Understanding Obama in historical context

(WARNING WARNING WARNING: This post is long, contains no horcerace analysis of the primaries/caucuses, and is not funny. Proceed at your own risk. --M.)

I've been following with some interest the flap over Obama and Reagan in the past few days. Every blogger in the world has been writing about it at length; Obama's statements have been parsed into total incoherence and Reagan's legacy has been debated with an intensity usually reserved for, I don't know, non-dead politicians. There's no way to summarize this sprawling argument, though some starting-points are Matt Stoller, Ezra Klein, Digby, Big Tent Democrat, Paul Rosenberg, Kos, and Dem Apples veteran Josh Patashnik. Good luck.

What I want to focus on, though, is not the political and ideological implications of this debate (which have been done to death) but the largely-overlooked historical and cultural ones. More than any other of this year's campaigns, Obama 2008 has been deeply and fundamentally tied in with a number of complexes about the 1960s and 1970s (as I have written before), complexes which have little salience among the general public but a great deal among high-information political elites (Obama's target market). The injection of Ronald Reagan into the debate, and let's not pretend it wasn't deliberate, is calculated perfectly to play into those complexes and further promote the 1970s mindset in which his campaign makes the most sense. All politics is ultimately about the past, but it is rarely this obvious -- and it's extremely bad for the Democratic Party. Join me after the jump and I'll explain.

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Rudy's slipping in the polls? Iran's not evil? Quick, men! To the time machine!

Look what the cat dragged in:

Yes, Rudy Giuliani's latest ad is all about Iran--- but not the Iran you're thinking of, with the nuclear disarmament and protesting students and other such annoying complexities. (Completely true: that declassified NIE report sank a CNN special planned for the 12th called "CNN PRESENTS: We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear". Darn reality, always ruining a good story!) No, Giuliani wants to talk about the Big Evil Retro Iran of 1980, a presumably safer choice and certainly a more perfect foil for his macho Reagan fantasies -- emphasis on "fantasies". Giuliani really wants us to think that "Rambo" Reagan being in office for an hour caused Iranian terrorists to burst into tears and lay down their arms. It'd be poignant if it wasn't so fucking retarded.

The brilliant Phil Nugent explains the real facts and context very well. All I want to point out in addition is that this follows a pattern I've seen among Republicans for years: that for some presumably psychological reason, they have absolutely no idea what decade it is. The concept of historical context simply eludes these people. Just as they do not understand the difference between TV and real life, conservatives likewise do not grasp the difference between the past and the present; hence this totally earnest attempt to pretend it's still the age when gas cost $1.20 a gallon and Ron Reagan rode around on his horse. To a man, they see nothing wrong with this escapist drivel; I fully expect Mitt Romney to respond with an ad invoking the Miracle on Ice. (And Fred Thompson, who's been doing the Cold War thing for some time, will probably just keep pedaling backwards until he winds up raving about pinkos and the Apollo program. But then, it's Fred Thompson, so nobody will notice.)

---ON THE OTHER HAND, if Giuliani really wants to cast this election in terms of 1980 -- when, if you remember, the incumbent party was soundly defeated due to a clearly failing economy, a disastrous foreign policy and a widely mistrusted leadership -- I suppose I wouldn't really have a problem with that...

...Someone Still Loves You

I confess to having a very large soft spot in my heart for Boris Yeltsin (who died today). This is less for political reasons than emotional ones; while I have immense respect for the tireless work he did toward democratization and free speech in Russia, that's not what came back to me when I read about his passing. No, what I love is Boris the man.

He was a major world figure from the moment I came to any level of political consciousness (the early 90s), and appeared relentlessly in both the news and the sophomoric Canadian satire programs I liked to watch. For good reason -- Yeltsin, I contend, was the quintessential figure of the 1990s. The Cold War was over and he was the new, friendly face of Russia, a country suddenly totally absent of menace or hostility towards us; Boris, like his nation, was just a big guy who wanted to be loved. And that tapped perfectly into the zeitgeist of the decade -- the 90s West was exhausted from all the conflict, international and intellectual, it'd been dealing with since 1914. Our music was sloppy, our TV was silly; we just wanted to relax and have a good time.

Yeltsin spoke to that. You could see it a little bit in other leaders, like the saxophone-playing Bill Clinton; but even he was small-time compared to Premier Boris. Here was a man who was fat, drunk, happy, and totally unapologetic about it. Here was a man who ruled, often harsly, but always with a smile. HERE was a man who knew how to have a good time--

--while leading his country. Sure, he had personal problems. Sure, the geopolitical situation was often complex and hostile. Sure, Chechnya blah blah blah. DEEP DOWN everybody knew that Boris was the right guy for the time.

So to read about his death casts our current situation in stark relief. After all, that chilled-out 90s vibe is completely gone; our country is run by militaristic wackjobs again; and Russia! Russia is now ruled by a humorless prick named Vladimir who is diligently undoing all of Yeltsin's reforms en route to a 21st-century czarship. It's damn sad. I was particularly grabbed by these words from the Times article:

His death, at a hospital, came at 3:45 p.m., the Kremlin said, making the announcement without ceremony...

“I express the very deepest condolences to the family of the deceased on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country, and serious mistakes,” Mr. Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency...

Mr. Putin released a statement late Monday declaring that Mr. Yeltsin had given the country democracy as the first elected president of Russia. “Under this title, he has taken his place in the history of this country, and of the world,” Mr. Putin said. He made no mention of Mr. Yeltsin’s role in Mr. Putin’s rise to power.

