I have long been intrigued by the distance between principle and practice, how people respond to the distance, and what the consequences are, of the distance and the response. This was my major concern in The Cynical Society. It is central to “the civil society as if” strategy of the democratic opposition that developed around the old Soviet bloc, which I explored in Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall. And it is also central to how I think about the politics of small things and reinventing political culture, including many of my own public engagements: from my support of Barack Obama, to my understanding of my place of work, The New School for Social Research and my understanding of this experiment in publication, Deliberately Considered. I will explain in a series of posts. Today a bit more about Obama and his Nobel Lecture, and the alternative to cynicism.

I think principle is every bit as real as practice. Therefore, in my last post, I interpreted Obama’s lecture as I did. But I fear my position may not be fully understood. A friend on Facebook objected to the fact that I took the lecture seriously. “The Nobel Address marked the Great Turn Downward, back to Cold War policies a la Arthur Schlesinger Jr. et al. A big depressing moment for many of us.”

He sees many of the problems I see in Obama’s foreign policy, I assume, though he wasn’t specific. He is probably quite critical of the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued, critical of the drone policy, disappointed by the fact that Guantanamo prison is still open, and by Obama’s record on transparency and the way he has allowed concern for national security take priority over human and civil rights, at home and abroad. The clear line between Bush’s foreign policy and Obama’s, which both my friend and I sought, has not been forthcoming. And he draws a logical conclusion: “a great turn downward.”

My friend sees a familiar failure: militarism wrapped in an elegant intellectual package (the reference to Schlesinger). In the distance between perceived principled promise and practice, “the best and the brightest” seem to be at it again: sophisticated rationalization for militarism reminiscent of the Cold War and its ideology, He sees the distance between the ideal and the practice as proof that the professed ideal was a sham. Perhaps he even makes the cynical move that the fancy words are but a mask for narrow self-interest (election and re-election) serving the interest of the powerful (the neo-liberal corporate elite). Is Obama’s advancement just about serving the interests of the hegemonic corporate order? Is their advancement linked directly to his serving their interests. Are the two primary cynical observations I studied in The Cynical Society all there is? It’s not what you know but who you know, and they’re all in it for themselves.

I, when I wrote my book and now, judge the ideal more independently, connected to practice to be sure, but connected not only in a cynical way, but also connected to the possibility of critique, a way to empower critical practice. Cynicism is the opposite of criticism, a major theme of my book. And now I read the Nobel lecture with this starting point. The lecture provides a guide to critically appraise Obama and his policies, and it provides the grounds upon which to critically respond to the shortcomings of the policies. As I put it in the post: “The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama.”

I see no reason to take the flawed actions of the Obama administration as being somehow more real than the professed complex ideals expressed in the Nobel lecture. Action and ideal interact in an important and consequential ways that suggest future possibility.

Yesterday I read a piece, “Obama’s Drone Debacle.” It reports that the drone policy has been more determined by career bureaucrats in the national security establishment than by the President and his White House. “It’s clear that the president and the attorney general both want more transparency,” says Matthew Miller, a former senior Justice Department official. “But the bureaucracy has once again thrown sand in the gears and slowed that down.” This does not relieve Obama of the responsibility for his policies, but it suggests an ongoing battle within the administration that may yield a change in direction. The article cynically highlights that Rand Paul outmaneuvered Obama in his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA. This is “Obama’s debacle.” The Nobel lecture reveals the thought behind possible change.

Am I again just apologizing for the politician I admire? Perhaps, but I think there is more to it than that. For even as I am critical with my friend of directions Obama has taken, I see a leader trying to move the public and not just making empty gestures of change. I see a complicated ideal being kept alive and shaping foreign policy to a degree, if not enough for my friend and others with similar criticisms. The U.S. surely is disengaging from the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more quickly with Obama, than we would have with either McCain or Romney. American foreign policy is moving away from extreme militarism that Obama’s Republican opponents proposed as a matter of principle. Principles matter.

And lastly the general point, without the ideal publicly visible, there is next to no chance that it will be acted upon. I saw and reported how this animated practice in the Polish underground. It explains why I think America is not only “the cynical society” but also a democratic society, simultaneously, with democratic ideals moving action, even as manipulation and cynicism are rampant. And more close to my intellectual home, it is why The New School for Social Research is a very special institution of higher education and scholarship, even when it has faced profound challenges and has been undermined by less than enlightened leadership for long periods of time. That will be the subject of my next “Principle and Practice” post.

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.

I believe that the victory of truth over truthiness is the most important result of the elections last week. The victory is beautifully documented in Frank Rich’s latest piece in New York Magazine. In my judgment, the defeat of truthiness is even more important than the victory of Barack Obama over Mitt Romney and the victory of the Democratic Party over the Republicans, important though these are. A sound relationship between truth and politics will provide for the possibility of American governability and progress, informed by both progressive and conservative insights.

To be sure, on the issues, foreign and domestic, and on various public policies, the differences between the two presidential candidates and their two parties were stark, clearly apparent now as the parties position themselves for the fiscal cliff. Yet, these differences pail in comparison to the importance of basing our political life on factual truths, (as I analyzed here) instead of convenient fictions (fictoids), and on careful principled (of the left and the right) judgments and not the magical ideological thinking offered by market and religious fundamentalists (as I also previously examined) and by various xenophobes and racists (who promise to take their country back).

Stephen Colbert, the great political philosopher and public intellectual, the leading expert on truthiness, disguised as a late night comic, has most clearly illuminated the truth challenge in his regular reports. His tour de force, in this regard, was his address to the White House press corps in George W. Bush’s presence. But now it no longer takes a brave comic genius to highlight the problem. Republican and conservative responses to election polling and results provide the evidence, both negative and positive.

