The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: Vote for the Liberal!

(Part five of a series. Links to earlier parts: Part One, Introduction; Part Two, Who Can Win?; Part Three, The Affirmative Action Arguments; Part Four, Experience and Other Distractions.)

And now we get to the real arguments, the fundamental reason that liberal Democrats should not support Hillary. I will be spelling these out, elaborating on them, and so forth, in the forthcoming parts -- which will include arguments which (I believe) ought to sway people who are not liberal Democrats too.

But for liberal Democrats, the argument is really quite simple:

If you are politically liberal, you ought to support the most liberal of the viable candidates.

Or: vote for the liberal!

There are, I think, reasonable disagreements about whether this means voting for Edwards or Obama. But there's no possible way it could be read as suggesting a vote for Clinton.

The reality here is very simple. Hillary Clinton -- like her husband -- is a centrist. She's a triangulator. She believes in the (supposed) centrist consensus of American politics -- the pro-business, pro-empire, but not lunatic-right-wing consensus that American elites cluster around. As far as that goes, she's a pretty decent version of it, I suppose.

But that's not what liberals want, or should want. We should want someone who will shift the politics of the country towards the left.

To a large degree this is a rhetorical project -- a project of selling values, philosophies, world views; of shifting the overton window; of changing the underlying assumptions of the debate. This is, for me, one of the central points -- enough so that I will devote an entire entry in this series to it (the projected future part eight).

Clinton seems perfectly willing to adopt left-wing ideas once they have become mainstream -- adopting John Edwards' health care plan, for instance (and good for her: it ain't perfect, but it'd be a heck of a lot better than what we got now); or opposing the war. But what about low-profile issues? Issues where she has to make a spur-of-the-moment decision? Issues where she has to lead? Clinton's instinct will almost certainly be what it has always been: to play it safe (or what our political class assumes will be safe), to try to play off both "extremes" against some imaginary middle.

This spirit will pervade her government; and it's far less than a liberal should hope for.

In some sense, this basic notion -- the idea that one should vote for the person most broadly in agreement with one's beliefs -- is far more important than any of the specifics on any issues that any of the campaigns put forward. This is true for two reasons.

First, because so much of what a president does is done through appointments. It is the presidential appointments -- not the high-profile stuff like the cabinet posts, but the lower-down posts -- that affect so much of the governance that a president is the public face of. Which laws are vigorously enforced, and which only reluctantly; how those laws are interpreted in novel situations; what relationships regulators have to those they regulate -- all of these things are affected by the president's appointments. That's one of the reasons that Bush has been such a disaster in so many areas: the cronies and hacks that he's appointed, the ideological nitwits with barely any expertise about or even interest in the government they are supposed to be running, go deep, and lead to corruption, mismanagement and mendacity such as has been so routine in this administration.

But Clinton will appoint very central, standards DLC-Democrat types. Her economic advisors will be centrist, if not slightly-right-of-center ones; so will her advisors in every other area. It will be the Clinton restoration. Which, needless to say, will be like heaven after the multiple calamities of Bush. But will be far less than we should want out of the government. As I wrote in earlier installments: the Republicans' trashing of their brand (and of conservatism) has created a (possibly) once-in-a-generation opportunity here. We should ask for more than the cautious, half-way

Now, Edwards and Obama will appoint a lot of those too. But they'll appoint fewer. And, more to the point, there's at least the hope that they'll appoint some staunch liberals in the government, in a way that Clinton almost certainly will not. Worst case scenario? They appoint the same centrist technocrats that Clinton would: and what have you lost? But in the many appointments they make, surely in some cases they'll be better?

Isn't that worth going for?

Aside from the issue of staff, there is another -- equally if not more important -- reason to vote for the person who matches your political preferences broadly, rather than focusing on a particular candidate for one particular reason. And that's the inevitable fact that what presidents actually focus on and deal with are things that no one has foreseen. History is, as always, unpredictable.

Therefore you need to vote for general tendencies. And, again, Hillary Clinton is the most conservative of the three major democratic candidates.

I will go on, in the next two installments, to make arguments about two central areas of policy -- ones that are of central importance in the foreseeable future. (Although even there I'm going to focus on broad areas rather than specific policy proposals.) In other crucial areas -- such as health care and gay rights -- all three of the leading candidates are about the same: far better than any republican; quite far from as good as I'd wish.

But who knows what the next president will actually deal with?

All three candidates have plans for Iraq. But (as many blog writers, at least, have pointed out) all are plans for right now; none are dealing with where we'll be in January, 2009 -- with two and two-thirds more Friedmans gone, Iraq still a hell on Earth, our army even more broken than it is now. And certainly none of them have plans for the frighteningly likely possibility that by the time we become president, Bush will have launched yet another criminal war, this time against Iran.

Will they have to deal with an economic meltdown? Some new area of cultural war we can hardly imagine now? Who knows?

And, of course, there's not guarantee that any of them will do well.

But the best gamble is on the one with the most sensible political approach overall -- not the one who's the best on this or that policy.

What we want is a strong, solid liberal.

Barbara Boxer'd be great; but she's not running. Paul Wellstone would be great; but he's dead. Maybe Kucinich would be good; but he won't win.

Of the plausible candidates, there's reason to think that both Obama and Edwards are the most liberal.

There's every reason to think that Hillary Clinton is the least liberal.

Which is why liberals shouldn't support her.

Interestingly, my friend's arguments for Hillary -- which you can read in her own words in comments here (and I encourage everyone to do so) -- have a big component of "I've-been-hurt-before-so-I'll-take-the-known-quantity" in them. Like many spurned lovers, my friend is scared of hoping for something better. Liberals were disappointed in Bill Clinton (boy, was I ever disappointed!); so we shouldn't hope for more. This is evident not only in the ire against Gore (which is a fair cop, I'll admit), but in this:

I believed in Bill Clinton, and I believed in the tooth fairy too - which leads me to the second reason I'm supporting Rodham Clinton. With HRC, you know what you're getting. She's not a liberal, she's not an ideologue, she's not passionate. I will never understand what makes her tick. However, she has spent her entire life in the public eye, and she is exactly who she seems to be: rational, calculating, competent. After the past eight years, competent - and not venal - sounds pretty good.

