Accused of being an optimist once again last year, I was sure that Barack Obama would be re-elected and that this potentially had great importance. As the election contest unfolded, it seemed to me that Romney and the other Republican candidates made little sense and that a broad part of the American electorate understood this. A major societal transformation was ongoing and Obama gave it political voice: on the role of government, American identity, immigration, social justice and a broad array of human rights issues. Thus, I think the re-election has broad and deep significance, and I conclude the year, therefore, thinking that we are seeing the end of the Reagan Revolution and the continuation of Obama’s.
But, of course, I realize that my reading is a specific one, and partisan at that. My friends on the left are not as sure as I am that Obama really presents an alternative. From their point of view, he just puts a pretty face on the domination of global capitalism and American hegemonic military power. I have to admit that I view such criticism with amusement. It takes two forms. The criticism is either so far a field, so marginal, that it is irrelevant, leftist sectarianism, which is cut off from the population at large, confined to small enclaves in lower Manhattan (where I work and have most of my intellectual discussions) and the upper west side, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Austin, Texas, Berkley, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Brooklyn and the like. Or there is the happy possibility that the critiques of Obama and the Democrats engage popular concerns and push responsible political leaders to be true to their professed ideals. I have seen signs of both of these tendencies, significantly in the Occupy movement. I hope the leftist critics of Obama pressure him to do the right thing. Marriage equality is an important case study.
I think the criticism of Obama from the right is much more threatening. If conservative critics of Obama don’t take seriously the significance of the election results, they are not only doomed to failure, they may take the country down with them, evident today as we are purportedly falling off the fiscal cliff.
Michael Corey in his response to my post on the Obama revolution exemplifies a significant problem.
“President Obama waged a very successful campaign; however, there is a darker side to it. One of the major reasons he was successful was his ability to destroy Romney’s reputation with innuendo and misinformation. President Obama also adroitly avoided dealing with major policy issues concerned with the longer term viability of a number of programs. President Obama is likely to get his way on tax rate increases and many other tax issues without giving up anything because he is more than willing to drive over the fiscal cliff, and then introduce his own legislation next year. It probably will work, but will have numerous unwanted negative consequences. When elephants dance, the grass gets trampled.”
I think Corey is mistaken about the elections, and though this is good willed, it is serious. To propose that Obama won by vilifying a good man, Governor Romney, is to ignore the significant principled differences between the two Presidential candidates and their parties. Obama emphasized economic recovery and a Keynsian approach to government spending. He proposed to address the problems of the cost of Medicare by working to control our medical care costs, more in line with costs and benefits in other countries that have significantly sounder public health. Obamacare is his solution, though his conservative opponents don’t take this seriously. If conservatives don’t face this, if they don’t take seriously that new alternatives to market fundamentalism are being presented, they can continue to work to make this country ungovernable, their apparent strategy for the past four years. I think they will suffer as a result, but so will everyone else in the States and, given our power, way beyond our borders.
But the situation is far from hopeless. There are numerous signs of hope. I am impressed by posts on Deliberately Considered by our contributors over the year as they reveal grounds for hope here and abroad.
Ironically, the Republicans might address their problems by moving ahead, while looking backwards.
And then there is the hope founded in the work of extraordinary individuals, who can and do make a difference, such as Vaclav Havel. See tributes here, here and here.
There is the engaged art of resistance, as it criticizes the intolerable, as in the case of Pussy Riot in Russia, makes visible distant suffering through artistic exploration in far flung places such as Afghanistan, and illuminates alternatives in Detroit, a central stage of the collapse of industrial capitalism.
And new media present possibilities of new forms of public deliberation and action, see this and this for example.
The possibility of action should work against cynicism, which is often confused for criticism, but actually is a form of resignation.
But I am not an myopic optimist. Suffering is knitted into the social condition, something I hope to investigate more systematically with my colleague Iddo Tavory in the coming year, starting with two posts in the coming week. Indeed as proof that I am well aware that naïve optimism about the future is mistaken, I view the last post of 2012 as one of the most important. The death of innocent victims through the force of arms has enduring effects. Richard Alba underscores this through personal reflection and professional insight. We all then suffer whether the violence is the result of accident, domestic or state violence, through the widespread arming of American citizens or the use of drones apparently far from home. Let’s hope next year is a better one.
