The Republicans were combative:

Senator Mitch McConnell:

We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don’t. Choosing — I think what our friends on the other side learned is that choosing the president over your constituents is not a good strategy.
There are two opportunities for that change to occur. Our friends on the other side can change now and work with us to address the issues that are important to the American people, that we all understood. Or further change, obviously, can happen in 2012.

Governor Haley Barbour:

On behalf of the Republican governors, while governor’s races may be thought of as being separate or very different from what’s going on in Washington, in this case, even in governor’s races, this election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. And the policies of the Obama administration, the Pelosi-Reid Congress were repudiated by the voters.

Representative John Boehner:

Listen, I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country.
That means that we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that’ll bring down the cost of health insurance.

The President was conciliatory:

Over the last two years, we’ve made progress.  But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And as President, I take responsibility for that.
What yesterday also told us is that no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here, that we must find common ground in order to set — in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges.  And I told John Boehner and Mitch McConnell last night I am very eager to sit down with members of both parties and figure out how we can move forward together.
I’m not suggesting this will be easy.  I won’t pretend that we will be able to bridge every difference or solve every disagreement.  There’s a reason we have two parties in this country, and both Democrats and Republicans have certain beliefs and certain principles that each feels cannot be compromised.  But what I think the American people are expecting, and what we owe them, is to focus on those issues that affect their jobs, their security, and their future:  reducing our deficit, promoting a clean energy economy, making sure that our children are the best educated in the world, making sure that we’re making the investments in technology that will allow us to keep our competitive edge in the global economy.

These statements summarize the new political terrain, and they reveal very significant problems.  The Republicans speak as if the American people have one clear and unanimous voice that just says “yes” to them and” no” to the Democrats. They believe that they can govern in the name of the people, even though this election clearly indicates that the citizenry is not unanimous in its support of all their policy positions.  The overall vote went 52% to 45% for Republicans, mirroring the results of the last election, which went by the same numbers in the opposite direction. Exit polling indicates the public is evenly split between those who think the top priority is increased stimulus spending for the creation of new jobs and those who think the top priority should be reducing the deficit.

But the Republicans are demanding a populist enactment, the sort of position that the Founders tried to avoid by making the House more responsive, the Senate more deliberative, and separating power between the executive and the legislative branches of government.

The Republicans did win in this election cycle, while they lost in the last, and we have a representative structure that reflects this.  It seems to me that this means that the President’s position of bipartisanship, contrary to his critics on the left and the right, actually is the wise democratically mandated response to the voice of the people.  What the mandate for bipartisanship might and should yield is another question, which we should discuss in the near future.

Barack Obama, Storyteller in Chief, has been going around the country making clear what he thinks the choice is in the upcoming election: the Republican position that government is the problem not the solution versus the Democratic position that good governance can matter.  As I examined in my last post, he is telling his version of the American story, supporting specific candidates and promoting specific policies, but also giving his account of the recent past and his imaginative understanding of what the alternatives are in the near future.  The specifics are interesting.

In Boston, supporting Governor Deval Patrick, the emphasis was on the economy and the kinds of tax cuts and public support that would benefit working people, the emphasis of all his speeches, but then a group in the audience called out: “Fight global AIDS!  Fight global AIDS!” And the President improvised around his central theme:

And if they [the Republicans] win in Congress, they will cut AIDS funding right here in the United States of America and all across the world.  (Applause.)  You know, one of the great things about being a Democrat is we like arguing with each other.  (Laughter.)  But I would suggest to the folks who are concerned about AIDS funding, take a look at what the Republican leadership has to say about AIDS funding.  (Applause.)  Because we increased AIDS funding.

He was highlighting a distinctive position that Democrats share in contrast to their Republican opponents, public investment can contribute to the common good, especially in difficult times.  And he makes his basic argument by citing the greatest of Republican authorities. (link)

But in the words of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, we also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.  (Applause.)     We believe in a country that rewards hard work.  We believe in a country that encourages responsibility.  We believe in a country where we look after one another; where we say I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.  That’s the America we know.  That’s the choice in this election.”

In Portland, environmental commitment was given a little bit more prominence.    In Seattle, he included in his list of accomplishments the withdrawal of 100, 000 troops from Iraq.  “Because of you (who supported him and the Democrats) there are 100,000 brave men and women who are back from a war in Iraq.”   In many speeches he denounces “All this money pouring into these elections by these phony front groups — this isn’t just a threat to Democrats; it’s a threat to our democracy,” as he did in Los Angeles, frontally criticizing the results of the Roberts’ Court 5 to 4 decision in the Citizen’s United Case.  But in L.A., he went on to declare: “which shows you how important it is who’s making appointments on the Supreme Court. I’m proud I appointed Sonia Sotomayor.  (Applause.)  I appointed Elena Kagan.  (Applause.)

