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Cult of personality
Whatever Mike Huckabee’s views of his calling are, it seems to me that there’s a good bit of quasi- or pseudo-religious sentiment in a different venue on the campaign trail. Consider, for example, this post, by our friend RC2 (who, it’s safe to say, isn’t likely to vote for Obama in tomorrow’s Potomac primary) and this post, by MOJ’s Rob Vischer, who seems largely immune to the enthusiasm (and I would call attention to the literal meaning of the word) for Obama, despite his unfulfilled intention to vote for him in last week’s Minnesota caucuses. Although I was taken to task by some commenters for viewing the Obamenon through lenses offered by Jonah Goldberg, I can’t help but call attention to this passage from an email one of Rob’s readers sent to him about Obama: isn’t it true that at the very heart of progressivism lays the desire to subject all (or most) or human life to politics? That seems to lie at the base of Historicism which is the philosophical expression of progressivism: as the State becomes more and more "rational," experts are more and more able to govern the minutiae of human life in the name of the common good. There is less room for "little platoons" of civil society as their functions are swallowed up in the all-encompassing State. This in turn leads to greater "democracy" because the whole people are able to govern the whole of everyone else’s lives through the State.
This is not to say that all modern-day progressives wish this to occur, but at the very least it needs to be addressed and explained by those who seek to take up the mantle of progressivism today. I think that there are some countervailing tendencies in Obama’s own understanding of things. But he doesn’t seem to be doing much to discourage the messianism of his supporters (I almost typed "followers"). Locked in a dogfight with the Clintons, that would probably be bad politics. Perhaps I should just take solace in the facts that Obama acknowledges that he’s a sinner in need of a savior (which gives some "hope" for his humility) and that he uses the first person plural a lot (at least that’s better than "I...I...I"). Still, I worry....
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 2/11/2008 9:29 AM
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No Left Turns Mug Drawing Winners for January
Congratulations to this month’s winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows: John Dillender
Diane Shuskey
Ben Boychuk
Lauri Shannon
Andrew Willis
Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn’t win this month, enter February’s drawing.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 2/11/2008 4:11 PM
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Random Observations
1. I’m not sure why people aren’t saying the Democratic race is as over as the Republican one. Obama will win three more primaries on Tuesday and Hillary is hoping (quite unreasonably) that her leads in state polls (Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania) will hold up after ten defeats in a row. Hillary’s last big win (California) depended on votes cast early. Time is and has been on Obama’s side, and he’s now clearly both the establishment and the change candidate. I can’t understand why some Republicans are happy about this. The more responsible Democratic brains have been with Hillary; she’d be a better president, and she’d be easier (especially for McCain) to beat. The odds are, to repeat, that Obama is our next president, with a very solidly Democratic Congress.
2. I think Huck’s reliance on revelation and miracles for a comeback probably won’t work. And he’s become tedious. He’d become interesting and even important if he’d actually take McCain on on the domestic front. Still, I don’t think he should withdraw until he actually has a bad day. That’ll probably be tomorrow, but you don’t have to believe in miracles not to be entirely certain about that.
3. I really hope Mac starts to think hard about the fact supported by a thousand studies that his character and the surge alone won’t get him anywhere near victory in November, especially against the most charismatic candidate in a long time.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [24] | 2/11/2008 9:23 AM
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The candidates and religious constituencies
This interview with religion and politics maven John C. Green goes over a lot of familiar ground, but contains an interesting nugget at the end: Obama has had some trouble with both Catholic and Jewish voters. Since Catholics have been the proverbial swing voters in the past few elections (as in 2006, where their swing in the Democrats’ direction, mostly because of Iraq, sealed the Republicans’ doom), this is a potentially important datum.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/11/2008 9:24 AM
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Debunking the "Bradley Effect"
Robert Novak writes this morning of "the Bradley Effect", i.e., the phenomenon whereby black candidates underperform their polls on election day. This is purported to explain why Obama is losing to Hillary in most primary states but winning the caucus states.
The Bradley Effect refers to Tom Bradley, the Los Angeles mayor who lost the 1982 governor’s race in California after leading in the polls by a large margin. This is supposed to indicate America’s latent racism, of course. But not so fast. That conclusion is not so easily reached if you take a closer look at that election. First, Bradley was a boring, cautious candidate (not that George Deukmejian, who beat him, was Mister Excitement--but he was the attorney general, not a slouch statewide job). I recall talking to someone in the Duke’s camp the Saturday before the election, and he told me their tracking polls showed them pulling ahead, and he predicted they would win narrowly, which they did. So the general polls, always several days old, were out of date on election day. (This did not stop Mervin Field, the head of the Field poll, from saying on TV as late as 10 pm election night that Bradley was going to pull it out.)