Though the polls clearly predicted an Obama victory, it is noteworthy that the Republican leaders and their advisers really didn’t see the defeat coming. They operated in an ideological bubble, which facts did not penetrate. Now they must (more on their alternative courses in our next post by Aron Hsiao on Monday).

After all objective reports on election night indicated a decisive Obama victory, Romney wouldn’t concede. Karl Rove on Fox News comically refused to acknowledge what Fox News (Fox News!) projected. Before the election, Republican pollsters systematically distorted their election predictions to confirm their desired results. A fact denying normality had become the order of things. The right-wing politicians, and their media enablers, were not simply lying to the public. They were blinded by their own fabrications. There were the fortunate (from my point of view) miscalculations of the campaign, but when it came to science, to climate change, to biology and much more, fact denying had become deadly. Thankfully, there is now sensible resistance, by the population at large and also by conservatives themselves.

As reported by Jonathan Martin at Politico notable young conservatives are now presenting important criticism. Ross Douthat: “What Republicans did so successfully, starting with critiquing the media and then creating our own outlets, became a bubble onto itself.” Ben Domenech: “The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality.” Such self-criticism is heartening. Perhaps, it will be possible for serious conservative intellectuals and public figures to present positions without the craziness.

Severely conservative Romney continued his ideologically driven, fact-denying, forty-seven percent ways, blaming his defeat on “free gifts” to Obama’s core constituencies, free birth control to single women in college, health care to African-Americans and Latinos, and a special gift to Latinos — the promise of amnesty to children of illegal aliens, “the so-called Dream Act kids.” In the conservative cocoon at Fox, Bill O’Reilly strongly agreed, but it is very interesting to observe many Republicans running away from the remark. Surely political calculation is involved, but it is also a healthy matter that key conservative figures, such as Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, are distancing themselves from the ideological fiction of the society made up of takers and makers, as Paul Ryan has put it.

I wonder, thinking ahead to 2014 and 2016, perhaps there will be a Republican civil war, between the ideologues and the conservatives. I have my hopes, but also my concerns. But at least in this election, those who used facts to mobilize their campaign won over the prisoners of fictoids.

I identify with Barack Obama’s political position, as a centrist wanting to move the center left. I identify with the democratic left because of its long and developing progressive tradition, addressing the problems of inequalities based on class, race, religion, gender, nation and sexual orientation, and because of its critique of the injustices of untrammeled capitalism and its conviction that the present order of things can and should be subjected to critique, its conviction that the way things are is not necessarily the way they must be. For these and other substantive reasons, I am very happy with the election results.

But further and in a less partisan way, I understand that alternative political traditions, broadly understood as conservative, are worthy of respect, especially as they illuminate the importance of learning from experience and highlight the limits of reason. I respect this tradition and have learned from it. I think a healthy modern republic should be informed by it. And, for these reasons, I even have sought to find conservative intellectuals worthy of respect at Deliberately Considered, see here and here. It is a terrible loss that fact-denying, right-wing ideology has prevailed in the Republican Party in recent years, amplified by racist currents during the Obama presidency. But perhaps the tide will now change among conservatives.

Conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, and radical icon, Karl Marx, are important thinkers for me as I try to make sense of the political world, but it is the ambiguous and ambivalent commitments and insights of Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt that make them my primary political teachers. Tocqueville, the ambivalent democrat, highlighted the dangers of mass society as the underside of democracy. (I should post my thoughts on this one of these days.) Arendt more crucially observed the dangers of ideology and emphasized that a common factual base is the ground upon which democracy is built. I sense that the most significant result of this election is that we are moving back to this ground. I hope Fox News craziness, the right-wing entertainment industry, as David Frum is now describing it, is “so yesterday,” or at least no more intimately connected to the Republicans than the Democrats are tied to MSNBC. I can’t tolerate either as a source of news. It worries me that some think of them as such.

This is how I understand my centrist orientation. My primary political commitment is to a free public life, where people with different identities and principles meet between left and right, i.e. in the center. I don’t’ believe in watered down progressive and conservative positions, but a position where there is informed debate. For me, this is the meaning of “the vital center.” I think this election, as truth prevailed over truthiness, and as a principled leader prevailed over one that pretended to be a true-believer, who had a very problematic relationship with factual truth, provides hope for a centrist with leftist commitments.

I am off to Europe today, leaving the excitement of the elections with ambivalence.  On the one hand, I won’t be completely up to date and in touch with the latest developments and won’t be able to work for the re-election of the President. On the other hand, to be honest, I haven’t been working on the campaign this year, apart from occasional small contributions and apart from my clearly pro-Obama commentaries. I also must admit that being away, I hope, cuts down on my anxieties about the election results. This election is driving me crazy.

I have been trying to figure out why I am so tied up in knots about it, why it seems to me that the election is so important and why I am so invested in the results. After all, there is a chance that moderate Mitt, and not severely conservative Romney, is the alternative.

Moderate Mitt, perhaps, wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps, he is honestly revealing himself as he has been rushing to the center in recent days, with the identical foreign policy to Obama’s, guaranteeing that the rich will pay their fair share and promising to work with Democrats in forging a bi-partisan approach to economic growth and fiscal responsibility. Proud of his great accomplishment in effectively insuring universal health insurance to Massachusetts residents, perhaps, I shouldn’t even worry about his pledge to repeal Obamacare on day one.

