A German View of our Political Theater

The American press has become so predictable in what it chooses to write about the race for the White House that it is becoming necessary to look to other countries for an alternative perspective. Marc Hujer has attempted to provide such a perspective in his attempt to examine the preparations for the Democratic caucus in Iowa in an extended analysis at SPIEGEL ONLINE, and it is worth considering that perspective simply because it is not beholden to American media interests. The first thing one observes is that Hujer has confined his analysis to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, regarding them as the only "signal" in a much broader field of "noise." This may be an unfortunate consequence of his being a one-man operation trying to do his job while all the other media have tag-teams canvassing the state of Iowa every which way; but it also may be a reflection of how any of us would react when there are just too many players on the field. We need to focus down on making a choice between a smaller number of alternatives; and, at the risk of sounding too cynical, two is the ideal number because, if all else fails, you can always toss a coin.

Having made his decision to focus, Hujer then tries to develop a model of the distinction between Obama and Clinton; and the result is that he seems to have made of his mind how he would cast his vote had he one to cast. He sees Obama as a bright star that is just too detached from the electorate to have an impact. Hujer latches on to an epithet that he claims is popular among campaign strategists to argue that Obama lacks any standing among "the beer drinkers." Unfortunately, he does little to explain why this is the case beyond portraying Obama as a bright guy who just is not particularly comfortable in his own skin. This is not meant to be a metaphor about race, because it seems as if he real discomfort is with being given the dreaded "brainiac" label. Gone is the label of "audacity" under which he first charged into the fray, along with any suggestion that hope may be revived through that audacity. Hujer sees Obama as a man with much to say but without anyone willing to listen; and this German perception of what happens when someone who is, by nature, cerebral tries to go stumping among beer drinkers may be one of the more accurate assessments to have been written about a political process that may ultimately exemplify the sort thing that another German, Max Weber, had in mind when he wrote about "loss of meaning."

Hujer's contrasting view of Clinton, on the other hand, is summed up in the thesis sentence of his analysis:

Barack Obama may be the star of the 2008 US presidential campaign, but he lacks what rival Hillary Clinton offers in spades: competence and experience.

Invoking the spirit of Weber again, this is what one might expect from an attempt at a rationalist assessment of the current state of play. However, in the interest of that rationalism, Hujer may have neglected Clinton's strongest holding in her hand of spades: ruthlessness. I have already suggested that lack of ruthlessness may explain why John Edwards was not even detected by Hujer's radar; and it may also explain that Obama's audacity has been beaten down by Clinton's ruthlessness, even when it appears through a mannerism like her "Medusa eyes." I am a bit surprised that Hujer chose not to pick up on this, particularly in the context that one of the greatest masters of ruthlessness was Otto von Bismarck; and it was due to this trait that Isaiah Berlin held him up as such an expert in political judgment. Indeed, when it comes to the Berlin model of political judgment, Clinton probably fills the bill better than any of the other contenders among Republicans as well as Democrats. However, Hujer does not explore this point of view, preferring to focus of competence and experience, probably because they are more palatable for his rationalist sentiments.

This may ultimately be the flaw of his analysis. Yes, it is true that we find better examples of rationalism in what Europeans write about politics; but, as we can see from the reports of recent neo-Nazi and other nationalist activities, rationalism does not dominate the electoral decision process in Europe any more than it does in the United States. Thus, Hujer's contribution is valuable for being different but not necessarily for contributing any critical observations that might provide further insight into the current political theater in Iowa. Had he been less attached to his rationalism, he might have spent more time among the "audience in the stalls" than in tracking the two front-runners.

The Ruthlessness Factor

My conjecture that the Republicans treated Pete Stark as a sign of vulnerability in Democratic leadership, which they could then exploit in going after Nancy Pelosi, seems to have attracted some attention over at Truthdig. Reader Outraged now seems convinced that the Republicans are planting moles among the Democrats, so they can plan and implement further attacks. I certainly agree that the concept of a "loyal opposition" has become about as quaint and outmoded as the concept of "public trust;" but I suspect that the adversarial relationship between Republican and Democrats has not (yet?) escalated to a level of Cold War thinking. Everyone has vulnerabilities; but, in a town that has as many off-the-record blabbermouths as the District, you do not need undercover agents to figure out what they are!

