Obama and James Buchanan
Timothy Burke wonders if Obama isn’t the next James Buchanan:
The basic error was that Buchanan approached American politics in procedural or legal terms at a moment when the reigning political conflicts in American life were no longer in any sense shaped or resolved by procedural or legal processes. He waited passively for legal decisions to determine his course of action, and when the Dred Scott decision dropped in his lap, he regarded that as the end of the matter. Open conflict in Kansas baffled him, and again he turned to a safely procedural answer (advocating that Kansas enter the Union as a slave state).
His worst moment in these terms was when he reacted to secession by characterizing it as illegal while maintaining that doing anything about secession would also be illegal. That’s pretty much the definition of clueless, of a basic incapacity to grasp the nature of the situation.
….
As in 1855, there are moments of potent intersection between the complex social and cultural formations driving large-scale political conflict and the formal political system (remember, after all, that it was Lincoln’s election that was the final catalyst for secession). But any elected official who really wants to lead at this moment needs to stop paying attention to what’s going on inside the Beltway and start paying attention to what’s going on outside of it. Any meaningful action that involves an engagement with the grievances of Tea Party activists has to be aimed at trumping or bypassing the established rules of the game. In those circumstances, compromise for the sake of compromise, justified in the name of necessity or helplessness, doesn’t resolve anything. It just kicks an increasingly explosive can down the road a bit. Like Buchanan did, which I think justifies his reputation as the wrong leader at the wrong moment.
Just to twist the knife a bit: a leader who hopes to restore respect for procedure also would have to do a more consistent job of it than Obama has: he’s done very little to reign in extrajudicial or arbitrary uses of security and military power, very little to call back extreme assertions of executive supremacy by the Bush Administration. It’s the worst of all worlds, really: President Obama has done a good deal to actually reproduce the illiberal, anti-procedural initiatives of his predecessor in security matters and on questions of transparency while hamstringing his own ability to speak to and act meaningfully at larger sociopolitical scales where the nation is most agonizingly at odds with itself.
Not sure if I agree with this, but Obama’s utterly political haplessness does leave one wondering.
“Utter political haplessness.” Christ on a crutch, man.
I thought Obama was the next Bush. Or Hitler.
Indeed, Christ on a fucking crutch…
That was such an incredible, painfully wrong analogy. Buchanan isn’t regarded as among the worst president ever because he was some clueless nerd arguing technical points while Southern Senators beat down some old frail guy. He was regarded as being among the worst president ever because he deliberately did a number of things that made it possible for a Civil War to kill 600k people.
Sometimes, it’s just not me being some sort of racial provacatour. It’s just some of you liberal commentators have lost your goddamn minds in the heat and stress of today’s America. I understand being really scared about the future, but firebaggery ain’t the answer!
Yup
It should go without saying that I and presumably not Timothy is even beginning to make the claim that Obama and Buchanan are somehow moral equivalents. But if you compare how both dealt with national crises, there are potentially some interesting and uncomfortable similarities.
NO, just,oh my god, NO.
You’d be better off comparing Obama with Martin Van Buren. There are lots better similarities, but then this sort of thing isn’t really about anything more than a scream of panic, now, is it?
Alright: go ahead. What are the similarities with Van Buren? That sounds interesting (as was this comparison to Buchanan).
Obama for America vs Van Buren’s restructuring of Jackson Democrats
Seminole War
Smart, capable person with a background many consider as dubious
Undone by financial crisis created by his anti-intellectual predecessor.
I think that’s a good start.
Not buying it – the relationship between Jackson and Van Buren could not be more different than that of GWB and Obama.
Which really does goes without saying.
What the topic is, is Van Buren a better comparison to Obama than Buchanan? I think I’ve said enough to say, yes.
Anyways, where’s that secret manifesto about annexing Taiwan? Or beatdowns of Justice Scalia until he makes more business-friendly rulings? Or having Pat Toomey as head of Health and Human Services…
Do you even begin to fucking understand just how mind-alteringly insane the comparison is, even in the most limited of senses?
You’d be better off comparing Obama with Martin Van Buren.
Or Lincoln with JFK. That one never gets old.
The similarities seem to be created by a deeply inaccurate reading of the Buchanan administration. Buchanan didn’t welcome the Dred Scott decision because he was a legalist. He welcomed it because he agreed with it. And he certainly didn’t embrace the profoundly dubious Lecompton constitution out of respect for proper procedure, when a respect for proper procedure would surely have led to a rejection of that anti-democratic nonsense. Nor do we see this supposedly mortal trait in Buchanan’s purposeful decision to try to aid in the destruction of Democratic Party unity due to a personal grudge against Stephen Douglas.
