PMC Commentary

Obama's refined 'quest'

Give it time, say the East's sages, and what's bleak will brighten:

One Democratic operative ... said the debt ceiling debacle, which damaged Obama’s approval ratings, convinced the White House that its previous strategy of compromise and flexibility — that quest for a political middle passage to woo independents — was pointless.

The paradox, just to continue our Eastern philosophical theme, is that Obama's evolving argument throughout the debacle was, in actual fact, rapidly winning over the independent mind; it was coming to see not only the GOP's brutishness, but the economic incongruity of slashing federal spending in the grips of so much recessionary joblessness.

Yet just as there indeed exists a "cultural lag" (as coined in the 1920s by sociologist William Ogburn) to modernist developments, so there's a polling lag to political developments.

No neurosis here

The substantiation provided for this very peculiar observation, from Vanderbilt's Kelly Oliver, in the Times' usually engaging philosophical corner, "The Stone," is so thin, it's absurd:

Despite the proliferation of "cute" pet pictures and anecdotes on the Web, actual displays of affection towards one’s pet or companion animal, or grief expressed over their illness or death, is looked upon with ridicule.

To love animals is to be soft, childlike, or pathological. To admit dependence on animals — particularly emotional and psychological dependence, as pet owners often do — is seen as a type of neurosis.

Jesus, what kind of creeps does Prof. Oliver hang with? They believe it's "pathological" to love animals? "Neurotic" to confess one's emotional attachment?

Look, animals, especially dogs, are people too. And all I know is that our border collie, Jackson Bidwell Carpenter, rarely moved from my ill wife's bedside for more than a year -- unless of course moving meant a poop-walk in the park. His patience was heroic, his tenderness touching, and his primitive insight a thing of advanced wonder. He wanted to be there and he knew he was needed, and there was absolutely nothing "neurotic" -- on my wife's part or his -- about it.

Now sadly in the 21st century

Public confession: To honor a gentle reader's request, I have created -- yikes! -- a Twitter account (and a "Tweet this!" link, below each post). I'm at "CarpenterPM"

Do not go to PMCarpenter, unless of course you wish to encounter a certain Priscilla Carpenter, who, for all I know, will be really glad you did. So maybe you should. Visit Priscilla, I mean. 

Honestly, when it comes to all things Tweeted, I really don't care.

Anyway, there it is, my Twitter account, which may just mean there's actually something to the whole apocalyptic Revelations thing.

Keynesianism, as 'theoretical' as Darwinism

Krugman reiterates a political point which should be reiterated -- and reiterated -- by liberal pols with the pseudoconservative right's magnificent artistry for that sort of messaging thing:

[T]he right has always seen Keynesian economics as a leftist doctrine, when it’s actually nothing of the sort.

Keynesian economics is merely modern macroeconomic theory in the same vein that evolutionary biology is modern biological theory. Because Keynesianism is now empirically grounded and thus subject to towering heaps of statistical verification, it's no more a falsified "theory," as the right would have it, than the Austrian School is cutting-edge analysis.

As Krugman notes, the right's motive behind characterizing Keynesianism as "leftist" is that the decency-averse right appreciates all too well the socioeconomic efficacy of increased government spending (job creation) during economic downturns. And, as Krugman delights in pointing out, the right itself uses Keynesian arguments (though it certainly doesn't label them as such) against potential defense-spending cuts and their consequent, losing effects on American jobs.

This basic concept -- Keynesianism -- is not economics graduate-seminar stuff, although God knows that professional economists have, in their uniquely disputatious way, managed to splinter it into a multifront, multischooled war of academic carnage. The elementary principle, however, remains intact: In times of economic slump, government spending creates jobs.

And liberal pols shouldn't be shy about aggressively barking the indisputable truth.

Cain's troubles are Paul's pickup

Herman Cain is discovering that there are some truisms in politics and war that simply are not reversible by eccentricity.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
 -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Which is to say -- from Politico -- here's the field reaction to Herm's way-too-personal personnel skills: 

[Ron] Paul’s campaign insisted that it would steer clear of attacks on Cain’s "character".... The Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman campaigns all declined to address the story. A representative for Rick Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

So with whom does this leave the rabidly anti-Mitt base? Bachmann has already flamed out, and her frozen appearance yesterday on ABC's "This Week" only confirmed her sad diagnosis of creeping catatonia. Perry is still trying to string together an intelligible English sentence (or coherent thought), and had he even a tenth of W.'s renowned verbal skills, he might succeed. Yet now his heart seems as demoralized as his tongue is tied.