Second, Bradley actually did win among the votes cast on election day; the Duke’s margin of victory came from absentee ballots, which Republicans actively procured ahead of time that year, in of the most advanced absentee drills to date at that time. Third, the Duke had huge turnout from the state’s not insubstantial Armenian community, which was probably undersampled in the general polls. Finally, there was a stupid, lefty gun control initiative on the ballot that year that juiced turnout from gun owners. Many Democrats at the time attributed their loss to the tactical error of having such a red meat initiative on the ballot. Finally, don’t forget that the 1982 election was coming after eight years of Jerry Brown in Sacramento, and the desire to switch parties was probably a small factor with some voters.
This does not mean that there is no Bradley Effect at all; people point to Doug Wilder in Virginia, who underperformed his polls back in the 1980s. But that might be more understandable in Virginia, an old Confederate states. It seems less plausible in California. After all, remember that Bradley was first elected mayor of LA at a time when the black vote in LA was tiny.
Posted by Steven Hayward | Link to this Entry | Comments | 2/11/2008 8:32 AM
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The Anointed One
After the voting Tuesday, I heard Huckabee on the radio. He opened his remarks by referring to two biblical passages, one of which implicitly compared him to David. He has since been talking about miracles, apparently including one that allowed a Huckabee for president campaign sign to survive a tornado. So, God has chosen him and is supporting him. The problem with this kind of talk is that it injects into our politics principles and justifications that are not open to every citizen as a citizen. Huckabee is the beneficiary of a special revelation. How does one argue or discuss this? How would one argue or discuss with President Huckabee some decision he made based on what God whispered in his ear? This kind of talk alone should disqualify Huckabee from holding any public office.
Posted by David Tucker | Link to this Entry | Comments [67] | 2/10/2008 6:01 PM
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In case you hadn’t noticed
There were some primaries and caucuses yesterday, with Obama narrowing Clinton’s lead and Huckabee winning in states that resemble Iowa and Arkansas. You can read more about the Republican contests here. The Republican result in Washington state is muddy, as you can read here and here. Aside from the fact that Huckabee seems to be disputing the results, there’s also the fact that roughly half the delegates will be assigned in accordance with the results of a February 19th primary. If this story is correct, the Huckabee campaign seems to be willing to go to the mat over an issue that can’t really help their man and can only give aid and comfort to the Democrats. If he were a few delegates behind McCain, this might make some sense. But shouldn’t he display some magnanimity here?
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 2/10/2008 4:29 PM
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The End of the Longest Campaign
Perhaps the three Obama victories of yesterday do not surprise us. They didn’t surprise me (I bet a cup of coffee that he would). But the quickly surfaced crisis in the Clinton camp is a bit of a surprise. They are in the throes of chaos. Patty Solis Doyle, Hillary’s campaign manager, has resigned. Since they already started talking about lowering expectations for the next many primaries, you could feel the problem; the Clinton campaign was putting the squeeze on everyone, including MSNBC; they were grasping, ignobly grasping. But the problem is worse, and has come upon them much more quickly, than I thought it would. Her electoral support is dissolving, or has dissolved. They now know this. The only hope she may end up having is: 1) twist the arms of the Superdelegates and 2) get the Michigan and Florida "non votes" back by some legalistic sophistry. Both would represent an "anti-democratic" Machievellian move, given that Obama is in the lead through the regular (and legal) primary process. If there is a Democratic Party that is separable from the Clintons this cannot be allowed to happen because the Dems would lose the general election for certain. But if the DNC is able to prevent Hillary from backroom and anti-democratic dealing, the DNC will gave a Democrat a chance to become president, but it will certainly not be Hillary for she will not be the nominee. It’s over.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 2/10/2008 4:26 PM
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More Warrioring and Preaching
1. I’m back in town after speaking at a great conference hosted by Michael Poore and his Humanitas biotech think-tank in Monteagle (next to Sewanee on the mountain), TN. The other speaker was Bill McClay (who was in excellent form), and there was a geuinely diverse, smart, and engaged sell-out crowd. I couldn’t invite you to this event because seating was limited, but Michael is having more. (Go to his website etc.) My title: "Our Great and Miserable (and Erotic and Virtuous) Human Future"
2. Thanks also to Joe for a very classy and high-level conference at Oglethorpe. There I learned that McCain might really be the strongest candidate the Republicans could have had, and there was a lot of good-natured discussion about the strengths and limits of Jonah’s "liberal fascist" thesis. Susan McWilliams (with whom I was always in half-agreement) also confirmed my suspicion that the replacement of beer by bottled water as the beverage of choice among young people is tearing our social fabric part.