Then again perhaps not: there is no way of knowing what Romney will do, who he really is, and that scares me. And even scarier, are the people who support him and will make demands upon him. From the crazies who denounce the President as a post-colonial subversive, bent on destroying America, to The Tea Party activists, to the neo-conservative geo-political thinkers, to supply side economists, who imagine that austerity is the path to growth (as in Great Britain?), to those who want a small non-intrusive government on all issues except those concerning sexual orientation and women’s bodies, to all those who just want to “take America back.” I am far from sure that moderate Mitt could resist their pressures, while I am quite sure that severely conservative Governor Romney wouldn’t, and would be, in fact, at the front of the barricades.

On every policy issue, in comparison to the Republicans, I support the President.  Yet, that isn’t the reason for my passion or my anxiety. Rather, I think, it has to do with feeling at home, feeling comfortable in my country. Something I am thinking about as I get ready to leave for a while.

Obama’s election opened our country up. It was something I was privileged to observe and celebrate with my friends at the Theodore Young Community Center, a rich, diverse community, primarily African American. I fear that Romney and especially the forces around him seek to close my country down. I share these fears with many of my friends. Especially with Beverly McCoy, the receptionist at the center, her passion for Obama is unmatched. She recognizes a competitor in my wife Naomi, and the three of us have become very close friends, along with other friends at Theodore Young. Beverly is sure that the passionate opposition and hatred of the President is ultimately because of race. I can’t disagree. I hope my leftist friends, those quick to be critical of Obama, remember this on election day, and also when they get carried away declaring that there is no difference between Romney and Obama.

I am off to see these friends now. I am off for a swim before my taxi to the airport and flight to Paris to visit family. Then on to Rome, Warsaw and Gdansk to give lectures and take part in discussions about the politics of small things and media, and the elections and my most recent book, Reinventing Political Culture, which has just been translated into Polish. It should be an interesting trip.

Yesterday, Beverly and I agreed that we would meet after the elections and celebrate our friendship no matter what. She wants to tell the world that our friendship is thanks to Obama, but it will live whether “our guy” wins or not. But I do hope that when I come home I will feel comfortable. To that end, Naomi and I cast our absentee ballots two weeks ago.

Immediately after watching the second Obama – Romney debate, I, along with the majority of the viewers and commentators, concluded that Obama won. But as I collected my thoughts and wrote my initial response, I found that I had actually written a piece that was less about why Obama won, more about why Romney lost. I knew I had to write a follow up.

In the meanwhile, Roy Ben-Shai sent in a very different interpretation, which I thought was important to share. He thought that as the President won the battle of the moment, Barack Obama, the principled political leader who can make a difference, lost. While Romney didn’t win, the empty game of “politics as usual” did. I am not sure that I agree with his judgment, but I do see his point.

The quality of Obama’s rhetoric and argument is one of the four main reasons why I think that Obama has the potential to be a transformational president, which I analyzed fully in Reinventing Political Culture. Obama has actually battled against sound bite and cable news culture, and prevailed. But not last Thursday: Ben-Shai is right. Obama beat Romney not by playing the game of a strikingly different political leader, capable of making serious arguments in eloquent ways, establishing the fact that there is an alternative to the politics of slogans and empty rhetoric, but by beating Romney at his own game, dominating the stage, provoking with quick clipped attacks and defenses. The idealist in me is disappointed, but I must admit only a little.

Tough practical political struggle is necessary and not so evil. Democratic political persuasion can’t replicate the argument in a seminar room or a scientific journal. The rule of the people is not the rule of the professoriate and advanced graduate students, and it’s a good thing, keeping in mind the extreme foolishness of distinguished intellectuals cut off from the daily concerns of most people. Popular common sense helps avoid intellectual betrayals, untied to everyday concerns. The challenge is to somehow be tough in the day-to-day political struggle, including the world of televised debates, responding to immediate concerns, and still contribute to serious public deliberation about fundamental principles. I believe this happened in both debates, with Romney winning the first popularity contest and Obama the second, and in my judgment, Obama actually winning the implicit serious debate that is embedded within the political spectacle.

In both debates, two starkly different visions of America and two strikingly different programs for America were presented. In both debates, Romney was fundamentally dishonest, proposing a five-point program that has no substance, promising a great deal that is quite contradictory and unworkable: cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, balancing the budget, through closing unspecified loopholes and reducing deductions of the rich, and growing the economy (purportedly by cutting taxes on the job creators, i.e. the rich). It just doesn’t add up and makes little sense as a way to actually addressing the economic challenges. And as we will hear tonight, I suspect, he also promises to make America great again by “never apologizing,” demonizing China and pretending that the problems associated with the world historic civilizational transformation occurring in the Muslim and Arab worlds are all the fault of Barack Obama.

I should add, as I declare Obama wins the serious debate, I am also aware that Romney is now mounting a serious challenge. I am not as sure as I have been about my prognostications.

The commentators agree that Romney, despite the contradictions and thinness of his program, has the momentum, and the President has to tell people how the next four years are going to be different. I was struck by an exchange on The Chris Mathews Show on Sunday morning. The panel, Andrea Mitchel, Chris Mathews, Michael Duffy, Jonathan Martin and Kathleen Parker, a moderate to liberal bunch, agreed that there is a problem. Obama has to make a case for four more years. They wondered together “why has he not laid out what he is going to do?” They viewed it as “the central mystery of the last part of this campaign”: why hasn’t he laid out what he is going to do? Is entitlement reform? Is it military reform? Is it tax reform? Is it all three?” Or is it more industrial policy, auto industry? Why wait until after he is elected? Martin told the cynical purported truth: it wouldn’t be popular: cutting a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, including cutting entitlements. The auto industry bailout is popular in some key states, but not in the rest of the country. They also agreed closure on Libya is pressing. This is the mindset of the mainstream pundits. It is also the campaign line of the Romney campaign: Obama has run out of steam.

