The New Republic

Krauthammer and Marty (in his piece on Obama's OTOH-OTOH mangling of middle eastern history) here nail the central issue I've always had with Obama. Perhaps because of his ambiguous position in US society growing up, he instinctively reaches for the notion that truth lies equidistant between two extremes. And then he positions himself as the arbiter, the explainer, the reconciler who makes the oceans and the oceans of mistrust or hatred recede.

But there are issues that can't be reconciled, and it doesn't make one a bitter partisan or hack to stick to a particular pole on an issue. The problem for BHO in particular is that he almost never PERSUADES people. He seeks alternately to calm the angry and dazzle those who are susceptible to the charms of his lifestory, but you rarely hear him go before an audience and make a strong case whose merits rest not on his great lifestory or soothing presence or rhetorical uplift but on the power of logic and fact.  

Case in point: our casually-cruel, Rube Goldberg health care system can't be reformed. It's broken, and in large measure because of the avarice and insane privileges accorded to for-profit health insurers. It's not just right but absolutely necessary for a POTUS to speak this truth plainly and clearly so that he can PERSUADE people to this factually, logically correct point of view-- including, most importantly, the likes of the Rush Limbaugh audience. Single payer is the pro-business and pro-family solution.

This is an easy case to make for a leader-- assuming said leader wants to make a case rather than charm and soothe people with the mental bankruptcy of his OTOH-OTOH, both-sides-must-give rhetorical tropes.

- teplukhin2you

June 12, 2009 at 3:26pm

pot, meet (k)ottle.

Some outtakes from the implied soft touch that "Kraut"'s critic apparently prefers:

snide

derisive

heavy-handed

embittered

self-satisfied bile

snarky

"Kraut"

Well, yes

Come on, now

Ok. Fine

"Kraut"

cheap dig

pissing off

huffing

unbearably pompous

dismissive

it would be hypocritical to try it yourself

(me: yea verily. Might even be "fricking hysterical")

- teplukhin2you

June 12, 2009 at 3:35pm

"Better to rage to the choir with total purity than convince anyone of anything with nuance."

Michelle, that one would have belonged in the Book of Proverbs if you were around in Solomon's time.  I wonder if you had your publisher emeritus in mind when you wrote it?

- wildboy

June 12, 2009 at 3:41pm

The conservative obsession with moral equivalence is buffoonish and proof that they've completely lost the ability to distinguish between acts of negotiation and public diplomacy.

- primwallflow

June 12, 2009 at 3:41pm

Isn't this fairly common for the GOP/Conservatives these days?  In that, absent any reason to their arguments, they simply paint each 'complaint' of the Obama Administration with the same broad brush.  So be it the 'firing' of Miss California from the Miss USA Pageant Organization as 'proof' of Liberal intolerance or Gov. Palin making blanket statements about all women in regards to Letterman's 'jokes' about her and her daughter (as now it seems, ALL women have massive self-esteem issues according to the Alaskan politician) -- the GOP has decided that up will be down and down will be up based not on facts, but their own petty feelings toward having lost their Rove-crafted majority.

Krauthammer and the rest of his ilk simply can't see any shades of grey or subtlety of action from (ironically) the first African-American (himself the product of a bi-racial union) President -- whereas oddly, that's ALL they could speak of, in regards to the former occupant of the White House (for during W''s two terms he was always given the benefit of the doubt from his supporters and even his detractors in some respect).  Obama speaks of 'change and hope' and Krauthammer and his fellow Conservatives have decided that THEY (and no one else in the media or Beltway) are going to the final judge on how exactly how such campaign rhetoric (successful mind you...more so than McCain's 'Country First' slogan) will be deemed to have been successfully deployed and implemented upon a governmental system that has repeatedly had 'change and hope' heaped upon it since its inception.

