By Gary Alan Fine, January 19th, 2011
 What baggage becomes a politician most? In a democracy, voters are condemned to decide between imperfect men and women, each of whom presents a platform, listing left or inclining right. Should one select the platform or the politician who stands upon it? What is a simple voter to do? Put another way, should personal morality – or at least our judgments of that morality – trump those goals that we hope for a political to achieve. This is fundamentally the tension between having a politician serve as our representative in a Burkean sense or as our messenger of our immediate desires. Do we wish a deliberative democracy or a direct democracy in which we vote for a politician who will enact our policy preferences. Each model has appeal. The former suggests that we should focus on character and deliberative ability; the latter suggests that we examine ideology and policy most carefully.
While the battle between beliefs and character is not new, the choice is etched starkly at moments of national stress and ideological warfare – at those moments in which decisions really matter and in which we citizens are engaged. As Chantal Mouffe emphasizes a critically engaged electorate – one that accepts the reality and the virtue of conflict – can be good medicine in a democracy. At times we have the luxury of voting for virtue, but when the battle is joined, policy must trump person. Failed humans can still be fine leaders.
Perhaps, as Mark Twain averred, the Congress is our only native criminal class, but we have managed to thrive under the leadership of these rascals. We have little choice. Our lives are shaped by votes, more than by mischief. Perhaps we would like to find leaders who can persuade others and who can compromise – as Edmund Burke would have it – but most often politicians are tied to their beliefs and ours, and we voters find comfort in that.
We saw the stark choices in the recent election. When a party feels that they  are in touch with the mood of the . . .
Read more: The Conundrum of Their Character
By Laura Pacifici, January 18th, 2011
Laura Pacifici is a senior at Brown University concentrating in Political Science. A contributor to an international publication, Voices, she is particularly interested in domestic policy issues and has a forthcoming article on the criminal justice system. After graduating in May 2011, Laura plans on a career in law and politics. Jeff
Almost as quickly as the news media insinuated that vitriolic political rhetoric contributed to Jared Loughner’s killing spree in Tucson, these same reporters and commentators were sharply criticized for having pointed to political explanations. While David Brooks and others such as Charles Blow in their most recent columns were disturbed by these developments, I am not surprised that the news media all but ignored –as Brooks pointed out– psychological explanations in its quest to understand Loughner’s act. This, I believe, is a result of the fact that increasingly we are turning to political commentators such as Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly and away from Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams to deliver our news.
In relying more on “news commentators” and less on traditional “news broadcasters”, we have contributed to the merging of “news” and “commentary.” Commentators on the left and the right know what their niche and partisan viewers expect of them; their task is to fulfill these expectations. This leads to a creative, if unfortunate interaction: Major events come with a prepackaged political bent. It is no surprise that, burdened by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, these commentators would respond to an event like the massacre in Tucson using politically based explanations.
The news media is not immune from our polarized political climate. Nor is it immune from the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric used by today’s partisans to smear their opponents. Jeff Goldfarb in his recent post discussed the nature of this rhetoric. He pointed to the relentless use of the term “Obamacare” as a modern-day example of what Orwell in his canonical 1984 called “newspeak”, which Goldfarb describes as a language that conceals and manipulates rather than reveals.
By tuning in night after night to the Keiths and the Bills, to the MSNBCs and the . . .
Read more: The Media and the Motivations of an Assasin
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 14th, 2011
Barack Obama is the foremost orator in my life time. During the Presidential campaign, I thought that this may be the case. The first two years of his Presidency raised some doubts. I knew the talent was there, but would the talent be used effectively to enable him to be the great President that I thought he could and hoped he would be? But after his speech at the Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona, I have no doubt. No other public figure could have accomplished what I think President Obama accomplished last night.
He spoke as the head of state, not as a partisan candidate or leader, and a deeply divided country became, at least momentarily, united in response to his beautifully crafted and delivered address. He enabled us to grieve together, helped us try to make sense together, and challenged us to respectfully act together, despite our differences.
