Hypocrisy and the Damage Done

If anyone confuses me with a George W. Bush supporter, I can only conclude that person

• doesn't know me, or
• hasn't read much in this blog.

Perhaps (or maybe that should be probably) both.

After all, Bush was still president when I wrote that his actions in office needed to be investigated.

I still believe that to be true, but, after revisiting that particular post, I feel I need to amend what I said — if only to make what I feel are somewhat obvious points about hypocrisy.

I'm not saying that Barack Obama was dishonest about his intentions in Iraq — but he has been, at the very least, inconsistent in what he has said.

On the surface, Obama appeared to be gracious toward his predecessor when he said, in his speech informing the public that he had fulfilled his pledge to end all combat operations in Iraq, "[N]o one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security," and he went on to observe that "there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it."

But there has long been a rising chorus in America of people who believed that the Bush administration (the president and all the others whose names will be forever linked to this tragedy) lied to the people to further its own agenda. And one of those voices had been Obama's.

In the now–forgotten days before the economic implosion, Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq and his desire to end American military involvement there was one of the main things that drew voters to him, not unlike Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy against LBJ four decades before.

It may be hard to remember now, but the campaigns for both parties' presidential nominations were conducted with the unpopular Iraq war as the backdrop, not the economy.

"There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq," Obama told an audience in Ohio during the 2008 presidential campaign, "until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

Hmmmm. Seems to me Obama was asserting on that occasion (and on others in the spring of 2008) that both Bush and McCain had been guilty of lying when they pressed Congress for the authority to invade Iraq.

After all, the primary reason for going to war (which has long been discredited) was the alleged existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, weapons that supposedly were aimed at America, ready to launch at a second's notice. And those allusions to mushroom clouds from folks like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al., drove that message home.

And, because Al Qaeda was such an emotional subject for most Americans in the months immediately following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the proponents of a war with Iraq tossed around the suggestion that Al Qaeda had used Iraq as a base of operations. That, too, proved to be false.

But, without those two arrows in their quiver at that time, the so–called neocons never could have frightened the American public — or the American Congress — into going along with them.

Lying about the reasons for launching an invasion doesn't seem very patriotic to many Americans — especially Americans who were passionate about their opposition to the war (and believed their opposition was a valid expression of their own patriotism) and yet were slandered as unpatriotic by those who supported the war.

How do you suppose they feel when they hear Obama praise Bush's "love of country" in connection with the Iraqi operation?

Does it seem hypocritical to you?

Hypocrisy isn't an easy thing to confront, is it? Of course, no one is perfect, but Eugene Robinson, an Obama enabler from the Washington Post who complains that American voters are petulant "spoiled brats" who are ready to turn over the Congress to a party they loathe because Democrats haven't produced improvements fast enough to suit them, frets that what voters appear all but certain to do in November makes no sense.

Actually, in the context of the American experience, it does make sense. At the very least, it is consistent. In the midterm campaigns of 1982 and 1994, respectively, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton repeatedly reminded the voters that they had inherited bad economies.

And surveys showed that the majority of respondents agreed with Reagan and Clinton — but the voters had moved on. They weren't thinking about who started the fire. They were thinking about who had been chosen to extinguish the fire. And, in both cases, that had not been done.

Robinson doesn't think it is fair, and maybe it isn't. But what does fair have to do with it? It's the way American voters have behaved as long as I can remember. It shouldn't surprise anyone.

I'm inclined to think Robinson makes a valuable point when he says Obama can "point to any number of occasions on which he has told Americans that getting our nation back on track is a long–range project." Yet, in the very same column, Robinson admits that, when he was running for president, Obama's "campaign stump speech ended with the exhortation, 'Let's go change the world' — not 'Let's go change the world slowly and incrementally, waiting years before we see the fruits of our labor.' "

And that's the point. Obama raised the bar for himself by making "change" the centerpiece of his campaign. And his words had an urgency, an almost revolutionary sound, to them.

Now, not only is change coming too slowly for some, most can't agree on what kind of change the campaign was really about (and, therefore, the Obama presidency should be about).

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Obama campaigned under the banner of change, and change is what the voters expected. If the voters can't see it, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It might mean it isn't the kind of change they expected, or there hasn't been enough of it to make a difference in their lives.

