I wonder if Cornell West ever has second thoughts.

At a “Poverty in America” forum held at George Washington University on January 17^th, West forcefully criticized Barack Obama for taking his oath of office at his second inauguration on Martin King Jr.’s bible. See below for a clip of West’s remarks.

West was sure and authoritative, as a self appointed spokesman for the oppressed, in the name of the oppressed, and their great leader, Martin Luther King Jr.:

“You don’t play with Martin Luther King, Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By his people, I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally good people committed to peace and truth and justice, especially the Black tradition that produced it.

All of the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing a Martin Luther King, Jr. generated a brother of such high decency and dignity that you don’t use his prophetic fire for a moment of presidential pageantry without understanding the challenge he represents to all of those in power regardless of what color they are.

The righteous indignation of a Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a moment of political calculation. And that makes my blood boil. Why? Because Martin Luther King, Jr. died…he died…for the three crimes against humanity that he was wrestling with. Jim Crow, traumatizing, terrorizing, stigmatizing Black people. Lynching, not just ‘segregation’ as the press likes to talk about.

Second: Carpet bombing in Vietnam killing innocent people, especially innocent children, those are war crimes that Martin Luther King , Jr. was willing to die for. And thirdly, was poverty of all colors, he said it is a crime against humanity for the richest nation in the world to have so many of it’s precious children of all colors living in poverty and especially on the chocolate side of the nation, and on Indian reservations and Brown barrios and yellow slices and Black ghettos — we call them hoods now, but ghettos then.”

In great fury, West concluded to enthusiastic applause:

“When Barack Obama attempts to use that rich tradition of Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells-Barnett? Use the tradition of A. Phillip Randolph? Use the tradition of Rabbi Joshua Heschel? Use the tradition of Tom Hayden and so many others struggling to produce that voice that pushed Martin in the direction that it did? I get upset.”

Other speakers on the panel included Newt Gingrich and Jeffrey Sachs. Travis Smiley moderated. It must have been a great show, typical of a West performance.

I saw the video before the inauguration and Obama’s second inaugural address, tipped off by an approving Facebook friend. I thought immediately that the performance was appalling, a clear example of what I find most problematic in political life. West confuses his interpretation of the King legacy with the truth. He and his approving audience hold one interpretation. Surely, there are others. But the vehemence of West’s conclusion, his absolute assurance that he holds the truth, doesn’t allow for this.

I happen to disagree with West’s reading of King, and I was moved by the fact that Obama took his oath on King’s and Lincoln’s bibles. I see great powerful symbolism in this, a political leader commits himself to the legacy of the predecessor he most admires, and he commits himself to the legacy of the social movement leader he most admires, Martin Luther King Jr., who pushed Lincoln’s legacy most forcefully in the direction of civil rights and social justice. I was outraged that West, in effect, dismissed this reading, which I think is at least as powerful as his. But generally because I judge West’s theatrics to be a playful sideshow, I didn’t feel compelled to write about it. I listen to and read West regularly, often disagree. So it goes.

Yet now, after observing and thinking deliberately about inauguration, and Obama’s address, I feel compelled to speak up, because an important issue is involved, concerning the relationship between official power and the power of criticism, between the power of the state and the power of social movements, between Obama and his critics on the left.

It turns out that Obama gave a full-throated progressive speech. He pushed forward his long term project of moving the center left, of shifting political commonsense. He used the power of the presidential bully pulpit at the event in which that pulpit it most powerful. He used a supreme opportunity, the high holiday of America’s civil religion, to identify himself and the American public with the legacy of King and the civil rights movement, linking that legacy with the women and gay rights movements,

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

Obama also spoke precisely against an over militarized state: “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” And he centered himself and the nation on the issue of equality, opening with reflections on the Declaration of Independence and going on later asserting:

“We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.  We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

Obama, in effect, spoke to the legacies of King according to West, doing so as the significant political leader, statesman, that he is. Yet, perhaps West or the critical reader will note that the words are not always followed by deeds. I agree, but by uttering the words Obama sets clear and identifiable grounds for critical judgment of state action. He, in fact, is legitimating the criticism.