It seems to me that the idea of picking someone who you know is not a liberal, not passionate, over someone who might possibly be is (for a liberal) madness. It's quite clear that Obama and Edwards might be no more than "rational, calculating, competent". But they certainly won't be any less. And I think that picking someone who is known to be as good as the worst case scenario of the other two is wildly defeatist.

Yeah, we'll be disappointed with Obama or Edwards. Inevitably. But we'll be disappointed in Clinton too -- probably in every single case that we would with Obama and Edwards. And with Obama or Edwards we might, sometime, be surprised in a positive way.

I agree that "competent - and not venal" is better than what we have now. But I disagree that it's good enough. As I've said: this is a chance, in the face of conservatism not only rampant but overwhelmingly obvious failure, to make a real case for liberal -- to appoint a real liberal. Not a centrist; not a triangulator.

Edwards and Obama may not be that. But Clinton definitely isn't. Let's go with somewhere there's hope for better.

And less chance of things being worse. Which brings me to the area where I fear Clinton the most: foreign policy.

Addendum:

I had already written the above when I came across David Brooks's column for today. Kept safe by the NYT Firewall, I haven't read Brooks in two years, but from what I remember, he usually deserves his appallingly bad reputation. (Maybe he's improved.*) Today, however, I think he's basically right.

Oh, his tone implies all sorts of ridiculous things -- he gets the netroots totally wrong (honestly, some of these right-wing pundits sound like they're afraid they're living in a Phil Ochs song or something); he uses the usual "intellectual" spin to try to disdain liberals versus centrists (i.e. liberals are "intellectuals" therefore elite; centrists are the salt of the earth, real Americans; usually used by Republicans vs. Democrats, but always good in a pinch); and so forth. (Update: If you want a demolition of the mendacious and malevolent parts of Brooks's column, read today's piece by Glenn Greenwald.) But Brooks's basic point is celebratory: the centrist party -- the party of "the old Clinton establishment in Washington" -- is winning.

Now, I think he's wrong about why they're winning. He thinks it's because

Democratic politicians... know their party has a historic opportunity to pick up disaffected Republicans and moderates, so long as they don’t blow it by drifting into cuckoo land. They also know that a Democratic president is going to face challenges from Iran and elsewhere that are going to require hard-line, hawkish responses. Finally, these Democrats understand their victory formula is not brain surgery. You have to be moderate on social issues, activist but not statist on domestic issues and hawkish on foreign policy.

Translation help: for "moderate on social issues", read, anti-gay equality but (at least squishily) pro-choice; for "activist but not statist" read: not going to fool around with any good health care plans; and for "hawkish on foreign policy" read "lacking any reluctance to travel a long distance to kill foreigners at great expense." (Wording of that last from here.)

Now, I think he's wrong about what Democrats need to do to win. (Of course, I'm a member of the netroots, I suppose, so I guess I would think that, wouldn't I?) And his claim that not wanting to be "hawkish" -- read: in favor of wars of aggression -- makes you "cuckoo" is, well, depressing in how well it reflects the D.C. establishment, but morally horrific.

But he's right that the most hawkish and least liberal candidate is Clinton, and that she's winning.

And liberals -- and people who don't want to live in an Empire -- should be against this.

(Brooks is happy Clinton's ahead, of course, because he's a conservative imperialist. The netroots, who tend to be in favor of odd things like not starting aggressive wars against countries that don't threaten us, restoring the balance of constitutional power between the executives, universal health care on the European model, etc, are unhappy for the same reasons -- even if the others aren't not nearly as good as we'd like (then, I doubt Brooks will vote for Clinton: he'll probably support whichever cuckoo the Republicans settle on.))

So why is she winning, if it's not that she's hawkish, moderate and "not statist"? Well, I think it's because she's successfully misleading people about her positions. The same polls that show she's ahead show that Democratic voters think she's the most likely to end the war -- the most anti-war candidate. (Probably in part because she's running ads like the one critiqued in the video here (also here and here)).

Basically, she's doing what Joe Liberman did: projecting a false dovish image long enough to win the election. (Now that he's back to his old self again, by the way, Liberman would loose if the election were re-held -- but it won't be, so he's free to war monger all he wants.)

But she might successfully do it through the rest of the election. Still, liberals who know better should not support the balancing of Bush's right-wing lunacy by a return to mushy, hawkish, "moderate" Clintonism. We need to do better than that.

Now, the other mistake that I think Brooks makes is thinking that the netroots influence is that big with Edwards and Obama. The most serious critique of my position here, I think, is not that Clinton is better but that she's only marginally worse.** But the point is, she's clearly worse -- more hawkish, more "moderate", less likely to, well, end wars and promote liberal reforms -- even if how much worse is up for question.

Brooks knows which side favors his constituency -- the rich, the hawks, the D.C. establishment friendly. He's glad she's winning. Those of us who have other priorities shouldn't be.

(Update: Another view: Matt Yglesias -- no less irritated than Glenn Greenwald, or I -- sees the bright side of the reality behind Brooks's column.)

Later Update: As far as the correlation between Hawkishness and winning, see this post by Steve Benena>. Even Later: Tom Tomorrow has a special cartoon on the Brooks column in this post.

To be continued.

(As noted here, I have been forced to put this blog on the back-burner for a few weeks; normal blogging will resume sometime in November. It may be a few weeks before I manage to complete parts six through eight, therefore. But I strongly intend to finish this series before any votes are cast, so watch this space...)

This series, past and projected.
1. Introduction
2. Who can win?
3. The affirmative action arguments
4. Experience and other distractions
5. Vote for the liberal!
6. Against empire: the Democrats, Iraq and military force
7. Against excessive executive power
8. Articulating a liberal philosophy

_________________
* That's what we call a laugh line, folks.

** Indeed, reading Chris Floyd last night I almost gave up the idea of this series completely; I'm finishing because I do think there is a difference, and that that difference is likely to be important even if small (remember Nader and 2000!), and also because, well, momentum and promises and all that. And the key fact that I've not heard any plausible suggestions from the abandon-the-Democrats crowd -- note that Chris Floyd in that post suggests only symbolic and/or extremely unlikely possibilities.

