The Double Standard and Obama's Answer
Has a double standard actually worked against Sarah Palin, or has it worked in her favor? Suppose Barack Obama had a 17-year-old daughter who was found to be five-months pregnant and not married to the man who did it. Would Obama and his family be shown the keenness of sympathy and the warmth of fellow-feeling that Sarah Palin has evoked?
Because the public stories came alongside the private, the sudden emergence of unpleasant details about Governor Palin's official habits allowed her to be cast as a victim of "the media." But the facts emerged the way they did only because the McCain campaign knew so little about their nominee; and thanks to the haste of the choice, the country scarcely knew more. Sarah Palin has the ingratiating, surprised and friendly air of someone used to being liked; but her self-image has nothing to do with the record of her service in Alaska, or with her obvious penchant for intrusiveness and petty displays of willfulness. This covers her experiment with mass resignation as a test of loyalty, and her quest for ad hoc powers to censor the holdings of a town library. Palin couldn't keep her hands off the progress of a case against an Alaska state trooper, a case from which, because of the family connection, any fair-minded magistrate would simply have recused herself.
It is fair to concede that Governor Palin has had little time to develop. She herself can hardly know, yet, what is best and what is worst about her political character. But arming their well-placed nominee with the hunting license of the innocent and the persecuted, the McCain team took advantage of her first night before the nation to get in a low hit at Barack Obama. "I guess," they had her say, "a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." The injury was none the subtler for being a slander of omission. With those two words, community organizer, they zeroed out Obama's eight years as state senator in Illinois.
But there was more to it than that. Why did her words send the Republican crowd into an ecstasy of hoots and raucous laughter? For them, "community organizer" is code for rabble-rouser. The phrase, at one stroke, took down Obama from the legitimate world of Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell and put him back where they think he belongs, down there with the street scrappers and the demagogues, Sonny Carson, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson in the early days, all those hustlers. The idea of Obama as hustler had been tried earlier and with impunity by David Brooks, in a column that called him Fast Eddie Obama, after Fast Eddie Felson, the character played by Paul Newman in The Hustler.
Race is in this election. It never was far away. And the election will be decided to a large extent by the number of non-political white people -- people who hate what George W. Bush has done to America, but for reasons they can't easily articulate to themselves -- who can rise above race and vote for a black man. Those are the numbers that the Rove-McCain machine are determined to keep low.
So they are sandbagging him from both sides. Low as a rabble rouser, high as a messiah; lazy and vain like a rock star, reckless and provocative like a street politician: shining with the vulgar shine of celebrity. Said Palin, speaking from her script: "this is a man who has authored [sic: she means written] two memoirs but not a single major law or reform." There is no polite answer to the charge. People who don't read books are always relieved to be told that the author of a book should have been doing something else instead of writing.
Obama can be described as many things: U.S. senator, state senator, organizer, author, teacher of law. Maybe it is the last of these roles that he himself has underrated. For the sake of his campaign but also for the public good, he ought to revert distinctly now to the role of explainer. For, in the eighteen months of this long run, he has not attended sufficiently to a whole vast middle level of explanation. This level contains those concerns that hover somewhere between the word Change and the exact cost of prescription drugs.
He has not said clearly enough what was wrong, in principle, about the way the U.S. went into Iraq and what remains unacceptable about the reasons we give for staying there. Again, what is wrong with "unilaterialism?" -- a word Obama uses often, but that many people who hear it surely don't know the meaning of. Why should America not act alone as the National Security Strategy of 2002 said we would and as John McCain promises to go on doing?
Finally, what is the Constitution of the United States, and how have the new laws of the Cheney-Bush administration sapped and undermined the Constitution?
All of this work of explanation would convey a vivid idea, which till now we have had to take partly on trust, of what Barack Obama essentially is and what he isn't. People have a pretty fair idea, after all, of what John McCain is and is not. There are some things John McCain would never do. For example, he would never hesitate to take this country into war. Look at his recent statements on Iran and Russia: two more wars in the last six months, if McCain were president.