Political leaders, social movement leaders and public intellectuals play different roles. All are necessary. I wonder why so many on the left don’t get this. Perhaps Brother Cornell, as he might have me call him, is having second thoughts.

I hope so because I think that Obama is a great, though far from perfect, president, who promises much more, and that it should be the role of his critics to push him to do so. Talk of the middle class should be accompanied by clearly addressing the problems of poverty in America. Transforming American foreign policy, recognizing the normative and practical limits of military force (to be examined in detail in a future “in depth” post), needs to include a public examination of drone warfare, setting clear limits. The beautiful and challenging words of the inaugural address on climate change have to be followed my meaningful legislation and changes in policy.

My hope for the left: to paraphrase the great union leader Joe Hill (“don’t mourn organize”): don’t perform, seriously criticize and demonstrate. In this way, as Obama pushes the center left, which he clearly did in his first term and in his second inaugural address, he can be pushed further.

By the way, this is how I understand the success of the activism of Occupy Wall Street, and spectacularly the success of LGBT movement in the first term, culminating in the powerful words in the inaugural address:

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law  –- (applause) — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  (Applause.)”

Obama wouldn’t have said this, he wouldn’t have understood it, without a powerful social movement pushing him. With this in mind, in tomorrow’s post, we will publish a report on the protests in Washington at the time of the inauguration.

It’s a great, but not a flawless, movie. Steven Spielberg, the King of Hollywood, and Tony Kushner, Angels in America author, teamed up to create an illuminating and entertaining snapshot of the icon of American democracy, Abraham Lincoln, and of legislative politics. The artistry is impressive, as usual for Spielberg, and Kushner. Politically, it raises interesting questions, provoking important debates: a work of art, not a polemic.

The opening battle scene was striking and gruesome, though reminiscent of Spielberg’s early works: hand-to-hand combat, less mechanized than in Saving Private Ryan, with the interracial struggle emphasized. As in Schindler’s List, the human tragedy is compactly presented. The great moral outrage in Schindler, the ferocity of the anti-Semitic genocide, was graphically depicted in the clearing of the ghetto scene. It was at the core of the film and its greatness (despite its problematic Hollywood wrapping, “happy end” and all that, as I argued in my essay on anti-Americanism). I think Spielberg was trying to do the same in this battle scene, though with less success. The interracial struggle for justice and its brutality were there to see, but because the battle somehow didn’t engage as the ghetto scene did, critics, Kate Masur and Corey Robin, among many others, have noted that African Americans appear in the film merely as on-lookers in a story about their liberation.

I was deeply impressed by the clearing of the ghetto in Schindler’s List and the battle scene of Saving Private Ryan. These are cinematic high points, great moments in the history of film. They are difficult to watch, though impossible to turn away from. The opening scene of Lincoln is not as compelling. Perhaps because it so directly quotes from the Ryan battle scene: strange how it is that art doesn’t work the second time around. I think this is at the root of the political criticism of the movie. If the scene had worked, the criticism would not have made sense.

On the other hand, the film accomplishes more than its strongest critics and supporters maintain. Its political strengths are connected to its artistic accomplishment. It asks questions in engaging ways, avoiding simple answers to complex problems. It illuminates the dilemmas of enduring the tragedies of the social condition (more on this in future posts), showing how dilemmas sometimes can be overcome with creativity. The film does not provide simple formulas about the tension between idealism and realism, moderation and radicalism, fact and fantasy. I think this is Lincoln’s greatest strength.

David Brooks of the Times and Al Hunt, at Bloomberg, loved the film. As mainstream commentators of American politics, conservative and liberal, they particularly appreciated the realistic account of how things get done in official politics.

Brooks:

“The movie portrays the nobility of politics in exactly the right way.

