The New Republic

And this after Richard Posner's meandering commentary a few days ago! I'm relieved that TNR isn't the only media organ that solicits contributions on economic policy from people whose knowledge and talents are too-obviously located in very different disciplines.

- ironyroad

August 25, 2011 at 3:05pm

Hard to believe the university that in the past did so much to bring us deconstruction, post-stucturalism, literary theory and the inimitable Naomi Wolfe could now be home to an insufferably smug English professor with a dubious, provocative, hard-left take he expresses in oddly awkward prose.

- mtinora@me.com

August 25, 2011 at 3:09pm

Good God, that Bromwich piece was a crime against the English language and prose in general! At least Drew Westen's jeremiad in the NYTimes was lucid and engaging in its style -- and this from a guy in Emory's Psych Department.

- wildboy

August 25, 2011 at 3:21pm

While it's true that the austerity consensus is associated more with the GOP, there's a case to be made that Obama has more or less climbed on board. His recent speeches have focused on deficit cutting more than on jobs, for example, even in the face of arguments that jobs are the current crisis and deficits should wait. See, e.g., Krugman on this point. Now, one might argue that Obama's position is tactical--we'll see when he speaks next month--but it's not clear just from observing him up to now. That's not to say that I find him to be Bush Lite in general, but I'd like to see some evidence that he really gets this particular point.

- ramcat

August 25, 2011 at 3:31pm

The Huffington Post is to political journalism what Bleacher Report is to sports journalism. Any uninformed idiot can have a soapbox, as long as he generates cheap content that generates page views.

- RerunStubs

August 25, 2011 at 3:40pm

You know, you could make a moderately persuasive case that Obama = Bush if you were talking about Bush the Elder.

- Dausuul

August 25, 2011 at 4:44pm

Policies can overlap in particular areas without having to be lumped together. ramcat, Yeah, Obama has been focusing on budget cuts alot, but that doesn't mean he's hopped on anyone's bandwagon. Obama campaigned on fiscal responsibility too, promising to cut waste with the same breath he used to promised stimulus spending. He's always taken both sides of this debate. I'd say he's holding the course he charted in '08, with slight detours to take advantage of or adapt to circumstances "on the ground".

- GSpinks

August 25, 2011 at 4:49pm

...Good God, that Bromwich piece was a crime against the English language and prose in general! ... I thought that it virtually goes without saying that all English profs write well. That's an essential part of their professional competence after all. More the fool me.

- basman

August 25, 2011 at 4:57pm

One look at the ARRA (stimulus) should disabuse anyone that BHO=GWB. Bush is all oil, but as other TNR links have pointed out, the ARRA included an unprecedented $90 billion for clean energy. If that's not the anti-Bush, what is?

- ballston

August 25, 2011 at 5:12pm

A stupid article, but I really don't see how this is magically transmuted by Chait's typically magical thinking into the view that this "sums up much of the magical thinking that characterizes left-wing opposition to Obama." There are those on the left who have been critical of Obama's policies, those, including me, who have been critical of Obama's negotiating tactics and compromises, and those, including me, who have argued that Obama has failed to advocate for sound policy or even to attempt to persuade the public to a Democratic narrative. Rather, he has repeatedly validated the Republican narrative that deficits are our greatest problem hamstringing any efforts to promote jobs or at least force Republicans to take the blame for the failure to do so (let alone "pivot" to jobs, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean three years after the real estate crash). And, gosh darn, but I seem to recall Jonathan Chait criticizing both Obama's tactics and rhetoric with regard to the Bush tax cut extension and the debt ceiling debacle. Does Chait include himself within the magical thinking left? Or, indeed, does Chait consider that he himself IS the magical thinking left? Or is it that criticism of Obama from the left is only magical when uttered by someone other than Jonathan Chait? I mean, I may not agree with Chait some or all of the time, but does that alone suffice to label his thinking as magical? Now, for some really magical thinking, see Jonathan Chait expressing his charming belief that Republicans aren't in fact cynical enough intentionally to pursue one set of policies when they are in control of government and to descry the very same policies when they are not in control of government merely to undermine a Democratic president. According to Mr. Chait, this is all unconscious on their part. Magic!

- roidubouloi

August 25, 2011 at 5:13pm

There's something missing here and it's O'bama's attempt to give away the house, which the amateur Tea Party Republicans naively sabotaged. That extraordinary offer seems to have been airbrushed from history. If Republicans had accepted his offer, where would O'bama be now in comparison to Bush? Ironically, in that respect, we have the Tea Party to thank for a convincing progressive defence of O'bama. Pretending O'bama didn't try to move even further to the Right but was foiled by the Republicans ineptitude or to pretend that his already woeful negotiation skills failed him even further to bring him to that point is...magical thinking. The truth is O'bama is an Independent President. Independent in the already right wing American political context. In other words, he's a committed Tory and that's the continuity.

- IggyPop

August 25, 2011 at 5:47pm

I recall an article by Jonathan Cohn when the details of O'bama's offer/plan emerged claiming O'bama was "finishing what Bush started". Once again, we have the Tea Party to thank for this not O'bama.