The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: Experience and Other Distractions

(Part four of a series. Links to earlier parts: Part One, Introduction; Part Two, Who Can Win?; Part Three, The Affirmative Action Arguments.)

One more bad argument to be dealt with, before I get to the arguments which I think are good and should influence our votes.

But here, the bad argument is not one for Clinton, but one against one of her chief opponents -- probably the person who is, at this point, her most important rival: Barack Obama.

And that's the issue of "experience".

The question of "experience" is, I think, a complete red herring. It's a non-issue -- or it should be: I grant that our fashion-slave heathers-style media may make it more of one than it should be. But let's face it: they will empower Republican narratives no matter who the candidate is. (Lord only knows what they'll do to Hillary if she wins! Except for talk about the Clintons' sex life: we know they'll do that because they already are.) Yet another reason not to make electability our criteria here.

But is it an issue as far as actually making a good president goes?

No.

There isn't a shred of evidence that I can see that good presidents have more experience than bad ones. Now, the problem (as someone -- Kevin Drum, I think? -- has pointed out) with generalizations about presidencies (and even presidential races) is that it's hard to draw good conclusions because the sample size is so small. For Pete's sake, we've only had 42 presidents* in this country -- and the country is very different than it was in George Washington's day (or even Abe Lincoln's).

But even if you want to assume that the experience of past presidents, however long ago they were in office, is relevant here, the record speaks against the argument of experience.

Historians are remarkably consistent about who they think the best presidents (usually "greatest" were). For instance, for decades, whenever you poll them the number two and three slot are taken up by George Washington and FDR -- the order varies, but they're almost always two and three. And the number one slot is even more consistent than that.

Who do historians agree was the single best president of the United States, ever?

Abraham Lincoln.

The single man to come into the office with less experience than any of his predecessors.

(Lincoln's immediate predecessor, James Buchanan -- who, until Bush '43, was the usual favorite pick for the worst president of the U.S. ever -- had an enormous amount of experience.)

Lincoln had served precisely two years in the U.S. Congress, and another six in the Illinois Legislature. That's it.

Oh, yes -- it happens to be precisely the same experience that Barack Obama has had -- or will have had, as of January, 2009.

Now, I don't think that means that Obama will be another Lincoln: I just think it helps show that the "experience" question is silly.

Why is it silly? Because being the president of the U.S. isn't like any other job in the world. There is no -- can be no -- preparation for this. The closest, one might argue, is being governor of a U.S. State** -- an experience which none of the leading Democratic candidates has had (although Bush '43, of course, had it: see where that got us).

But further, it gets wrong what makes a good president***: and what is worse, it gets it wrong in a way that fits in with a pernicious conservative talking point.

The worst version of this argument is to compare Obama to Bush. I've heard people -- liberals! -- say this: oh, we tried an inexperienced president; it didn't work out.

First, one might note that Bush had been Governor for the same length of time that Hilary will have been Senator, if she's elected. He wasn't particularly inexperienced as presidents go.

Second, if what one really means is that Bush was an ignorant SOB, then you're right... but none of the Democrats will be that. That's a non-issue.

But of course the key problem here is that it gets wrong why Bush has been so catastrophic. Bush wasn't bad because he, personally, was inexperienced, or even dumb or incompetent (although those latter two elements no doubt helped him add additional dimensions to the disaster that has been his presidency). Bush wasn't bad because of his inexperience, he was bad because of his ideology: Bush is a conservative, and conservative governance is terrible.

I've heard it said that the problem with Bush's inexperience is that he therefore had to rely upon his advisors. But of course his chief advisor -- some say the shadow-president -- was Dick Cheney -- who had lots of experience, precisely the sort of experience that people who natter on about the importance of experience are talking about.

Or, put another way: if experience is a criteria, then Cheney passes with flying colors. If you think the problem with Bush is his inexperience, then you ought to love Cheney.

But, of course, most people don't. Because Cheney has been a particularly pernicious influence on an unprecedentedly bad administration. Because he is a particularly fervent neoconservative on foreign policy issues, and a standard movement conservative on everything else.

The "experience" issue -- like the "character" issue, like the "competence" claim -- are dodges that conservatives use to try to avoid the fact that their governing philosophy has been a complete disaster from beginning to end in every area. Bush is bad because he implemented a conservative politics with a particularly free hand -- not because he didn't know what he was doing.

John McCain has lots of "experience". He'd be a terrible president.

Obama has very little. Clinton, actually, has reasonably little; so does Edwards. But every single one of them would be far, far better than McCain.

Experience is just irrelevant.

Finally, of course, Obama isn't inexperienced compared to Clinton -- unless one accepts a silly hierarchical conception of levels of experience in government.

Obama, of course, was a state legislator for six years, and then was elected to the U.S. Senate; Hillary will have been a U.S. Senator for six years if elected. But I can't think of many reasons that one is better "experience" for being president than the other. (One might argue that experience with the U.S. Senate is important for passing legislation, but here again, experience isn't the relevant issue here: Kennedy wasn't all that much more experienced as a Senator that LBJ, but he didn't do as well in the Senate. It was mostly about personality, political skill... other things.)

But the fundamental point is that this is a distraction. We ought to vote for candidates based on what their ideology is: it's that which will shape their governance. Which will influence the decisions they make on issues we can, today, barely dream will matter to us as much as they will. Other things matter -- the kind of people they appoint and take advice from, for instance. But experience is just a big red herring.

Okay. Enough about Obama. In part five, I'll get back to Hillary -- and on to the real reasons to vote against her, the ones that I think should matter (unlike electability, gender or experience).

Continued in part five.

This series, past and projected.
1. Introduction
2. Who can win?
3. The affirmative action arguments
4. Experience and other distractions
5. Vote for the liberal!
6. Against empire: the Democrats, Iraq and military force
7. Against excessive executive power
8. Articulating a liberal philosophy

_____________________________
* Yes, I know that W is the 43rd President. They count Grover Cleveland twice. I think it's silly. But even if you want to say he had two presidencies, it's hard to say that he was two presidents.

** Actually the closest would probably being the executive leader of another country. But so far a I know, no candidate for U.S president has ever had that qualification -- indeed, it would almost certainly rule anyone out as a candidate. (Sorry, Tony.)