The power of the speech was revealed by the reaction to it. Even Glenn Beck recognized Obama’s accomplishment, and publicly thanked the President for giving the best speech of his career. And the instant analysis of the panel at Fox News praised the excellence and effectiveness of the President’s inspirational address. Charles Krauthammer concluded the discussion, recognizing that the President appeared and spoke as the head of state, not as an ideological politician, and maintained that it may have a significant effect on Obama’s fortunes. “I am not sure it’s going to have a trivial effect on the way he is perceived.” This from one of Obama’s major critics.
Of course Obama’s supporters, including most of the people attending the service in Tucson at the vast McKale Memorial Center at the University of Arizona, were deeply moved. My friends and I at the Theodore Young Community Center were especially pleased that our guy did so well.
And the commentators of the major newspapers and blogs were almost universally in agreement of the speeches inventiveness and excellence. Dionne, Robinson, Thiessen , Gerson at the Washington Post , Collins and the Times editorial voice at The . . .
Read more: The President’s Speech
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 11th, 2011
 Anticipating the State of the Union address, with Robin Wagner – Pacifici’s recent post in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to remember how President Obama has used the power of his voice to address political problems. I agree with Robin and with Jonathan Alter that one must govern and not only campaign in poetry. I agree with Robin that such poetry is appropriate about significant matters of state, particularly about war and peace. But I think we should remember that key problems of national identity and purpose, not only matters of war and peace, require such poetry. Today the Race Speech. I will consider other key speeches in subsequent posts.
It was in his “Race Speech,” delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, that Barack Obama addressed the most serious challenge of his run for the Presidency. In Philadelphia tactics and overall political vision were brought together. The vision was used to serve a pressing necessity.
The situation was grave. The project of his campaign was being challenged by the politics of race, which was perhaps inevitable given the deep legacies of slavery and racism in America. The immediate controversy was a video compiled from sermons given by his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright seemed to embody black resentment and anger. If this was Obama’s minister, how could whites be sure that Wright did not say what Obama thought? Why did he stay in Wright’s church? Who is Barack Obama really? In order to have a chance to win the primaries, let alone the general election, Obama had to address such questions. Obama’s campaign advisors counseled a tactical response. Obama overruled their advice and addressed the issue of race head on, choosing to continue telling his story and make explicit that he was proposing, to expand the promise of the American Dream by addressing the legacies of the American dilemma. From the standard partisan point of view, this was dangerous. There was the very real danger that Obama could become identified as a symbolic black candidate.
The setting was formal. He spoke in Philadelphia, across the street from Constitution Hall, from a podium, flanked by . . .
Read more: Anticipating the State of the Union Address; Looking Back at the Philadelphia Race Speech
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 8th, 2010 
 The glow of celebrity is bright. Most people know Steve Martin as a popular entertainer, movie star and standup comedian. He is, though, also a very serious art collector and, most recently, an author of a novel set in the art world, An Object of Beauty. At a recent event in New York, the serious side of Martin was not appreciated, given the demand for the celebrity. I see this as a manifestation of a basic social problem.
The simple proposition, “there is a time and place for everything,” which I take to be not only a popular saying but a fundamental condition of modern life, is challenged in our present media environment. Now on different fronts, the significance of the challenge is becoming most apparent.
I’ve already observed this in thinking about the spread of economic logic to more and more spheres of our social life (link), (compactly named by Jurgen Habermas as the “economic colonization of the life world” in his Theory of Communicative Action) And clearly the issue arises in the case of WikiLeaks. But it also appears in surprising moments and locations.
There is the strange case of Steve Martin’s latest visit to the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, leading to the embarrassment of all involved. (link) Martin went to an institution known for serious discussion about all sorts of issues, but was not permitted to have such a discussion with Deborah Solomon, a writer for The New York Times and art historian and critic.
At the Y, the demand for the entertainer silenced the collector and writer. I think the primary reason for this was that the event was telecast nationwide and the email messages from that electronic audience did not permit the live event from developing as it otherwise would have.
