THE PLANK DECEMBER 20, 2007
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If you haven't yet read Sean Wilentz's anti-Obama brief on our site, you should. I take Wilentz's point that the political press (myself included) is probably too enamored of Obama's biography--and the insight and instincts that we presume he's acquired from his life experiences. But, that said, I'm not really clear how Wilentz himself doesn't fall into that trap when assessing his own preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Here's Wilentz making "a dynamic historical case" for Hillary to Newsweek:
I think Hillary is important because the
election really is the culmination of what's been a 40 year struggle
for the Democrats to rediscover who they are. A 40-year struggle
against what we'll call Nixon-slash-Reaganism. And, simply put, she's
in the best position to be a president. Which is to say, she
understands how American politics works. She understands the trajectory
of American political history for the last 40 years because she's lived
it in a way that the others haven't, really. She's seen it at all
levels, from Arkansas to Capitol Hill. The country needs someone who
can take us beyond this struggle--this long, long fight we've been
having. [Emphasis added.]
I suppose that Wilentz's support for Hillary is based on, as he puts it in his TNR piece, "prosaic credentials such as knowledge, experience, and sound policy proposals"--or at least the first two out of those three, as he doesn't mention any of Hillary's policy proposals in his interview with Newsweek. But Obama's supporters can make the same claim. Indeed, if you want to argue, as Wilentz does, that Hillary
"understands how American politics works," then the fact that Obama has
spent 10 years as an elected official--having
served for 8 years in the Illinois State Senate before he came to the U.S. Senate in 2005--and that Hillary has spent only 6 years in elected office is pretty relevant.
But Hillary's knowledge and experience that Wilentz finds so impressive is, as he says, derived from the life she's led for the past 40 years. And if Hillary supporters like Wilentz believe that her time as the spouse of a governor and a president arm her with relevant knowledge and experience, then I don't think Obama's supporters are out of line in thinking that his time as a child in Indonesia and as a community organizer in Chicago imbue him with relevant knowledge and experience, as well.
In other words, I think that to a certain degree we're all guilty of projecting.
--Jason Zengerle
10 comments
"In other words, I think that to a certain degree we're all guilty of projecting."
Indeed. Please further note that neither senator has faced serious Republican opposition in races for public office. Edwards has gone one for two against a couple of incumbents.
- henderstock
December 20, 2007 at 3:10pm
I think one of the reasons Obama gives to think twice about another Clinton candidacy and Presidency is that very "trajectory of American Politics" of the last 40 years. I would suggest that she understands it so well because she is partially responsible for it. And if the last few weeks of slime and innuendo from the Clinton camps is any indicator, that particular, vicious, take no prisoners, polarizing "trajectory" will continue for another four or eight years, with little to show for it but the political survival of the Clintons themselves as they cling to power without accomplishing anything signifigant or lasting.
Remember all the time we spent fighting to keep Bill in power during the impeachment days, unable to pass any programs or make any lasting changes because we were consumed with defending the Clintons in their personal wars and vendettas? If Bill had resigned when the Lewinsky stuff first came up, Al Gore would have had a half a term to establish himself as a competent President and probably sailed to re-relection and we would have been spared the trajedy of the last seven years.
Wilentz's piece is a partisan political hatchet job, unworthy of a serious academic and historian. And it isn't even a persuasive argument on the face of it. Barack Obama is not remotely George Bush, for all the reasons cited and elaborated on by the various talkback commenters to Wilentz's article. They can't find anything of substance to attack him on (Hillary and her surrogates), so they try to find some superficial equivalences fo Bush and manufacture an argument that Obama is Bush recycled. Who's "delusional"?
- vanwurs
December 20, 2007 at 3:31pm
And henderstock,
all due respect, and I like and admire John Edwards, but he's only won one election for political office in his entire life, and never tested that with a an attempt to run for re-election. Obama's been elected and reelected several times, and been through at least one uphill primary fight, and Hillary has sought and won the approval of her constituents for a second term to the Senate. As far as electoral prowess goes, Edwards has one senate election and one primary under his belt, so far. Not that overpowering a resume'.
- vanwurs
December 20, 2007 at 3:43pm
It's pathetic. Edwards beat Lauch Faircloth, who, intellectually speaking, is about 2 steps above cauliflower. And it was only 51-49.