Not only does it seem somehow wrong that Gorbachev outlived him, and not only does Putin come off here like the ungrateful little shit he is, but fundamentally I'm just so depressed by the thought that Boris Yeltsin wound up a political punching bag (if not punchline). He was one of the touchstone figures of the 90s, man! Surely he deserves better.

It is a great consolation to know that Boris lives on, in the name of a fun Missouri indie band who also provide the title for this post. But I nevertheless can't quite shake the thought -- and this startled me greatly when I realized it -- that we've lost someone important for the world's cultural history. There was a certain feeling that came with Premier Boris, and we may never get that feeling back.

Ah well. Rest in peace, Mr. Yeltsin. You earned it.

---Update, 2:30 AM: Jesus, James Lileks is channeling me. Or possibly vice versa. Who knows.

At the time he was a fresh wind, and he fit a Russian stereotype we hadn’t seen in decades. Instead of dour glowering technocrats or the tall Ivan-Drago Leninbots of fiction, he was a big rumpled Siberian who appeared to enjoy smiling for the simple human reasons. [...] I always had a soft spot for him. Seeing him stand on the tank, and watching the Soviet flag come down – one of the most remarkable moments of the end of the 20th century.

Retro Is In This Year

I've already written about how Barack Obama's candidacy -- through no fault of his own, mind you -- is basically out of a time warp from 1974. Well, turns out Barack's not the only candidate who hasn't caught up with the times, and in this case the candidate's entirely to blame: one look at Rudy Giuliani's platform and you get a whole different kind of retro. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I GIVE YOU: the 1980s.

Take away 9/11 and examine Giuliani as a conservative - and he is a kind of conservative. How does this kind of conservatism translate to the America of 2008? It's an older model - a sort of reactionary tough love, a pastiche that thrived in an urban environment of racial tension, crime, and economic crisis. It appeals to a certain frustration with bureaucratic fecklessness, and it unmistakeably draws from white resentment of blacks stereotyped as welfare queens and criminals.

[...] Giuliani's conservatism is the product of a particular ecosystem - it's a reaction to the New York of the 1970s and 80s. As even some conservative analysts have noted, it is based on themes - welfare, crime, taxes - that simply don't resonate very much on the national level anymore. Giulianism was a late flowering of America's post-1960s reactionary phase; it's hard to imagine it translating to a presidential campaign in the current context.

[...] What he has emphasized is supply-side economics. There was the flat tax flip-flop to pick up the Forbes endorsement. Larry Kudlow loves him. And he seems to be trying to channel the force of his personality into, of all things, ending welfare as we know it... As a presidential campaign strategy, this is a very good one for 1980.

Per usual Paul from Alien & Sedition is right on the money. It's like Ronald Reagan if he'd missed out on the Cold War. Supply-side economics, for Chrissake, and cranky rants about the bleeding-heart liberals and their love of handouts. At this rate I half expect Margaret Thatcher to show up someplace and start bombing the Falkland Islands.

Of course this stuff resonates with many Republicans, a group hardly known for their progressive forward-thinking attitudes. They do venerate Reagan -- if for reasons that rarely correspond with reality -- and many elites are still drawn to that sense of tax-cutting fervor. (The Onion once pointed out that Bush's cabinet is pretty darn retro. And that was pre- Robert Gates, who was an Iran-contra conspirator for crying out loud.) But for the most part, the Morning in America message has lost its luster, as more salient issues have replaced the sort of hardheaded fiscal quasi-conservatism Giuliani still espouses. "Welfare queens" no longer scare people, after all, and Ronald Reagan is dead.

Paul cites the Pew poll, which shows a tremendous recent increase in public support for activist "big" government. (To which the natural response is, "about time.") Today's political environment is pretty much the worst in which Giuliani could possibly hope to articulate his already-outdated message. Which makes it all the more interesting that he's somehow become the prohibitive frontrunner; well, hell. If Republicans want to commit suicide by anachronism, I'm the last to suggest we stop them.

Let's Get To Work

Well, the Democratic Senate (fingers crossed) already has one major task laid out for it: figure this out.

Bush's nominee to replace Rumsfeld (good riddance) is Robert Gates, longtime of the CIA, and reportedly tangled up fairly heavily in the Iran-Contra affair. The ghosts of old scandals rise again! And the amount of baggage he carries is staggering -- here's what Tom Harkin had to say about him:

Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates' past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

[...] Mr. President, I do not believe that Robert Gates is the right person to lead the CIA at this time. The cold war is over and it's time for some of the old warriors to rest. Now we must take a fresh new look at the world, think new thoughts and reassess the future role of the intelligence community. I urge my colleagues to vote against Robert Gates.

That was 1991. Read Harkin's whole statement; it's a doozy.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, to see a nervous and disheartened Bush regressing into his father's presidency; but must he always pick the really scarily incompetent ones? Was this maybe Dick Cheney's doing? Why didn't he choose someone with a connection to the MILITARY, for crying out loud, rather than a spook? There are a ton of WTF questions this nomination immediately raises.

So there need to be vigorous confirmation hearings, and a real effort to cut through the murk and the dust surrounding this guy. I'm envisioning a journey back in time, complete with Ollie North and shady guys in mirrored sunglasses. Maybe synthpop will come back. Who knows. But the Democratic Senate -- or the Democrats on the committee, it occurs to me, if Bush tries to push Gates through the lame-duck session -- had better step forward, because the potential for a real disaster here is serious.