*** Good as opposed to great, here. Good presidents either have mixed-but-generally-positive records (e.g. Wilson), or presided over comparatively uneventful periods (T. Roosevelt, Clinton, Jefferson) and did well at it. What distinguishes a good president from a great president -- Washington, Lincoln and FDR from the merely good -- is a crisis: the great ones faced a crisis and did well at it. (Starting a new country, a civil war, and the depression/WW2). (Whereas the worst presidents face a crisis and do terribly at it, often making it worse (Buchanan, Bush '43.))

The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: The Affirmative Action Arguments

(Part three of a series. Links to earlier parts: Part One, Introduction; Part Two, Who Can Win?.)

And so I jump from an issue I'd rather not focus on -- who can win? -- to an issue I'd really, really rather not focus on: the affirmative action arguments.*

But -- as with the "who can win?" argument -- I am going to talk about this because the two conversations that kick-started this series both highlighted it. (See also the first comment to part one here; it's one of the four reasons given.) My two Clinton-supporting friends both cited Hillary's being a woman as one of the chief reasons they had for supporting her as well. To paraphrase a comment from the first of the two conversations: "if they're all going to be equally ineffectual, I'd rather have a woman".

Now, this argument is of course premised on the idea that they're all going to be "equally ineffective" -- or, since given the broader case I don't really think that this is my friend's view, that they'll all be the about the same, politically (she likes the Democrats; I'm sure that she thinks, on balance, that they'd all be good). The balance of this series will be devoted to my arguments against this proposition, so that will bear the chief weight here.

But I suppose I should at least touch on the core point here -- if only because it's been such a big motivation for her support, insofar as I've read about it online, and heard about it. People -- mostly women -- are thrilled with the idea of a woman president. People talk about how thrilled their daughters are that they could be president some day. And so on.

Now, if there's a basis for choosing a candidate that I think is less worthy than picking the one you think will win, it's picking one based on identity politics. I really don't think it's the issue here. It's nice that having a woman president would inspire girls around the country, but we don't (or shouldn't) pick a president on that basis: we pick a president to govern the fracking country, and it's on the quality of their governance -- as best as we can judge it -- that we should pick candidates. (Frankly, the affirmative action argument reminds me, structurally, of the "he'd be good to have a beer with" argument for Bush: both are irrelevant in precisely the same way (the latter is even, arguably, de facto an affirmative action argument for good ol' boys -- who, granted, hardly need one.))

But -- particularly since I'm a middle-aged white man -- saying that makes me sound like a cranky, anti-affirmative action person: perhaps an effective stance to take in parts of the country, but not for my intended audience here. And anyway, it wouldn't bother me so much if it ended up helping a candidate I favored -- I still don't think it's the basis on which one should choose a presidential candidate, but in voting no one looks at your work and gives you partial credit: it's the result that counts. So if it helped the cause of good governance, then I wouldn't sweat it. -- But since it won't, let me address a few arguments against it that might better sway my intended audience here (left-leaning Democratic primary voters).

The central argument here is if you want an affirmative action candidate, your candidate should be not Hillary Clinton, but Barack Obama.

What's hard here is that a lot of the people making the affirmative action argument -- certainly the two friends I mentioned -- are themselves white women. They probably feel, personally, the injustices of American society in terms of gender; they probably feel, personally, the tug of emotion that it's about time for America to have a woman president. And as a white man I can't address those things on an emotional level -- any more than I could answer an African American who, for parallel reasons, supported Obama.

I could argue that, as someone who has a personal stake in neither minority group, I'm more disinterested in the outcome, and thus am better positioned to judge the relative merits of a pro-Black male affirmative action argument versus a pro-white woman affirmative action argument. (Under this theory, only white men (or, arguably, men of other non-African American ethnicities, say Asian American or Native American) and black women could be disinterested.) That's true in a sense, although personally I find it a rather repulsive argument. It is, however, the sort of repulsive argument that an excess of identity politics leads to -- which is one of the reasons that I don't like it (but some might claim that of course a white man would say that, wouldn't he?).

But I do think that it would do more for this country to have a black president than a woman president -- if that's the choice.

Now, granted, there are more white women than African Americans in the country, so if we're choosing on the grounds of who it will inspire the most, that's an argument for Hillary. (And it might be a good argument for electability, if you think that women on average will get more fired-up about being pro-Hillary because of her gender than African Americans will about Obama because of his race.) So you could argue for voting for the woman over the African American on majoritarian grounds. But frankly that's a really fracked-up argument to make in an argument which presupposes the importance of justice to minority and disempowered groups. So let's move on.

Certainly both groups have, historically, been radically disempowered in our society -- and I won't even get into the rather squalid argument of who's been more disempowered.**

So why do I think it would do more to have an African American than a woman president?

Because I think that, right now, today, African Americans are more shut out of power than women.

Since Obama and Hillary Clinton are both in the Senate, let's take a look at the Senate. There are currently 16 women in the Senate (counting Clinton herself). There is one -- one -- African American in the Senate: Obama himself. You sort of have to count the candidates, or there wouldn't even be one.

In more localized races -- including the Congress -- African Americans can do well, if they represent a majority-African American district. But in the country as a whole -- or large chunks of it, like states -- women are definitely more empowered. Not anything like as much as white men, of course (and alas): but, I'd argue, more than African American men.

I'm hardly a specialist in these matters, and there are a lot of different statistics one could pick out, and I'm sure some would go both ways. But I'd submit that there's at least a very significant case to be made for the idea that white women are more empowered than black men. (Again: an odious question. But one I feel I need to address.)

It would also, I claim, do more, practically, for the country. We are now hated around the world as never before. I can see no sign that electing a woman leader has done anything for the reputation of countries that have done it (Maggie Thatcher? Indira Gandhi? Golda Meir?). But I think that electing an African American president would do something for the country. We are seen now as a colonialist power: in much of the world, that goes hand-in-hand with being a racist power. Electing an African American president would be as clear a repudiation of Bushist imperialism as the country could make.

None of this is dispositive, or at any rate I don't think any of it should be. But I think that, if we're going by affirmative action standards, then Obama and not Clinton is the right choice.