3. McCain may be the presumptive nominee, but his performance in the three contests yesterday was sure weak. The highlight for him was a "victory" in Washington with 26% of the vote, or just 2% more than Huck and 5% more than Ron Paul. Huck, meanwhile, scored a huge victory in Kansas (famous for not being a Confederate state) and a narrow one in Louisiana. And even with Huck as the only opponent worth mentioning left, Mac is having trouble breaking 50% in the national polls. Gotta get credible on those domestic issues... (And Huck’s not giving up. He says he didn’t major in math but in miracles!)
4. Obama, meanwhile, beat the heck out of Hillary three times, more or less evening up the national delegate count. She may still be very, very slightly ahead in the national polls, but her people ain’t showing up when it counts.
5. Thanks to Peter S. for posting my Oglethorpe talk, although only two cups seems harsh. Actually, Peter has been very tolerant of my deviation from the dominant Ashbrook view of what’s going on today, as were the panelists and audience at Oglethorpe.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 2/10/2008 3:41 PM
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The Great Game
An important Pakistani Army General was killed in a helicopter crash in the "restive South Waziristan region," near the Afghan border. Two other generals died in the same crash. The copter "crashed because of a technical fault."
"According to the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad, the death of Maj Gen Sultan will dent morale among Pakistani troops who have already suffered heavy casualties in the region. He is the most senior Pakistani officer to be killed in military operations in the area. Hours before the crash was reported, Taleban militants based in Pakistan said they were scaling back operations against the military."
In the meantime, Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said in Munich that the European public needs convincing that Nato’s mission in Afghanistan is part of a wider fight against global terror.
Gates: "On a conceptual level, I believe it falls squarely within the traditional bounds of the alliance’s core purpose: to defend the security interests and values of the trans-Atlantic community. We must not - we cannot - become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not. Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 2/10/2008 9:25 AM
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Guelzo
Allen Guelzo’s book just landed on my desk. It looks great. I had intended to get a lot of work done around the house this weekend. Instead, I’ll get back in bed and tell everyone I need to nurse my cold. What I don’t finish of it, I’ll read Monday on the flight to Alaska. Perfect. Thanks, Allen.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [15] | 2/9/2008 2:52 PM
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Book reviews, continued
The Sunday NYT book review section has all sorts of nuggets (calling them gems would be too strong). Michael Lind reviews the Gerson and Bolton tomes. Alan Ehrenhalt (one of my favorite fair-minded observers of American politics) takes a look at David Frum’s new book. And Notre Dame historian R. Scott Appleby reviews two of this season’s efforts to resuscitate the religious Left, by E.J. Dionne, Jr. and Amy Sullivan.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 2/9/2008 1:58 PM
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Life science
William Saletan reviews the latest attempt by the tireless Robert P. George (and co-author Christopher Tollefsen) to defend human life against scientific efforts aimed at the relief of our estate (as Francis Bacon would put it). Saletan poses some challenges to their case, which apparently relies almost exclusively on science to make the case for respecting our humanity from its earliest beginning. Here’s the nub of Saletan’s argument: “The proper way to identify the nature of an organism,” they write, is “to look at it through time.” Each of us “comes into existence as a single-celled human organism and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood.” But in the big picture, the embryo isn’t a future adult. It is, as the authors acknowledge, a future corpse. And the program is far bigger. It doesn’t end at death, because it doesn’t run on one body. It runs on the network of humanity. In fact, it runs on the entire Internet of evolving species. According to even a teleological science, in the end we’re all dead, providing food and fertilizer for our successors. Our humanity gains its significance, not from science, but either from our capacity for self-assertion (in which case, the argument against abortion or destructive embryonic stem cell research is at best merely a pragmatic one) or from our creatureliness. Because science can’t answer the biggest question, it can’t settle the dispute. And since we’re "doomed," so to speak, to be unable all to agree on the answer, the dispute will always be with us. Properly understood, this gives no comfort to those who would privatize abortion decisions or deregulate embryonic stem cell research. Rather, it leaves us with the various political mechanismes for conducting our disagreements--legislation and constitutional amendment, above all.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [17] | 2/9/2008 12:39 PM
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Unity in politics
Dennis Hale makes the entirely commonsensical and grown-up point that choosing means dividing. Unity requires the overcoming or suppression of politics. Obama promises to build the kingdom on earth, which amounts to the overcoming of politics. But people who promise that usually end up trying to suppress politics. If Obama were serious about unity, he’d be Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, or Mussolini. I credit him with not being altogether serious. He’s merely, as Jonah G. would say, a liberal fascist.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 2/9/2008 12:32 PM
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The Democratic Problem