Rather, I think it is just that the era of the "loyal opposition" has given way to an era of overt ruthlessness; and I’m afraid the problem is that the Republicans are just a lot better at that overt ruthlessness than the Democrats are when it comes to playing power games; and ruthlessness trumps reasoned deliberation in the face of complex problems every time. Indeed, "ruthless" is the adjective that dare not speak its name in Isaiah Berlin's essay on "Political Judgement;" but there is no doubt that it is lurking in the subtext. After all, Bismarck is one of Berlin's prime examples; and he was about as ruthless as they get.

This is not to say that ruthlessness was not a factor in the good old days of "loyal oppositions;" and it is not as if Democrats have always been naive about ruthlessness. What, after all, was behind LBJ's famous "I've got his pecker in my pocket" metaphor? The problem seems to be that inter-party ruthlessness now undermines deliberation, and one of the most important contributions that the Congress makes to the balance of powers is its capacity for deliberation. However, if we have now slipped down to the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy, dispensing with deliberation in favor of acting for immediate self-gratification, then Eugene Robinson's editorial last June about the need for a "brainiac president" is way off the mark. After all, the brainiac was always the first kid to get the crap beaten out of him by the school bullies; or, in a more innocuous setting, the brainiac is the victim of Lucy van Pelt in Peanuts, who once said, "He was beginning to make sense, so I hit him."

So this brings me back to yesterday's agonizing over the extent of the corruption of the body politic and the need for the how-did-we-get-in-this-mess question. One explanation may be that ruthlessness trumps deliberation because it is far more entertaining. After all, how many people actually watch the C-SPAN coverage of the Congress, compared to the number of people who watched Glenn Beck deliver his serves-them-right fulmination over the victims of the California fires? For that matter, how large an audience did Don Imus attract for doing the very things that eventually got him kicked off the air? In the language of the preceding paragraph, in the business of mass media, the market for school bullies is always going to dwarf the market for brainiacs; and, like it or not, political decisions and actions now have far more to do with what "sells" than with the subtle questions that arise in the course of deliberation. Whether or not this is the government we deserve, it certainly appears to be the government we want!

The "Brainiac President"

I just read the Truthdig posting of Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column, "America Likes an Idiot, but It Needs Al Gore." Mr. Robinson may be regarded as a great asset to the Washington Post; but I think he really falls short when it comes to the insights raised by Frank Luntz in his book that I recently discussed, Words that Work. Since I have been reviewing some of the "laws" I have been discussing in my posts, I think it is important to add the take-away "laws" from that discussion:

1. You are not going to persuade anyone of your position if the first thing you do is call that person stupid.
2. Furthermore, you are not going to persuade that person if you call anyone that person clearly admires stupid.

Mr. Robinson's title has certainly played well with Truthdig readers, but those are not the people who need to be persuaded. Furthermore, as a result of his stomping them so energetically with his title, they are unlikely to make it to his object of persuasion, let alone take it seriously:

We need a brainiac president, a regular Mister or Miss Smarty-Pants president. We need to elect the kid you hated in high school, the teacher’s pet with perfect grades.

For my part I take Mr. Robinson seriously. I just think he is flat-out wrong. Had he spent less time and column-inches praising Mr. Gore for the books he reads and done a bit more reading for himself, he might have recognized the fallacy in the reasoning behind his punch line. I recommend that he start with Isaiah Berlin’s The Sense of Reality (not an inappropriate title) and go straight to the “Political Judgement” essay. Berlin tends to use big words and (far) longer sentences than Gore; but he makes some very challenging assertions and then leads his reader through the argumentative complexities necessary to substantiate them. However, for those who prefer to “cut to the chase,” the bottom line in this essay is that neither rich experience in book-learning nor even the skill to engage with “expert consultants” who know even more than you do provides appropriate preparation for the kind of deciding and acting that takes place in matters of government (or, for that matter, the military). The crux of the justification is that what Mr. Robinson calls “brainiacs” excel as generalists, while the day-to-day realities of a government or battlefield require dealing with the particular. Needless to say, the question of “presidential material” is an important one; but Mr. Robinson might consider exercising some of the traits he admires in addressing it!