Yet, I don’t understand this slogan and this analysis. Obama promises to stay true to his principles and implement them, moving “FORWARD” (his campaign slogan). A budget deal that includes tax increases and spending cuts. This makes sense and is popular, and it is projected to reduce the deficit by 3.8 trillion dollars in a decade. He will also work to sustain a robust recovery, by investing in infrastructure and pushing education reforms. From elementary schools to universities to green industry, he sees an active role of government as a key to economic recovery. In this regard, he will work to consolidate the advances of his first term, by implementing health care reform and regulations of the financial abuses that caused the financial crisis, i.e. the Affordable Health Care for America Act and Dodd-Frank. Obama is steady. He will follow through. And of all of Obama’s announced plans comprehensive immigration reform is a new initiative that is likely to be implemented. His victory would be thanks to the Latino vote and my guess is that enough Republicans will take notice to support significant reform.

While it is quite unclear who Romney is, whether he will be the servant of the Tea Party or the Massachusetts moderate, and how his proposals add up, Obama promises a steadfast political persona, a centrist moving the center to the left, a second term that enacts this position. This choice was apparent in the two debates. If the choice is clarified, Obama wins. More tomorrow, after tonight’s debate.

Many are saying that Obama “won,” that is, we won, the second presidential debate. I find this to be untrue, at least in the bigger picture, and unfortunately so.

Let us take a brief look at the recent events that led up to this debate. Prior to the debates, Romney was heavily down in the polls. The generally accepted view was that his only chance to overturn the scores would be some remarkable (almost magical) landslide at the presidential debates. But that, it was stressed, would be highly unlikely. After all, how much difference could a debate make? We already know the positions of the sides by heart; nothing substantively new or sufficiently remarkable could be stated so as to halt, let alone counter, Romney’s overwhelming flight downwards. Or is it? Romney showed up to the first debate like his life depended on it. True enough: the contents of the respective positions are known in advance and could not make much difference. But the performance could. Romney would be aggressive, precise, and most importantly, attack Obama directly (with the minimal courtesy and respect due, of course) at every occasion. He would show the American people who the true leader is, and what a terrible mistake they are making. Obama and his camp seem to have been caught off guard, overly confident, underestimating both Romney’s resilience and the potential importance of the debate.

Romney came to the first debate, so to speak, to the kill, and one of the main reasons for Obama’s “loss” was that he did not respond in kind. Romney was attacking, speaking directly to and about Obama, yet he did not heed to Romney’s rhythm. Obama stuck to his own tempo and demeanor, while on a few occasions being taken aback. This made him look “weak” and “tired,” even confused compared to Romney’s sharpness. This, it seems to me, simply confirms Obama’s most characteristic and compelling traits, and part of his particular nobility as a politician.

Ever since his first campaign, Obama made it a point to speak positively rather than negatively, to minimize the attacks on the other party (be it domestic or foreign) and maximize the talk of promise, change, improvement, and collective efforts; to minimize the language of fear and threat and maximize the talk of hope (let us put aside for now the fact that many of his promises he failed to live up to in practice –the promises and the promising at least were good).

By “winning” so decisively, what Romney proved in that first debate is what, by now, we all sadly know: aggression, especially in politics, wins the day. If you’re not aggressive, especially when the other side is, you are “wimpy” and a shadow, “disengaged.” This is allegedly true whether your opponent is a Republican or a terrorist, a Romney or an Ahmadinejad. In my opinion, this macho ideology may well be politically effective, but it is absolutely false and contradictory. To be able to focus on one’s own strengths and vision rather than on the other’s flaws and blindness, to speak the truth instead of calling out the other’s lies, to respond and resist non-violently to the other’s violence, the more so the more the other pushes (and the other will push, if only out of panic), is a show of power and resoluteness, not weakness. It was indeed a show of power and nobility that Obama (whatever flaws he might otherwise have) refrained, in the first debate, from mentioning or manipulating the poisonous and self-destructive remarks that Romney had been making, including the particularly sad one about the “47 percent.” The best way to counter this kind of divisive and patronizing approach is to ignore it, not to honor it with mention (especially given that it is common knowledge: Obama would be saying nothing new by bringing it up).

However, sure enough, Obama and his camp have “learned their lesson”. The first debate was the perfect reminder of what the “public” wants and to what it favorably responds. The situation in the second debate (as is often the case in sports) was reversed. Obama came up as the surprising underdog, and it was now the Romney camp that was caught off guard, overly confident, underestimating the underdog’s ability to talk that talk. This, in my opinion, is the lowdown of Tuesday night’s show: Having been pushed to the corner in the previous debate, Obama was forced to play their game, in their field. In that sense, the entire second debate was set within and framed by a Republican victory; it was a reactive move, and perhaps just as panicked and out of desperation as Romney’s had been in the first. Among other things, we could see Obama nearly mimicking the “enumerating” rhetoric used by Romney in the first debate to suggest that he is not talking “abstractly” (“We will do three things. Number one… Number two… Number three…,” all with the adjacent finger counting gesture).

Obama indeed managed to win it their way, in their field. It is, I admit, impressive. But his win is at the same time his loss and ours, certainly in the longer run. The “fierceness” of this debate — already celebrated by some as the “best” one ever– no doubt set a precedent for future debates, near and the far; a future that, from where I stand, seems rather bleak. The operation code is now to be direct and aggressive. The understanding is that, if played this way, debates have true transformative pull at the polls. To use the boxing metaphor that Obama is actually rather fond of using: Each opponent must keep his (or her) face and body shielded with the one hand, and, with the other, watch for the bare and vulnerable areas of the opponent’s. Each must take advantage of the opportunities unwittingly given by the other, and be sure to strike back whenever the other does. A lot of it has to do with timing: one must time one’s blows, and the expenditure of one’s energy and ammunition. The mentioning of the 47% remark, to cite one particularly good example, was brought up right on time, at the debate’s closing statement. Well played, Mr. President, we were eagerly waiting for this punch.

