Trouble in Liberal Paradise. Dear Mr. Obama, where's the beef?
Liberal Values has some of the best blog-based political analyses out there, and it's almost got me convinced to back Obama, however, there's growing trouble in paradise for Obama. Liberal Values of late has been expending a lot of sweat and bytes defending Obama from a well-coordinated Clinton attack campaign, e.g.,
Eric Zorn Exposes Clinton Lies:
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn also argues that The Clintons are Lying About Obama’s Remarks on Reagan. Don’t miss his quiz at the end . . .
Why Bill Clinton Has Spent The Last Several Days Spreading Lies:
As I just posted, Factcheck.org has supported Obama in debunking the falsifications from Hillary Clinton on the Ronald Reagan matter in last night’s debate. Earlier in the day Eugene Robinson had similar comments defending Obama while also suggesting why Bill Clinton might be so upset . . .
Factcheck.org Verifies Obama Side of the Reagan Controversy:
Factcheck.org has reviewed the debates and, as usual, found that all the candidates made statements which can be questioned. The ones which were the most significant regarded the distortions of Obama’s statement on Ronald Reagan by Hillary Clinton. This includes two distortions, the first regarding Obama and Republican ideas . . .
Fact Checking the South Carolina Debate:
The South Carolina debate got heated (as seen in the above video) but primarily covered material which has already been discussed in recent posts. I’ll briefly summarize some of the key controversies with links to further material. (Obama also responded to similar issues on Good Morning America with video posted here. Many of these issues were also reviewed by The Washington Post, which I discussed in this post) . . .
Liberal Values and other Obama supporters are doing Yeoman's work in defending Obama with expert and exceptionally well executed parrys, beats, remises and ripostes -- but they're so involved in a heated pitched battle that I'm afraid they don't really understand why they're forced into this kind of battle at all.
I really want to believe in Obama — in fact, for me, I love it if he was really another Bill Clinton (and the GOP was in charge of the house and senate. That’s what made the 90’s so great, but that’s going off topic here).
The problem Liberal Values and other Obama supporters are overlooking is a fundamental weakness with Obama: the Clintons are aware of it -- and they’re taking maximum advantage of it. It all comes down to the question: “Dear Mr. Obama — where’s the beef?”
David Boaz at Cato.org posted this astute observation on the Cato-At-Liberty.Org blog called Where’s the Beef?
Sen. Barack Obama has excited the national media, Andrew Sullivan, young voters, and 38 percent of Iowa Democrats with his message of “change” and “hope” and “becoming one people, the United States of America.” It makes for a great speech. But I’m reminded of what the Democratic establishment candidate, Walter Mondale, said to insurgent Gary Hart after Hart did well in the 1984 Iowa caucuses with a campaign of “new ideas”: Where’s the beef?
Now, Obama hasn't been deaf, dumb, and mute over questions of public policy. His campaign web site has as many policy ideas as a Bill Clinton State of the Union Address. But, let’s face it, they’re pretty much the same ideas (Boaz continues):
[Obama proposes] more taxes, more spending, more government help to scratch every itch a voter might have. He’s got more subsidies for workers who lose their jobs because of international competition, more subsidies for research and jobs and energy technology and broadband access and rural schools, more federal support for labor unions, and much much more.
To help borrowers and employees, he proposes more regulations on lenders, credit card issuers, and employers. These would, of course, make lending and hiring more expensive, so fewer people would be hired, and their wages would be lower, and borrowing on credit cards and mortages would be more costly.
Whether it's true or not, Boaz concludes with I think how Obama is perceived relative to Hillary:
But my main point here is, these are the same policies that Sen. Hillary Clinton proposes. So what’s so new? In what way does Obama offer “change” or “hope” or something different from ”the same kind of partisan battling we had in the ’90s”? Where’s the beef?
Now, Liberal Values and other Obama supporters can argue with me about all this, about how similar or different Obama & Hillary are from each other, but if Obama was really, REALLY, that different -- would these Clinton attacks be so effectively distracting?
Everybody, it seems to me, is spending a lot of time defending Obama, clarifying what he really meant, what he really said.
