responses to them. The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 and the Tripartite Pact (Germany, Italy and Japan) of 1940 are other examples of preparations for war in which the mediations of language rehearse the channels of ascendancy.
These pacts were secret but were developed in parallel with sustained propaganda manoeuvrings of national will all over the European map, and like any modality through which bids for power might flow the languages of national identity were relentlessly manipulated. One might compare the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, to be enforced by NATO formations, by which Bosnia was to remain a single state with unchanged external borders but internally divided into a western Bosnian-Croat Federation and a north-eastern Bosnian-Serb Republic; Handke’s own lin-guistic history as an Austrian might have prepared him to see that the attempt to impose ethnically homogeneous partner-states in a region of antagonistic racial intermixture could only result in fierce violence and inhumanity, just as the British insistence on calling the civil war in Northern Ireland ‘sectarian violence’ was an insult to both sides that could only prolong the bitterness which sustained it.
The languages of international diplomatic manoeuvre remain as complicit as ever with the terrors they envisage: Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Convention of 1949 interdicts concentration or carpet bombing (mass-bombing attacks on whole cities or territories), but as supra-national entities neither NATO nor SHAPE nor IFOR (the U.S.-led Implementation Force set up to enforce the Dayton Accords) were parties to the Geneva Convention or Protocol I thereto; according to Max Johnson, legal adviser to the supreme allied commander in Europe writing in March 1996, IFOR, as a multinational force under the operational command and control of NATO, ‘should not be equated to a State in terms of international obligations’ and that as IFOR was ‘not an army of occupation’ it was ‘free to do anything it pleases’ (Roy Gutman and David Rieff, eds, Crimes of War; What the Public Should Know [New York, 1999], p. 259). Even the PLO has ratified the full Geneva Convention, although cynics might argue that, by this aspiration to be behaving like a state, it has rather little to lose if (even after the Camp David breakdown) rather little hope of advantage: the PLO and the Arab refugee communities in Lebanon are probably closer to the ultimate definition of no-hope than almost anyone except perhaps the tribes of Mali who are so far out of civilised awareness that their wretchedness can’t even be imagined.
Whatever the actions of human social aggregations, whether internal or external, divergent or monolithic, the implied social contract has been validated by and through values perceived to be upheld within language itself. Human language is the tribal continuity of expressive human behaviour, and is marked in its very core by whatever depravity or nobility an exercise of linguistic analysis may discover within the human record. If writers and poets think that language can somehow resist this involvement with the worst, while claiming natural affinity with the best, then they are guilty of a naive idealism that ought least of all to attract those who know how language works and what it can do. Treaties and diplomatic instruments are not drafted by poets; but poets live within the illusion of peaceful free choice that such protocols broker into the historical process. Language in its more elevated functions trades forward upon a future, upon readers yet to come, ‘just as’ the other social modalities of money and war also trade forward in order to buy out the future by competitive power-investment against the status quo.
antrastan, you really shouldn’t quote entire articles, and you shouldn’t even use snippets without attributing the author or at least the source.
Here, let me give ya a hand: http://www.dispatx.com/show/item.php?item=1039
“EVERYONE I know who identifies as conservative or republican is voting for McCain without hesitation.”
Even my 70+ year old Mom has given up on the GOP. She gave up before me, actually.
I think the Republicans are going to be staying home in droves this year.
I don’t think that the echo chamber is small exactly, but it is smaller (or emptier) than it used to be and there aren’t enough people in it to win the election. I’m sure if you live in Oklahoma or Idaho or someplace similar, everyone you know *is* going to vote for McCain, just like everyone I know in Hyde Park will vote for Obama. What is more interesting is what will happen back in my home state of New Mexico and other normally competitive states.
Thanks for that catch, angela. I was momentarily astonished to see a reference to that great freethinker and musical radical Bartók on a paleoconservative political blog.
Now I’m going back to my study scores for the Third and Fourth String Quartets…
I’m a great fan of Bartok, actually, and I am very interested in the work he did recording Hungarian folk songs in Transylvania. The folk group Muszikas has done some wonderful performances of these songs. Of course, I’m part Hungarian, so I have a peculiar interest in these things.
I think even a carefully orchestrated negative campaign would have failed at this point, but my goodness it certainly has been ineptly executed so far:
(1) Campaign aides announcing the negative campaign as a way of diverting attention from the economic news. I mean, of course that’s true, but not the kind of thing a campaign should admit.
(2) Usually this kind of stuff is best coming from surrogates or maybe the VP candidate, not from the candidate. But McCain was … I was going to say out of control, I actually think that he was, but whether or not that’s true, he was … over the top vicious today. I can’t imagine this helping with anyone other than the base. Not at this point, when the public has had a chance to get to know Obama, and when McCain’s credibility has been eroded.
(3) It’s just so scatter shot. Like the campaign as a whole. No theme to it, no rhyme or reason.
I do get the impression that McCain is really upset at some of Obama’s recent negative ads (ironically, Obama has gone negative almost as much as McCain lately; he’s just been a LOT smarter about it). I think there is at least a 50% chance that he loses his temper at the next debate. And then maybe my prediction that his floor is 40% will be tested.
And more bad polling news for McCain today - though it is still probably too early to link it to the latest attacks.