What a week. The nation debated irony and discovered the New Yorker. Both events worrisome to hipsters, aging or not. But what about the rest of us? What should we make of the Obama campaign's inexplicably uncool reactions to the kerfuffle? Not only did the campaign whinge shamelessly about the infamous New Yorker cover (Michelle Obama showed restraint in not observing tartly that she would not be caught dead in tacky army surplus boots), but as Rachel Sklar warns, they may have engaged in the most Bushian of school yard revenges, kicking the meanie off the bus.
There are some ironies here, in senses that would make both George Will and Alanis Morissette proud. The cover is the easier one to grapple with. Yes, there are vile and pernicious rumors about Barack Obama out there. And it certainly doesn't help Obama with his "rube" problem, the subtext of so much of the Vice Presidential chatter. (Who can help Obama connect with the rubes?) But I don't remember the New Yorker cover depicting Bush and Cheney as the doomed lovers of Brokeback Mountain eliciting a serious discussion about whether the American people should be concerned their swaggering (watch from 3:58 to 5:00) President charmed more men than just Karl Rove.
So the overkill response is a tactical error. The Obama campaign should be smart enough to realize that when an opponent attacks you, outrage is correct. But that is because it makes the story about the opponent. When it is you versus the media, the story stays about you even if the media's interest is fueled by its inside baseball nature. Inaccuracies should be quietly but firmly corrected. Freaking out about an over the top satire doesn't help.
The Obama campaign may have had its freakout moment at a harmless time in its reaction to the New Yorker cover. The other question, of retribution against the New Yorker in the person of Ryan Lizza, is more serious. It is not certain that Lizza was singled out. There were 200 applications for 40 seats. Mathematically, Lizza can't complain. But he is not just any reporter. He has been covering Obama since his rise to national prominence in 2004. In the course of doing so, Lizza has written some exceptionally insightful articles about Barack Obama.
The central Lizza observation is that Barack Obama is a consummate pragmatist, a smart strategist, and a skillful politician in addition to being a genuine idealist. That this comes as a shocking revelation to some, and is disingenuously presented as revealing some dark and Machiavellian secret about Barack Obama by others is surely the result of three powerful and converging media narratives. The first was Hillary Clinton's misguided strategy to portray Obama as a harmless ingénue who had pleasant ideas but lacked substance. Of course, Obama is not the first person to be so misunderestimated, as the current occupant of the White House puts it. In 1932, the famous commentator Walter Lippmann declared "Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President."
Obama himself stoked this image of being above politics, of bringing high mindedness back to American politics after the cess-pool of the Bush, and, more sotto voce, the partisanship of the Clinton years. The media rather lazily glommed onto these complementary narratives, and here we are today. Surprised that the most gifted and extraordinary politician of our time is a politician. Why do we only have this feeling of betrayal when it comes to politicians? I have never heard of a lawyer who does good pro bono work being maligned because, psst, apparently he writes briefs! And he is good at it! (My British mother suggests that the problem is that we make our figurehead and political leaders one and the same. Perhaps.)
I volunteered for Barack Obama in New Hampshire for two weeks. Barack Obama is one of my heroes. But I have never read a Lizza piece and come away feeling like Obama was mistreated. In his GQ piece, Lizza quotes Michael Kinsley on Robert Novak as a way of making sense of Obama's identity.
Michael Kinsley once said of Bob Novak, "Underneath the asshole is a nice guy, but underneath the nice guy is another asshole." One way to describe Obama is that underneath the inspirational leader who wants to change politics -- and upon whom desperate Democrats, Independents, and not a few Republicans are projecting their hopes -- is an ambitious, prickly, and occasionally ruthless politician. But underneath that guy is another one, an Obama who's keenly aware that presidential politics is about timing, and that at this extremely low moment in American political life, there is a need for someone -- and he firmly believes that someone is him -- to lift up the nation in a way no politician has in nearly half a century.
It's a nuanced view and one that the mainstream media seems almost congenitally unable to process sensibly. He's an idealist! No, he's an ordinary politician! Wait, that means he is a hypocrite! After all, in our personal lives, we are serious all the time or we just frolic like sprites in the forest. Wait, a false what? Dichotomy? Explain, plz.
Whether or not Lizza was deliberately snubbed, he is exactly the sort of person who should be on the bus, or the plane, precisely because he is not one of the Boys on the Bus. Obama may be made nervous by Lizza's insights into him and his Obama-like immunity to Obama's charms--if a thrill goes up Lizza's leg because of Obama, it stops before the knee--but he is a gifted, sympathetic chronicler. All of us, including Barack Obama, should hope that the Obama campaign did not snub Ryan Lizza, not only because of what it would tell us about Obama, but because of what Lizza is capable of telling us.