It may well be true, as some have suggested, that some economic indicators are doing better and that this is a stubborn economy — and that, even though it will be years before most Americans see any change in their health care, it is a landmark achievement (that could well be repealed if the other party takes legislative power in a few months) — but real change, the kind that makes a positive difference in people's lives, is hard for many to see, especially when the latest report from the Labor Department showed unemployment moving back up in the direction of 10%.

Perhaps that explains why Gallup reports finding that less than 40% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy. And, while Obama may be proud of passing health care reform legislation, he would be wise not to bring it up too much if Gallup is right. His handling of that issue is only marginally more popular than his handling of the economy (Gallup's finding, by the way, is confirmed by CNN polling, which tends to be more pro–Democrat than the typically neutral Gallup).

Some voters continue to take it on faith that the economy is getting better and blame the previous administration for all their difficulties, and Obama eagerly embraces that approach, as other presidents have.

But it just seems hypocritical to me that the same man who, in the days before his inauguration, urged his countrymen to look to the future instead of the past by investigating his predecessor's actions in office — who launched his presidential campaign with an eloquent plea for taking responsibility ("We've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We are distracted from our real failures and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants, and as people have looked away in frustration and disillusionment, we know who has filled the void") — now excuses his own failings by reminding people, at every opportunity, who was in office when the recession began.

And then he praises his predecessor's patriotism as he concludes a war that predecessor began.

This isn't exactly what I would call an "alternate history." If you're looking for something like that, may I recommend David Brooks' piece in the New York Times this week?

While his column rightfully could be considered an example of Monday morning quarterbacking, Brooks does suggest a plausible scenario in which the prospects for the midterm elections wouldn't be as dire for the Democrats — even if the employment numbers were fundamentally unchanged.

American voters may seem like petulant children to Robinson, but the lessons one learns from childhood do have a staying power all their own. They can continue to guide one's steps in adulthood.

And, while I may seem blase about the concept of being fair, I do understand that desire for fairness, justice and all that — and the bitterness one can feel when fair treatment has been denied.

I recall that, when I was about 6, I found myself in a situation in which the people around me were discussing something of which I knew nothing. I don't remember the specifics — or what I opted to do in that situation except that, whatever I did, it must have backfired on me because I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother.

(For some reason, I think this incident involved a discussion some of my peers were having about a TV program. But not everyone had a TV in those days, and it seems to me that, at the time, my family didn't have a TV set, so I knew nothing about TV programs. I probably felt left out of the conversation and decided to change the subject to something I knew about — resulting in a predictable outcome.)

Anyway, Mom told me there would be times in my life when the people around me would be discussing something in which I had no interest or knowledge to contribute to the conversation. In such situations, she told me, there were three things I could do. I could

• ignore the feelings of those I am with and change the subject to something I feel more comfortable talking about,
• try to contribute to the conversation, even though I have nothing to add to it, thereby embarrassing myself and wasting the others' time, or
• be respectful of those who are talking and remain silent.

She told me the third option was the best. And, although I don't remember the specifics of the incident that led to this conversation, I still remember what she told me: "Show courtesy and respect for others, and wait your turn."

I loved my mother very much, and I always wanted to please her. I don't recall if her answer made sense to me at the time, but it made sense to her, and that was all I needed to know.

As I think back on moments from my childhood, it occurs to me that I accepted many of the things Mom told me on face value. I didn't always understand the things she told me or the advice she gave me — and, in that case, I may well have been equally influenced, even if I didn't realize it, by the admonition that supposedly came from Mark Twain that "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" — but if she believed it, I believed it, too.

I guess I should have asked more questions, though, because there have been times since Mom died when I have wondered if the sense of justice and fair play that she passed along to me might have been somewhat askew. Or maybe I've just applied her lessons wrong.

I know of at least one occasion about five or six years ago when I was having lunch with a group, and the women in the group were discussing something to which I had nothing to contribute. I don't remember now what the subject was, only that it was something I knew nothing about.

I was in a situation I had neither foreseen nor prepared for. I was also sensitive to traditional gender roles, and I was aware of the issues that always exist just beneath the surface, even if they aren't spoken out loud. I didn't want to trample on anyone's feet. And there were other factors at work as well.

So Mom's advice kicked in. I sat there in silence. I thought I was being courteous and respectful. Apparently, it wasn't taken that way. I say "apparently" not because any of the women in the group ever showed me the courtesy of telling me that my silence had been offensive to them in any way but because one of them told someone else — and he told me.

I've been paying the price for my "transgression" ever since. So much, I suppose, for the sense of fair play and justice in which I believed since I was a child.