- sammyglick

June 12, 2009 at 3:42pm

Ms Cottle,

This is not speaking to the choir. Many conservatives, like Mr. Charles Krauthammer, think of themselves as truly liberal.  For example, they are saddened by the obvious fact that race-based politics trumps women's rights.  Phyllis Chesler is a main exponent of this.  In broad strokes, they see that the politics of multi-culturalism has weakened the classically-liberal driven women's rights movements.  To put it differently, there is a great quote of a British general in India, if memory serves, 'yes, it is the custom to burn widows, but it is also our custom to try the killers as murderers.' Some would call the British conservative. However, this is a very liberal sentiment.

Mr. Krauthammer is suggesting that President Obama isn't acting like a liberal, but as a dismissive conservative: other people's lack of rights is their problem.  Perhaps the middle ground is simply: there's not much Obama can do about it anyway; so he'll make the most of what he can in the liberal tradition.  This is a judgement call that is confounded by Obama speaking to a non-US audience.  He was looking for effects - but was he being truthful?  Don't know.  Rhetoric is a strange beast.

- dashendorf

June 12, 2009 at 3:58pm

America is a wonderful country filled with wonderful conservative people (the others don't count) and all we do is always wonderful and Charles Krauthammer is right and anyone who disagrees is a liberal traitor like the other liberal traitors who are always against America.

[Takes deep breath, clinging to religion and guns]

- ironyroad

June 12, 2009 at 4:08pm

Tep, I'm glad you are making the case head-on that Obama's even-handedness is part of the problem with your favorite cause, single-payer health care.  Now please explain to everyone how a President can make a persuasive case for a complete overhaul of health care in this country, and the attendant elimination of every private health insurer in the country, and get that enacted into law in these here United States (you know, with real majority votes in the House and Senate).  Then you can proceed to explain to us how lecturing foreigners about their faults without ever admitting that there is anything wrong with American policy, past or present (except the old "we're not perfect" line) is ever effective.

- wildboy

June 12, 2009 at 4:12pm

"We are drowsily accustomed, by now, to the fetishization of "balance,"

the ground rule of "moral equivalence" in all conflicts between West and

East, the 100 percent and 360-degree inability to pass judgment on any

ethnicity other than our own (except in the case of Israel)."

Martin Amis,,  The Second Plane, September 11: Terror and Boredom_ (2008)

- noga1

June 12, 2009 at 4:20pm

You don't have to eliminate all for-profit private health insurance plans, just regulate them severely so that they occupy a small place, serving their low-risk, cherry-picked niche.

But again, that's a case one makes with FACTS and LOGIC, not with sweeping rhetoric or lithe allusions to one's biography. The great advantage of this approach, for the speaker, is that those people who don't give a damn about your lifestory or your rhetoric will nonetheless give you a fair hearing. If your case is strong enough, you'll win most of them over.

- teplukhin2you

June 12, 2009 at 4:52pm

You nailed it, tep.  He does not act as a leader, but as a mediator.  It showed up first when he outsourced the stimulus to pelosi and Reid, but his f-p speeches have showed this trait to a fare thee well.  He's in charge, but chooses not to act like it.

- butchie b

June 12, 2009 at 4:55pm

The Charles Krauthammers of this country are terrified at the idea that the United States is not the John Winthrop-style beacon on the hill, whose glory eclipses all races on the globe.  Rather, the United States is one country of many.

We are, in fact, fallible, we Americans.  We have social problems that need addressing (but to admit that on a global stage is to admit that we're not perfect and that's unmanly and inherently wrong).  

This conservative argument that we Americans should be happy because in the USofA women aren't stoned and children burned by death squads is a convenient tactic to get us to ignore these very problems.

Charles Krauthammer is the most craven of political columnists.  From his ivory tower in Washington, he doesn't have to dirty his manicured hands with the problems of the messy proletariat.  He'll never have his pay automatically reduced because of his sex, he'll never know living paycheck to paycheck, he'll never know discrimination.  

Krauthammer has license to be nasty and churlish because he can afford to be. It's a luxury most of us cannot afford.  But instead of using his position of influence (and affluence) for good, he uses it to carp at those who at least pretend to care about people who don't write columns or sit in ivory towers.

