The declining political currency of outrage,Part I: The Taking of Umbrage

For the duration of the recent -- for a while, seemingly interminable -- election season, the day-to-day coverage of the cable news-ish punditocracy was dominated by discussion and analysis of a blow-by-blow succession of statements, gestures and reactions, usually embodied by the candidates themselves, whether on 'the stump' or in a television studio, and sometimes simply written-up in a press release in rapid-fire fashion.

Some examples. Criticisms and denunciations: 'Senator McCain strongly criticized Senator Obama for his tax plan, ridiculing it as "socialism"'; 'Senator Obama's campaign shortly thereafter fired back, releasing a statement denouncing Senator McCain's allegations as "more smear tactics from the Karl Rove playbook.'" And, of course, the 'gaffes', the 'favorability ratings', 'raised questions about', etc. That kind of thing.

My favorite of these gestures, by a landslide, was umbrage-taking. It was at once among the most frequently cited gestures on the campaign trail and easily the most ill-defined. It often seemed simply to be imaginary. You were never quite sure who it was who was taking the umbrage, and on whose behalf. Nobody ever announces himself as having 'taken umbrage'. He just takes it!

In fact, it almost has more to do with what you don't do than with what you do, in fact, do. After The New Yorker ran its inscrutable cover portraying Senator and Mrs. Obama as black-power activists/terrorists/Muslims/whatever -- and by the way, re that cover: yes, of course we 'got' that it was an attempt at parody...the trouble is that that's not the same as it actually being funny -- Obama's campaign released a statement denouncing the cover as being in poor taste. But the denunciation was worded vaguely, if with all requisite rhetorical passion. And Obama himself didn't seem to personally care all that much about it, soon thereafter going on the record saying that it wasn't really a big deal.

This is leading me to a couple of points which foreshadow the meatier portions of this discussion (which will follow when I post Part Two):

Despite the near-constant perceived and actual taking of umbrage that occurred throughout the campaign, neither McCain nor Obama were all that convincing about it. It's almost like they were going through the motions. I think that in McCain's case it was unconvincing because he was bullshitting us, and McCain -- despite having tried repeatedly to the point of embarrassing himself and everyone else during his weird campaign -- has never been a good bullshitter. By contrast, in Obama's case, I think that the minimizing of umbrage-taking was part and parcel of the political and rhetorical values on which his campaign was based.

It's not that Obama undertook so lofty and impractical a goal as to transcend the tit-for-tat politics of ridiculing the other guy and taking umbrage when he tries to ridicule you. If you think that either Obama's campaign or his nascent administration contains so much as a speck of the impractical, you're ignoring all available evidence. No: the aspirational aspect of Obama, his espousal of our nation's founding principles and his articulation of the dream of achieving better future, this is not pie-in the sky idealism. Rather, it represents specifically the undercutting of the assumed and unquestioned antimonies between our capacities and our ideals.

One of the practical methods by which Obama undercuts these polarities is encapsulated in my final observation in this post: the difference between Obama's style of umbrage-taking and that of Former President Bill Clinton.* Clinton's style was to make his critics look bigger and meaner and more sinister than they already were**, in effect garnering the sympathy and support of the electorate, or anyway of the slight majority of it that was in his camp.

Clinton demonized his enemies and inflated the scurrilousness of their charges and tactics, in effect shoring up support from 'his side', but simultaneously enraging and radicalizing his opposition. Obama's style is exactly the opposite. He deflates the scurrilousness embedded intentionally in the rhetorical excesses of his opposition (of which, lest we forget, there was tons of the most reprehensible and even dangerous sort imaginable). Instead of demonizing his opposition, he stares it down, as though the would-be demon is revealed to be nothing more than shadows in the bedroom of a child afraid of the dark.

People sided with Clinton because he was needy of our attention and our love; he needed us to prop him up against the mean bullies who were out to get him. People side with Obama precisely because he doesn't need a babysitter to watch over him. We are drawn to him not because he needs us, but because we need him. And when it comes down to it (and part of Obama's brilliance is that he recognizes this even when many of us fail to), we don't need him because he's Barack Obama.

We need him because he's an adult.

Think that's small beans? Not if you consider that the last three decades -- and, arguably, the last half century -- has placed us under the leadership of whiny, needy children.

In comparison to Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush Junior, Barack Obama is not only an adult, but he is a paragon of practicality. Think about it. How many things can you name that are more juvenile, more pie-in-the-sky/fantasy than:

• "Star Wars" (aka: Strategic Defense Initiative)
• "trickle-down economics,"
• "a thousand points of light,"
• "the era of big government is over,"
• "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,"
• "Ownership Society,"
• "Mission Accomplished,"
• "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,"
• "No one anticipated the breach of the levies,"
• "We do not torture"....

.... ??

I rest my case. Part Two of this item, coming up.



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* And actually, during the primary, Hillary perfected a style of umbrage-taking that was -- adjusted for constituency, gender and political climate -- taken straight from of her husband's playbook.

** Although, to be fair, among many of his critics, certain GOP gadflies and thugs, Clinton's characterizations of them proved prophetic and even tame. Ken Starr, for instance. What a weaselly little motherfucker that slight, puffed-up specimen of grandiose Bible-Belt foppery turned out to be!

Nursing My Champagne Hangover...

What a time to find oneself living in Chicago.