Incidentally, on the "affirmative action" front, there is one serious argument to be made against Clinton: that she got where she is because of her husband. This has been, frankly, all-too-true for women in power in general: that one of the only ways in which they can gain power is through men. Perhaps one shouldn't hold it against her. And in some ways it would be fitting if the first woman president got power, essentially, through marriage (since it's been such a common means by which women have gotten into government roles in the past). But it sure doesn't sound very inspiring to me, so far as a tale of women's empowerment goes.

It does, however, get an argument which I think has roughly the same normative status as the affirmative action argument, i.e. it isn't really at issue, is purely symbolic, and shouldn't be the basis -- but which is, symbolically, a powerful argument, and in this case works against Clinton: namely, the argument against pseudo-aristocratic governance.

We're just now suffering through a president who was elected on the basis of who his father was -- restoring the old order of his father's reign (only much, much worse) after an interruption by Clinton. It seems to me to be a very bad symbol if the answer to this is to elect a president who will have gotten where she did because of who her husband was -- again, restoring the old order of her husband's reign.

Frankly, it is unfitting for a democracy to select its leaders on the basis of family connections like this; it is dangerous for a democracy which is in multiple and important ways developing aristocratic tendencies and suffers ever-more entrenched hierarchies to do so twice in a row. Having a presidential succession which goes Bush/Clinton/Bush is unseemly; having one which goes Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton is so much the worse. It reinforces lots of terrible trends in our society -- symbolically only, perhaps, but it's symbolism we're discussing here. Dynasties are not becoming for a democracy: two in a row approach the downright dangerous.

Let's elect someone who is not related to any U.S. Presidents -- most especially to any still-living ex-presidents.

You might say that that's irrelevant to whether Clinton would be a good president. I agree; but so is her gender. In the realm of symbolic politics, there are arguments which cut both ways.

But, again: I don't think that any of these grounds are good ones to decide on. So let's move on.

Continued in part four.

This series, past and projected.
1. Introduction
2. Who can win?
3. The affirmative action arguments
4. Experience and other distractions
5. Vote for the liberal!
6. Against empire: the Democrats, Iraq and military force
7. Against excessive executive power
8. Articulating a liberal philosophy

________________________
* Point of clarity: what I'm calling the affirmative action argument here is the idea that we should vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman (or Barack Obama because he's black, or Bill Richardson because he's hispanic), and it would be a good thing to have a woman (black, hispanic) president on the basis of redistributive justice ("it's about time") or the like. The idea that Clinton is better on women's issues -- which some have argued -- is a different point, and one I probably won't address -- for me the central issues of the election are different (I'd say they are war, empire, restoring constitutional balance, health care and gay rights, roughly in that order, and articulating a broad liberal philosophy as a important step in achieving all of those things), so I'm going to try to make the case on what I believe are the central grounds. Anyway, just bear in mind as you read what I am talking about when I talk about the "affirmative action arguments".

** Small sample, offered as a immunization measure: (A) African American men got the vote before white women, since the 15th amendment was passed in 1870 and the 19th was only passed in 1920! (B) Ah, but the 19th amendment was put into practical effect immediately -- African Americans were de facto barred from voting in large majorities until the voting rights act of 1964! etc., etc., ad nauseum.

The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: Who Can Win?

(Part two of a series. Part One, the introduction, can be found here.)

Who can win?

Frankly, this is not the issue that I want to focus on. There are lots of reasons for this. First, I am not a political scientist, nor a pollster, nor pundit, and thus don't trust my analyses of this issue particularly. (Not that I, nor anyone else, ought to particularly trust theirs either.) I have ideas about it, but I have less trust in those ideas than I do my ideas about the actual politics of the country, who's likely to do well at governing.

But, second -- and far more important -- I actually think it's a mistake for Democrats to focus too much on this. I think it's a mistake both tactically and strategically; and I think that it's a mistake both in general and in the context of the 2008 election specifically.

It's a mistake tactically because not only I, not only political scientists and pollsters and pundits, but because Democratic voters in general, are very, very bad at predicting who can win. Remember how the reason everyone supported John Kerry was that he was electable? Look where that got us. The truth is, we aren't good at judging this, for pretty much any value of "we". This is partly true because we focus on the wrong things, and partly because this whole 'who-can-win' business is inherently dependent on factors that don't become clear and events that don't happen until long after the candidate is chosen. So if we can't tell who's most likely to win, we might as well pick the person who we'd most like to win.

But it's a strategic mistake, too, because one of the central knocks against Democrats has been their perceived willingness to pander rather than stand up for their beliefs (think of the knocks against Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry); and one of the central handicaps against liberalism over the past few decades has been an excessive pragmatism, a tendency to preemptively compromise and to make small arguments rather than arguing for large visions of how society should work that arise from core beliefs. This latter point is, essentially, conceding that the former point, while far from wholly true and (to the degree it is true) far from as damning as it is made out to be*), has a partial truth to it.

In short, I think that we're bad at picking candidates pragmatically; I think that the perception that the left side of the spectrum picks candidates pragmatically reinforces the stereotype that we have no core principles, won't stand up for our values, etc, which in turn becomes a genuine handicap in electoral contests; and I think that in fact we ought to spend more energy making the basic case for our governing philosophy than trying to eek out narrow wins in an essentially hostile rhetorical environment.

Finally, however much of a mistake I think it is in general to pick an "electable" candidate, I think it is a particular mistake in this election to do so. Due to their having had undivided control of the government for six years (and all-but- unimpeded control since January, due to the spinelessness of the Democrats), the Republicans have trashed their own brand (so to speak) through the simple expedient of governing as they wish to govern. People like conservative rhetoric, but they tend to hate conservative governance since conservative governance, in a word, sucks.

Thus, despite all the Democrats have been able to do to spoil this opportunity -- cave in to Bush at every turn, fail to do one damn thing to stop a hated war, etc -- they nevertheless still have a very rare chance -- a once-in-a-generation chance, perhaps -- to make a big change in the politics of this country: both practically (winning the Presidency and a lot of congressional seats, as well as other races, etc.) but also structurally and philosophically. We have a chance, now, to re-orient American politics -- in its underlying assumptions and beliefs and rhetoric, as well as in its practical politics -- the way that the conservative movement reoriented politics in 1980 and 1994 (successive waves of a single re-orientation, I'd argue).