Krauthammer has the leisure time to waste on being angry at Barack Obama for having the gaul to admit we Americans are addled with social problems-- while we also parade our values around the world as shining examples.

Tep, I think Michelle Cottle has every right to be as snarky as she accuses Krauthammer of being.  At least she does it in the service of pointing out the utter stupidity of a man who consistently wastes a public platform at the Post on his own insecure drivel.

- shaw-man

June 12, 2009 at 5:03pm

The Obama phenom is greater than that. He's beyond leadership. A Meta-Leader.

- teplukhin2you

June 12, 2009 at 5:09pm

Islam and the West may both have "issues with women's equality" but these don't just differ in magnitude.  They differ qualitatively.  At the risk of over-generalizing, conservative Islam believes that gender equality is  a threat, not a goal.  I was startled to read in the Pew survey of global attitudes a couple years ago that large Muslim majorities think that it is the WEST that disrespects women.  So while Michelle may be right that Krauthammer is snarky and mean, I take his point perfectly well.  Obama is trying to imply "we understand your challenge because we face the same one, albeit at a different magnitude."  But with regard to women's rights, we don't face the same challenge at all.  

- gwolfjr

June 12, 2009 at 5:29pm

"This conservative argument that we Americans should be happy because in the USofA women aren't stoned and children burned by death squads is a convenient tactic to get us to ignore these very problems."

It's actually the other way around. To the extent that there are  problems of sexism and racism in the West these serve as a cover for  so-called  "progressives"  to ignore what happens to  women and homosexuals and minorities in such places as Iran or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, in the service of some multicultural principle.

mickhartley.typepad.com/.../the-naomi-wolf-myth.html

- noga1

June 12, 2009 at 5:46pm

nogal: If it weren't for progressives in THIS country, you would not be concerning yourself with the plight of the persecuted elsewhere.  But we progressives are able to multi-task, willing to find persecution of all kinds intolerable, here and abroad.

So kindly spare me the lectures on how progressives in this country ignore oppression elsewhere to fuel their political proclivities here. Tell you what, the next time a woman is raped or a gay man bashed in this country, I'll make sure to either ignore them or point them to articles about their brethren elsewhere in the world.  I'm sure that will comfort them.  I'm glad you have the luxury of playing down persecution in this country.  I wish I were so lucky.

- shaw-man

June 12, 2009 at 6:16pm

On the other hand, perhaps it's the case that there would be no point in campaigning here against stoning in Saudi Arabia (or even suttee in India) as if it were happening here; likewise, mounting the barricades in, say, Iran over the very low numbers of girls in science majors in the U.S. wouldn't make much sense.  Each society has to deal with its own rather than some other's problems.

The mere presence of multiple discrete facts about the world doesn't mean that any two or more of those facts are locked into a hierarchical relationship of significance.  I've held that view ever since the "children are starving in Africa so eat up your greens now!" admonition of my childhood.

- ironyroad

June 12, 2009 at 6:37pm

I agree, it's a fruitless (and rather childish) game to play that "we have it worse than they do" sort of thing.  But the conservative reverse of that game, the "you should be thankful we DON'T have it worse" game, I find that so frustrating and, ultimately a convenient excuse for the non-directly-affected to do nothing and pretend nothing is wrong, a la Charles Krauthammer and the like-minded posting here.

Persecution is persecution, regardless of degree, type, or location.  But we as a culture do make choices as to what we'll find outrageous enough to act on.  

I will sooner campaign in my own community against gay-bashing than I will the female genital mutilation ravaging women in Africa and Asia.  I can make a direct difference in my community; I'm not as effective in other parts of the world where I can only send letters or money.  Those communities must fight it themselves (with some help from powerful entities that have the means to spread themselves).

- shaw-man

June 12, 2009 at 7:24pm

When I lived in West Berlin, especially in the period before the Wall came down, people told me of an old polemical insult that used to be thrown at student protesters, left-wing bohemian types, and other malcontents:

Geht doch mal nach drueben, wenn es Euch hier nicht gefaellt!

Which translates something like "If you guys don't like it here, then just move over there!" (meaning, of course, to East Berlin, under the communists).