It shows that you can do more good in politics than in any other sphere. You can end slavery, open opportunity and fight poverty. But you can achieve these things only if you are willing to stain your own character in order to serve others — if you are willing to bamboozle, trim, compromise and be slippery and hypocritical.”

Hunt:

“It’s the best movie about Washington politics I’ve seen…It brilliantly captures him doing what politicians are supposed to do, and today too often avoid: compromising, calculating, horse trading, dealing and preventing the perfect from becoming the enemy of a good objective.”

I agree with these judgments, but also think they miss important points. Politicians acting forthrightly on high principle provide the bargaining capacity of the tough realists – in Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens for Abraham Lincoln. And high-principled social movements, definitive elections and significant military action set the stage for realist deals – here the abolitionists, the re-election of Lincoln and the union victories of the Civil War.

It is the need for a broader focus that concerns radical critics of the film, such as Aaron Bady, at Jacobin.

“Lincoln is not a movie about Reconstruction, of course; it’s a movie about old white men in beards and wigs heroically working together to save grateful black people.

…It is about the triumph of a political compromiser, and it argues that radical change comes about by triangulation, by back-room deals, and by a willingness to forego ideological purity.”

Bady maintains that “slavery was already all but dead by the time Lincoln got around to declaring himself an abolitionist.” On the battlefield and throughout the countryside a new status quo had already been established. The amendment was a formality. The passage of the Thirteenth amendment was a mere confirmation in law what had already happened in society. Mere?

I think Bady misses the artistic point, as he makes a perfectly reasonable political one. The tight focus, it seems to me, is presented not because Spielberg and Kushner are proposing that this is where the real political action is, but because this focus brings us in, gives the viewer a sense of intimate participation in a turning point in American history, through an aesthetic experience. Hunt, Brooks and Bady confuse art with politics, with a political theory or interpretation. They miss the power of Daniel Day Lewis’s brilliant performance.

The film successfully paints a cinematic canvas, which suggests multiple political responses, inviting discussion about politics then and now. The film enriches experience, providing an intimate knowledge of a time, place and people, in the way only a film can. This is to be found in the details of the film. An alternative reality is created through art: the performance of Day Lewis, the cinematography of Janusz Kaminski, along with the directing of Spielberg and the writing of Kushner, down to the fine details, including, the most surprising, the sound.

I actually agree with Hunt, Brooks and Bady, along with Masur and Robins about the politics of the film. It is a wonderful depiction of the interplay between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of ultimate ends, as Max Weber would put it, and as Brooks and Hunt applaud. The films narrow focus on gritty official politics, on the other hand, leaves out a great deal, including the importance of social movement and war, and the agency of African Americans, as is highlighted in responses of Robins, Masur and significantly the great historian of the era, Eric Foner. The accomplishment is that this artwork inspires an audience to discuss these issues, about emancipation and about the politics of our times.

My note in this regard, despite the liberal, conservative and radical takes: in a functioning democracy the legislative arena doesn’t make social change but confirms change that is forged elsewhere. Think civil rights, gay rights, women rights and, of course, workers rights. Major social change, on the other hand, needs the official politics to ratify, institutionalize and protect the social change. There is nothing in the film that denies this. Think Martin Luther King Jr. and LBJ as partners, and realize this film is the equivalent of one that focuses on LBJ. Which is more important? An interesting discussion, an interesting film.

A final observation on Spielberg as an artist: I think his children and family movies are his unambiguous best, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. They create complete imaginative worlds that engage and are believable. Fantasy and story, and their technics are in harmony. The power of Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln, along with The Color Purple, Amistad, and Munich is that they use Spielberg’s capacity to imagine worlds to connect us with history and pressing social problems. As a result, we get inside history, we live through history, in a way that only film can provide. By getting details right, or at least giving us a sense that they are right, we experience history. This is the magic of art, the magic of Lincoln, which explains its appeal. But there are dissonant notes. Sometimes sentiment gets in the way of historical engagement. Hollywood happy end is a problem, but, in my judgment, not a fatal one. It is a great, but not a flawless movie.