And in Las Vegas he ended very strongly, supporting the Nevada Democratic candidates, especially Harry Reid, with quintessential Obama rhetorical passion:

Look, change has always been hard in this country.  This country was founded when 13 colonies came together in a revolution that nobody believed could happen, except they believed. They founded this country on ideas that hadn’t been tried before:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal — (applause) — that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  (Applause.)

Nobody believed that the slaves could be free — (applause) — except they believed.

Folks didn’t believe that women could win the right to vote, except women believed.  (Applause.)

Nobody believed that we could get workers’ rights, except workers believed.  (Applause.)

There were a lot of folks who said we would never get civil rights.  But we got civil rights because somebody out there believed.  (Applause.)

Imagine if our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents had said, oh, this is too hard; oh, I’m feeling tired; oh, I’m feeling discouraged; oh, somebody is saying something mean about me.  (Laughter.)  We would not be here today.

We got through war and depression.  We have made this union more perfect because somebody somewhere has been willing to stand up in the face of uncertainty; stand up in the face of difficulty.  That is how change has come. (Applause.)  And that’s the spirit we have to restore in 2010. (Applause.)

And if all of you are going to go out and vote, all of you knock on doors, all of you are talking to your friends and neighbors, I promise you we will not just win this election, we just won’t elect Harry Reid, but we are going to restore the American Dream, the Vegas dream, the Nevada dream, for families for generations to come.

God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.

Obama went full steam there and then, perhaps, because Reid is not a particularly expressive political speaker.  Perhaps it was because Reid has been a key player in the accomplishments of the past two years, as Obama sees it.  The way he supported him sums up what Obama has been doing on the campaign trail, indeed what he has been doing since he gave his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004, telling his story as a way to guide the American story.  I suspect that this will guide him and the Democrats and the nation in meaningful ways in the coming years, though I doubt it will prevent significant Republican gains on Election Day.  How big the gains are will reveal the power and limits of Obama’s storytelling around the country.

This has led to some frustration.  He can’t talk our way out of a major economic crisis, and he has had difficulty convincing his opponents and the general public that a balanced budget is not a rational answer to a severe financial crisis and deep economic recession.  Further, he can’t convince real enemies abroad to accept American priorities, although he has improved attitudes towards our country around the world.  And even more politically damaging, he can’t convince his political opposition to work with him, when they calculate that it is not in their narrowly conceived interests.  Producing meaningful bipartisan legislation is a goal, but practical political calculation can and has stood in the way.

Now, the Story Teller is fighting back on the campaign trail.  The fight started in a speech on Labor Day in Milwaukee presenting his basic themes, as I analyzed in an earlier post. Obama then extended the themes to specific circumstances, starting by going down the road a bit to Madison, Wisconsin, also analyzed here.  He has since traveled from coast to coast delivering the message he introduced in the Wisconsin speeches.  As he gives each speech, he is attempting to rally the troops, to energize his base, but he is also presenting different elements of his understanding of the political situation and his political vision and policy actions, telling the story of the last two years as he understands and feels about it, setting the terms of our politics for the next two.

The general theme: he dispassionately explains that when he became President Americans faced a severe crisis. He had thought and hoped that the Republicans and Democrats in Washington would work together to address this crisis.  But the Republicans decided to play crass politics.  As Obama put it in his speech of October 7^th at Bowie State University, in Maryland:

They knew it would take more than a couple of years to climb out of this unbelievable recession that they had created.  They knew that by the time the midterm rolled around that people would still be out of work; that people would still be frustrated.  And they figured that if we just sat on the sidelines and opposed every idea, every compromise that I offered, if they spent all their time attacking Democrats instead of attacking problems that, somehow, they would prosper at the polls.

So they spent the last 20 months saying no – even to policies that they’d supported in the past.  No, to middle class tax cuts.  No, to help for small businesses.  No, to a bipartisan deficit reduction commission that they had once sponsored.  I said yes; they said no.  I’m pretty sure if I said the sky was blue, they’d say no.  (Laughter.)  If I said there are fish in the sea, they’d say no.  See, their calculation was if Obama fails, then we win.