Who is steering at the wheel I am not at all sure, but for some time now our ship is steadily drifting to the right, and not only in the United States, in most of the electoral democracies. Divisiveness, intimidation, aggression, and warmongering may not help to win wars (nor, perhaps, are they meant to), but they certainly help winning elections. Obama’s notable victory Tuesday night, I am afraid, only served to remind us of, and perhaps to consolidate and accelerate, this overall direction.

The debate was again very stimulating, and again I had trouble sleeping, more out of excitement this time, not because I was fighting against despair, as was the case after the first Obama – Romney confrontation.

This debate turned the election back to its substantial fundamentals. Obama’s September advantage has evaporated. It was perhaps inflated by the Democrats excellent convention performance and the Republican’s very poor one, and also by Romney’s 47% put down. Now there is a real contest between a centrist who is trying to move the center to the left (think Obamacare), and a professional candidate with unknown political orientation, clearly against Obama, though not clear what he is for.

Three competing approaches to governance, in fact, have been presented in the campaign. If Romney had won last night, he would likely win the election. Then there would be a contest between Romney, the Massachusetts moderate, and Romney, the severe conservative. There’s no telling what the result would be. But because Obama prevailed, he is still in there, and for three reasons I think that he will likely prevail. It’s a matter of authenticity, common sense and American identity.

Moderate Romney won the first debate because he performed well and because the President didn’t. That was reversed last night. The President was sharp, answering questions accurately and with authority, responding to Romney’s attacks precisely, most evident in the way he turned his greatest vulnerability, his administration’s handling of the attacks on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Romney tried to use the same technics to dominate and shape the discussion as he did the last time.  But it was off putting. He insisted on talking when moderator Candy Crowley tried to keep him within the time limit, first with success, then failing. His attempt to bully a woman didn’t look good, as was noted on social media. And then there was the unfortunate turn of phrase “binders full of women,” a phrase that took off on the web immediately, revealing as it does a patronizing approach to woman and a view from on high of human beings as pages that fit into binders.

Romney was not nearly as weak as Obama was in the first debate. But Romney’s second performance reveals the unattractive technics he used successfully in his first performance, perhaps lessening the earlier success.

In the first debate, Romney pivoted. His move to the center thrilled Republican moderates and operatives, apparently making him attractive to independents and undecided voters. It confused Obama, who responded poorly. But prepared for this now, Obama effectively responded and Romney now wasn’t able to cogently account for his proposals or for himself.

Romney was caught between his supply side fantasies of cutting taxes on the “job creators” to stimulate economic growth, and a promise that he wouldn’t favor the rich, when job creators = rich. He declared that his move to cut tax rates and radically increase military spending will be paid for by closing unspecified loopholes, but wouldn’t or couldn’t provide evidence. Obama was particularly sharp in criticizing this.

“Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

Romney used an authoritative tone to trump such contradictions in the first debate. It didn’t work last night. And there was a big difference between his weak performance and Obama’s. Obama’s identity, his character, like it or not, is consistent. Romney’s isn’t. After campaigning for President for six years, it is still not clear whether he is severely conservative Romney or moderate Mitt. Strong performance can hide this, but the weak performance raised serious doubts.

Romney tests common sense both in the specifics of his major policy ideas and in presentation of self. His strongest move in the debate was to use every bad statistic about the economy, sometimes questionably cooked, and claim it is the fault of Barack Obama, from employment statistics to the price of gasoline. Without recognizing the larger historical and global context of hard times, it is all Obama’s fault. Some of this seems pretty compelling. It is his best argument, but I have my doubts that it can work when the alternatives Romney proposes so obviously most directly benefit the most privileged and so closely resemble the policies of George W. Bush. The Governor’s inability to distinguish himself from Bush and his policies, I think, was a notable low point in Romney’s performance

Women played a special role in this debate. There was a stark contrast in the way that Romney spoke about and to woman and the way that the President spoke: women in binders versus “women as heads of households,” as the President answered the question of equal pay for equal work. What was remarkable about the women in binders gaffe, is that it revealed a candidate who seems to be removed from America as it is and as it is becoming: less white, Protestant, Anglo, heterosexual, socially equal and mobile, and educated, than Romney and the Republicans imagine, with more suffering that demands government action. Obama and the Democrats speak to the America that is becoming, while the Republicans are in denial.

I realize this may be the most politically momentous night of my life. The differences between Romney’s and Obama’s approaches to America and its problems are stark and the choice was clearly revealed. Obama won the contest, in my judgment and according to the early polls.  As a partisan, I am very pleased. As a sociologist of political culture, I am intrigued.

In my next post, I will further consider the debate and focus on the positive vision that Obama expressed. I heard many commentators last night declare that the President has still not presented his plans for a second term. I don’t think this is accurate and will explain.

As I was composing my thoughts about the Biden–Ryan debate, I returned to my initial response to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his Vice President.

“Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.”

I reported this on my Facebook page and a very interesting debate developed, the sort of “serious discussion about the events of the day,” beyond “partisan gated communities,” which I hoped Deliberately Considered would stimulate. Thomas Cushman, the Deffenbaugh de Hoyos Carlson Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College, was the critical voice, reflecting on my post and on James Jasper’s on anti-intellectualism, which focused on Paul Ryan. The discussion than took off when I responded and then Aron Hsiao joined us.