Buchanan was bad largely because he was malign, nut because he was ineffectual and weak (not that he was not ineffectual and weak, of course, just that that really wasn’t the key factor).
Even after November 1860, the incredibly weak response to secession had a lot more to do with the presence of treasonous southerners like Jacob Thompson, Howell Cobb, and John Floyd in his cabinet than with Buchanan’s legalism. After the southerners cleared out, Buchanan mostly replaced them with staunch unionists, including Edwin Stanton. And Buchanan could have been a lot worse than he was: he easily could have abandoned Fort Sumter, but he didn’t.
There are some on the left (Digby, most vocally, but others) who view Obama similarly.
I agree with John. The fatal flaw in the analogy is that Buchanan wasn’t a proceduralist. Buchanan — like the Congressional leadership — approved of Dred Scott decision on the merits, and any “proecuralist” committed to “popuular sovereignty” would have immediately rejected the fraudulent Lecompton constitution.
On a hotel computer, typos cannot really be fixed.
Well that goes to those who are seeing in the pattern Obama seems to be following that this is what he wants. He really didn’t want single payer, he really is OK with the continued drain, both financial and human, of Iraq and Afghanistan and he really does want to protect the wealthy interests while gutting the social safety net.
He certainly has kept treasonous parties in his administration (Geitner, Berneke).
Yeah, I think you may have hit the nail on the head here.
it should go without saying that i and presumably not timothy is even beginning to make the claim…
you is?
Lots of presidents immorally supported slavery and opposed secession. The argument here is that Buchanan uniquely opposed session but took bizarrely legalistic and impractical positions that limited his ability to stop secession. He also uniquely misread the tenor of the time in thinking that compromise on slavery was possible.
Is Obama’s political strategy similar to Buchanan’s? I dunno. However, Obama does keep trying to compromise with hostage takers that show no qualms about killing the hostage, and never get punished for it. It certainly seems to lean more Buchanesque than Lincolnish.
I have absolutely no idea how one can equate (or even compare) secession to the Tea Party, which has attempted to implement a disastrous and cruel political program through entirely legitimate means.
Besides, the argument is vague to the point of meaninglessness. In arguing that to rule in the present climate, Obama’s strategy “has to be aimed at trumping or bypassing the established rules of the game,” the author seems to explicitly lobby for illiberal tactics to achieve one’s goals. Failing to follow that path cannot possibly be analogized to allowing the nation to disintegrate before one’s eyes in the name of some hazy vision of legality.
Yes, the tea partiers and secessionists cannot be “equated”. No two distinct things are exactly the same. But analogies do not claim identity. They claim analogousness.
On the other hand, no two things are entirely different from each other either, so any two things can be “compared”. Whether a given comparison is illuminating or not has to be made out by argument.
Burke gave his argument, which you appear to misunderstand. By Burke’s lights, the contemporary Republican party is not now playing by the “rules of the game”. Their playing chicken with the debt ceiling may be “legal” and so in that sense “legitimate”, but that is not the point. The point is that their actions are a radical departure from established norms of political practice. Additionally, they can only be understood in terms of motivating forces that conventional discourse about politics does not make room for (among other things, because the motivations violate the conventional assumption that political players are not willing to destroy the nation’s economy).
Burke’s claim that Obama is a bad fit for the historical moment basically comes to this: that in light of the points above, to respond to the actions of the House Republicans with endless attempts to compromise is deeply misguided. It bespeaks an inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that has no application to the situation we currently face.
You might debate these claims. But they are the claims upon which is analogy rests, and You need to have them in view to productively engage Burke’s argument. Though doing so might be less satisfying that chastising Burke for his obvious foolishness.
“To respond to the actions of the House Republicans with endless attempts to compromise is deeply misguided.”
Again, what is the alternative? As I have no idea what “trumping or bypassing the established rules of the game” means, I don’t know what to engage with. If it means invoking the 14th amendment, then sure, I agree. Anything else strikes me as either reflecting illiberal thinking or as an unrealistic solution.
As I have no idea what “trumping or bypassing the established rules of the game” means, I don’t know what to engage with.
Again, you already have an example of “trumping the rules of the game” in the sense relevant to Burke’s argument, namely, violating established political norms. It is what the House Republicans are currently doing.