We have all noticed (all TV news broadcasts are now into this in great detail) that the focus is now on the probability of a brokered Dem convention, on cutting deals with the superdelegates, on re-writing the rules for Michigan and Florida in order to make "their votes count," etc. In practice this means that Hillary will do anything to be the nominee, and Obama will resist as long as he is likely to have the majority (albeit slight) of chosen delegates going into the convention. Because the possibilities for mischief are endless, I am betting that the Dems will "solve" these problems before the summer. If they don’t, there really is a chance that the ’68 Chicago mess will seem like a walk in the park compared to what could happen this summer. All this, I hasten to add, just proves that the so-called reforms (post ’68) having to do with proportional representation, etc., are very bad for democratic government at any level. Forming
majorities, especially rational majorities, is not such an easy thing. We’ll see if anyone on that side of the isle will notice this good lesson. Here is an
L.A. Times story on the immediate problem, and this from the WaPo.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [7] | 2/9/2008 8:42 AM
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The perils of going negative
Jay Cost argues that Romney’s attack ads might have made it difficult for him to win over voters--supporters, especially, of Huckabee--who were otherwise persuadable. Romney might have had the effect of driving down Huckabee’s support, but leaving others to reap the benefit of the defections. And he might also have made it more difficult for Huckabee supporters--having, perhaps reluctantly, concluded that there wasn’t any hope for the man from Hope--to transfer their allegiances to him. All of this is to say that campaigns matter and that issue positioning isn’t everything.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 2/9/2008 8:48 AM
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Dobson endorses Huckabee: too little, too late
Rather late, don’t you think? Such an endorsement could have helped Huck raise some money earlier on, or perhaps bolstered him in South Carolina, where every little bit would have helped. Had Dobson spoken, say, after Iowa, it’s not clear that McCain would now be the presumptive nominee and that it would now be hard to find a plausible political rationale for Huckabee’s persistence. I’m far from saying--in this counterfactual fantasy--that, but for Dobson’s silence, Huckabee would now be closing in on the nomination. But consider this: Huckabee wins Iowa; McCain wins New Hampshire; and Huckabee wins South Carolina. Who then wins Florida? Wouldn’t it have been a three-way or even four-way race, with Huckabee having the money to persist, McCain not doing so well in the panhandle, and Giuliani not necessarily bleeding votes? It’s not out of the question that any one of the four could have won, under those fantasy circumstances. I take it as given that, on Super Tuesday, Huckabee wouldn’t have won much more--perhaps Missouri and Oklahoma. But Romney would have done better, and Giuliani might have hurt Mac in the Northeast. My fantasy bottom line: by endorsing Huckabee earlier, Dobson could have made it more likely that someone he could tolerate--Huckabee or Romney--would be well-positioned after Super Tuesday. I don’t say this because I think that Dobson is a king-maker. His endorsement matters at the electoral margins and probably looms a bit larger in fund-raising. But that might have been enough to change the dynamics of a closely fought race. Again, I say this as someone who will vote for McCain and would have voted for Romney or Huckabee.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 2/8/2008 11:20 AM
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McCain the honor politician
Yuval Levin does an excellent job of explaining what makes John McCain tick (almost identical with what ticks him off), its uneasy relationship with "principled conservatism," and how conservatives can try to make their causes his. The result won’t have much staying power beyond this campaign or a McCain administration since it depends almost entirely on the mostly admirable character of the manly man, but it is the hand we have been dealt. And to the degree that politics is about the formation of character--something conservatives who haven’t sold their souls entirely to libertarianism surely can’t deny--a McCain candidacy and presidency could offer a highly particular and personal vision of a kind of national unity. The problem, as Peter Lawler has pointed out in an all-too-brief post (though doubtless soon to be in print or online somewhere in a more expanded version) is that honor politics is problematical or incomplete as a democratic politics. Men of honor have a hard time feeling compassion or respecting the ordinary lives of their fellow citizens or living with even a non-debased equality. McCain the "aristocrat" needs a leavening of "democracy"--not mere egalitarianism or pandering (the old Clintonian feeling our pain)--but what Peter has called "the preacher." This is a vision of nobility that justifies sacrifice not as an act of generosity or noblesse oblige, but as an expression of solidarity. John McCain 1.0 could do well campaigning against Hillary Clinton. In both of them, "democracy" looks more like aristocratic generosity than solidarity. The difference is that McCain’s distance comes from his character, whereas HRC’s comes from her wealth. Clinton’s can even come across as interest group log-rolling, which really helps McCain. (If she could ever compellingly make her liberal Methodism part of her public persona, it would help her at the margins, adding a small element of solidarity to her noblesse oblige. But I digress.) It would, I think, take a McCain 2.0 effectively to contest the election against Obama, whose seemingly vacuous message of unity hits all the right democratic notes. McCain the mere aristocrat can’t beat that. He needs someone not named Huckabee who can relatively plausibly present himself as a "sacrificial servant" as a running mate. But even if you don’t buy a word of what I’ve said, read Levin’s article. It’s that good. 
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 2/8/2008 9:54 AM
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