Well, that's on a very small (albeit personal) scale. And it may not be entirely applicable.

Maybe I would have gotten the same response if I had said something stupid or insisted on changing the subject. Considering what I have long known of these people who have crucified me ever since for remaining silent, I was in a no–win situation. I believe there was nothing I could have done that would have been right in their eyes, even if I had had hours to carefully consider my options because nothing I have ever said or done has been right in their eyes.

I guess the moral for a president, who faces more demanding critics, is that there are times — especially when the economy sucks — when a president is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Maybe it's like the moral I always drew from "Short Cuts," Robert Altman's film of several Raymond Carver stories that eventually intersect.

One of those stories dealt with a young boy who was hit by a car being driven by a woman who was distracted by her personal problems. The woman tried to persuade the boy to let her take him to his home, but he seemed OK and, because his mother had always told him never to accept a ride with strangers, he politely refused her offer and insisted he was all right.

But he wasn't. Apparently, he had severe injuries that became more and more apparent after he got home. He fell into a coma and was rushed to the hospital, where he eventually died. His parents spent virtually every waking moment by his side.

Meanwhile, a baker who had been commissioned to bake a cake for the boy's upcoming birthday grew angrier and angrier as the days passed and no one came to pick up the special order (and pay him for all his hard work). The baker, knowing nothing of what had happened to the boy, began making harassing, anonymous calls to the parents' home.

It's always seemed to me that the moral was that life would be a lot simpler and things would turn out a lot better if people knew the whole story before they jumped to conclusions (as neatly as such conclusions may fit their particular world view).

The baker probably wouldn't have made those calls if he had known the family was facing a crisis. And that crisis might have been avoided if the boy had realized that, when his mother told him not to accept rides with strangers, she didn't mean to turn down a ride from someone who has hit you with her car and wants to make sure you are all right.

For that matter, the driver of the car never knew the fatal consequences of her inattentiveness. She told her husband about the incident, but she believed it had been a narrow escape.

Anyway, the grieving parents put two and two together and confronted the baker about the phone calls. When he learned what had happened to the boy, he regretted making the calls and tried to do what he could to make amends for his behavior, offering them some of his freshly baked rolls. "You should eat something at a time like this," he said. And they accepted his offering, perhaps more as a courtesy than because they were hungry.

And the rolls were good. I haven't read all of Carver's short stories, but I have read that one — eventually, I'd like to read the others that were brought to the screen in Altman's movie — and it describes the reassuring flavor of the rolls and the soothing warmth of the kitchen. The parents had not asked for the rolls, but they were good and the parents were grateful for the baker's act of kindness.

But the baker couldn't give the parents the one thing they did ask for. When the mother asked if she could see the cake he had made for her son, he had to confess that he had thrown it away.

And maybe that really is the moral of the story.

Sometimes the damage is done. Sometimes it is too late to know the whole story — or for that knowledge to make a difference.

Where the Wild Things Are

David Brooks writes, in the New York Times, about "the Obama slide."

If it isn't obvious what the "Obama slide" is, Brooks is writing about the president's sharp decline in public opinion polls.

My friends often remind me that polls are not infallible. I agree with that. In fact, I have often pointed out that polls are nothing more than snapshots of public opinion at a particular moment, but the science of polling has improved greatly over the decades, and I have found some (but certainly not all) of the polls to be valid.

Current polls offer lessons that Obama and his supporters would be wise to heed. The president's "slide" need not be permanent, but a certain amount of flexibility is required.

Brooks' column is worth reading in its entirety. It provides plenty of insight, which may be helpful for bewildered Obama supporters who can't understand why "The One" has fallen from favor so quickly with so many.

Take heart. Brooks feels your pain. "All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs," Brooks writes, "but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast."

And, as Brooks goes on to say, "Anxiety is now pervasive." Much of that can be laid at the doorstep of Obama's political adversaries, who have been guilty of using all kinds of scare tactics against not only the health care reform plan but other Obama initiatives as well.

But there is no reason for those on the left to feel smug or superior. They were not above resorting to emotional appeals to further their own causes when the right wing was in charge.

That's probably a significant part of the reason why, as Brooks observes, "[o]ver the first months of this year, the number of people who called themselves either Democrats or Republicans declined, while the number who called themselves independents surged ahead."