In general, I expect the Democrats to fight back in kind when they are again in the minority facing a Republican president(and perhaps even be smart enough to reform the system if they ever have a filibuster-proof majority again) – to filibuster everything, make the nominations process impossible, etc. Those are the new rules of the game, and I think everyone including Obama and Harry Reid realize that.
In the present context, however, Burke’s argument seems like a way of avoiding the consequences of the fact that the American people elected a bunch of near-lunatics to the House. This is not akin to the secession crisis in which southerners acted anti-democratically to subvert the political process, nor is failing to violate established political norms (and, again, I have no idea what this might mean in the context of Obama’s position), comparable to Buchanan’s actions in 1860.
I think everyone including Obama and Harry Reid realize that.
Bet you half a dollar.
Gotta agree with the others in this thread: Buchanan = Obama? I’m just not seeing it.
The now tried and tested Herbert Hoover analogy works a lot better.
(Or maybe you could try the conservative Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan, now that Obama has abandoned Keynesianism and embraced so much of the right’s economic ideology.)
Jeez Louise.
“Political haplessness”? I remind you and everyone else that this guy got us a national health insurance plan and a restructuring of financial regulation and a national recovery plan and … well, just about the best progressive legislative record since Lyndon Johnson. You don’t get those kinds of results when you can’t politic.
But I think what many Progressives really want isn’t a liberal Reagan (and if he wins again next year, as is likely, that’s what Obama will be). What they want is a liberal George W. Bush: an unabashed partisan who will castigate the Republicans and conservatives everywhere just like Dubya did, even if, like him, it costs him legislatively. To his credit, Obama isn’t that guy. He really does think that good policy is good politics in the long run and he’s right. Not so much to his credit, he also seems to believe that he can model good governing behavior and get Republican partisans to pay attention. It’s a good thought, but that ship sailed a long time ago.
And another thing: no president – liberal, anarchist, commie, conservative, fascist, you name it – will give up presidential power in foreign and national security affairs while the country is at war. Shoot, they usually won’t give it up, period. People need to look on the bright side here: Obama hasn’t gotten us further embroiled overseas so he could use the rally effects for domestic purposes, like some recent presidents we know. But if we really want to reign in presidential authority in this area – where their constitutional authority is already so great – the answer is not new personalities, it’s new laws. We hear precious little about that, but we should. Then we should make Obama pass them. Expecting him to back out of present power arrangements in foreign and security affairs out of the goodness of his heart is simply expecting personality to effect an institutional problem. It can, but it usually won’t.
a national health insurance plan????
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
you’re serious?
Have you ever been covered by a national health insurance plan? I have. The ACA is nothing like a national health insurance plan.
It’s merely a requirement to buy insurance. With some subsidies if you can’t afford it, i.e. if you can’t pay 20% of your income to an insurance company, and those subsidy amounts subject to legistlative tinkering.
That’s not a national health insurance plan. That’s a national insurance company guaranteed-profit plan.
As for financial reform: ha ha ha ha ha again.
And economic recovery? Tell that to the 20% unemployed.
Man, that hopium must be really really good. But don’t let Holder catch you smoking it.
this guy got us a national health insurance plan
That’s a fucking joke.
I think what many Progressives really want isn’t a liberal Reagan (and if he wins again next year, as is likely, that’s what Obama will be).
Why would you think this? He hasn’t shown a whole lot of progressive proclivities to this point.
I think you’re just projecting your own views onto Obama, just like he encouraged us to do during the ’08 primaries.
His political haplessness started with not foreseeing Republican obstructionism and forcing Harry Reid to eliminate the filibuster. He lived through the Clinton Administration, too, what did he think was going to happen? All he needed was 50 senators. He also showed foolishness in his cabinet appointments by picking people like Kathleen Sebilius who were more valuable to his political program where they were.
He then passed a healthcare plan that is a nice first step and important for that reason, but didn’t give the general public enough right away to overcome their misgivings about big guvmint. If people had been able to start signing up for a cheap, public healthcare plan, maybe the Dems would still have the house? When he was put to passing healthcare without 60 votes, he didn’t pass the most generous plan he could get votes plus Biden for. He stuck with the one that could get 57 or 58, a useless number.
I submit that Obama is most certainly leading, but per his political lights. He is a Blue Dog, and/or (what was once deemed) a moderate republican. During 2008, he gave semi-fair warning to that effect. For example, although it occurred after he had gained the nomination, his FISA vote betrayal spoke volumes. Those who had ears took note.
The democratic rank and file got snowed. Being human, the smarter ones now resent it like hell.