NONE of the Big 3 has ANY electoral victories worth talking about.
- butchie b
December 20, 2007 at 4:18pm
If people really cared about experience Joe Biden would be walking away with this.
- adamvaught
December 20, 2007 at 4:26pm
Hillary's win over Lazio, while not exactly a political heavy-weight, was still impressive--when Lazio entered the race, the CW was that Hillary was in trouble because they had been gearing up to go against Rudy, and now lost the anti-Rudy aspect. Hillary's re-election campaign was sort of like Obama's only statewide win, where she benefited from an extremely weak general election opponent, but had nothing like Obama's luck (having the front-runner for the Democratic nomination and the Republican nominee spectacularly implode).
Also, while it's undoubtedly true that we all project, I'd like to think that Hillary's experience as first lady and seven years as a US Senator trump community organizing in Chicago and being a STATE senator, in terms of experience with issues that will likely face the next President in getting their agendas accomplished. Not all legislative experiences are created equal--it's like saying Dwight Howard and Al Horford have the same levels of experience since they've both been playing post-High School basketball for four years.
- sprechs
December 20, 2007 at 6:04pm
Jason, thanks. You have destroyed Wilentz's piece. I did not know he had made such a fatuous case for Hillary based on the same airy biographical mumbo jumbo that he condemns Zakaria and Brooks for indulging in. You also handled this as gently as you could, given that Wilentz's "delusion" article appeared in your own magazine.
I've got another delicate question. Some talkbackers say that Wilentz is a personal friend of the Clintons, and a quick Google of "Wilentz friend of Bill Clinton" bears that out; in a New Yorker article from 2006, David Remnick described Wilentz as "a friend of the Clintons." Shouldn't TNR be disclosing facts like this to its readers. Many readers, myself included, have read Wilentz's pieces about things non-Clintonian and found them credible, and we were really surprised at the low quality of his article today. Then suddenly everything made sense when someone mentioned the friendship in the comments section. It really should have been disclosed; the nondisclosure was a breach of faith with your readership -- I'm sure unintentional.
- LDuncan
December 20, 2007 at 11:15pm
Dudes -- Joe Wilson got the memo (!):
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../joe-wilson-rips-obama-ig_n_77921.html
- J.J. Gould
December 21, 2007 at 8:34pm
This is a very well argued main post. It did not, to my mind, as has been suggested, destroy Wilentz's piece published in TNR, which can stand on its own and to which Zengerle gives at least some props. But is extremely persuasive in showing Willentz's somwhat gauzy rationales for Hillary as being cut from the same insufficient gauze that Wilentz takes on in those he cites praising Obama.
- basman
December 22, 2007 at 12:32am
Wilentz's piece attacks PUNDITS for their swooning treatment of Obama's instincts, hence Zengerle, a pundit's, partial defense here.
But as I see it, this is precisely where Wilentz's critique of Obama falls apart. His argument may be outlined as a syllogism:
A. President Bush places inordinate value on his own instincts.
B. Prior to his election in 2000 the MSM placed inordinate value on President Bush's instincts.
C. The MSM now places inordinate value on Obama's instincts.
D. Bush's presidency is a disaster.
Ergo, Instincts are of little value to a president and a hypothetical Obama presidency may be as disasterous as Bush's.
Yet the conclusion, the second part of it at least, doesn't follow from the premises. Bush's problem is that HE HIMSELF places inordinate value on instinctual decision-making. Nowhere in Wilentz's critique does he present any evidence that Obama is himself over-enamored of his own gut. And while certain Talkbackers--I'm thinking of the Biden, McCain, FP-obsessed teplukhin2you--mount reasonable arguments to the effect that nothing in Obama's biography in any way qualifies him uniquely for the foreign policy challenges of the presidency, I think tep oversells the notion that a president must know a second language or have lived overseas to lead effectively on FP/Defense.
At risk of repeating myself, Bush's problem has been that he was ignorant of the larger world and yet believed that he could overcome this ignorance with his gut. No one has presented any evidence to me that Obama suffers from any such delusion.
- aeromonas
December 22, 2007 at 11:44pm