But, he goes on: he and the Democrats persevered and accomplished a lot, despite the almost complete Republican negativity, highlighting how the accomplishments have been realized for his audience.

In each speech, he addresses special concerns of his audience and tries to support local candidates.  Most news reports have focused on whether or not candidates appear with him and how well or poorly his speeches are firing up the base and potentially bettering the prospects of the Democratic Party in maintaining control of Congress.  The general consensus: despite Obama’s efforts they almost certainly will lose the House, while having a good chance to maintain control of the Senate.  I have no reason to doubt this, but I think there is more involved.

Missing in the analysis is an attempt to actually understand what the campaign is about and how it is connected to the Obama Presidency.  It’s there in the words.  The live audiences hear it, but not those reading newspapers and watching television.  The variations on the major theme of the stump speech reveal Obama and his fellow Democrats principles, positions and achievements.  While the Republicans, from its Tea Party Wing to its more mainstream versions, are sticking to their theme of the last thirty years, the government is not the solution but the problem, clearly revealed in the much ridiculed “Pledge to America” (which has been quickly forgotten), the Democrats, and Obama most clearly, argue that good government can make a crucial difference.

Governing well matters in education, for example, something he emphasized in Maryland, with its Democratic Governor, Martin O’ Malley, running for reelection:

Here in Maryland, you know, understand, how important education is to our economy, how important it is to our future.  Martin O’Malley knows that, too.  His opponent raised college tuition in this state by 40 percent when he was in charge.  This is at a time when the economy was doing better.  Now, even in the toughest of times, over the last two years, Martin O’Malley froze in-state tuition, so he kept the cost of this school and other schools affordable for Maryland’s families. (Applause.)  And thanks to his unprecedented investment in Maryland’s education, as I said before, you’ve been ranked the best when it comes to public schools the last two years in a row. That’s what Martin O’Malley does.  (Applause.)  He walks the walk, doesn’t just talk the talk.

When he campaigned for the Presidency, Obama emphasized the need to reform and support education.  As he has governed, this has been a major project, a key component of his stimulus package, but recognized by conservatives, such as David Brooks, as well as liberals as a significant effort.  Now Obama is supporting the Democratic Governor of Maryland on this accomplishment. Good government can improve things.  It has improved educational opportunities and achievements.

And it has done more, which Obama has been emphasizing in his speeches around the country, which I will analyze in my next post.

Barack Obama gave a campaign speech yesterday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin which was largely absent from last night’s newscast. (link) Now, I will take a closer look at the content of his speech.

Obama made his points cogently, identifying the problem and the obstacles:

Think about it, when I arrived in Washington 20 months ago, my hope and my expectation was that we could pull together, all of us as Americans — Democrats and Republicans and independents — to confront the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I hoped and expected that we could get beyond some of the old political divides between Democrats and Republicans, blue states and red states, that had prevented us from making progress for so long because although we are proud to be Democrats, we are prouder to be Americans.
Instead, what we found when we arrived in Washington was the rawest kind of politics. What we confronted was an opposition party that was still stuck on the same failed policies of the past…

He criticized the opposition:

Understand, for the last decade, the Republicans in Washington subscribed to a very simple philosophy – you cut taxes mostly for millionaires and billionaires…You cut regulations for special interests, whether it’s the banks or the oil companies or health insurance companies. Let them write their own rules. You cut back on investments in education and clean energy and research and technology.

So basically the idea was if you just put blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America would automatically grow and prosper. But that philosophy failed…

He highlighted Democratic accomplishments

And over the last 20 months — over the last 20 months, we’ve made progress… We’re no longer facing the possibility of a second depression — and I have to say, Wisconsin, that was a very real possibility when I was sworn in. We had about six months where the economy was teetering on the edge, and we could have plunged into a second depression.
Now the economy is growing again. Now the private sector has created jobs for the last eight months in a row. There are about 3 million Americans who wouldn’t be working today if not for the economic plan that we put into place. Those are facts.

To rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation, we passed Wall Street reform to make sure that a crisis like this never happens again, so that these reforms are going to end the era of taxpayer-funded bailouts forever –reforms that will stop mortgage lenders from taking advantage of homeowners, reforms that’ll stop credit card companies from hitting you with hidden fees or jacking up your rates without any reason.

But we didn’t stop there. We started investing again in American research and American technology and homegrown American clean energy because I don’t want solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars of the future built in Europe or Asia. I want them built right here in the United States of America with American workers.