Huntsman? A Bolshevik. Santorum leaves a detectable, malodorous trail of slime that even the anti-Mitt base can't tolerate; and they ffffundamentally don't trust the Tiffany-trusting Gingrich.

So the process of elimination narrows the number-two slot to one: Ron Paul. And if he hewed to only two lines of argument -- auditing the Fed and returning to the Republican brand of isolationist, prewar American Firsterism -- rather than frightening old women and literate children with spooky tales of shredded safety nets, he might have a legitimate shot at retaining a competitive status.

After all, he's running third in most polls as things stand; and despite what George Will believes, in politics there's nothing wrong with a little Romneyesque "trimming."

The potential of political realignment

The Times' Frank Bruni scratches the thickening surface:

In terms of real progress on jobs creation, infrastructure and other matters central to our economic predicament, we could be looking at a solid year of nothingness, and therein lies another of the moment’s disconnects....

What worries me isn’t the Cain surge or the Bachmann boomlet before it, but the likelihood that when Americans do focus, more and more will see nothing hopeful happening and a motley crew of politicians who are merely blowing smoke.

What happens then?

What happens then, indeed -- both short and long term.

As for the former, there's little reasonable doubt about the politically predictive indictment of "a solid year of nothingness." The GOP has staked its affirmative defense on a weird sort of hazy, free-market nirvana that we never had, and to which it wants a return, while its grilling of President Obama rests on a prosecution of his big-government socialism (as opposed to George W. Bush's even bigger-government plutocracy). With the tea party in primary control, any fundamental change in Republican strategy is exceedingly improbable.

From the presidential and Democratic table we've seen more than the blowing of smoke. The dead end of their job-creation proposals -- thanks to the GOP's arms-folded obstruction of virtually every facet -- may look like smoldering futility, yet serious proposals the Dems have in fact offered, unlike the hallucinatory Republicans in effective charge of this miserable Congress.

In pondering the long-term possibilities, one popular option is to indulge in the shortest of shortsighted perspectives. Yesterday, Bruni's op-ed colleague, Charles Blow, wallowed in the immediacy of our woes as though there was never a doppelganging yesteryear:

We are slowly — and painfully — being forced to realize that we are no longer the America of our imaginations....

We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.

I resist sobering didacticism, yet Blow's intoxicated economic history gets the better of me. He doesn't explicitly assert that pipe dreams and plutocratic robbery are only contemporary phenomena of the American Experiment, but imply it, Blow does. Gone are A. Hamilton's aristocratic foundations of the American economy; gone are the early 19th-century political wars of small-government Jacksonianism vs. big-government Whiggism; gone is the wretched Gilded Age; gone is the equally wretched Age of Coolidgism-Hooverism and its devastating consequence of vast economic depression.

Yet somehow -- a much, much longer story -- we recovered from each of these execrable ages: in brief, through more sophisticated economic theories and planning, through technological growth, through business rationalization and worker unionization, through a grueling expansion of civil and human rights, through more than cliches of social safety nets, through intense wars and through focused peace, and, perhaps above all, through political realignments.   

Workers' pipe dreams and the rich grabbing the gold and influencing government and gaining favors? Oh my. Do tell. My dear Mr. Blow, that's not modern history -- that's recorded history.

As a cynic -- i.e., a student of history -- I also naturally resist pollyanishness. Yet it seems to my objective me that President Obama is navigating not only a wise course of the long game, but the only course of wisdom, one historically grounded. Shit happens, but things do change -- particularly when presidential leadership conscripts popular opinion to its side. Then, abolitionism becomes possible, Progressivism becomes possible, New Dealism becomes possible, a postwar economic "pipe dream" becomes possible, and so with the 21st century, assuming a presidentially inspired political realignment.

Which is only to say, Let's not get too down. (Not yet.)