Let's not blow it by picking a middling candidate who we happen to think -- perhaps erroneously -- is "electable".

For that matter, given that the Democrats, atypically, have the edge (thanks to Republican mis-governance, not to anything good they've done), let's actually pick a good candidate and not simply a passable one.

Now, I'm trying to take a middle-of-the-road approach to this. I'm not saying that the issue of electability is irrelevant. I'm not arguing for Kucinich nor (FSM forefend) Nader. William F. Buckley's argument -- from the other side, naturally -- that there's "no sense running the Mona Lisa in a beauty contest" strikes me as basically good advice. But I think a middle-of-the-road approach is the one to take here: pick the best of the major candidates, rather than simply the most seeming-electable of the candidates (on the one hand, or the best tout court, on the other).

...But.

But when I spoke to both of my pro-Clinton friends (as discussed in the introduction to this series), the fact that Hilary could win loomed large in their thinking. It was, I believe, one of the two or three central reasons that they were supporting her. So I don't think I can skip it.

So, very briefly, here's why I think that Clinton, far from being more likely to win, is less so.

Clinton is seen as the most liberal candidate. This is wrong -- indeed, oddly wrong, since she is in fact the least liberal of the major candidates. But she isn't seen that way, which makes her more

Clinton will inspire the right-wing base as no one else will. Lord knows why, but they really, really hate her. In a year where they are -- for good reason! -- dispirited and hopeless, given the demonstrated disaster of their governing policy and the pathetic inadequacy of their candidates, Clinton is one thing that could really fire them up.

Clinton is already seen negatively by many people. This is separate from the item above because here I'm referring to swing voters, not the base: Clinton already has -- fairly or unfairly -- high negatives, which the other candidates don't. She'll have fewer people who she might win over from among the great middle, those who don't pay much attention to the details of politics

Clinton fails to articulate a liberal philosophy. I'll have more to say about this when I reach a later installment in this series. But I think that Clinton's triangulating, centrist roots in fact harm her candidacy rather than help it. (Yeah, Bill Clinton won that way -- but it was a different country then.)

Now, when I spoke to my friend, one of the things she spoke about most was desire. Paraphrasing, she said: Clinton really wants it. She'll sell her child to win. We can't have any more candidates who don't really want it.

Frankly, I find the idea that the problem with Gore, Kerry, etc, or for that matter Edwards and Obama, was/is that they don't want it to be a bit bizarre. No one puts themselves through the sheer torture of running for president who doesn't really want it; and anyway, all four of those men strike me as terrifyingly ambitious (just as all the Republicans are, and Clinton too: you sort of have to be to run for president.)

But let's accept for the sake of argument the idea that Clinton has more sheer will than other candidates, past or present, and see where that gets us.

I would argue that it doesn't get us very far.

In fact, I think it's an application of what Matt Yglesias calls the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics to domestic politics. The GLTG is the idea that what matters in global politics -- especially warfare -- is will. Thus, if America can simply keep it's will unified and strong, then anything it wants to happen -- the maintenance of South Vietnamese independence, the arising of a Jeffersonian Democracy in Iraq, etc -- will happen. That we are inevitably defeated, not by arms or tactics or what have you, but by our own lack of will.

See Yglesias on why this is silly in foreign affairs. But I think it's equally silly in domestic politics. Kerry didn't loose because he didn't want to win; he won because the Republicans out-campaigned him, painting him as a liberal panderer, and portraying him as so scary that even Bush (who a lot of right-leaning people were already beginning to dislike) was preferable.

In broader terms, I don't think that will has a lot to do with why candidates win. I think they win based on strategy, on their inherent talent as campaigners, unforeseeable circumstances, etc.

Now, in my friend's defense, in addition to will she also said she thought that Clinton would run a more disciplined, better campaign. And she may think that Clinton is a better campaigner -- she didn't say. And these issues strike me as much more up for grabs. I think that Obama and Edwards are better natural politicians; but Clinton is clearly campaigning very well. She has a staff that I find suspiciously traditional, filled with the sort of people who lost for us in 2004 and before... but, again, she's clearly running a tight ship. So on this aspect I'm agnostic. I'll simply say, again, that I think we have a very good shot next year, and we might as well put up the best candidate rather than the most electable one.

Okay. Enough on who can win. As I said at the beginning of this section, I'm not as interested in who can win. I'm interested in who we should want to win. So beginning in the next section I'm going to talk about that.

Continued in part three.

This series, past and projected:
1. Introduction
2. Who can win?
3. The affirmative action arguments
4. Experience and other distractions
5. Vote for the liberal!
6. Against empire: the Democrats, Iraq and military force
7. Against unchecked executive power
8. Articulating a liberal philosophy

____________________________
* Pandering is thought to be bad because it shows lack of principle; but of course "pandering" is another word for "doing what the majority of the people want". Now I agree that there are issues where the majority is wrong (appeals to base bigotry often gain majority support, but aren't any better for that), but often doing what the majority wants in a democracy is a good thing. At the very least it should be evaluated on the merits, rather than on some ridiculous notion of "authenticity". (But, in our country, it won't be.)

The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: Introduction

The other day I spoke with a friend of mine, a firmly liberal Jewish woman, about who she was supporting in the Democratic presidential primary. Rather to my surprise, she said she was supporting Hillary Clinton. I say "to my surprise" because, in all the talk with all my liberal friends about the race, I hadn't actually talked to a real, live Hillary supporter before. I knew they were out there -- she's leading in the polls, so obviously she has a big constituency -- but for me it was like the existence of Bush supporters: I know that there are a lot of them, but they aren't part of my social circle. Or so I had thought. But the election is just starting to come up in conversation: so I guess I don't really know. (And come to think of it, that colleague was... and...)

A few days later, I had lunch with another friend -- another liberal woman, this one from the Midwest -- and she, too, said she was supporting Hillary. When I described the reasons the first friend gave, the second friend agreed that those were pretty much her reasons too.