Are there things Obama would never do? If so, it is a matter best conveyed in the patient explanation that ought to occupy a serious campaign at a critical time. Perform that work in earnest, and you pass from being an organizer and a lawmaker to something rarer. It is the best imaginable answer to the slanders and the coarse contempt of the Republican Party of 2008.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
"All of this work of explanation would convey a vivid idea, which till now we have had to take partly on trust, of what Barack Obama essentially is and what he isn't."
All this talk about Obama not explaining himself, or that little is known drives me crazy. For nineteen months he has been explaining himself and talking about himself and what he wants to do for the country. If you haven't learned what it is, you're lazy.
I have seen youtube video after youtube video of Obama's speeches, I have read newspaper and magazine articles about his well thought out policies, I have listened to many interviews where he talks about his history and his family and his plans. If all you're doing is listening to what the main stream media says, of course you're not learning about all that Barack has talked about because their coverage has been all about polls, horse races, his supposed difficulties with some sector of the voters, his comments about Clinton or McCain and now Palin and their comments and smears and lies about him.
Do yourself and the country a favor and get informed and then, only then, will I read a diary like this and give your words any credit.
One Heart Beat Away from A 72 year Old Heart.
James Carville said this today regarding the comment by McCain campaign operative Rick Davis that "This election is not about issues."
"Maybe I'm sitting somewhere else, but I thought we were fighting 3 wars. I thought that we were
facing a looming fiscal crisis. I thought that personal income had gone down $2000.
I thought that we were facing the biggest credit crisis since the great depression.
I actually take a unique view, I think the job of President Of The United States is an
awfully big job, and it requires people that understand that.
I happen to think that Vladamir Putin is a dangerous man, and that we need someone who's
been out of the country more that once to deal with him.
I think our dependance on Middle Eastern oil has to be addressed immediately.
I think that global warming is real, and I don't think the earth is 5,000 years old!
I don't know if that makes me an Elite or what, but those are my beliefs."
I came to believe as a child that the deadliest attacks on our country would be by people wrapped in a flag and carrying a religous book. I just never imagined that it would be Old Glory and the Bible!
McCain Operative Rick Davis let the strategy out last week. "This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates
The McCain/Bush clan can not run and win on the issues! So they need these "Flag Pin" attacks to try and attract the "undecideds and easier to distract" away from the real stuff.
Let's face it, for some 20 whatever percent of the population, they don't give a damn about the issues. It matters not to them if the middle class and the stuggling people in this country have to lose it all, because they have enough resources to benefit from EVERY DISASTER! For every horrible event someone makes money, folks.
So you will see the McBush people work hard on everything except the issues! Personalities! LipStick! Pit Bull! Race Card! Gender Card! Patriotism! Jesus! Muslim! Terrorist! Elite!
So the game will come down to this: Will the middle (the undecideds, fence sitters, whatever) vote for the team that will battle for them to have a REAL chance of change, health care, new jobs, world respect, no torture, veterans benefits, etc... or will they choose 4 more years of the same old BS.
David,
Good article - the hypocrisy is just unbelievable.
However, I think the press is missing the really, really big story - Sarah Palin's connections to the Alaskan Independence Party. Her husband was a member of the party for several years, she may have been a member (unproven) and she has attended and addressed the party's annual convention as recently as 2008.
Can you imagine the furore if Obama or his wife (or even someone he knew) were members of or had addressed a Hawaiian independence party (does one even exist?). He would be called unpatriotic, "a Manchurian candidate" and a traitor.
The republican party and the McCain campaign have the temerity to label the Obamas unpatriotic while picking a VP candidate with strong secessionist links and noone is calling them on it. Please get this more widely into the MSM as it is truely ridiculous.
Look for a last major speech by Obama in late October.