The idea, as made plain, was that there were only two realities, capitalist West Berlin with its freedoms guaranteed by the Allied forces, and communist East Berlin with its heavy-handed one-party system guarded by the secret police, the Stasi.  And you had to choose.

The counterargument, that one could value the democratic freedom of West Berlin but still want to use some of that freedom to improve the status of women, to protest a war one disagreed with, or to even suggest that the communist side for all its faults had done a couple of good things, had no place to express itself.  Beyond the Choice, there was Nothing.

It's like saying that, while one is perfectly aware of the brutally disadvantaged position of women in, say, Afghanistan, that shouldn't prevent one from tackling some rather more subtle issues of gender discrimination here at home -- and finding that somebody has deliberated parked in the space for that counterargument to block one from using it.

- ironyroad

June 12, 2009 at 8:58pm

butchie, um...he isn't the leader of the world so how can he act like one? And damn right we can use a mediator, being that mediator means someone who brings about peace by reconciling two sides, so fuck yeah, he is the mediator between the West and Middle East. God forbid he try to do that, no he should just "lead" the Middle east by some kind of fiat, whoops been there, done that, didn't work.

The simple truth is that a lot of these conservative lunkhead never lived abroad for a significant period of time living as foreigners (not in some western style compound) so they have no idea. Any non American would view Krauthammer as a chauvinist  best ignored. Try making your speech not in America and see how your wisdom is received then you stubborn old fart.

- blackton

June 12, 2009 at 9:02pm

Ironyroad, this is for you:

"It is not only in academia and on the remnants of the Left that you encounter the argument that to prefer democracy to tyranny in other cultures, or the rights of women to the demands of misogynist clerics, is to announce yourself as insensitive brute or interfering imperialist. Across the West, you find the incoherent feeling that only dogmatists think they have the right to assert that medicines which have passed double-blind trials are superior to homeopathic remedies or that one woman's theories on the death of Diana or the dangers of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are better than another's. . ."

- Nick Cohen, in Standpoint, on the Golden Age of Conspiracy, here.

Clincher: "Sensible societies throw cordons sanitaires around dangerous ideas, because they know that 'usually sane and responsible people' cannot be counted on to see their flaws. After the Second World War, the ideas of Nazism became taboo in Europe — get too close to them and you were denounced. To my exasperation, my comrades on the Left have worked hardest to pull down the barriers by providing platforms for Islamist radicals they would denounce as 'fascists' if they had white skins. Predictably, the far-right British National Party has broken out of its cage. It can now announce that its version of neo-fascism is not as extreme as ideas tolerated without objection in polite society. As culpable as the pseudo-Left are all the clueless journalists and civil servants in the mainstream who think it is virtuous rather than cowardly to be non-judgmental about ideas that demand to be judged."

transmontanus.blogspot.com/.../after-while-your-mind-is-so-open-your.html

- noga1

June 13, 2009 at 9:30am

In what particular way is it for me?  In general, I agree with Cohen on the broad issue of conspiracy theory politics (which reminds me of the battles we had with the loony 9/11 theorist on the CR site).  

On the question of giving radical islamists an ideological break you would never give anyone else, I would tend to agree too, and I've often wondered if there isn't also a hankering after authority on the part of the very people whose raison d'etre was being anti-authoritarian.  After finally tearing down Daddy, suddenly there's a need for a gruff-voiced figure who tells you what's what and no ifs or buts.  Or a sort of sneaking envy of those who still have a gruff-voiced figure.

I would say that I think the British left in particular can be an odd creature.  I've often suspected that behind a lot of the alliances and preferences lurks a Kipling-esque frustrated imperial romanticism (le Carré get this right, I think, at times).  There are, perhaps, closer parallels than immediately obvious between the district supervisor heading off across the dusty plain in 1909 to negotiate with the fierce hill tribes, and the white, middle class, anti-racist activist heading off to Bethnal Green in 2009 to meet the islamist comrades and sort out the banners for the march on Saturday.  Both are on a sort of "British mission" that consists of one part admiration, one part contempt, and one part political calculation.