In his most recent New Yorker piece, Lizza retells a story that is frequently cited by the Obama skeptics as proof of Obama's ultimate obeisance to the dark arts. The story is of how Obama broke with his mentor Alice Palmer. In the traditional telling, that mean Barack Obama used procedural gamesmanship to remove his mentor! His mentor, folks! from the ballot and thereby won his state senator seat. As usual, Lizza gets a more nuanced story. Palmer ran for Congress and endorsed Obama for the seat she planned on vacating. Unfortunately, she faced a primary against Jesse Jackson, Jr., and realized that she would lose. Her supporters approached Obama and asked him to step aside. He declined. Palmer ginned up the signatures necessary to get back on the ballot. Obama challenged them based on the many irregularities involved and ended up running unopposed. A saint would have stepped aside. But Obama is not a saint. He is just the best candidate for President in a generation. And, sometimes, that's enough.
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Lizza does long pieces with a lot of research. Would he really benefit from this trip? I liked the last piece he wrote, too bad it was overshadowed by the cover. But it took quite a bit of time to put together, that's why its so good. Could he do something similar about this trip? Last I want to agree w you that its shocking to me that people are shocked that any successful candidate is in fact - gasp- a politician. I'm not looking for perfection, just someone who is moving in the direction I believe is better for the country.
The cover was legit satire, aimed for the audience that buys the magazine. If it had shown up as a YouTube video, like the ones that show McCain as a crazed warmonger or Bill as a satyr pronging anything that moves (It's OK to lampoon Bill but not Michelle?), we'd all have had a giggle over it and moved on.
But NOOOO...
It showed up in the MSM. (I thought the MSM was irrelevant.) It 'reinforced' a negative misconception rather than a positive one. (Obama astride a unicorn, being the change that we need to change to?) And perhaps the hardest to swallow of all, it demonstrated just how easy it will be for the GOP to turn rhis election into a mud pit. (And you thought Hillary got nasty. Just wait.)
So save your outrage for when you'll really need it. The boys in the back room with millions at stake on McCain haven't bought their first ad yet. And, by the way, Lizza's work is important and insightful. Be thankful that Obama has at least one honest biographer out there.
What you are talking about is the kind of "gotcha" that has dominated our politics for some time. Of course, I don't expect Obama to be a patsy; when he opted out of public finance, I saw it as a wise move, given the big money lining up on the other side. And I like that his team hits back quickly and aggressively. But excluding someone on the basis of unfavorable coverage is not, well, change we can believe in.
they shot THEIR ENTIRE LEG OFF.
I really doubt it (40 out of 200 got an invite), but I hope Obama did "kick the meanie off the bus".
The New Yorker deserve it.
Why would you be pleased that Obama's team would engage in school yard tactics? Admittedly, the New Yorker cover provided ammunition for the idiots among us, but they really didn't need it. And Ryan Lizza has been a sympathetic, thoughtful commentator on Obama.
Interesting observation. Michelle Obama is a gem.
This sort of sums up my own nuanced and evolving relationship towards Obama. At first I viewed him as a real straight-shooter, an anti-politician who would work tirelessly to restore the Constitution to primacy and reinstate the rule of law.
This image of Obama was shot down -- hard, and ruthlessly -- when Obama went back on his word and voted for the FISA amendments. I was bitter, and I was (and remain) angry. But I've come around from my "Obama is evil" stance towards a more nuanced "well, what he did was dishonest and very, very dickish. And from a political perspective, not even very smart. But in the whole, he is still a decent individual, and a much better choice than McCain."
Interestingly, this paints people like me (and, it sounds, like Lizza) as enemies of the diehards on BOTH sides of the spectrum. Die-hard Republicans bash anyone who supports Obama -- that's expected. But die-hard Obama fans bash anyone who bothers to point out Obama's many flaws (outweighed by his more numerous strengths) as a heretic. Any dissent is beyond the pale. As you state in the article, it is this encroaching orthodoxy that most frightens me; Bush was enabled in his tyranny by those (on both sides of the aisle) who refused to question or oppose him on important issues.
My own take on FISA is that Obama doesn't think that he can effect the process at the moment. So there's no percentage in taking it on at this point. An Obama administration will respect the rule of law.
Just a question: Did they kick off the otehr 159-plus that didn't get a seat on the airplane, too? ANd if they did, what did those 159-plus ever do to deserve it?
I also make it a point to stop reading anything from anyone saying that we should lighten up about the NYer cover.
Brother, I know satire when I see it, and that cover was nowhere near satire. Like a few folks were saying, if it was meant to poke fun at the right wingers, how come there is nothing in the drawing to draw the viewer to that fact. The artist was counting on everyone being in on the joke. He never stopped to think that many people might not know or have heard about the joke.