George Will, as usual, has it all wrong

George Will, in the form of a question, begins, at the end of his column, with this deeply flawed premise -- "Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles" -- and ends, at the beginning of his party's comeuppance, with this inescapable and somewhat rational conclusion -- "to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?"

This, of course, is the unpleasant Mitt Romney. And Will's piece is a pleasure to read. The prince of priggishness (Will, that is, not the other one, Romney) has helped to husband a party of intellectual opportunism and ethical degeneration for several decades now, only to awaken from his dogmatic slumbers in repulsion and horror at its repulsive, horrifying inevitabilities; namely, a "recidivist reviser" of "principles" who must somehow balance the vast, internal contradictions of an absurdly radical conservatism.

Will assaults the GOP's "last to be voted off the island" -- to quote an outstanding pol of High Competence, a leadership quality in low favor with the ideological Will -- for hedging his positions on ethanol, the auto industry, and collecting bargaining. Will understandably neglects, for reasons of sheer space, Romney's even greater heroics in backflipping on abortion rights, gay rights, health care, gun control, illegal immigration, climate change ...

The ellipsis is there for, "More to come." And, I probably missed some.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: Romney's faults are not Romney's fault -- not for a political animal. He inaugurated his Republican career when his party still permitted some autonomy of intelligence and empirically based decision-making. During his forced absences from the public stage, it was his party that slipped into recidivist revisionisms, thereby forcing Romney to serially revise his, uh, options -- of which he had none, not if he was to remain the Great Republican Hope.   

Strike that. Romney could have jumped ship; he could have changed parties and therefore have left his principles unchanged. That tactic, however, would have been enormously bold, especially seeing how Romney was sired by a Republican governor and potential Republican president and all. It's an Oedipal thing, I suppose. Plus, boldness just isn't one of Romney's congenital traits.

So, he's been stuck -- stuck with "surmounting so many obstacles" of GOP madness. And Romney has done an admirable, even an awesome, job of it. I'm unaware of any other GOP pol who could so nimbly navigate his party's elaborate web of appalling deceit, dissension and accelerating radicalism.

Gallup's findings, less shocking than they seem

Franco is still dead, and "Republicans continue to be more likely than average to be male, white, married, and religious, and to describe their political views as 'conservative.' "

That's one key finding from "a special Gallup analysis of the demographic and ideological composition [from 2008 to 2011] of the U.S. population," although how much of a real finding it is, fixed as it is within the study's general immutabilities, remains a real question.

By that I mean one might logically expect the U.S. population in general to have demonstrated a leftward shift in self-described ideology, given contemporary pseudoconservatism's destructive prominence and unremitting retreat from anything resembling actual, philosophical conservatism. But here, Gallup's findings are shockingly(?) constant.

Which is to suggest, very little has changed within the average American's philosophical consciousness, despite the right's ruthless bombardments of it, for what, three years? -- or rather thirty. One might think that the right's pitiless bankrupting of the public treasury, its wholesale transfer of national wealth to the already obscenely rich, its military belligerence and vastly ill-advised adventurism, its abject indifference to working-class Americans and its indescribable dynamiting of the American economy -- well, one might think that this collective depravity, or merely in part, would compel the average American to rethink his or her fundamental, politico-philosophical attitude.

But one would be wrong. In 2008, just as the right's "payoff" was beginning to show itself, Americans ideologically self-described, according to Gallup, as 40 percent conservative, 38 percent moderate and 22 percent liberal. And now, in 2011, after all the indisputable evidence has piled upon all the other indisputable evidence of the right's malignancy, Americans self-describe as conservative, moderate or liberal at the levels of 42, 37 and 21 percent respectively. Essentially, no change.

Issue-polling tinged by the ideological has changed somewhat dramatically, however. Ask the average American if taxes should be raised on the wealthy -- yes; if income inequality is far too imbalanced -- yes. Yet issue-polling saturated in self-interest remains, as some descriptively argue, consistently leftward: high levels of support for protecting Social Security and Medicare's integrity, for example.