However, I still think the argument "they are stoning women in Afghanistan so why are you complaining about discrimination against lesbians here" is ultimately a pretty weak one.

- ironyroad

June 13, 2009 at 2:43pm

"However, I still think the argument "they are stoning women in Afghanistan so why are you complaining about discrimination against lesbians here" is ultimately a pretty weak one."

Again, I think what  jars is the inverse: Why the fact that there are still areas in our life where there is  discrimination against  women is an excuse to avert our gaze when girls are mutilated in Somalia.

I thought you might enjoy that link because it echoed the point you were saying earlier, albeit  admittedly with greater panache.

(I could almost imagine the frowning brow tightening in suspicion: tiresome woman,  what is she blaming me for now?)

- noga1

June 13, 2009 at 4:34pm

The imagination is a great resource.

- ironyroad

June 13, 2009 at 5:02pm

Replying to legitimate points about sexism in the U.S. by saying, "At least you're not stoned in the streets like women in Saudi Arabia" doesn't help conservatives like Krauthammer one iota.

- connieboyd

June 13, 2009 at 7:15pm

"Replying to legitimate points about sexism in the U.S. by saying, "At least you're not stoned in the streets like women in Saudi Arabia" doesn't help conservatives like Krauthammer one iota."

That is not how I read the argument he is making. What he decries is the knee-jerk cultural relativism, what Martin Amis called ''The fetishization of balance", which basically maintains that who are we to pass judgment on the kind of violence women face in Afghanistan, when in our own streets women get raped and discriminated against?

Krauthammer clearly articulates this thought:

"We all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge?"

I wonder (as usual, a lot of wondering I do around here) why posters do not engage with what he is really complaining about, rather than "answering" some caricature of what it is not?

- noga1

June 13, 2009 at 7:35pm

"I wonder (as usual, a lot of wondering I do around here) why posters do not engage with what he is really complaining about, rather than 'answering' some caricature of what it is not?"

Noga, I think there are two possible reasons for that, a short one and a long one:

1.  It starts to be a habit -- everyone is piously claiming to deal with the other poster's arguments but instead keeps inventing straw men to pull down.  If not everyone, then enough that it begins to permeate the threads.

2.  In some cases, there is spread of possible interpretations as to what someone is "really complaining about," and there is often a suspicion of deliberate disingenuousness.  For example, I have met -- and I've lived in several countries and know poeple of many different backgrounds -- very few people in my life who are genuinely complete relativists, who say "ah, we all have our foibles."  But I have met many people who think that the there are some complexities and gnarly problems associated with westerners (Europeans, Americans etc) telling other people how to live their lives, or what their standards of moral calculus should be, or just generally sticking their noses in.

Is this a sound watertight position to hold?  Is it within a progressive tradition of universal rights?  No and no.  But it's certainly within a tradition of seeing culture as more than just what folks do for entertainment, and rather as containing a long-marinated identity that people are invested in quite as much as we are in ours.

If I may express it as follows (and btw I'm more sympathetic to the universal idea than I'm being here for the purposes of making this point):

There are, over-simplifying a bit, three arguments one could articulate:

1.  Women are being stoned to death in country X, which is legalized violence against women and against basic standards of civil rights and social decency that we have developed over the last few hundred years.  Therefore everyone who considers themselves progressive, left, feminist, etc should condemn this and contribute to ending it.  Cultural differences should not be an excuse here.

2.  Women are being stoned to death in X, which is legalized violence against women and against standard of civil rights etc etc, as in 1.  I am against that, and will contribute to ending it, but I'm not going to forget that there is also a genuine difficulty about APPLYING WHAT I ASSUME TO BE UNIVERSAL STANDARDS TO PLACES WHERE THAT ASSUMPTION IS NOT ROOTED IN HISTORY.  Although I want such crimes to end, because I believe such behavior is criminal and that a lot of people in X also see it as unacceptable, mature experience and my knowledge of history tell me it is far better if change comes from within, rather than being imposed in the name of a "universal" standard that looks great to us but to others suspiciously like American or European moral criteria, about which they have significant reservations.  If I pretend that every single horror in the world can be solved by me declaring myself against it, I am at least guilty of smug naiveté.  Maybe it's just as legitimate to pursue my beliefs here at home, which in turn will change the global atmosphere and hopefully isolate brutality against women.