Underneath this column is an admission that the GOP strategy to merely craft a narrative about Palin, and use that to distract the American public from McCain, and to bully the press into not asking hard questions, has worked.
I pray that a Dem congress will put the press under the most heated microscope possible in 2009.
This is a beautifully written column.
"If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, a double standard is the shelter that prejudice offers to privilege.
I do not think the dynamics of this election could better be captured than in that sentence.
And I agree with you completely on the importance of and need for Senator Obama emphasizing his experience as a professor of constitutional law. After eight long years of Bush's observance of the constitution in the breach, we could all use the lessons that a man of his stature can provide.
This particular blog seems to have been gathering a lot of paid "independents" . I wonder why John . McCain is not leading in the polls? Why has he not been the odds on favorite? Why can't he close the deal? Will independents vote for John S. McCain or will they turn their backs on him?
I think John S. McCain should explain his policies more clearly so that the good people who revere this country can get to know his policies better. I think he will win them over once they know what he stands for. He won't win with just his base. He needs to move to the center and bring along some independents.
We can't afford to lose this election to another four more years of Clinton rule. The Clinton policies have left us in such bad shape that I might have to move to another country ... Hawaii.
Dr. Bromwich, you get to the heart of what this campaign should be about. Voters, at best, have cursory knowledge of the problems the country faces, how those problems came about, and how to solve them. I wholeheartedly agree that Obama would be of best service to voters and his campaign if he used his talent and experience as a professor to educate the public.
My advice to the Democratic party and the Obama campaign, is to stop mentioning Palin at all. Focus on McCain, he's weak, and he makes mistakes. Palin's total lack of knowledge of national and world events will emerge all by themselves during the campaign.
DEms have lost the initiative here...Pal
I think you're partially right but he also has to take the same questions to McCain.
How can a guy who voted 90 percent with George Bush (part of the problem) now claim to be part of the solution?
How can supply side economics, after having been tried for at least 20 years in 3 republican adminstrations, suddenly become magically effective in the face of all evidence that it's a failure?
- Along those lines - where are the specifics? I want Obama to FORCE McCain to DRAW A LINE from his 50,000 foot rhetoric and the ACTUAL plan that gets the economy running again.... And by the economy I mean the "American" Economy.
I want Obama to FORCE McCain to look America in the eyes and tell him why people in cities don't matter and how people in the "small states" and the "Country folk" have all this wisdom. We have been hearing that rhetoric since Reagan and I'm sick of it.
I want Obama to FORCE McCain to Concede that Palin's statements regarding his legislative record were patently false
I want Obama to FORCE McCain to play on his end of the court.
What McSame is doing here is classic Bush and Reagan divide and conquer. Win enough of the electoral votes to sneak in to the White House. Say or do anything to win and don't care who you step on in the process.
I like the concept. If Obama released an hour "class" about his positions on TV. It would rock.
I like it! Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor. I like that!
What make Mcsame so ready to lead?
Why? oh why ?oh why, hasn't someone called Foul, especially the News media. Media are you afraid of the mean and vicious Republicans? The McCain camp is protecting the "empty" Sarah Palin like if she was a little glass egg. No interviews, they don't let her answer questions. We all know why. Does she know anything about Healthcare, does she know anything about Foreign Affairs, Ms "A heartbeat away from the Presidency" No.! All she does is read speaches written for her and make personal catty attacks. She has said nothing of substance, issues cncerning women and all Americans She is no Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Condi Rice or Christian Amanpour . The Republicans are crying that the media was asking too many questions about her, right after McCain named this unknown, who just got her passport for the first time in 2007, BTW. Give me a break.! Stop being such a baby Palin. No one has talked about how the Right Wing has attacked Michelle Obama.What about what Hillary Clinton has gone through with the media and the Right Wing for years; but she takes it and always gave interviews and answers every questions thrown at her from anyone. She is tough and definetely one of the boys. She's also a very kind person. I'm saving those debates all during the Primaries for posterity. She is a woman to admire. No baby there.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