Thomas Cushman: Honestly, is it possible that anyone could not look at Biden and see the incarnation of the anti-intellectual? It would seem more sociologically accurate and fair-minded to see that ideologue anti-intellectuals abound in both parties.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: Historically for sure, there have been anti-intellectuals in both parties. I really don’t understand on what grounds you label Biden as such, though. And I think ideological temptations, in the form of magical modern thinking about complex problems, exist among Republicans these days, not among Democrats. I wish this wasn’t so as someone who admires conservative thought.

Thomas Cushman: Really, from my point of view, it seems like Obama is almost completely a magical thinker, who inflects most of reality with a utopian narrative, and therein lies the problem. You can’t govern with a narrative, not a complex modern society in any case. I think Ryan comes across as a kind of intellectual technocrat, icy facts, some basic principles. Romney as well. I was here in MA for the Romney governorship, he was very pragmatic and not an ideologue. I think Obama is, at base, an ideologue, and it is his own words that give that sense to me. This is why Clinton, deep down, thinks he’s an amateur politician. Because he is a utopian and that doesn’t work. As for Biden, well, where to start on making the case against him. If you can look at the behavior and thinking of the two men in relation to each other, and come away thinking that Ryan is the anti-intellectual, I’m not sure what to say.

I would add that loud guffaws, eye rolling, bullying, laughing, etc. are not exactly the hallmarks of what I would consider to be an intellectual habitus. Ryan comes off as studious, serious, even professor-like. One could make that observation despite any political preference. There is nothing intellectual in Biden, no literacy, no depth, nothing but bluff and bluster. Obama at least can claim the mantle of intellectual, but of course for the Americans that is something of a liability in politics. Thanks for listening.

Aron Hsiao: Thomas, it seems to me as if you’re confusing an affect associated with certain social statuses with logical and empirical soundness. The socially constructed quantity of “the intellectual” encompasses both, but as a social construction, it is inflected in the process of reception as a matter of the audience demographic at issue and their culture and values.

Certainly both Obama and Biden are more logically and empirically sound than Romney and Ryan in the substance of the platform, policy specifics, and accounts of our present policy universe. In fact, Romney and Ryan have worked hard, to my eye, to ensure that there is relatively little content in this dimension of their “intellectualism” inasmuch as it is claimed to exist and obtain.

What is often described as Obama’s “utopianism” is in fact an acknowledgment that the social dimension of the world (both practice and ideology) are deeply implicated in and constitutive of policy outcomes, a view that is somewhat unpopular in American circles (note the constant dismissal of sociology and, to a lesser extent, other social sciences as “just politics” or “just utopianism” or “soft and wishful”) despite what history has to tell us about the incredible power, both for good and for bad, that inheres in publics and their quotidian lives and interactions.

Thomas Cushman: Fair enough, but one can be a sociologist — like myself – and feel as if some people read the social dimensions of the world differently than, say, contemporary welfare state liberals. My own sociological awareness is deeply suspicious of state power, as Jeffrey Goldfarb’s ought to be, given our common experiences in looking at state socialism. I think hard sociology is actually the best empirical proof of the dangers of utopianism, as evidenced by the now forgotten classical liberal sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who was the best sociological critic of utopianism, with the possible exception of Raymond Aron. Somehow, liberals forgot that the real enemy of freedom was the state and then came to believe that anyone who actually believed that was somehow retrograde or anti-intellectual.

Aron Hsiao: I think that Obama’s position on the state is a nuanced one; one of the underlying issues at debate is whether he is a statist at heart (the Right position) or seeks a realization and understanding of the state as a responsive expression of the nature and values of its public (the Left position). The problem, of course, is that the public of the state in question is a deeply divided one in terms of value orientations and everyday life practices, which means that in the wild the argument devolves into a debate as to whether the prerogative belongs to the slim majorities or, in the opposed view, the state is to be effectively abolished as an expression of the irreconcilable differences of the public.

My view is that it is in the interest of the best estimable practical and ethical outcomes, given the history of the 20th century and the modernities that we have already observed, that Obama’s nuanced Left understanding of the state ultimately obtain. But obviously, this is precisely the terrain of the value difference in the first place, so on both sides the argument has tended toward the subtly tautological.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: I go to sleep and an interesting discussion happens, too complicated for me to adequately address here. Just a few quick notes, and then perhaps we can reproduce this as a sustained exchange on Deliberately Considered [and here it is]. Tom, I am looking for intelligent criticism of my position on Deliberately Considered, not just agreement. It would be great to get one from you. I agree that Romney is no right wing ideologue, but he sometimes has tried to appear as such. It is difficult to know where he actually stands, what he would actually do. Obama on the other hand is very clear, at least to me. He doesn’t celebrate the magical powers of the state, as you suggest. He is a principled, pro market, centrist, who thinks the market should function in a setting that is developed with state support and control, including controls that facilitate greater social justice and decency. He is quite pragmatic about this, it seems to me. I don’t see this as having much to do with the previously existing socialism, which we both knew and developed our critical skills studying. Ryan as anti-intellectual? As James M. Jasper analyzed, there is pseudo intellectual quality to anti-intellectuals, which I think is present in Ryan. Further, his true believing anti-statist position is ideological (though he controls this) and especially dangerous. And on Obama again, all politics is formulated through narratives, the telling of stories as Arendt would put it. He is a powerful storyteller who in the last debate lost his voice. I hope he finds it soon.