Those who had ears took note.
Yep.
I wish I had picked up one of those bumper stickers.
Me too. Brilliant work, that was.
You got the left-most candidate capable of election, in other words.
I dispute this. The fundamentals were so in favor of Democrats in 2008 that we could have nominated Zombie Eugene Debs and he’d probably have won. Whether or not he’d have gotten anything done is another question, but Obama was certainly not the leftmost democrat capable of being elected in 2008. Not even close.
Look at the margins in many of the states that didn’t cause the win, but padded the score…
I’m not so sure.
At the time he wrapped up the nomination, in early/mid summer, he was probably the leftward-most candidate who could get elected.
By November, Gravel would have been near-even money against McCain.
And another thing – when both parties picked their candidates, it was a foreign/military policy election. By the fall, they pre-empted the dedicated foreign policy debate to ask questions about the economy.
This whole dynamic about “the smarter ones” is what’s toxic about the atmosphere in liberal circles. Obama =/ Matt Cleland. Obama especially =/ Zell Miller. Obama =/ Jim Webb. Obama =/ any number of actual Blue Dogs we can actually name and check the record of, online. Again, Obama is like Cory Booker or a smarter Ray Nagin, and that’s just another kind of cookie. This is the sort of stuff actual smart people like me, or your favorite target Matt Yglesias, or anyone else actually wanting to process goddamn reality can look up and figure out. And everyone (leftist) who ain’t a white male understands the goddamned whistles and the stupid variants of Madonna/Overman-Slut/weakling complexes when they see them.
People are just getting so stressed out, they’re letting their programming show, here and in Crooked Timber. People just shouldn’t have patience for this illiberal crap
I see now, shah8. You’re actually a nut. Good to know.
Being called crazy by the insane isn’t actually something I’d be especially ashamed of.
I’d say shah8 called you out. You want a left coalition without any black people in it, and based on fundamentally sexist (and stupid) ideas about strong non-negotiating fuhrerprinzip leaders. Good luck with that.
actual smart people like me
*takes out troll-bingo card*
*marks square*
/me has a crooked grin on…
Madame, I do believe–since you’re abusing a feminist trope, that philter you just drank was the one with the iocaine.
Mhm
105 House Democrats and 22 Senate Democrats voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. It was definitely a conservative leaning vote, (and a disappointing one) but far more than just Blue Dogs voted for it.
I think the problem here is that the phrase “Blue Dogs” describes a very specific, organized group within the Democratic Party that, though important, has never been the sum total of all non-progressive elements within the party. Like the old epithet “DLC” it actually refers to a specific, organized group of people who can be quite objectively identified.
Obama is not and never has been a Blue Dog.
He also is not particularly progressive.
Does anyone have a political memory that goes back more than a couple of months? Have people completely forgotten what a blue dog is? Hint: Not Obama. Obama may very well be less liberal than you may like. But the Blue Dogs are more conservative still, as was demonstrated, repeatedly and at great length, during the debates over the ACA.
Disappointing, yes. Snowed? I’m not sure. Do you really think Hillary Clinton would have been any better? Remember, she picked Mark Penn to run her campaign. Wherever she lies on the political spectrum in her personal beliefs, I have no doubt her governance would have ended up squarely in the middle of the DLC consensus which is about what we got with Obama. In retrospect, the most striking part of that hotly contested primary campaign is how irrelevant it may ultimately have been to broad policy outcomes.
I would like to note that, if you were paying attention to a number of the past ‘prominent politican’ and ‘worst presidents’ threads, that both Erik and Scott have somewhat idosyncratic views re: Buchanan.
I would submit to Erik, however, that however accurate it might be a Buchanan comparison isn’t really helpful. Buchanan was so morally awful that a purely technical observation of similarities in styles of governances are going to be drowned out by that. There are surely other less inflammatory examples that could have been used?
Maybe Obama is Buchanan, maybe not. But Romney/Bachmann sure as hell isn’t Lincoln.
I won’t be happy until we’ve worked through the vital question of whether Barack Obama is the second coming of Grover Cleveland.
That was Clinton. Obama could be the third.
Surely the second coming of Grover Cleveland was, well, Grover Cleveland again?
Obama 2016: Hope & Change For Real This Time!
Tanned, Rested, and Ready.
Kinda like this.
Really, Erik?
Healthcare reform? Hapless? Like it or not, he was the first of a lonnnnnnnnnng line of Presidents, Republican and Democrat, to actually pass something comprehensive. We may not like the outcome but you cannot deny that something happened and he managed to get a big bill passed.