So we're left with a miscellany of both statistical and philosophical constants and inconstants: A plurality of "conservatives" in support of higher taxes on the so-called accomplished class -- a surprisingly pronounced "redistributive" spike along the ideological spectrum -- thriving just as discontentedly among a decided minority of "liberals." 

In short, the spread of Americans' self-described ideological bents doesn't seem to coincide with their more explicit, issue-oriented opinions. Some on the left argue -- self-servingly, it scarcely requires adding -- that Gallup's ideological surveys, therefore, don't mean squat. The argument comes twofold: the word "liberal" has merely been stigmatized by rightist, Orwellian-Luntzian efforts, so fewer surveyed respondents offer it up as a self-label; second, most Americans simply don't understand what "conservative" means.

I -- as a self-described democratic socialist, it absolutely requires adding -- protest, for probably the hundredth time.

In admittedly very broad terms, Americans do comprehend the meaning of conservatism; chiefly, its aversion to sudden, radical change. (Indeed, they more deeply and instinctively understand its meaning far better than "conservative" politicians, most of whom of course aren't conservatives at all; they're just spineless survivalists, scared to extremist lunacies by radical tea-partying hordes.) 

And that's why twice as many Americans self-describe as conservative, even though they hold rather similar views to liberals. The "liberal" program of Social Security has been around so long, it's a conservative institution -- it's now a traditional part of our broadly accepted social contract. Same goes for Medicare and Medicaid. What's more, the same applies to the authentically conservative view that crushing, class inequalities in wealth will someday inspire violent revolution -- hence the former ain't too bright.

Hence, Gallup's findings are less shocking than they at first seem.

No Rick, live, and lips mumbling?

Staying abreast of every developing GOP-presidential-candidate nincompoopism has become an impossible task. It's torrential. It rains down upon us in buckets. We scoop, bail, and heave, but more comes -- more and more and more -- relentlessly, from morning through night, in newspapers, on cable TV, and in blogs like this one.

These candidates have no mercy, and we're reaching our limit.   

The latest: Gov. Rick Perry, he of plunging poll numbers and skyrocketing electoral doubts, is thinking about skipping future debates. Now, it is axiomatic in politics that only two types of candidates are permitted to do so -- the Mitt Romneys and the Jon Huntsmans; the clear leaders (who don't care to open themselves to public blunders) and the hopelessly obscure (I repeat, Jon Huntsman). If you've any chance at all of overcoming the frontrunner, you debate. Period. This is axiomatic for excellent reason.

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's presidential campaign manager (yeah, I know, but Schmidt is nevertheless a real professional), had this to say of the non-debate non-option:

It’s like skipping the third quarter of a football game. It’s not practical. Plus it’s a stipulation he can’t make an argument and is unprepared on the issues.

Or, rather, a re-stipulation. Whatever.

At any rate, the larger point remains, How much more can we take? We've months more of this amateurish twaddle.

'A series of missteps'

The inelegant understatements of the week, nicely bundled in one short passage by the NY Times:

Mr. Cain’s campaign may have undermined itself with questionable decisions and a series of missteps, which have led to the impression that the candidate lacks focus and preparation.

May have, questionable, missteps, the impression, lacks.

Is the Times reporter, Susan Saulny, a political journalist or a Foreign Service applicant?

Among the very few incontrovertible facts of our political scene, the one that sits at the absolute apex of supreme incontrovertibility is that Herman Cain has indeed undermined his campaign -- mostly because he never thought he'd make it this far; ergo, there was always so little for him to undermine.

Now, why is that so hard for a political reporter to simply, plainly, clearly report? There is no "may have," only a has; there've been no "missteps," only colossal imbecilities; and we're countless parsecs beyond any mere "impression" of Cain's mental sloth and ill-preparedness.

So, Ms. Saulny & Editor, please just say so.

The magic that is Mitt

The accelerating simplicity of President Obama's reelection strategy, as phrased by a "Democratic operative":

The thing that is unique about Romney ... is that if you close your eyes and have somebody read the attacks on Romney it would be impossible to know if it’s coming from Perry, [Rick] Santorum, the DNC, [Democratic strategist Bill] Burton or [Obama spokesman Ben] LaBolt: that he doesn’t believe anything, that you can’t trust him, that he’s a flip-flopping weasel.