Solomon is an expert interviewer, Martin an expert performer. The interview apparently started unsteadily. They wanted to frame their discussion about art and not entertainment. They needed to reframe audience expectations. In that Martin and Solomon are accomplished professionals who have worked together before, it is predictable that they would have succeeded. And this . . .
Read more: Steve Martin’s serious side
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 5th, 2010
Is democracy in America fundamentally flawed?  Do our political parties offer significant enough political choices? Do they actually engage in consequential political debate, offering alternative political policies? Are we so accustomed to inconsequential elections that our major newspaper confuses real consequential politics with authoritarianism? . These are the questions posed by Martin Plot in the past couple of weeks at DC. I think they are important questions, and I find insight in the answers he presents, but I don’t completely agree with Martin’s analysis. He thinks the democratic party in America may be over. I think it has just begun. Tonight, I will bluntly present my primary disagreement. Tomorrow, I will consider the implications of our differences and add a bit more qualification to my commentary. I welcome Martin’s response and anyone else’s.
First, though, I must acknowledge the insight of his media criticism. I think the Times reporter is inaccurate about politics in Argentina for the reasons Martin presents in his post, and further elaborated in his reply to the post. The reporter may very well hang around the wrong people, listening to critics who are far from unbiased and with questionable democratic credentials. And he may not fully appreciate that fundamental change can occur democratically, with radical changes in social policy, because this has not a common feature of American political life since the 1930s. Such a reporter can’t tell the difference between the democratic, and the authoritarian and populist left.
And when Martin notes that factual lies can persist because they are left unopposed in our fractured media world, in response to my concern about the power of fictoids, I think he is onto something very important.
But I do disagree with Martin’s overall appraisal of Democratic politics and the Presidency of Barack Obama, thus far. Put simply, I am not as sure as Martin is that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have not offered a significant alternative to the Republican Party and the Presidential leadership of former President George W. Bush, both in terms of platform and enacted policy. I don’t deny that “mistakes were . . .
Read more: The Democratic Party’s Over?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 18th, 2010 
As politics have been increasingly paranoid around the world, the newest proposal in Israel amp up tensions.
I have been thinking about the ubiquity of paranoid politics, as I wonder whether the Israeli – Palestinian peace process has any chance for success, and as I read the news from Israel concerning a bill that would require non -Jewish immigrants to take an oath of allegiance to “Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
If we aren’t paying close attention, this amendment may seem to be no big deal. After all, hasn’t Israel all along been the Jewish homeland and a democratic state? But a loyalty oath that commits to the official formulation of Israel as a Jewish state is clearly directed at the rights and citizenship status of Israeli citizens of Palestinian origins. Although they are twenty per cent of the population, they are being asked to demonstrate their loyalty, publicly confirming their second class status facing this symbolic act and a variety of other oaths of allegiance.
There is a sense that they are being assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, and they have to demonstrate their innocence repeatedly. Many Israelis and friends of Israel, elected officials, including those inside the ruling coalition, are deeply worried.
The same politicians who came up with this oath have additional proposals, as Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz, puts it “a loyalty law for Knesset members; a loyalty law for film production; a loyalty law for non-profits; putting the Palestinian catastrophe, the Nakba, beyond the scope of the law; a ban on calls for a boycott; and a bill for the revocation of citizenship.”
Some might suggest that Levy is a left wing critic who exaggerates. But Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister, has apparently been working to show that Levy’s worst fears are a reality, bringing paranoid politics to its logical extension, proposing to strip Israelis of citizenship for disloyalty. “’Declarations are not enough in fact against incidents such as [MKs] Azmi Bishara and Hanin Zoabi,’ Yishai said in reference to . . .
Read more: In Israel: Road Blocks to Peace
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 5th, 2010
Fox News is not just biased. It is a political mobilization machine, shaping the political landscape.