Brooks encounters resistance from one of the left wing's most virulent defenders, the Daily Kos, which calls Brooks' column "especially vile and dishonest," even though, as far as I can tell, Brooks is merely offering constructive criticism that can help Obama restore some of the luster his presidency has lost in recent months. The Daily Kos may be reluctant to admit it now, but last spring, Brooks supported Obama so much that Jennifer Rubin was prompted to lament in Commentary that "[Obama] lost David Brooks" over the budget. I took issue with the idea that Obama "lost" Brooks merely because he asked questions from a centrist's perspective.

The Daily Kos' rant also seems to me to be an indicator why TIME labeled it one of the "most overrated blogs." I would add to that that the Daily Kos has an over–inflated opinion of itself.

There doesn't seem to be any room in the political debate for centrists anymore. It seems to me that both sides have adopted the Bush doctrine of "you're either with us or against us." Need more details? Feel compelled to ask questions? Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out for you.

I must say, though, that the campaign against the health care reform plan has been particularly vitriolic — with talk of "death panels" and armed opponents going to rallies while other opponents, instead of carrying guns, have carried signs equating Obama to Hitler.

That is clearly an emotional appeal. I doubt that anyone who has spent any time studying the Nazis' rise to power can make make a convincing, fact–based case that Obama and the Nazi fascists have anything in common.

I certainly understand the suspicion that many have about centralized government. It is a concern that goes back to the earliest days of the republic, and fear of it intensified with the passage of the stimulus package. Right wingers recognized that fear and, realizing they could capitalize on it, fanned the flames with their scare tactics on health care.

But will it be any better if Republicans make big gains in Congress next year? Will it be better if 2010 turns out to be like 1994, with Republicans taking control of Congress?

After the 1994 elections, Bill Clinton moved more to the middle, which helped him win re–election but didn't necessarily help his party in the 1996 congressional campaigns.

Could Obama, who appears to be more committed to left–wing causes, as well as less pragmatic, than Clinton, move far enough to the middle to be re–elected if Democrats lose a lot of ground in the Congress in 2010? Even if Democrats retain a majority in Congress, will it be better if 2012 brings a Republican capture of the White House?

That's a tough one for me. In my lifetime, it seems that things have worked better for the country when government was divided, when one party held the White House and the other party controlled Congress. If a Republican is elected president in 2012, my guess is that, if Democratic lawmakers still hold the majority in Congress, they will be just as obstructionist as Republican lawmakers have been in the first seven months of this year.

I can remember when lawmakers in this country were civil to each other, in spite of opposing views. I'm afraid we may have laid to rest the last of the cordial lawmakers Saturday when Ted Kennedy was buried. Say what you will about Kennedy's politics, but when they held his funeral mass in Boston, TV cameras picked up the likes of John McCain and Phil Gramm in the audience. Kennedy, as his oldest son said, was a pragmatist. He knew how to work with folks with whom he disagreed.

Now the wild things have been turned loose.

At a time when legislators on both sides of the aisle need to be reaching out to each other and pulling together, it's turned into a vicious game of tug–o–war instead.

And, if the polls are correct, many Americans who voted for Obama in the hope that he would bring real change to Washington are now saying — as the dying Mercutio said to the feuding Capulets and Montagues — "a plague on both your houses."

The Center Cannot Hold

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"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

William Butler Yeats
"The Second Coming," written in 1919

---

I am reminded of Yeats' apocalyptic poem — written 90 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of World War I — after reading an intriguing column by David Brooks in the New York Times.

Brooks, who calls himself a "moderate-conservative," writes that, while there are things that moderates like about the Obama administration's direction, there are aspects that give moderates pause.

"Uh Oh — He Lost David Brooks," says the headline on Jennifer Rubin's entry at Contentions, Commentary magazine's blog. Does it necessarily follow, logically, that, because Brooks has the audacity to ask questions, Obama "lost" his support?

Rubin writes that this defection, if you want to call it that, is "not quite LBJ losing Walter Cronkite on the Vietnam War," but it may be bad enough. Indeed, it may be, if Obama and his true-blue supporters are not open-minded enough to recognize this for what it is.

Some on the left say the stimulus package was too small and that the administration was too concerned with bipartisanship. Some on the right say it was too much.

Those on the left, who now hold the balance of power in this country, accuse those who disagree with them of being racists because the president is black (well, actually, biracial). This is a case of playing the race card. It is similar, in many ways, to the tactic used by those on the right, when they held power a few years ago and accused those who disagreed with them of not being patriotic enough. That was the patriot card.