He’s had many very important successes and led the way on many if not most of those issues.
Yes, he’s being diplomatic and particularly closed-mouthed here, but there seems to be a bigger picture in everything he does so I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
Like it or not, he was the first of a lonnnnnnnnnng line of Presidents, Republican and Democrat, to actually pass something comprehensive.
“Mom, this meatloaf tastes awful.”
“But I followed the recipe to the letter!”
“Obama is not and never has been a Blue Dog…He also is not particularly progressive”.
As there is no rock hard definition of Blue Dog, that’s impossible to dispute.
What were Scoop Jackson democrats once called? (I know what I called them, and it was ugly).
That he’s “not particularly progressive” is putting it exceedingly mildly. He oozes contempt for intra-party critics. Which is not very politic of him, is it?
Actually, there is a rock-hard definition of Blue Dog: members who joined the Blue Dog Coalition.
Silly me, I thought the term “progressive” referred to an ideological orientation. I guess it’s actually a measure of who’s butt one kisses. And I haven’t seen him ooze contempt for any actual intra-party critics – just people loosely affiliated with the party. Could you name an actual Democratic office holder that he has oozed contempt for?
As a point of brute politics, distancing oneself from people perceived as the fringe is smart politics in a two-party system.
Jeebus, hysterical much?
Not only is Obama facing a situation pretty much like the impending Civil War, not only is his attitude towards procedure “the worst of all possible worlds,” but the president who actually passed health care reform*, the president who has a 45% approval rating when unemployment is at 9%, is “utterly” – utterly – politically hapless.
I remember thinking that George H.W. Bush was, like, totally the worst president evah – but I was 20 when I though this.
*No, noting that he made political deals to do so doesn’t demonstrate that he is less politically adept, but more.
I dispute this as a point of general wisdom, joe. The mere presence of a political deal doesn’t automatically imply that the person making it is politically adept. The quality of the deal from a political standpoint determines that. I think you want to argue that Obama managed the political environment well to make the best policy deals he could and then spun them politically in the best way possible.
Mind you, I don’t really agree with that. Maybe not as strongly as Erik does, and I’ve been coming around a bit lately, but I really do think that whatever his policy choice merits or tactical concessions, Obama has been politically blundering strategically. A lot.
But that is the argument you want to make, not that the mere presence of a deal being cut means the guy cutting it is politically adept.
From a politicalstandpoint, Murc. Not from a policy standpoint, but a political standpoint.
From a political standpoint, getting a comprehensive health care reform bill passed is an amazing accomplishment, and how close that bill comes to your or my policy preferences is irrelevant.
I didn’t argue that the mere presence of a deal demonstrates his adeptness. I wrote No, noting that he made political deals to do so doesn’t demonstrate that he is less politically adept, but more.
I’m stating that accomplishing the passage of the bill demonstrates political adeptness. The presence of deals by themselves is not an impressive political achievement; the use of deals in order to achieve the passage of comprehensive health care reform is an impressive achievement. I’m saying, he used the tool well, not just that he used the tool.
It’s pretty much the entire lefty blogosphere that’s collapsed into apoplexic racism/associated entitlement complexes. Check out any thread you like from Naked Capitalism, for example. Ives Smith was always something of a PUMA, but she and her crew has gone absolutely bananas recently. I don’t even need to point out Great Orange Satan threads. People have really lost their goddamned minds.
I still can’t believe that people I’ve thought were sane are saying all kinds of incredible shit…
I think this is debatable. The generals do not like the time line withdrawal in Afghanistan, nor the rate its to take place. His dealings with the generals in more nuanced perhaps. What Rory Stewart said not too long ago…
But perhaps even more importantly, defining a more moderate and limited strategy gives him leverage over his own generals.
I fear for the world when the CoC needs “leverage” over his generals. Did Truman need leverage over MacArthur?
Yup. That leverage was named George C. Marshall.
Without him, MacArthur becomes the next POTUS.
No he would not have.
DC would have been an irradiated wasteland, and MacArthur’s ashes are airborne somewheres above Yukon Territory, as the devestated US swears in an ill Thomas Dewey in Denver, the new Capitol of the US!
Maybe, but that was after the fact, as I recall. And the point, that a CoC should not need leverage with subordinates, really should not be controvertial.
Marshall kept MacArthur in line for a while before the big blow-up, and Truman knew he had him in his corner to defend his decision to fire Mac when he made it.