Best wishes for a happy New Year to all.
Perhaps you can clarify your objection to my observation, hardly an original one, but one that needs to be acknowledged. During 2011, President Obama’s campaign adopted a strategy to disqualify Romney in the minds of voters, and during the campaign hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on implementing this strategy. Many of the messages were misleading at best. I believe that this had a material impact on the campaign. It wasn’t the only reason why President Obama won. I don’t believe that I said it was. Unfortunately, this type of tactic may work, but it has an adverse effect on democracy. I think that we need to recognize all aspects of a campaign: the good, the bad and the indifferent.
I think there were many contributing factors to the election results, and perhaps this includes ads that vilified Romney, though I just read an analysis on Nate Silver’s blog that demonstrates that these ads weren’t really effective. see http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/were-obamas-early-ads-really-the-game-changer/ But despite the effects of one turn or the other in the election, I believe the overriding cause for the Obama victory were very significant changes in our politics. The Republicans offered an incoherent message, based on unbelievable economic program and (happily) out of date social ones. The Democrats made sense to a broad and rapidly changing public. I used your comment to exemplify a problem I see. The failure of Obama’s opponents to take seriously the meaning and consequences of the election. We now still have a mixed government, but it is necessary that both parties take this seriously. The Senate Republicans seem to get this, in the House not so much. This has been a pressing problem today. I worry that conservatives and Republicans are sticking their heads in the sand. I am not accusing you of this, though I fear the kind of explanation you gave for the election results supports it.
Thanks for providing the links. The data is interesting, but it only deals with advertising, and does not demonstrate cumulative impacts over time and their impact on decision making closer to when decisions are actually made. The advertising was only one element in the vilification campaign. The messages were communicated through many other mechanisms and by many actors. We know that the Obama campaign felt that the vilification of Romney was from their perspective necessary, but not sufficient to win the election. The campaign expended huge amounts of time and resources to implement the tactic. Maybe they were wrong and wasted their resources, or perhaps they were right, and the misinformation campaign made the difference on how competing messages were received. Once someone is disqualified as an acceptable alternative, the weight of the messages is diluted. (Actually, I don’t think that Romney waged an effective campaign). My original point was and remains the same. Using misinformation and innuendo to destroy another candidate is an ethically bad practice. When it occurs, it needs to be recognized for what it is, and critiqued. Good practices should be praised and instrumental, bad practices should be acknowledged and discouraged in my view. Creating a fictive representation of an opponent and running against it hurts democratic deliberation.
Is Romney a Massachusetts moderate or a severe conservative? To the degree to which the vilification worked (honestly I don’t think it was extreme, nothing in comparison to what was thrown at Obama), it was a function of his fundamentally ambiguous presentation of his political self. I don’t blame the person Romney for his presentation, though, I think it is a function of the conservative-Republican crisis: too ideological and dogmatic party base that makes little sense to the changing America. This is my point: a major and important political party is in deep crisis making a broad deliberate center hard to establish. I have my partisan Democratic (Party) concerns, but also republican (small “r”) ones. I know we disagree on the proper policies for our times, but I want to somehow emphasize that for me the more serious problems go beyond these.
I’m really not very fond of political labels. Most of the people I know hold liberal, conservative and pragmatic beliefs as part of their political personas. I suspect that this is also the case with Romney. I have a passion to fix things that are broken. I had the good fortune to be mentored by leaders who were scrupulously ethical and honest, who expected the same from those they led. I followed their lead with developing leaders that I mentored. For most of my working career, I was a problem solver who enjoyed improving processes, systems, institutions, and helping people achieve all they can be. I championed meritorious performance. I always believed that truth and honesty were a basic requirement for organizations that I helped lead. The people I worked with found ways to give back to our local communities. Most of the leaders I knew could not function as politicians. I continue to believe that political propaganda waged during campaigns is a corruption of the political process, and I have very little respect for campaigners and staffers that use these tactics. I’m afraid that the tactics are not likely to change.