Neither card is justified except in extreme circumstances. They are used, it seems to me, to obscure uncomfortable problems and thoughtful questions. The fact that someone finds fault in some of Obama's proposals does not make that person racist, just as the fact that someone expressed concerns about the wisdom of invading Iraq did not make that person unpatriotic.

I do not mean to suggest that some of Obama's critics are not racists, nor do I mean that some of those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were not unpatriotic. But they are/were the exceptions to the rule. And those negative labels are/were applied by a mob mentality instead of trying to answer serious questions that had been raised.

The outrage that has been expressed recently about a cartoon in the New York Post and a book display at a Barnes & Noble in Florida is merely the tip of the iceberg, like the outrage that was aimed at French fries during the hysteria of the patriot card a few years ago. They are mere symbols, and, as George Carlin once said, I prefer to leave symbols to the symbol-minded.

Just as it was when the patriot card was being played, those of us in the center feel that important issues are being swept under the rug.

Not everyone looks at things through the alarming prisms of unemployment and foreclosure. The majority of Americans continue to live lives of apparent security. They go to work each day for the same employer whose paychecks have kept food on their tables for many years. They sleep under the same roofs that have kept them safe and dry for those same years.

They may not realize it, but they are the fortunate ones. Nevertheless, their security can be gone in the wink of an eye, like the hundreds of thousands of people who perished in the tsunami the day after Christmas in 2004.

I consider myself a centrist. And I have wondered about many of the things that Brooks writes about in his column. It isn't that I disagree with many of the proposals. But I vacillate between wondering if we aren't trying to do too much too soon (and spending too much to do it) and wondering if we're doing enough to address the urgent problems posed by the recession.

If one does not speak constantly in glowing terms about Obama, does that make that person a racist? No. Does that make me a racist? Hardly. Does that mean Obama has "lost" me? Hardly. It means I have questions that, to this point, have not been answered.

In fact, the liberal frenzy over Obama often reminds me of the conservative frenzy of the 1980s, when having a hero to love (Reagan) required the existence of an enemy to hate.

When people can no longer feel free to ask questions in America, this is no longer the America in which I was brought up. It is an alien land.

I heard on the radio yesterday that saving is up. That would have been good news a few years ago, but today it means that people are saving their money instead of spending it, which will not help revive the economy. Consumer spending is the fuel of the economy.

If consumers are not spending, employers have no reason to hire more workers. Indeed, they have even more reason to let workers go. It is not racist for the unemployed to wonder how they can find work as long as economic conditions are killing off jobs, not creating them. If you need more evidence of this, just wait until this Friday, when the latest jobless report comes out. It is a vicious downward spiral that will not stop until those who are still employed put aside their fears and put some of their money into circulation. What is the government doing to encourage this?

I'd like to see the folks on the left working with the folks on the right to solve the problems that threaten not just this country but the rest of the world. Everything is interconnected. But we can't fix everything at once, and, as Yeats warned, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

And the center surely will not hold as long as the left and the right insist on pointing fingers at each other.

The Challenge of Picking a Running Mate

David Brooks of the New York Times neatly summarizes the problem faced by both Barack Obama and John McCain in picking their running mates.

And he has a solution for both men.

"[T]o balance his ticket, Barack Obama should pick a really old white general," Brooks says. "Therefore, he should pick Dwight Eisenhower."

Turning his attention to the Republicans, Brooks writes, "John McCain, on the other hand, needs to pick someone younger than himself. Therefore, he also should pick Dwight Eisenhower."

It's not really quite that simple, as both Obama and McCain should have discovered by now. But it does serve to illustrate Brooks' larger point -- which is that the emphasis in running mate selection is "completely backward."

Speculation in this regard centers on"what state or constituency this or that running mate could help carry in the fall," Brooks points out. But running mates "haven’t had much effect on elections at all, except occasionally as hapless distractions."

A thoughtful presidential nominee "should be thinking about who can help him govern successfully so he can get re-elected," Brooks writes. "That means asking: What circumstances will I face when I take office? What tasks will I need my chief subordinate to perform to help me face those circumstances?"

Brooks has a couple of reommendations for both candidates.

Whether they are plausible is something each nominee needs to decide for himself.

But Brooks' most important assertion in today's column is generic advice.

And both Obama and McCain would be wise to heed it.

"[T]he vice presidential pick is not really a campaign decision. It’s the first governing decision -- and a way to see who is thinking seriously about how to succeed in the White House."