And Keisha should be asking people if they want fries with that. Life sucks.
Ahahahaha.
Marshall did no such thing. MacArthur fucking hated Marshall and literally went out of his way to provoke him. If anything Marshall’s presence made MacArthur LESS likely to toe the line, not more. And he had a ton of dirt on Marshall thanks to the defection of Ned Almond.
We are talking about a man who sent a light colonel to present his plans for Inchon to the Joint Chiefs eighteen hours before it was scheduled to happen. The only thing that was ever going to keep MacArthur in line was jerking his choke chain, which is what ultimately had to be done.
In fact, Marshall repeatedly yanked MacArthur leash to get him back in line. It wasn’t a question of MacArthur liking him; he outranked MacArthur as Secretary of Defense.
Now, it wasn’t ultimately successful – he eventually had to be fired, as I said – but Marshall did exert some influence over him. The blow-up between MacArthurn and the President probably would have happened considerably sooner without Marshall.
MacArthur completely disregarded those chain yanks on the part of Marshall, though. Completely.
What Marshall did was periodically outmaneuver or outright block MacArthur. This is not the same as keeping him ‘in line,’ although I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘in line.’ MacArthur regarded being balked as a reason to find another way to get what he wanted, not to back off, and at that point in his career he was never going to recognize anyone as a true superior officer. He often took Marshall’s ‘interference’ with him as an excuse to deliberately do things he knew would anger Marshall. That’s hardly the action of a man being kept at all in line.
I’m using the phrase in the context of the discussion above:
Ah. Yeah, I guess in that sense Marshall represented leverage over MacArthur, but in his role as SecDef, not as a unique quality attached to his own person. Forrestal would have exercised as much or more leverage, for example, and it would have been near impossible for any SecDef to exercise less. Marshall wasn’t even insulated from political attack due to his massive chops; many accused him of treason for trying to rein in MacArthur.
A Commander-in-Chief shouldn’t need leverage with subordinates, but of course in practice they do. Coups are one of the most common forms of government overthrow for a reason, after all.
The nature of delegation and bureaucracy in a modern government is that all departments of government have a significant amount of independent political power in practice, and the United States military is a particularly extreme example, both because they have jurisdiction over a very important part of government and because Congress gives them an awful lot of money to play around with.
Its a fact of political life that a president needs “leverage” with a popular general in a time of war. As mentioned, Truman put up with a lot before actually firing McCarther and he caught a lot of flak over it. He could act with impunity a suppose but could pay a heavy political price in the end.
MacArthur was fired in 1951. What political price could Truman play, assuming that MacArthur was unwilling to actually lead a coup?
Great question, and maybe I need to look into it again. However, even if Truman was not up for re-election, maybe he could lose ability to achieve some of the things he still had in mind, and not lose popular support. A president also has to keep in mind that he represents his party and the harm a unpopular decision of his could have on future elections.
Found the wiki fascinating…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_General_Douglas_MacArthur
Loss of popularity among the public.
Loss of influence over allies and would-be allies in Congress.
Erosion of his ability to pursue his agenda.
A pretty big one, Mal.
The Taft Republicans of the time (as in Bob Taft, who would eventually become the Goldwater Republicans) were in full swing against the Truman Administration at the time. You probably have no idea who William Jenner is; Senator from Indiana, a minor McCarthyite. The man rose in the Senate and literally accused Truman and Marshall (Marshall, the man who basically won WWII) of being traitors who were deliberately attempting to lose the Korean War because they were owned by the reds. And he was LAUDED by much of his party for it.
Meanwhile Truman was watching his opinion polls drop like a brick and wondering if he’d be remembered as the President who was dragged unwillingly by his General and his Congress into a nuclear war with China. That was a legitimate fear on his part.
Meanwhile Truman was watching his opinion polls drop like a brick and wondering if he’d be remembered as the President who was dragged unwillingly by his General and his Congress into a nuclear war with China. That was a legitimate fear on his part.
Yes, but he did not look for “leverage.” He did not make any deal. He did not appoint him to, say, the CIA. He just went ahead and fired MacArthur.
What makes you think those situations are even the slightest bit similar?
David Patraeus has never let the slightest bit of daylight show between him and whatever civilian leadership holds office above him. Not under Bush, and not under Obama. He isn’t remotely comparable to MacArthur.
I can’t imagine why someone might suspect Petraeus is contemptuous of civilian control.
I’m not reading a six page Vanity Fair article. Make an argument.
Try here then.