So having encountered Hillary supporters not online, not in print, but in person, indeed in the person of friends I care about and respect, I want to consider (yes, online and in print, not in person, unless you, Noble Reader, want to fly to Ithaca: we'll do lunch) the reasons that these friends of mine gave -- and why I think they are so terribly mistaken.

It may be too late: the U.S. media is already building a Hillary-is-inevitable narrative, and of course the media in this country are interested largely in narratives rather than in policy or any of the other things in politics that actually affect our lives. And, of course, my blog isn't read by more than a handful of readers. But confronted by an impending mistake -- indeed, I fear, a grave mistake -- I throw what I have into opposing it, little though that may be and hopeless though the cause might be.

Let me begin by saying that I think one central problem here is the existence of two leading candidates apart from Clinton. If the liberal wing of the Democratic party -- and that's really what we're talking about here, I think: Clinton represents the establishment, centrist, DLC, old-school side of the party, and both Edwards and Obama represent the liberal side, except insofar as Clinton has suckered (I use the word deliberately) liberals such as my friends into seeing no difference between them (more on this anon). Start again. If the liberal wing of the Democratic party splits, of course the establishment candidate will win. Even if this series of blog posts, in a miracle of biblical proportions, reaches half the Democrats in the country and convinces them all, Hillary would still win if we split between Edwards and Obama. Unless the anti-Hillary forces coalesce around a single candidate, Hillary will win.

I don't have an answer for this last one. I don't even have a candidate: at the moment, my current plan is to vote for whichever candidate -- Edwards or Obama -- is the anti-Hillary candidate at the time of the New York state primary. This is presuming that one or the other of them will have (practically if not technically) knocked the other out of the race by that point, but that that one still has a chance to win. If in fact by the time of the New York primary Hillary has the nomination sewn up, I'll vote for Kucinich as a protest-vote against the hawkish, pro-Empire tendencies of the Democrats; if, in fact, all three candidates are still viable, I'll then have to choose between Edwards and Obama. (I'm leaning in one direction, but quite definitely swayable on this point -- or even towards Bill Richardson or one of the other dark-horse candidates.)

I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton wouldn't be an okay President. She would, without question or doubt, be far better than any Republican currently either in the race or considering it -- with the extremely problematic, possible exception of Ron Paul, who would be far worse about almost everything but far better about the most important thing. But let's face it: he's Kucinich on the other side -- a nice idea, but not going to happen. So, certainly, if Clinton's the Democratic candidate, I'll vote for her, I'll support her, I'll hope she'll win.

But I think it will be a mistake -- a grave mistake, a mistake that will throw away a big chance, both for liberalism as a movement in America, and for our country as a whole. I think that Hillary Clinton will be distinctly worse than either Edwards and Obama -- although both of them are far, far, far from as good as I would wish or as I hoped they would be.

So I want to speak -- with as much force as I can, which admittedly isn't much -- to my fellow Democrats, and particular to those within the party who think of themselves as largely on the left -- as my friends do -- and see if I can convince them that I'm right.

At the moment, I am imagining this essay series as dividing into six parts; this plan may change as I go forward, however, and the essay takes final shape. But for the moment, the projected table of contents (so to speak) is as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Who can win?
3. The affirmative action arguments
4. Experience and other distractions
5. Vote for the liberal!
6. Against empire: the Democrats, Iraq and military force
7. Against unchecked executive power
8. Articulating a liberal philosophy

The first three parts are, as I see it, necessary hurdles to jump; the final three parts will be the core of my argument here.

Except to see new entries regularly -- about one a day for the next week or so if I can manage it (excepting Saturday, which is Yom Kippur). If not, they'll still come as fast as I can write 'em. So stay tuned!

Part two is now posted; click here to read it.

Update 9/23: My friend (the first of the two I mentioned) was kind enough to post her own version of her arguments in comments here. Thus instead of relying on my summary, you should click through and read what she has to say herself.

Waiting for Nixon

The front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary is -- rather unexpectedly -- Richard Nixon.

What do I mean by that? I mean simply this: the Democrats will most likely run a candidate who claims to want to end the war, but will in fact continue it. The Democrats will most likely run a candidate who presents themselves as a peace candidate -- and yes, improbable as it seems in retrospect, it's important to remember that Nixon ran as a peace candidate -- but is in fact a war candidate. And the Democrats will most likely run a candidate who takes an immoral, failed, unpopular and disastrous war largely begun by one party and achieve true bipartisanship with it.

And it seems that the Democratic voters don't know this. (via)

As Chris Bowers said, it'd be one thing if the Democrats knowingly put forward candidates who want to continue the war. (A war which, its boosters claim, will "require the presence of roughly 100,000 American troops for 20 years — and that, even so, it would be a "long-shot gamble."" That's what the pro war people are saying.) But to do so in ignorance? To have 76% of Democrats think that Hilary Clinton wants to end rather than perpetuate the war?

It's hard to stomach. I mean, no wonder Hilary's leading if more people think Hilary wants to end the war: as Atrios keeps saying, people hate the war and want it to end. Only our political class seems not to notice this -- or to agree. Our political class -- including most of the Democrats.

How could they think so? Why are people so misinformed about the leading candidates' support for the war?

Well, maybe because the candidates are lying about their positions:

A damning video. (via) One that -- in a sane world -- would cripple Hilary Clinton's candidacy. But, of course, we don't live in a sane world.

Now, Obama is saying some terrible things too. And his Iraq stance is, so far as I can tell, not much better than Clinton's. (Edwards' might be better -- I frankly don't know; I haven't looked into it enough. I'll have to study the issue if my primary vote will actually matter. Otherwise I'm voting for Kucinich as a protest vote. (Update: Edwards is certainly saying some good things.))

But what the candidates are saying isn't everything. And there's at least one very telling indication that Obama would be significantly better than Clinton (once again via):

The well-publicized contrast between Hillary Clinton's early backing of the Bush administration's war effort and Barack Obama's early opposition, has to a degree been replicated in the less visible network of foreign policy advisers that each candidate has cultivated -- the early war opponents by Obama, and the one-time hawks by Clinton. The differing histories of the candidates on Iraq, reinforced by the parallel commitments of their advisers, suggests - but does not guarantee - that Clinton and Obama would, if elected, adopt substantially dissimilar approaches to international relations and to national security threats. If the past and the advisers are a guide, then Clinton would be expected to adopt a tougher line, and would be likely to threaten, and perhaps use, force more readily than Obama.