To help middle-class families get ahead, we passed a tax cut for 95 percent of working families. I want to repeat that: We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, because if you were listening to the other side, you’d think we raised taxes.

But, again, we deal in facts. And the fact is, we cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We passed 16 different tax cuts for America’s small business owners, who create the majority of jobs in this country. We passed health care reform that will stop insurance companies from denying you coverage or dropping your coverage because you’re sick.

And he was sure to link his specific audience, young people, to his programs and policies:

And by the way, Madison, let me just see a show of hands, how many people are under the age of 26 in this crowd? Every single one of you, when you get out of college, if you have not found a job that offers you health care, you’re going to be able to stay on your parents’ health care until you’re 26 years old, so you don’t end up taking the risk of getting sick and being bankrupt.

We finally fixed the student loan system so that tens of billions of dollars — tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies that were going to big banks, they were acting as middlemen, and the student loan programs were going through these financial intermediaries. They were taking billions of dollars of profits. We said, well, let’s cut out the middleman. We’ll give the loans directly to students and that means million more students are going to be able to take advantage of grants and student loans.

And by the way, we also kept a promise I made on the day that I announced my candidacy. We have removed combat troops from Iraq and we have ended our combat mission in Iraq.

But he also did not shy away from the challenges and limitations:

We have made progress over the last 20 months. And that is the progress that you worked so hard for in 2008. Now, we didn’t get everything done. Sometimes people say, well, you know, this item is not done and that idea — well, I’ve only been here two years, guys. If you look at the checklist, we’ve already covered about 70 percent, so I figured I needed to have something to do for the next couple of years.

Linking their stories and his to the issues involved:

I believe in an America that gave my grandfather the chance to go to college because of the GI Bill. I believe in an America that gave my grandparents the chance to buy a home because of the Federal Housing Authority. I believe in an America that gave their children and grandchildren the chance to fulfill our dreams thanks to scholarships and student loans like some of you are on. That’s the America I know. That’s the choice in this election.

Obama, of course, told the story of the last two years from his partisan point of view.  He celebrated the Democrats’ accomplishments, criticized the Republicans because they obstructed his attempts to address the pressing problems of the day, and he further criticized, even ridiculed, the alternatives they proposed as old and warn out, actually the policies that created the financial and economic crises.  He outlined the clear choice and linked his audience’s hopes and dreams to the choice he was presenting.

This is Obama the politician, not the Chief Executive.  He was doing politics, not governing.  But shouldn’t the news take note of this turn?  Shouldn’t they contrast his account of the last two years with the Republicans account?  Shouldn’t they analyze what each side is now proposing, including the way they propose it?

That the 24/7 news, of the left, right and the center, did not devote the air time to the forty-five minute speech indicates their interpretive frame for politics.  In fact, between the Republicans proposal of a Contract with America and the Democrats legislative accomplishments and direction, which Obama highlighted in Madison, there is a real substantive, Tocqueville might define it as big, principled politics going on.  Yet the media reports small.

Perhaps the difference between my students and me on politics in the United States (link) is that they accurately depicted the way the media reports, while I am responding to the parts of the political performance that often stands outside the cable news frame, but nonetheless is highly consequential in the long run.  In cable news frame, the commentary does not illuminate the alternative political principles and philosophies, the alternative marshaling of evidence to support the competing political positions, nor provide a guide for understanding the cogency of the alternatives.  It just works from preconceived ideas.  It misinforms, overlooking the fact that there is serious big politics now going on.

I am quite ambivalent about the Tea Party.  While I am appalled by some of the slogans and signs that have appeared in Tea Party rallies, I am convinced that this is a genuine social movement, a politically significant instance of the politics of small things, a political movement concerned with fundamental principles, engaged in a great debate about both the pressing issues of the day and the enduring problems of American political life.  As a registered Democrat and as a strong supporter of President Obama and his program, I am pleased that the actions of the movement may have made the Republican landslide in the upcoming elections less momentous, as the talking heads are now speculating, although I am still concerned that the movement may have given wind to the rightward shift of public opinion.  The emotional, irrational and often purposely ignorant political expression in Tea Party demonstrations is of deep concern, but I think the strong expression of fundamental political principles can and should be seriously considered and confronted.  I am unsure about what the Tea Party Movement’s impact on American public life in the very near term, i.e. the midterm elections, and in the long term, i.e. in the reinvention of American political culture will be.  As I have been trying to sort this all out, I am reminded of the insights of an old friend, Alberto Melucci, an Italian sociologist who presciently understood the meaning of social movements in the age of internet and mobile communications, before these new media were common.