 President Obama offered a critique of Fox News in an interview published in an issue of Rolling Stone. This absolutely shocked and appalled Fox shock jocks Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity the evening of Obama’s speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on Tuesday. They were shocked by any suggestion that they were anything but “fair and balanced,” providing the alternative to the kowtowing liberals of the mainstream media. They were appalled by Obama’s criticism. (link)
Their response is cynical. They pretend to be what they are not, news commentators on a news network. Obama’s critique on the other hand is on firmer ground, even if it is not clear that it was wise. Isn’t it below the President’s dignity to engage in polemics with partisan press criticism? Doesn’t it enlarge them and belittle him? These are the questions of the talking heads on cable and on the Sunday morning shows.
But actually in the interview Obama was quite careful, offering a measured serious answer to a provocative question:
Rolling Stone: “What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it’s a good institution for America and for democracy?”
President Obama: “[Laughs] Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you . . .
Read more: Obama v. Fox News
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 22nd, 2010
The man behind the controversial Islamic Community Center in lower Manhattan, Feisal Abdul Rauf, aims for tolerance, but stirs up fear and regret.
 While I have been observing Feisal Abdul Rauf’s actions and reactions to the public controversies surrounding his work as the the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and the imam of the Farah mosque in Lower Manhattan, I have been thinking a lot about my book, Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society. I think that in democracies, intellectuals are talk provokers who help the general public confront and address serious political problems by informing discussion. I think that they do so by civilizing differences so that enemies can become opponents and opponents can become collaborators, and by subverting commonsense that hides problems, so that these problems then can be discussed. I, of course, know that no one intellectual is always a subversive, and no one intellectual is always an agent of civility. Yet, certain key intellectuals have primarily played one or the other role. This for example is how I think about the intellectual work of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr.
The tragedy of Feisal Abdul Rauf is that he has intended and has dedicated his life to the role of civility, while more brutal figures in our public life, perhaps Newt Gingrich is the primary culprit, have intended to turn the persistently patriotic imam into a subversive. He has been labeled an agent of Islamic, indeed radical Islamist, subversion of the good moral order, just when he has done everything in his public pronouncements and actions to support the good pluralistic moral order that he understands, along with many of his fellow Americans including his President, to be the great American achievement.
Thus consider deliberately Feisal Abdul Rauf’s words in his recent op-ed piece. He is even willing to see this episode in which he has been systematically and viciously slandered as a positive development in the project of civil religious interactions:
“Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that . . .
Read more: The Tragedy of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 9th, 2010
I was planning to post today about the new peace talks between Israel and Palestine using the perspective of the politics of small things. But this will have to wait for another day. Barack Obama gave a speech on Labor Day that requires attention. It was a very strong partisan address, a forceful support of the labor movement on labor’s day, a clear proclamation of his position on the pressing issue of the day, the state of the economy, and on the strategy necessary to fix it.
The Storyline
 Obama proposed a transit plan to create jobs, reported in The New York Times as the storyline, but, it seems to me, the specific proposal was an illustration of his political message, not the message itself. The significant story: Obama was challenging the commonsense that seems to support the Republican prospects in the coming election, forcefully and clearly depicting an alternative commonsense that would support his Party’s immediate chances and also contribute to his attempt to reinvent American political culture. Far from Reagan’s “the government is not the solution but the problem,” Obama depicted how and explained why good government can help, and bad government can and has hurt. He wanted to turn the terms of debate from big government versus limited government, to good government versus bad government.
Obama is now drawing a clear line between those who support his policies and those who have been an obstacle to the change that at least Obama and his supporters believe in. He sought to draw the contrast between his administrations accomplishments and achievements, and his opposition. It was often an entertaining exercise, clearly meant to increase the level of passionate support for his overall project and to address the immediate task at hand, winning, or at least not losing badly in the upcoming elections.
The Declaration
Obama’s most telling declaration, biting in its critical thrust, revealing in its positive direction:
“When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save jobs — the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses and police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said no. (Applause.) . . .
Read more: Back in the Ring
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