- IggyPop

August 25, 2011 at 5:52pm

Having read Bromwich's article now in full, I am certain that it is ridiculous to call it "a crime against the English language." Apart from a few weird and clumsy formulations, it's generally a fairly cogent and comprehensible piece, and his inventory of the "saved" and the "sacked" is quite amusing and rhetorically effective in its parallel layout. However, I disagree with it substantially in its political assumptions and its broad argument, for much of the reasons listed by JC and others above, and I also find it peculiarly evasive at a couple of points (see, for example, the opening paragraph where he talks about "ceremonies of thanksgiving" without mentioning that he means the president and the Osama bin Laden operation. All in all, it's actually a better piece than Posner's here in TNR, although one might be comparing two very different efforts unfairly.

- ironyroad

August 25, 2011 at 5:56pm

Also, financial reform is not one of O'bama's achievements. It is only an achievement in comparison to a reform bill that would have been written by...Bush. It is not an achievement, it is a failure, when you consider the window of opportunity there was to craft a bill that would prevent another financial crises (the post Fed QE one on the way). Something he was incapable of doing because his administration was partly funded and staffed by Wall St. From Volcker to Simon Johnson to Roubini to Stiglitz to...the list is endless, the links are endless. O'bama made a conscious decision to go down the Summers and Rubin route. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/05/paul-volckers-resignation-volcker-rule-is-a-sad-end-to-a-brilliant-career.html He had choices. He didn't take them.

- IggyPop

August 25, 2011 at 6:03pm

roi is right. To equate Bush=BHO to liberals who are dissatified with BHO is magical thinking indeed--- by Chait.

- drofnats1

August 25, 2011 at 6:15pm

Dear Roidubouloi, Please look up "descry" in your dictionary. thx RR

- RubyR

August 25, 2011 at 6:27pm

Pardon my often errant fingers (you should see some of my typing whoppers): "decry" not "descry" Thanks for the heads up, Ruby.

- roidubouloi

August 25, 2011 at 6:45pm

This is how the game is played, fellas. If you're out to attack Obama from the left, "Obama = Bush" is the perfect bumper-sticker slogan. Is it true? Of course not, but that's not the point. "Obama = Bush" distills a whole pile of disparate criticisms of Obama, some justified, some not, into a memorable, emotionally charged bullet, the kind of thing people carry with them all the way to the polling booth. Chait's response (as well as that of several of the posters here) is identical to his response to a lot of Republican talking points. He wants to pick it apart and persuade us as to the meme's falsity. The thing is, if you're explaining things, you're already behind. The proper response to "You're a limp-dicked loser!" is not, "Let's analyze that assertion and show where and how it deviates from the facts." The proper response is, "That's not what your mother said when she left my bed!"

- AaronW

August 25, 2011 at 8:24pm

I forget where I heard this, but the comparison is quite apt: "Is Obama the same as Bush? No, you can find differences! But, you see, it's like finding the differences between Claudius and Caligula - you will find some differences, but the general arc is the same." A thousand years from now, what are historians going to discuss: the Affordable Care Act, or the war in Afghanistan? Just think about what we ourselves remember of the Roman Empire; very few remember the welfare innovations introduced by Rome, because they were a drop in the bucket - just like the differences between Bush and Obama.

- whyamihere

August 25, 2011 at 8:38pm

OK Aaron, I'll buy that. So what is the best response to to someone who yells "Obama=Bush!" or pastes it on their rear bumper?

- ironyroad

August 25, 2011 at 9:06pm

Don't ask me, irony. I'm not going to help you there, 'cause I'm on the other side. I'm not going to help you break my frame. Down with the Conceeder in Chief! A vote for Obama is a vote for four more years of Republican Party rule! Better an out-and-out Republican than a Republican in Democratic drag! With Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans? Stupid? You bechya. But potentially effective.

- AaronW

August 25, 2011 at 10:04pm

If you are in a framing battle, irony, you do not, NOT defend the other guy's frame. As soon as you do that, you have already lost. Every single thing you say that defends against the other guy's frame instead affirms it by making it seem potent. Rather, you fight like hell to impose your own frame on him. The one exception is ridicule. If you can successfully ridicule the other guy's framing efforts, you can win that way, but you don't do that by engaging the other guy's claims. It is a lateral attack. This is actually what Chait is doing when he talks about left-wing critics of Obama as being magical thinkers. He is not really engaging their criticism. He has decided that they are a danger to the interests he wants to defend and thus is attempting only to frame and discredit them. The article he talks about here is merely a convenient occasion for him to do so.

- roidubouloi

August 25, 2011 at 10:23pm

FDR was a master at ridiculing his enemies. He had an instinctive understanding of framing even though the formal articulation of the phenomenon was in the far future. The people who describe it, did not invent it or discover it. Not at all. It has a political history that extends back indefinitely in time. All demagogues have understood it. It is only the deliberate application of a technological approach that is new, particularly since we possess many means of communication that did not exist even a short time ago.