The Theoretical Perspective of a Friend

Alberto Melucci

In series of important books, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, and Playing the Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Alberto explored what it means to become involved in a social movement in our times.  He understood that the means of social movements may be even more important than their ends, and that they make possible a new sense of self and self purpose for their participants to emerge.  Further and most significant politically, they can change the basic social codes.  Alberto was mostly thinking about progressive new social movements, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the like.  But I think his approach illuminates the new conservatism of the Tea Party quite well.  He died prematurely on September 12, 2001, not observing the strange turn in global politics since that very day.  But he would have understood the Tea Party, as a social movement concerned with primary values, unconcerned with electoral priorities, forging new, in this case, reactionary, identities and values, a movement that is very much a product and a challenge of our times.

Challenging Codes

The Tea Party Movement makes its participants feel good about themselves and gives them a sense of purpose, as the participants frequently report on movement blogs and to reporters.  The Movement seeks to “take our country back,” supporting and attacking politicians of both parties.  They have specific ends against bail outs and the government handouts to the undeserving, from the poor to the mighty banks and corporations of Wall Street and Detroit.  They are for limited government and the constitution, as they understand it.  They imagine together a new future based on an idealized past and in their movement they enact their future.

The movement activists and candidates sometime seem to hurt Republicans more than Democrats, an outcome that seems to be irrational given their own voting records, but this is not as significant to them as one would expect.  They are concerned about a vision of America between its past and its future and their place in this America, and worry that this vision to which they are deeply committed is being lost, taken away politically by politicians they revile, and overlooked by too many of their fellow citizens.  When the fundamental concern with the American code is kept in mind, the Tea Party Activists are not as irrational as most outside commentators, of the left and the right, think.

September versus November

Karl Rove got caught up in this Primary Night last Tuesday.   In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, they agreed on fundamental conservative issues.  Nothing in their discussion suggested a questioning of the principles and practices of the Tea Party.  But Rove dared to frankly criticize the candidate who won her primary in Delaware due to Tea Party activism and support, Christine O’Donnell.  She was the candidate of true conviction against a moderate, but her odd behavior despite her stated purity would lead to electoral defeat.  “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not [evince] the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.”  Rove maintained, frankly concluding that “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” (link)   For this assessment he was severely attacked by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the full staff of Fox News, forcing him to retreat from his initial assessment. (link)

Rove was caught between the calculation of a political analyst and of a political partisan.  Since he cares most about the politics of the day, he could not be content with pronounced conservative purity.   He, on the right, along with most objective and Democratic partisan observers, noted that the Tea Party victory in the Delaware primary greatly increased the Democrats chances of maintaining their Senate majority.

But those who seek to take their country back, those more interested in the long march of changing the political culture, changing the code of politics as Alberto Melucci would put it, would prefer resolute cultural battle (most prominently Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, link).    Their movement is their message. For them the victory in September is more important than the increased chances of a defeat in November.

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.)  And the Republican who thinks he’s going to take over as Speaker — (boos) — I’m just saying that’s his opinion — (laughter) — he’s entitled to his opinion.  But when he was asked about this, he dismissed those jobs as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving.  (Boos.)  That’s what he said, I’m quoting — “government jobs.”
Now, think about this.  These are the people who teach our children. These are the people who keep our streets safe.  These are the people who put their lives on the line, who rush into a burning building.  Government jobs?  I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.  (Applause.)  I think those jobs are worth saving. (Applause.)
Well, you know what, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for middle-class families all across America.  It didn’t work out so well for our country.  All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  I mean, think about it, we have tried what they’re peddling.  We did it for 10 years.  We ended up with the worst economy since the 1930s and record deficits to boot.  (Applause.) It’s not like we haven’t tried what they’re trying to sell us.
Now, I’m bringing this up not because I’m trying to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past.  (Applause.)”

My Speculation

All the talk of a Republican landslide, I think, underestimates the Obama effect once he focuses on electioneering. On Labor Day, he eloquently and dramatically drew the lines of the upcoming races. That the Democrats will not be as enthusiastic as Republicans may be the pre-Labor Day news. And it should be remembered that this battle is an episode in a long march to change commonsense about the role of government. The Republicans and their point of view in recent months have dominated public attention and discussion. This may have just changed.