Uh… no.
Truman spent literally years looking for leverage over MacArthur and trying to make a deal with him. It wasn’t overt, of course. Truman had his dignity, a President does not openly negotiate with his subordinates. But Truman didn’t just up and fire MacArthur. He tried literally everything else to deal with the man before being driven to that as the last resort.
Chest-thumping to colleagues?
Really? That’s comparable to MacArthur?
I don’t give a flying crap about what people second-hand reported to Bob Woodward about what they say David Patraeus said in private conversations.
When I worked in a government office, I used to bitch and moan to other people in the office all the time about what people above me did. Complaining to your coworkers when the boss doesn’t do what you want is a fundamental human right!
But I never, even once, provided any member of the public or any policymaker with even the slightest reasons to suspect that I disagreed with the official line once it came down, and neither has Patraeus.
Joe: A rock hard definition? If there’s another you wish to cite, let me know:
“Blue Dogs purport to have an agenda that protects the interests of the vulnerable while also respecting traditional cultural values and keeping taxes low. Others, including fellow members of the Democratic Party, have questioned the veracity of this mission statement”.
The president, to his credit, rose with the tide insofar as DADT was concerned. Still, America’s homophobes political influence peaked years ago. Obama did his bit, but it was hardly leadership. Am I overlooking any other “traditional cultural values” with which he has tangled? He may well have, for all I know. I don’t tend to pay much attention to what I ignore by inclination.
And how has he “protect[ed] the vulnerable” by putting SS and Medicare on the table? With his party in command of both congressional houses, why did he punt on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010?
As I’ve said, his actions thus far do not constitute a betrayal in my eyes. I understood his conservative inclinations in 2008. Suffice to say, his political sympathies veer towards the arch conservative within his party.
Yes, a rock-hard definition: membership in the Blue Dog Coalition, an actual group that has membership, is the rock-hard definition.
Barack Obama has never belonged to the Blue Dog Coalition, the the Lutheran Church, or the Cincinnati Bengals.
Ergo, he is not a Blue Dog, a Lutheran, or a Cincinnati Bengal.
If you wish to argue that he is a “conservative Democrat,” have at it. He is not, nor has he ever been, a Blue Dog.
Nor has Obama ever belonged to the Democratic Leadership Council.
He did call himself a “New Democrat,” however, although he also stated that his policy positions made him “an unlikely candidate for the DLC.”
He also never joined the Progressive Caucus (although “progressive” is both a description and a reference to a particular organization, unlike “DLC” or “Blue Dog.”)
As far as I know, the only caucus he joined was the CBC. I think we can all agree that he’s black.
On a continuum that runs, right to left, Blue Dogs-DLC-Progressives, I’d peg him as somewhere between the DLC and Progressives, perhaps a bit closer to the former than the latter, but even if you equate him with the DLC, he’s still well to the left of the Blue Dogs.
“Yes, a rock-hard definition: membership in the Blue Dog Coalition..”.
As Lyndon LaRouche once sensibly pointed out: “You don’t need to wear a brown shirt to be a fascist”.
Shark jumped.
LaRouche also pointed out that “The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division (Tavistock) specifications, and promoted in Britain by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence.”
The relevance to Sunday’s Winehouse thread cannot be overstated.
LaRouche also ran the greatest political ad of all time during the 2004 Democratic Primary debate in New Hampshire:
It opened with a mushroom cloud. Honest to God, that’s how it opened: KA-BOOOOOOOMMMMM!
Then, it featured LaRouche doing a voiceover while a still photo of him speaking was on the screen. Sort of like that Star Trek episode.
Then, it ended with someone else delivering the tag line: “Vote for Lyndon LaRouche…OR DIE!!!!!!!”
Just all kinds of awesome.
“Who is pushing the world toward war? is the forces behind the World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, and the heritage of H.G. Wells and the evil Bertrand Russell.” – “An Open Letter to President Brezhnev”, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Executive Intelligence Review, June 2, 1981
I knew it was the panda lovers. You just can’t trust people who like pandas.
Fucking pandas. How I loathe them.
I thought that was William Buckley.
Now that I look it up, it was neither. But crediting LaRouche was still funny.
And he should know, being a fascist.
To get beyond the silly Lyndon LaRouche thing to the issue of whether Obama is a blue dog, I don’t think Obama’s lack of membership in the Blue Dogs is necessarily particular evidence that he is not a blue dog. We describe Evan Bayh, say, as a Blue Dog, but he was not a member of the Blue Dog Coalition.