- roidubouloi

August 25, 2011 at 10:26pm

I'm a bit confused, Aaron. Why do you say "I'm not going to help you there" and then immediately provide four examples that answer my question? Roid, I agree about frames, but there is a legitimate rhetorical technique (see: Platonic dialogues) that involves ostensibly taking on board the interlocutor's frame in order to better dismantle it.

- ironyroad

August 25, 2011 at 10:58pm

Do you think the the irony of the Platonic dialogues is relevant to modern political communications with the 20-60 second attention span of members of the public? What did Socrates know about sound bites?

- roidubouloi

August 25, 2011 at 11:16pm

Now I'm the one who is confused, ironyroad. My example slogans don't ANSWER "Obama = Bush", they REINFORCE "Obama = Bush." At least, such was my intention. To clarify further, I, AaronW, unironically wish for Obama to be challenged and defeated by a left-leaning candidate in the Democratic primary. To the degree that the slogan "Obama = Bush" helps advance that goal--and I think it does, albeit very slightly--I'm all for it. What's more, I respectfully decline to assist anyone who opposes the goal of a liberal challenge to Obama in her or his efforts to fashion a rhetorical response to such liberal sloganeering.

- AaronW

August 25, 2011 at 11:42pm

Obama, of course, doesn't get this stuff AT ALL. Why isn't he out there day in, day out calling the Republicans out by name as the party who wants to take Grandma's Medicare away? The party of corporate welfare kings and queens? The party who threatens to wreck our economy to get tax breaks for billionaires but says it's too expensive to extend a payroll tax holiday to hardworking, struggling Americans? Seriously, it ain't rocket science. The closest I've ever seen Obama coming to engaging in this sort of politiking was in the primary against Hilary. He played the dozens with her ridiculing her gun-toting courtship of blue-collar deer hunters in western Pennsylvania, I think it was, saying something like, "All of a sudden Hilary's out there acting like she's Annie Oakley or something.." And you know what? I was funny, and it worked, and I never saw that side of him again. I can't imagine he got anywhere on the Southside of Chicago without being able to hold his own in this sort of contest, but for whatever reason he has abandoned it entirely. I have a feeling he sees such behavior as vulgar. But you know what else? Politics IS vulgar. Deal with it. Get down in the muck or lose.

- AaronW

August 25, 2011 at 11:59pm

Roid, fair point -- but do you agree that below the 20-60 second sound bite needs to be the groundwork of a coherent narrative of which the sound bite is the snappy encapsulation. No basic idea, no effective sound bite. Aaron -- oh ok, I didn't realize that's what you were about. Sorry. I hope you have no success with it.

- ironyroad

August 26, 2011 at 1:02am

The narrative doesn't need to be coherent, it just needs to be truthy, hard to neutralize, and, preferably, not truthy if taken up by the other side. For example, Democrats eager to cut spending is not truthy, no matter what Grand Bargain Obama proposes and no matter if he really means it. This is where Truman's comment comes in, that given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, the public will choose the Republican every time.

- roidubouloi

August 26, 2011 at 2:29am

I think the reason for the success of GOP truthiness is an underlying narrative that IS in fact coherent, in the sense that it appears logical and reasonable (small government free enterprise etc). The fact that it is (a) nonsense and (b) does not match how the Republican Party in power acts is a secondary and faraway consideration. The real problem is that Democrats don't have a narrative any more that sounds as if they believe it. As you've said yourself, we have policies, but policies aren't politics. We don't have a story.

- ironyroad

August 26, 2011 at 8:56am

That's right, irony. We don't have a story. As silly as that will sound to many people, it is the essence of the political problem. People do not relate to the details, let alone to the policies. They pay attention to the story line. I don't want to get too far down the road on the point about coherence, as it is a bit to the side of what you have put your finger on, but the coherence that is necessary is only the sort of coherence that one needs from a movie script. There are countless movies that we all enjoy in which the plot, if subjected to even minimal rational scrutiny, would be full of holes and clearly absurd. Most of the time it is not that we just accept them, we don't even notice the holes and absurdities. Once in a while, there is a corker that penetrates our willing suspension of disbelief, and then we are offended, because our pleasure in participating in the illusion is shattered. This is why political candidates can tell preposterous lies, lies that even their own supporters really do know are lies, as long as it advances the story line. When, however, the candidate does something out of character, or there is dissonance between the candidate's history and the story line, the illusion, in which supporters participate willingly, can break down. Suddenly there is an "authenticity" problem. For people who think seriously about policy -- include very large swathes of the engaged Democratic party -- this seems utterly incredible, that people could be making these fateful decisions on bases that are objectively ridiculous -- how much they like the story line of the fairy tale they know they are being told. But it is the reality of politics, and it is the part that I fear Obama has sorely neglected. Perhaps as an extremely smart, very intellectual guy, he has trouble pouring himself into the role playing that is a more important part of the job than being Chief Executive. (Do people really think the president is "running" the government of more than a million people? Sure they do. That is one of the fairy tales we love, and it keeps surfacing in the belief of even highly educated people that the president has far more power than he actually has.)

- roidubouloi

August 26, 2011 at 10:48am