The whole debate, the whole dialog is now on the Clintons' terms . . . not because they’re so powerful, such good liars (they are, of course), but because Obama hasn't really distinguished himself as something new. Maybe he is something really new, but it’s not getting across and now it’s left him vulnerable, and the Clintons, I believe, see this and they're using it.
Obama needs to nip this “where’s the beef” problem in the bud, or the race is going to continue to get a lot tougher, and the GOP has yet to even get into the ring . . .
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Anyone who would browse the Obama website will find plenty of substance to his ideas. This was the same as in the 1984 Hart campaign. Read on:
Denver Post
Opinion
Where's the beef?
By Dan Haley
Article Last Updated: 01/05/2008 07:18:54 PM MST
Shuffling through some old files in the office last week, I stumbled upon a yellowed clipping from The Futurist that someone from The Past had tucked away in a manila folder.
The piece was titled "The Future of the Democratic Party," and was dated December 1981. Democrats had just weathered the Reagan Revolution. Not only was a Republican elected president a year earlier, but Democrats lost their generation-long grip on the Senate.
They were searching for answers.
"Democrats need . . . to regain their own positive political vision," wrote then-Sen. Gary Hart, who was settling in to his second Senate term and scratching out the first of two presidential bids.
"Clearly, we can't do this by focusing first on the Republicans and then designing our own agenda in reaction to them. The party's future lies in the creation and articulation of a positive - not reactive - agenda."
Sounds like good advice for today's Democrats and Republicans.
The Hart piece was a fascinating read, given that we're now officially mired in high political season, where too often glitzy campaign ads, celebrity stumpers and soaring rhetoric substitute for substance and new ideas.
His piece was incredibly prescient, predicting exactly the issues we're faced with today.
The essay dropped, literally, onto my lap on the eve of the Iowa caucus. Ironic, since it was in Iowa 24 years ago that this unknown senator gained a national foothold by finishing a surprising second to front-runner Walter Mondale.
He did it by pitching new ideas that he thought would drive the country forward - an ingredient too often missing from today's Iowa debates.
With more than four days between Iowa and New Hampshire back then, Hart was able to use that momentum to upset the veep in N.H., shaking up the race for good. Mondale, though, somehow got away with criticizing Hart's ideas as empty, vague rhetoric. "Where's the beef?" Mondale deadpanned, proving, again, that easy slogans can win over substance.
The beef was there, had anyone looked. Hart outlined three issues in his essay that the United States would face in the 1980s: national defense, energy and economic revitalization.
While he whiffed on defense, considering how the Cold War would end - "We must never cease reminding Americans that an unrestrained nuclear arms race makes us weaker, not stronger" - his words on energy and the economy were striking.
He called energy independence a national security issue: "We cannot regain a clear vision of America's role in the world until we free ourselves from dependence on oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region," he wrote. "Until then, we risk being drawn into a vain, futile war for oil."
He backed an aggressive conservation program, and investment in renewable energy sources.
He also spotted the rapid growth of the country's high-tech sector: "We have concerned ourselves with shoring up aging industries . . . Our tax policy rewards investment in physical equipment, yet offers no similar incentive for investment in the human capital that drives our 'information economy.' "
Reading it begged the question: Is there a candidate out there today with such a clear vision of the future? And could he or she even articulate such a vision in our world of sound bites and slogans?
Hart couldn't do it 1984, but at least the more drawn-out process then allowed him to campaign all the way to the convention floor, where he would seal his front-runner status for a later bid.
Today's front-loaded caucus and primary system seems only to benefit the candidate with the money and organization, not the big ideas.
Where's the beef?
We may no longer have the time, or patience, to find out.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
Hey Tomas -- thanks for posting this. I agree wholeheartedly that the "future lies in the creation and articulation of a positive - not reactive - agenda," and there is substance in Obama's vision.
The question is (and I don't know the answer really): is Obama's substance substantially different from Hillary's? Or Bill's? In what way does he really offer REAL change?
Most people seem to want that, judging by Obama's poll standings, but -- can he really deliver?
- Cheers,
Christopher