3.  There are sites of gender discrimination here in, say, the U.S. -- therefore it is of no interest what is happening to women elsewhere; I don't care how cruel it is, and to get involved in that is to be distracted from the existentially  important issue here -- lesbians being discriminated against in the Salt Lake City property market.  What happens is the U.S. makes it impossible to criticize other countries in any way.

The problem with Krauthammer and his ilk is that they not only hold positon 1. (a totally legitimate take) but also, often, construct a polemic around it that pretends that 3. is the commonly held view on the "left" or among the "Democrats" or the "liberals" or "feminists" or whatever their negative flavor of the week is.  One can't deal with that kind of argument without first explaining that 3. is largely a rhetorical invention but 2. -- while one can certainly disagree with it -- is a legitimate position to hold.  So if CK is "really complaining" about position 3., then it should be enough to indicate to him that almost nobody holds it, and then he'd concede his mistake, right?  I''d like to believe that, but as I wasn't born yesterday I'm fairly sure that he knows damn well that 3. doesn't really exist, and it's a straw man deployed to discredit those who hold to 2., a legitimate position that Krauthammer doesn't like and doesn't really want to argue with.  If he was at all honest or concerned, he'd want to enage with 2., see where there are overlaps, commonalities etc, but he doesn't want to do that, he just wants to diss "the left."

- ironyroad

June 13, 2009 at 9:30pm

What Krauthammer fails to understand here is that lecturing other people about how inferior they are to us is less effective than admitting that we have problems, too. We (Americans) are viewed by most of the world as being arrogant (in policy, and often in person), and at the same time ignorant about other countries and cultures (in person, and often in policy). What Obama is doing is breaking that mold, and that is one reason why he is more effective than the smug and ignorant Bush, even if they articulate the same ideals.

Whether Obama's approach will lead to diplomatic and policy successes is still be be seen, but it can't be worse than the hectoring that Krauthammer appears to prefer

- JEFF FREY

June 13, 2009 at 9:33pm

As for the snark, Krauthammer is not writing to convince people. He is writing so that the already convinced can say, "Yeah, what he said."

- JEFF FREY

June 13, 2009 at 9:35pm

ironyroad: "The problem with Krauthammer and his ilk "

What "ilk' would that be? I cannot disagree with what Krauthammer is saying in this article. Nor would Martha Nussbaum, who has dealt with the double standards of Western femminists in her Capabilities Approach.

And I think you know it. So I have to imagine ( a great resource, the imagination) that you have to hold your nose when you address me on these boards because I can certainly be considered part of CK's "'ilk".

books.google.com/books

- noga1

June 14, 2009 at 1:13pm

By "Krauthammer and his ilk" I meant our battery of overpaid right-wing commentators who invent straw men to shoot down because they prefer preaching to the converted than exploring disagreements.  I didn't identify you with him because the discussion had taken on some autonomy.  Indeed, even if you were totally in synch with everything he says, I still woudn't see you as part of his "ilk" as you are a fellow poster on this board and not a paid pundit.

That said, 90% of my post was picking up on your question about why people don't respond to what others "are really complaining about."  Did any of it make sense?  The three possible attitudes and CK's way of pretending that #3 is massively present in order to neutralize #2?

- ironyroad

June 14, 2009 at 2:19pm

And fwiw I read the few pages by Nussbaum and agreed with a lot of it.  I assume you do too, as you posted them.  Sometimes you post enigmatically, and as I'm a bit slow I often wonder (maybe we all do a lot of wondering) what status the text has.

Although I have heard Nussbaum satirized as the proponent of the thesis "Antiquity:  The Unfinished Project"!

- ironyroad

June 14, 2009 at 2:24pm