Thomas Cushman: All very good. I’d be interested perhaps in an interchange on DC [It is starting here]. I am not sure why an anti-statist position is dangerous. It could be of course, but not necessarily. It was the wellspring of the anti-communist intellectuals whom your books taught me to appreciate and model my own politics after. I am searching for a liberalism which is more cautious of the state and have been led to something that is being called neoclassical liberalism, which tries to appreciate egalitarian high liberalism a la Rawls but also stresses greater economic individual liberties over and against the state as one of the best means for achieving self realization and more general societal happiness.

I do agree that there is a pseudo intellectual quality to all these politicians these days. I don’t consider Obama to be an intellectual in the strong sense of that term. As a legal scholar, presumably, he never left us any work by which we could judge his legal acumen. His autobiographies are written somewhat more for the Oprah crowd, and as we know now are creations of narrative rather than deep analysis. The smart people who have worked with him have generally left in frustration by his inability to listen (Larry Summers, for instance). Romney is certainly no intellectual either, but he makes no pretensions to being so. And it is difficult to find a person who worked for him who does not have deep respect for his abilities and successes. I wonder if really the US is actually better governed by intellectuals or managers. Seems to me that modernity demands managers of complexity, and that intellectuals are ill suited to govern in this context.

The discussion continued, packed with intriguing insights and competing judgments. I will post them later. For now, note the key questions that arise out of this discussion: Who are and are not intellectuals and what are their proper roles? Is there a distinction between storytelling based on principle and ideology? What is the role of the state and how suspicious of the state should we be? What are the promise and perils of utopianism? And much more specifically: what have Tom and I learned from our experience studying previously existing socialism and our appreciation of what he calls the classical liberal sociology of Ralf Dahrendorf and Raymond Aron?

I find the last question personally interesting. Thomas and I agree in many of our critical observations and judgments. He even maintains that his are informed by my writings (I indeed also appreciate his). Yet, we draw different political conclusions. He asserts that he is surprised by my conclusions, as I am surprised by his. I think such surprise is the stuff that makes for a sound democratic culture. More soon.

I woke up Saturday morning blown away by Charles Blow. His witty defense of PBS in his column is perfect. PBS as the enactment of the ideal of a democratic culture: refined, enlightening, open, inclusive, transforming. Blow presents not only illuminating personal reflections gleaned from the one gaffe of the Presidential debate on Wednesday, the dissing of Big Bird and PBS, as Aron Hsiao’s post yesterday analyzed, Blow also significantly addresses one of the crucial fields of contestation in American history: the perils to and promise of cultural excellence in a democracy. I have been thinking about this issue for much of my career. It was at the center of my book The Cynical Society: The Culture of Politics and the Politics of Culture in American Life. Blow shows how Big Bird and his Sesame Street friends, along with much else in PBS programing, contribute in a significant way to the health of the republic and its citizens.

Blow celebrates the character of Big Bird as it contributed to his own character. “I’m down with Big Bird.” Being black and poor in rural America, in the absence of good schools, PBS became his top quality primary and secondary schools. His uncle daily cared for him and permitted only one hour of PBS TV each day. (The same regime, I used with my kids. I wonder: how many millions were so raised?)

Blows imagination was sparked. His thirst for knowledge was quenched. He learned about science through nature programs, to his mind his SAT prep. He devoured arts programs, which he believes enabled him, a college English major without formal art training, to work as the design director of The New York Times and the art director of National Geographic magazine.

“I don’t really expect Mitt Romney to understand the value of something like PBS to people, like me, who grew up in poor, rural areas and went to small schools. These are places with no museums or preschools or after-school educational programs. There wasn’t money for travel or to pay tutors.

I honestly don’t know where I would be in the world without PBS.”

In the debate about what is the impact of democracy on cultural excellence, there are essentially two radically opposing positions, each unsatisfying: the elitist and the populist.

Elitists see a danger. Democracy weakens cultural excellence. If the majority rules in cultural affairs, mediocrity results. Distinguishing the good from the bad, the important from the insignificant and the creative from the formulaic involves hierarchical judgment. Elitists, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, want to preserve excellence in the face of the merely popular. The broad public be damned.

Populists have a problem with this. They rebel against elitism, while they defend the popular. Hierarchical judgment is seen as a defense of privilege. The tastes of the folk and the people are celebrated. The folk music coming out of the popular front in the thirties and forties, of the Weavers and Pete Seeger, express this position. It is also embraced by Seeger’s musicologist father, and the distinguished sociologist of the arts, Howard Becker. In the praise of the popular, concern for and support of “high art” is questioned.

Most of course try to square the circle, including the aforementioned, and try to figure out how the pursuit of cultural excellence and the pursuit of democracy involve a creative tension that supports both democracy and excellence. They further recognize that democracy and cultural excellence are mutually supportive, not only in tension.

Cultural work beyond elites is enriched by the insights and creativity of more diverse perspectives and cultivated capacities. In The Cynical Society I highlight the accomplishments of the American literary renaissance of the mid 19^th century, something that Tocqueville did not perceive or anticipate.

On the other hand, the rule of the people cannot be wise unless they are well informed and well educated. Excellence has to reach not only the privileged. Thus, Blow’s demand to not mess with Big Bird.

Romney made a cute comment, highlighting his antipathy towards government, shared with his fellow Republicans, in favor of minimal government. In contrast, in the view of Obama and the Democrats, the government can and should facilitate the development not only of the economy but also the society and American democracy. It is the government of the people, for the people, by the people, Obama emphasizes, not an alien force. It supports public goods, such as Big Bird and his friends. The stakes of the election for Obama are personified by Big Bird.

P.S.

