Dude, Where’s My Party?

This morning in an audio clip Camille Paglia exemplifies the split between reformers and revolutionaries in the Democratic Party that sparked Nate Silver’s post yesterday on which I commented. Ms. Paglia castigates Congressional Democrats for even broaching the idea of a return of the Fairness Doctrine as a betrayal of “the soul the party”. Rather, I think it highlights the struggle for the soul of the party.

This is a subject I touched on four years ago.

One’s view of the Obama Administration depends on what one thinks of Barack Obama. If you believe that he’s a revolutionary, out to overthrow the existing order, then you think it’s a radical leftist administration. If you believe that he’s a rational technocratic reformer, then you think he’s a fairly convention liberal Democrat.

Rahm Emanuel’s role in the new White House is a critical one. He’s no technocrat or, rather, his expertise is in fund-raising and running political campaigns which means that in any genuinely technocratic White House he wouldn’t get within spitting distance of policy formulation. But I do think he think he typifies the Congress and the path to wealth, influence, and power through wielding political clout.

7 comments… add one
  • I think the key to Obama is ruthlessness. He adapts, he elides, he explains, he obscures, he comes back, he sidles up and puts a shiv in you. He does whatever he has to do. And what will make him particularly effective is that he does it all elegantly.

    Obama buried Bill and Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Thompson, Giuliani, Gingrich, Steele, Boehner, Palin, Lieberman, look at the list of people who’ve tried to lay a glove on this guy. People are still trying to fit him in a box and all the people trying to do so find themselves in a box instead while Obama laughs.

  • I agree with your assessment, Michael. I also think he’s different from Bill Clinton in that he has better developed core values.

    However, the key question is whether he has the leadership ability to reconcile the contradictions within his own party and, indeed, within the White House. Frankly, I don’t think he does. Overcoming adversaries is one thing. Managing your allies is something else entirely.

  • PD Shaw Link

    michael has an Obama crush!

    I’m more disappointed with Obama so far, but I had larger expectations that he would take the lead position on the economic crisis. Instead, Pelosi took the lead, Obama voiced some concerns which she ignored, and then a plan was developed which he distanced himself from by saying what do you expect from Congress? This may end up being the most important legislation of his Presidency and he looked weak.

    And when he came to my district to lean on the freshman Republican Congressman from the District of Caterpillar, it was joke. It was a telegraphed punch that did not connect.

    I give him a large break though because he is still putting his team together, but after 9/11, we should be doing transitions much better. Another rant for another time.

  • A lot of this is the domestic disputes of an opposition party becoming a ruling party. As such, it’s natural, with the surface peculiarities of the Democrats. Technocratic reformers under Obama = neo-conservatives under Bush. How much they get to decide depends on what crises arise and how quickly they mobilize to claim them as turf.

    Some people in both parties — perhaps as many as half — are just going to be happier in opposition. They’ll end up hating their own president. Bush’s way was to say “the hell with them.”

    He was as cold to the GOP Congress of ’02 as he was to the Democratic Congress of ’07. Somehow we’ve lost sight of the fact that the presiden and Congress are SUPPOSED to be in tension and opposition, regardless of party. The system is built that way. We’re amazed to find any part of it still working as intended, I suppose.

  • PD:

    Obama got what he wanted, almost dollar for dollar, percentage for percentage.

    Pelosi comes out of it weakened.

    The GOP comes out weakened. (Read the polls, they’ve actually managed to drop a couple of points.)

    Obama just got the country to spend a trillion dollars, and did it in under a month.

    The only people who seem to have a problem with Obama’s effectiveness are are pundits who are now beginning to walk back from those positions after taking a look at the after battle realities.

    As for a man crush on Obama? So far the conventional wisdom on Obama (radical, naif, crook, empty suit, Bambi) has been almost completely wrong, and I’ve been almost completely right.

  • PD Shaw Link

    A man crush, I knew it.

    My expectations were not so dire and I’ll add that foreign policy wise, they’ve been exceeded so far.

    But there was too much distancing from the stimulus package to count it as an Obama victory. And in the process, he lost control of the message to Congress. Obama ran on middle-class tax cuts and bipartisanship, but in making one argument, a lot of Congressional Democrats said the tax cuts were the Republican part of the bill.

    The polls I am looking at show 38% – 44% support for the stimulus package, but the most popular part, the tax cuts, has been labeled the Republican part. A majority of Americans think the bill will hurt or do nothing for the economy.

    And I don’t think we’re over, we have more money to shovel at the financial industry and auto industry. 75% of Americans oppose nationalizing banks, so if that is, as Dave argues, the best solution, I think Obama is standing on dwindling capital.

  • PD:

    Check your polls again. Gallup says Congress’ number just went up 12% after passing the stim.

    Meanwhile GOP numbers have dropped. And Obama’s numbers are in the 60’s and 70’s just a month after winning with just over half the vote.

    It’s a waste of time polling Americans on individual aspects of this. Everyone opposes spending 800 billion dollars. But they oppose doing nothing even more. (Ask them how they feel about a cap gains tax cut right now.) And they’ll oppose nationalizing banks unless Obama decides to do it and explains it to the nation.

    According to conservatives Obama’s been just about to fall on his face for the last year. Still waiting.

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