Clinton supported the war; Clinton is hiring people who supported the war. Obama didn't, and isn't. Thus for now I'm supporting Obama, on the theory that he is the realistic anti-Clinton.

But for the most part I am bitterly disappointed in the Democrats. Not only for what they are likely to do in the next week about the Petraeus sham -- but for what they are likely to do in 2008.

Krugman, in his justifiably-widely-linked but NYT-firewalled column today, (update: try here), said:

Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

And also said that he's afraid that

Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

And part of me is afraid of that too. Afraid that they're too cowardly to stand up to a despised president on his most-despised policy.

But more of me is afraid that they're not afraid. More of me is afraid that they're doing it, not out of fear, but out of conviction.

And lying to us about it. Because, like Nixon, they know the public wants the war to end. And so their secret plan for peace will be the same as his was: more war.

Clinton Shouldn't Be Our Candidate

Yet another reason from Matt Yglesias. In regards to Clinton's campaign tactics in the Obama-Clinton debate, he writes:

[Her campaign tactics] reflect a certain set of beliefs about politics -- specifically that more militarism is always better -- which happen to be the exact same set of beliefs that helped drive so many Democratic elected officials to duck and cover during the initial drive for war. To get the foreign policy right, you need on some level to have someone willing to challenge the hawkish political box. Clinton isn't just failing to do that, she's going way out of her way to re-enforce it.

Clinton's a long-time hawk. She's dangerous both to the larger political debate (empowering militarism), but also in that, if elected, she's more likely to engage in immoral, unwise wars. We need someone else. (Update: Yglesias has another post on this topic here.)

Update: Another blog post from Ygelsias worthy of note here, where he focuses on the far-too-little noted tendency of many centrist Democrats to favor the indefinite occupation of Iraq:

An awful lot of liberals I know seem unduly confident that when their favored candidate is elected President of the United States, he or she will withdraw American troops from Iraq. I think people should pay attention to Progressive Policy Institute chief Will Marshall when he notes that the major candidates at least sometimes seem to more-or-less agree with his case for indefinitely extending the US military occupation of Iraq... Marshall/CNAS seem to me to be broadly reflective of the Democratic foreign policy establishment types who continue to be very influential, especially with Clinton.

Read the rest. It's an important issue. All of the major Democratic candidates here are lacking; but the one most likely to be bad on this is the most hawkish one, the one who sees hawkishness as essential politics.

We need someone else.

Second Update: More on this latter topic at TomDispatch. This is a crucial issue: the major Democratic candidates are not planning a full withdrawal from Iraq. Bad as Clinton is, Obama and Edwards aren't much better. The few candidates who support a genuine end to the war -- Kucinich and Richardson -- aren't gaining any traction in the polls.

I think Chernus is right in saying that the issue here is that the major Dems are fudging the issue to appeal to a strongly anti-war base (and country) while still reassuring the foreign policy/DC establishment that thinks that of course we need to maintain some control in Iraq. But how can we possibly get them to support what the overwhelming majority of the country supports -- a full, genuine end to the war?

I don't know. I really don't.

Another Argument Against Hillary

The arguments against supporting Hillary Clinton (our esteemed junior Senator here in New York) to be the Democratic nominee for 2008 are manifold, various and overwhelming. There is the fact that she has been disastrously bad on the central issue of her time in the Senate, Iraq. There is the fact that she has the temperament and record of a centrist and the reputation of a liberal -- by far the worst possible combination. There is the ugly aristocratic odor of supporting a former president's spouse right after the presidency of a former president's son. And there is the central, crucial fact that however strong she may be in the Democratic primaries, she would be a terrible candidate in 2008 -- exceedingly likely to loose at a time when a Democrat ought to be able to win. All of this, frankly, ought to be decisive. (Indeed, a recent London Times report is that even some in Hillary's circle are starting to think it might be. (via))

But just in case anyone needs it, here's another argument.

There are innumerable important issues on the agenda -- from the clusterfuck that is Iraq, to actual efforts to improve rather than worsen American security; from the problem of diminishing supplies of oil to the environmental havoc that that oil which we have already used has caused, is causing and will continue to cause; from the growing cultural power of theocratic forces in this country to specific issues, such as gay rights, on which they take discriminatory and immoral positions. But in one specific domain -- namely, the domestic domain of economics, social structures, and similar affairs -- the single, overriding issue is the absolute disaster that our health care system is, and the urgent practical and moral necessity of fixing it.

I don't know if I have to make an argument for this -- there have been a lot of arguments for it (here's one from just yesterday, for example (via)). But no other single problem has so many deleterious effects on our economy and society; no other single problem would help such a broad range of people, from the poor through the middle class to even some in the upper classes; no other single problem is as easy to fix on a technical level (every other industrialized nation in the world has universal health care, so there are a wide variety of tried and tested options to study and learn from); no other single problem has, I believe, the political power that this one does -- my sense is that people are increasingly agitated over this, and the option of universal care would sell well to a broad majority of them. So this is the issue to work on (within this domain, as opposed to, say, security or foreign policy or the culture wars or the environment) the next time we have a competent, reality-based administration -- hopefully as soon as January of 2009. I hope that many, or even all, of the Democratic nominees for 2008 take strong stances on this. We need to fix this already.

But here's the problem: because of her involvement with (and the public's association of her with) the most recent failed attempt to solve this pressing issue, in 1994, Hillary is perhaps more poorly placed than any national politician -- certainly than any foreseeable candidate for the Democratic nomination -- to deal with this problem. More than any other figure, she would be scarred off from this, unable to persuade the public on this, more likely to dodge it.

There are plenty of other reasons to oppose Hillary -- plenty of other reasons which are sufficient in and of themselves, irrespective of all the others. But her basic deficit at grappling with the central (domestic, economic/social) issue of our time is, for me, yet another.

Let's find someone else. If possible, someone who will take a bold stand for universal health care. For Lord knows that we could use it.