As I was writing this post, I received Aron Hsiao’s “Romney’s Big Bird Moment” and decided to publish it immediately. He first brought to my attention the importance of the Big Bird gaffe in a response to my earlier post on the debate. I was pleased he expanded his at first tentative speculations into illuminating analysis tied to Chinese – U.S. history and the Republican approach to the political economy.

Big Bird went to China as educator and diplomat, showing an alternative to cold war antagonisms then and thoughtless self-destructive anti-China sentiments now. Hsiao concludes that Romney and the Republicans attempted “to liquidate Big Bird for their own gain—a startling parallel to the Bain Capital narrative that has dogged the campaign now for some time.” Hsiao thinks that “The moment may help to solidify the notion that Romney remains (perhaps intentionally) the quintessential private equity CEO, despite his presidential aspirations—a “one percenter” disdainful of publics. One who knows and exploits the prices of things without having any particular interest in their value.”

As a Democrat and strong Obama supporter, I hope he is right about the potential political impact of the Big Bird gaffe, though I am not sure. As a sociologist, on the other hand, I marvel at the power of democratic culture as revealed in a yellow muppet. As individual citizens such as Charles Blow have greatly benefited from the broad array of programing on PBS, American political culture has been enriched by the creativity that PBS has made possible.

Mitt Romney’s “Big Bird moment” in the first presidential debate of the 2012 election season is no small thing. Analysts have not yet, in my judgment, understood its full importance. Governor Romney both disrespected a great American symbol, Big Bird, and attacked a broadly respected and supported public institution, PBS. The China connection was especially provocative. Mitt’s argument against Big Bird and PBS, which leveraged popular anti-China sentiments, came off as elitist, cynical and opportunistic.

In 1983, well in advance of the warming of the Cold War, Sesame Street’s Big Bird introduced a generation of Americans to the culture of a rising China. Big Bird did this in a way that was intellectually generous, humanitarian, and even graceful at the same time. Though there are those that might regard Big Bird in China as simple children’s fare, few in America could have done the job that Big Bird did without having egregiously politicized it, even if unintentionally. In contemporary discussions of U.S. – China foreign policy, it is often forgotten that many in the current generation of American consumers, producers, business leaders, and politicians first encountered the then waking dragon of Chinese society through Sesame Street’s Big Bird.

Big Bird belongs to that rarefied sphere of public figures that are beyond criticism, politics, or reproach, as a normative matter, to be embraced and admired. In Big Bird’s case, this is not only because his cognitive development is that of a young child, and our culture constructs childhood to be a time of innate innocence, but also because he is something of a foundational cultural universal. Since the ’70s, several generations of American children have learned important life lessons from Big Bird—lessons about social norms, tolerance and diversity, culture and difference, everyday pragmatics, life events such as birth and death, and the gestalt core of human experience.

The Governor, elaborating on budget cuts that might be necessary at the federal level under his economic plan, offered Big Bird and PBS as examples of federal allocations that might have to end. “I’m sorry, Jim,” said Romney. “I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to—I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

Beyond Romney’s unfortunate choice of symbols, his intention was to adopt a negative position with respect to one of American culture’s few deeply democratic institutions and products. As the New York Times’ Charles Blow argued in response to the Big Bird moment, PBS is the rare American social and economic equalizer, effectively offering knowledge to the ignorant and its power to the powerless in the interest of the greater public good. It is an essentially democratizing force with nonpartisan, practical intent. Its ethos is deeply compatible with American ideals and the American narrative, regardless of viewership. Romney’s argument that PBS was costly and superfluous has long been a losing one with the American public. Despite decades of attacks from the American political right, it remains an integral component of the American public life. This alone should have given Romney pause.

That he chose PBS, a comparatively insignificant budgetary item, from all the possible examples of superfluous federal programs thus reinforces a central campaign narrative that Romney has struggled to dispel—that he is an intrinsically socially and economically elite figure with anti-democratic tendencies, not someone deeply familiar with and affected by middle class concerns or in tune with its everyday practices and values. For many in Romney’s 47 percent, or in Occupy Wall Street’s 99 percent, PBS represents public, democratic access to what would otherwise be forms of exclusively elite culture.

But Romney didn’t merely target PBS. In a discussion on budgets, fiscal policy, taxation, and deficits, Romney made the bewildering choice to single out Big Bird by name and to juxtapose Big Bird with China, recalling one of the proud moments in Big Bird—not to mention PBS—history, at the same time drawing his own position and status into contrast with PBS’s approach.

Big Bird in China was in many ways the distinct opposite of Mitt’s statement. Big Bird embodied the best American aspirations for China’s future and narratively symbolized them. Big Bird, a character representing the idealized value core of the American public and the humanitarian unity and egalitarian impulses of a melting pot society, visited China and carried these values into the heart of Chinese territory and culture with him. Example and diplomatic offering were rolled into one. Romney’s parallel-but-opposite formulation elicits significant cognitive dissonance as a result and is on the decidedly unfavorable side of the comparison.

There was no particular reason to use Big Bird over any other examples, and there were very good reasons not to do so, given Big Bird’s stature and meaning for the American public as a whole. And yet Romney chose to politicize this figure, privatizing and attempting to take ownership of him. The Big Bird that had a moment ago belonged to everyday Americans was made suddenly to belong to Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, who expropriated the public and leveraged Big Bird for their own purposes. These purposes happened to be precisely to attempt to liquidate Big Bird for their own gain—a startling parallel to the Bain Capital narrative that has dogged the campaign now for some time.

Romney bit off more than he could chew when he took on Big Bird. The moment may help to solidify the notion that Romney remains (perhaps intentionally) the quintessential private equity CEO, despite his presidential aspirations—a “one percenter” disdainful of publics. One who knows and exploits the prices of things without having any particular interest in their value.