The Republicans won. The Democrats lost.  Obama faces a significant challenge to his leadership.  The Tea Party has come to town.  Politics in the Capital are about to become very interesting.   The political scene has changed.  Now we must deliberately consider: what the play will look like, who the actors will be, what will be their roles, how will they play them, and are we in for a comedy or tragedy.  Some initial food for thought using Alexis de Tocqueville as our guide.

Tocqueville in the 1830s described two types of political parties, great political parties and small political parties.  He explained:

“What I call great political parties are those that are attached more to principles than to their consequences; to generalities and not to particular cases; to ideas and not to men.  These parties generally have nobler features, more generous passions, more real convictions, a franker and bolder aspect than others. Particular interests, which always plays the greatest role in political passions, hides more skillfully here under the veil of public interest…

Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith.  As they do not feel themselves elevated and sustained by great objects, their character is stamped with a selfishness that shows openly in each of their acts. They always become heated in a cool way; their language is violent but their course is timid and uncertain.  The means that they employ are miserable, as is the very goal they propose for themselves. Hence it is that when a time of calm follows a violent revolution, great men seem to disappear all at once and souls withdraw into themselves.

Americans have had great parties; today they no longer exist: it has gained much in happiness, but not in morality.” (link)

Tocqueville thought that the fundamental principles of American political life were established in the great debates between the Democratic – Republicans and the Federalists, between Jefferson, Hamilton, et.al, and that once the order was set, politics would be of a more mundane sort about dividing the spoils and pursuing narrow interests, battles between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum about who would deliver the goods. This is what he thought he saw in Jacksonian America.  He illuminated a contrast in the type of parties in democratic politics, but he missed the principled issues that divided the nation, which ultimately led to a civil war.  Contrary to his expectations the contrast between great and small parties is an ongoing aspect of democratic politics, not a thing of the past.  And it was again in play yesterday.  One of the remarkable aspects of the results last night is how politics, great and small, were both present, in sensible and confused ways, with intriguing practical consequences.

As I indicated yesterday, I think that we are living through a great debate about commonsense, concerning the role of the government in the pursuit of the common good.  It is ironically cast as a debate between two highly successful Republican Presidents, Reagan versus Lincoln, between “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” and “government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.”  In Tocqueville’s terms this was an election about this great contrast, and the Republican Party, as the party of Reagan, achieved a great political victory over the Democrats, as the Party of Lincoln.

But clearly many of the people voting were not thinking about such abstract “great” concerns.  They want jobs and an economic recovery, were frustrated by the depth of the economic crisis and weren’t convinced that the programs of the President and the Democrats were effectively addressing their problems.  Deficit reduction sounds good to them, large government bailouts of Wall Street don’t.  But will that lead them to support libertarian positions on Social Security and Medicare, or for that matter repeal of the very desirable benefits of “Obamacare?” Probably not.  And it is beyond me how tax cuts for the very wealthiest and slashing of government programs that benefit the vast majority of the population is either a way of getting out of an economic recession or the road to political popularity.

As the Republicans, led by its Tea Party faction, attack government, as a matter of principle, the small concerns of the American people, those who want practical action to address their very real practical problems, will become disaffected.  But as the small concerns are addressed, those committed to high Tea Party principles will condemn compromise.  It strikes me that there are profound tensions within the Republican Party on these matters, between its identity as a grand and a small political party.  I don’t think the Democrats are so conflicted.  Their ideas about the pragmatic use of the state to address pressing problems permit them to both address small concerns and enact their fundamental principles.  Their challenge is to show that this approach works.  They were unsuccessful at this stage of the deep crisis. It is likely to be more successful as the crisis abates.

In the coming months and years the interplay between grand and small politics will define American politics.  The struggle for each party will be about commonsense, but also about practical everyday concerns.  More about this in my next post.