In other words, the Obama campaign is unburdened by most presidential campaigns' foremost, and most formidable, challenge: defining the opposition early, simply, and negatively. For as the operative added:

The fight [Romney's] having in the primary is the fight he’s gonna have in the general.

Mitt will be exhausted by next summer, while Obama's prep-work and framing are being done for him -- by the former governor's Republican opponents.

Meanwhile, Romney can rely on the exceptionally charmless policies and downright ghoulish personalities of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor to further depress the Republican brand generically. My guess is that the Romney staff is frantically calling the GOP's congressional conference and leaving the message, "Put a fucking sock in it"; but, well, boys will be boys. Especially these boys.

I tell you, I almost feel sorry for Romney. He's willing to be blue, be red, be a McGovern or Eisenhower, be a progressive or pseudoconservative -- to be anything and everything he can be -- and yet he's blocked at every turn. And God knows he makes a lot of those.

The ultimate, right-wing cop-out

OK, now we understand. We finally comprehend why the GOP presidential field is sated with clueless ideologues, unschooled blowhards, professional quacks, vocational swindlers, buffoons, halfwits and irremediable mossbacks.

Ready?

It's Obama's fault.

No, really. Here's WaPo's Jennifer Rubin to explain:

There is a certain hubris to run for president when you lack virtually every qualification other than age and citizenship. Alas, after Barack Obama the notion of preparedness went out of potential candidates' decision-making process.

Of course, there's an alternative explanation as to why so many unprepared, pseudoconservative egotists are running for president. Alas, after George W. Bush the notion of having to confront an intellectually demanding conservative press went out of potential candidates' decision-making process.

Paul Ryan: technocratic whiz kid

Paul Ryan self-promotes as a kind of technocratic whiz kid of the modern medievalism known as the Republican Party. His ideological compatriots love to propagate the whiz myth, hence political monasteries of the very right kind of thinking, such as the Heritage Foundation, originally financed by Rocky Mountain suds money and partially directed by unholy scandalmongers such as Richard Mellon Scaife, also love to host this unctuous ass of a U.S. representative. 

And Ryan gets unctuous-er every day, or morning, as the case may be, which it was today, in a speech, yep, at Heritage. There, this Wisconsin (wouldn't you know it) Republican accused President Obama of "sowing social unrest and class resentment ... [and] preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment." How? By advocating a jobs program, in the midst of nearly unprecedented joblessness. Oh my.

Who knows? Did it occur to Ryan that in accusing the president of sowing all that undesirable stuff, in addition to fear-mongering, that he himself was sowing some rather nasty business and doing a bit of fear-mongering, too? I'd like to think so, but only because I like my whiz kids to possess at least half a wit. But to watch Ryan in action, one wonders.

I don't mean to suggest he's stupid. Not at all. He is, however, stunningly obvious in his arguments -- and that sort of thing tends, in my book, to subtract from one's proper reputation for whiz kiddism.

Obama "is going from town to town," charged Ryan, "impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators." Well, there you go: a script as intellectually lazy and scapegoating as a political script can get. In said midst of said joblessness, the president is pressuring Congress to aggressively penalize job creators?

To me, what's most frightening about ideological twits like Ryan is not, in fact, their frightening ideology. It is, rather, their seeming disloyalty to any authentic ideology and their extravagant randiness instead to simply say anything that they think will politically harm Obama. These boys have no core, no -- egads, sorry for the cliche -- "authenticity," no soul. 

To the barricades!

From the NY Times:

The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report.

The CBO also reported that post-1980 Republican dominance   

bound new fetters on the poor and gave new powers to the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed eternally the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labor, slavery and wretchedness.

Oh, sorry, that second passage is from Jean Jacques Rousseau's timeless Discourse on Inequality (1758). I'm forever getting it and current analyses mixed up.

Obama did WHAT?

From The Hill, a splendid example of the unfathomability of Congress.

President Obama’s decision to send 100 troops to Uganda is coming under new scrutiny.... Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at a Tuesday hearing questioned the decision.

Later, there's this:

The House had approved the measure by voice vote and the Senate by unanimous consent last year.

These clowns give "Janus-faced" a whole new look.