The evidence that Obama is not a blue dog is that he was active at odds with the Blue Dogs and their fellow travelers for pretty much the entire length of the 111th Congress, and constantly had to cajole them to get them to vote for his legislative agenda.
We do?
I wouldn’t describe Bayh as a blue dog type. He’s much more of a corporate conservative than a cultural conservative, and he was smart enough never to affect a populist persona.
The Blue Dogs are much more corporate types than cultural conservatives, in practice.
“I wouldn’t describe Bayh as a blue dog type”.
You appear to have a bead on the definition of ‘Blue Dog Democrat”. Care to share it?
I just did.
“Shark jumped”?
Am I mistaken? Do only the good hearted and benevolent possess insight into human nature?
Explain to me why that particular observation of LaRouche is off base.
Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m wrong all the time, and used to being corrected.
Explain to me why that particular observation of LaRouche is off base.
Well, for one, LaRouche did not make it.
Yes.
Yes.
No.
Oh, hell no.
I won’t.
And I believe you.
How clever.
(You won’t, because you can’t).
errr, you don’t have a capacity for introspection, do you?
/me shakes with quite laughter…
Um, everybody knows Tim Burke is an Africanist right? And begged for correction from Americanist colleagues? Because, you know, he might be wrong? I know, a blogger who actually admitted he might be wrong and asks for correction. It’s inconceivable.
How about Obama as Henry Clay, watching as Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren wreck the economy out of misguided fealty to ideological purity?
[...] Eric Loomis at LGM says Obama’s haplessness has him wondering. I am wondering too. We don’t vote for presidents to be arbiters. We vote for a president to take a side, to be engaged. Share this: This entry was posted in Miss Ayn Thrope and tagged James Buchanan, Miss Ayn Thrope, Obama. Bookmark the permalink. ← Thank You, Financial Wizards [...]
I think Sandy Levinson does a much better job thinking along the very generally same lines as Burke:
here
Loomis wants a left-wing coalition with no black people and built around a profoundly sexist and stupid idea that real leaders look manly and never negotiate with people they disagree with. Good luck with that.
Given that the only way to “engage” with the supposed grievances of the teabaggers would be for everyone to the left of Grover Norquist to shoot themselves, I’m unclear on why ANYONE should take them seriously. One does not try to “negotiate” with the guy yelling at squirrels in the park…
kariyer, şirket rehberi, şirketler, şirket haberleri…
[...]Obama and James Buchanan – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money[...]…
Saying Obama is to the right of Stephen Harper is so silly it’s like a very, very silly thing that is silly.
Bullshit. Political structures in Canada, France, and Italy are in some ways to the left of politics in the United States. That doesn’t mean a center right politician in France is to the left of a center left politician in the United States.
Harper supports single-payer.
So did Thatcher. So what?
I think there might be a disconnect at work here, MGK.
The impression I’ve always gotten from you, based on your various writings back at your home blog and your Torontoist writings (and pleace, correct me if I’m wrong), is that you’re of the opinion that whatever he SAYS, if he could get away with it Harper would like to govern way to the right of where he actually does, but is constrained by the various institutional consensuses of Canadian politics.
Throw in his massive disregard for the rule of law and contempt towards Parliament, and for you, saying ‘Obama is to the right of Harper’ does in fact seem really, really silly.
But.
There are many, and to an extent I agree with them, who ascertain a politicians position on the political spectrum based on how they DO govern, rather than how they’d LIKE to govern. Richard Nixon, constrained by the same political realities that constrain Harper, brought us the EPA and tried to implement national health care and imposed actual price controls. Thatcher enthusiastically endorsed and entrenched a number of aspects of the british social welfare state.
From THIS perspective, Obama IS to the right of Harper, and Sarkozy, and Cameron, and a number of other right-wing politicans in OECD countries. And saying so ISN’T silly. It’s just america is so far to the right in general that trying to map someone from our ostensibly left-wing party on that scale is… tricky.
DNFTT
Well, those are indeed “other words.” I’ll give you that much.
Don’t feed Normy, joe.
Oh, come on, that “other words” thing was drole!
You still fed Normy. And Normy has never been droll.
Different countries have different political contexts. If you just compare positions in abstract policy space, there are ways in which FDR was and Segolene Royal is far to the right of Boehner, but it would be ridiculously ahistorical to conclude that they are more conservative politicians than the orange man.
Right. Nobody knows exactly how Harper would govern as the President of the United States, but it would almost certainly be far to the right of Obama.