J and I were varying degrees of sick with colds yesterday and therefore didn't venture down to Grant Park for the festivities. But nestled within the cozy confines of our humble Hyde Park digs, the city's excitement -- and reverence and awe -- was palpable. Of course, despite our colds, we just had to celebrate with a bottle of bubbly. Celebrations, cheers, cars horns honking and/or being honked lulled us to our slumber, our disbelief at what had happened still intact.

Today, the commute to work. Chicago's spirit of neighborliness and goodwill continues to pervade in the fuzzy Indian summer sun. On the bus and on the streets, back in Hyde Park and in the Loop, in the areas surrounding Grant Park. Faces speak volumes: a brand new text or a dusty text long forgotten. Where there was awe, there is now relief, a kind of basking in the moment's sunshiny serenity. Yes, it's really true; the albatross is off our back.

For one night, the City of Chicago was the focal point of the world's attention. Part of President-Elect* Obama's genius is that the focal point really was an entire city -- and, by extension, an entire nation and an entire world -- and not Obama himself. I mean, okay, obviously he was the figure of interest on the occasion of his acceptance speech. However: each and every one of Obama's communicative faculties, his body language, the content and music and resonances of his language and of his ideas, every power he summoned in the course of that speech was engaged in absorbing the enthusiasm of the entire, breathless City of Chicago, feeding this enthusiasm through his brilliant, tired mind, and returning the same enthusiasm, refashioned with elegance, finesse and sincerity.

This, by the way, is one of the most important of the myriad differences between Barack Obama and John McCain: for all of his confidence and even cockiness, Obama speaks with greatest authority about the American people and the future of this country.

By contrast, throughout his rambling, mean-spirited and at times pathetic campaign, McCain was able to speak with authority about one thing and one thing alone: John McCain.


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* You have to keep saying it to remind yourself that it's really true.

Transcript of Colin Powell's Oct. 19 Obama endorsement.

I'm tardy in getting to this, but behold -- if you've not yet done -- Four-Star General Colin Powell, in a moment of eloquence. Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press on October 19, Powell endorsed Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States. Powell, recall, was and is a steadfast Republican, having served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and as Secretary of State under George W. Bush.

Powell's most recent act of significance had been making the Bush Administration's case for the invasion of Iraq before an assembly of the United Nations on February 5, 2003. His case had, of course, been based upon the notion that Iraq presented an imminent threat to world peace, in that it was close to obtaining 'weapons of mass destruction'. That this notion was based upon faulty, patchy and forged evidence was clear for all to see in a matter of weeks.

Anyway, Powell's done much to redeem himself, I think, with this Obama endorsement. Not simply because it was he who made the endorsement (although that's not to be sneezed at), but because he stated his case so eloquently. Excerpt:

In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate.

Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration. I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

So, when I look at all of this and I think back to my Army career, we've got two individuals, either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.

Read or watch the entire endorsement on MSNBC's Web site.

CAN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TRUST JOHN McCAIN??? *

* Yeah, well....I mean, the answer's no, the American People can't.

All right, Hitch, you did the right thing in the end.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Christopher Hitchens endorsed Obama a few days ago, despite having previously -- inanely -- acted as cheerleader for the Palin/McCain freak show. For a number of years now, it has ceased to matter what Hitchens has had to say. I say that and yet, I had expressed -- in less than gentlemanly terms -- my dismay when Hitchens sleep-walked his way through a preposterous hatchet-job against Obama in a recent installment of his column in Slate. So I guess it must matter, at least a little bit.

So, I'll give credit where credit is due. Hitchens concludes his article with three paragraphs that I believe articulate the moral necessity of voting for Obama in this election, irrespective of which section of the political spectrum you occupy in normal times. Because McCain is really that unhinged, Palin is really that vapid and idiotic, and the times are not normal.

Moreover, given the interventionist economic measures pursued by our Republican White House, the huge deficits for which Bush is responsible (like his father and Reagan before him), anyone who espouses a "free market" ideology will have to look elsewhere than the Republican Party this year for their candidate. so these laissez faire types may as well line up behind such conservatives as Hitchens, David Brooks, George Will, and, satisfyingly, Christopher Buckley (son, of course, of William F., and who has, as a consequence, parted ways with the National Review, the publication his father founded), and make the only morally tenable decision available to them when they're inside the voting booth.

Anyway, here are Hitchens's concluding paragraphs, in which he doesn't mince words:

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

Read the rest of Hitchens's endorsement, in Slate.

Citing McCain's "boiling moralism & bottomless reservoir of certitude," conservative George Will questions McCain's fitness to occupy Oval Office.

A recent Crib From This post discussed the growing number of conservative journalists and Republican politicians who have expressed serious reservations about supporting McCain or have withdrawn their support outright. On last Sunday's This Week on ABC, longstanding conservative columnist/commentator George Will described McCain's recent behavior as "unpresidential," concluding that "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful."

Will reaffirms his criticisms of McCain's temperament and character in today's Washington Post:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama. ....

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)....

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases." ....

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

This is not mild criticism. That it comes from perhaps the most stalwart, respected and intellectually honest figure in American conservatism is a significant development. I mean, seriously. If George Will is starting to lean toward supporting Obama, it means there's hope that pretty much any conservative -- even my parents -- could be convinced to support the Democratic candidate in November.