It is probably little-remembered that Bob Dole ran as Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976 and that he had a debate with vice-presidential candidate Walter Mondale. During that debate, Bob Dole created some controversy when he said that World War One and Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were all “Democratic wars.” By that he meant that our involvement in all those wars began under Democratic presidents. It was a true statement, but the way he said it made it sound like these were all wars of choice irresponsibly launched by Democrats. I’d argue strenuously against the irresponsibility of fighting in World War Two, but the other three are certainly open for debate. My point here is that it wasn’t that long ago that the Democrats had the reputation for having a “muscular foreign policy.” To be sure, that reputation had begun to erode in a major way in the decade before 1976. That’s part of what made Dole’s comments seem so bizarre. But we fought and won the World Wars under Democratic presidents and we started the Korean and Vietnam Wars under Democratic presidents, only to see both of them sloppily resolved by Republicans.
While the GOP talked a lot of anti-communist smack, they hadn’t actually put any of our boys in harm’s way between 1941 and 1976. Sure, Nixon extended the Vietnam War, but he also ended it. The Republicans didn’t become the actual war party until Carter had some bad luck in his attempt the rescue the Iranian hostages and Reagan became president.
I mention this because I take a position midway between Josh Marshall and digby. I think Josh’s view of machismo in politics is oversimplified and somewhat insulting to the voters’ intelligence. I think digby is wringing her hands a bit too much.
Marshall sees the attack on Romney for not having the guts or wisdom to go get bin-Laden as a way of emasculating him. He’s thinks this is a legitimate strategy and he thinks it’s effective because swing voters respond to these manly/unmanly cues. Digby doesn’t necessarily dispute Josh’s analysis; she just bemoans it.
I’m not quite as ecstatic that we have an awesome manly man who can out macho the opposition with tough orders to kill our evil enemies. I tend to think it reinforces some unfortunate characteristics of our politics, which Marshall defines above. Not to mention that I don’t know anyone who really believes that Democrats can possibly be masculine enough to win this in the long term. The Party of gays, women and kids is never going to out-macho the Republicans. (They might be able to do it if they commit to totally abandoning those constituencies, so I suppose there’s still hope …) I have no doubt that Barack Obama will be remembered as a very manly president because of his national security policies. But if you’re on Team Blue, enjoy it. It’s a one-time thing. I doubt very seriously that will mean a thing to any other Democrat running for office now or in the future.
Why is digby wrong? Well, for starters, she just defined the Democratic Party as the party of gays, women, and kids. That’s pretty self-limiting, don’t you think? Was FDR’s Democratic Party limited to gays, women, and kids? Was JFK’s or LBJ’s Democratic Party limited in that way? I’m not attacking her here, but I think she left out the part about the blacks and the Latinos and Asians and the Native Americans. But she also just ceded the white male adult vote, and I see no reason to do that.
The main point is that liberals can govern this country with toughness and brains, and we should expect to lay our enemies low when we go about things in an intelligent manner. There’s nothing to apologize for. The Republicans started a war with a country that didn’t attack us and ran that war terribly. There is no reason in the world why we shouldn’t take full credit for focusing on our true enemies and defeating them. Contra Marshall, this is no mere schoolyard taunting. This is an actual record of success.
I think they’re both wrong.
Hear, hear!
He did not call them “Democratic wars”.
He called them “Democrat wars”.
That was when that whole slur on “Democratic” was beginning.
I’ve even heard self-professed Democrats speak of the “Democrat Party”. I try to say “Republic Party” in retaliation.
I think they’re on the offense on everything and putting Romney on the defense. Good. About time Republicans explain themselves.
of Obama, because it is in the right cause. Being a little boastful, a little prideful, WHEN YOU HAVE DONE THE DEED and THE DEED IS GOOD, is fine.
It’s being boastful about shit that is problematic. That’s Bush and Perry. Perry getting all that press for shooting a coyote who was running away in the back – now that is low-rent, cheap and stupid. Obama, taking proper credit for doing what Bush was unable to do in 6.5 years – now that is just fine by me.
And he did it without a padded codpiece!
I have no problem with digby’s take, and I suspect you’re misreading it. I read her passage as saying that so long as Democrats are perceived as CARING about women, gays, & kids, it will, in some knuckle-dragging minds, compare unfavorably to a party that, in rhetoric and in policy, despises all three. (Except, of course, home-schooled white kids and white kids who go to elite private schools. They’re our future, you know.)
Change her wording to reflect that more clearly, and I think she’s right on the money. For far, far too long, our entire political establishment – especially the foreign policy establishment – and not just the men – have had a bad case of testosterone poisoning.
I agree with Geov. Adding more, I’m agreeing with the rest of her post and her other point: it makes me sick that we’re going around with OBL’s head on a pike. Maybe liberals just need to accept that we’re a bloodthristy people; we always have been, why fight the political cravenness of our pols to pounce on it? If our elected leaders won’t lead the way, at least we can try to change the culture…lol, who am i kidding…
From Boo’s post:
I’m not attacking her here, but I think she left out the part about the blacks and the Latinos and Asians and the Native Americans.
I agree with both of you, but also think Digby isn’t forgetting, she just wasn’t listing every last part of the coalition.
“But she also just ceded the white male adult vote, and I see no reason to do that.”
There’s this too. How can you not cede the white male vote if you’re the party of women, gays, kids, blacks, Latinos, Indians and Asians?
It’s a fair question, if (perhaps necessarily) a bit oversimplified.
The dominant political culture tends to be a zero-sum culture. If you win, I lose. If a policy favors blacks, it disfavors whites. If you’re “the party of women”, you are almost by definition not “the party of men”. In fact, you’re the party in which men are not welcome.
Now, taking a look at the composition of, say, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, it’s ludicrous to say that Democrats don’t welcome men—including white men.
Having said that, the way Democrats don’t cede the white male vote (or the Latina vote, or the LGBT vote) is first, to signal by actions small and large that you respect them—even, perhaps especially, when you disagree with them.
Second, your issues and policies, your record of accomplishments, and what you aspire to do includes their values and self-interests—as they define them.
Third, you create and use a rhetoric that reflects all of this.
Obviously it’s easier said than done, and it’s more complicated than I’ve said, but I’d suggest that’s a start.
“But she also just ceded the white male adult vote, and I see no reason to do that.”
Their crimes are such that they should just shut up, not vote, get out of the way, and be governed instead of governing for a while.
In restitution and out of fairness.
(Maybe I read too many progressive blogs…)
I’d settle for negating their institutional advantages. The country is 63.7% percent white and speaking only for me, I believe in proportional representation.
Maybe if I read her stuff more often I would pick up some nuance that I’m missing here.
Maybe digby and I just place massively different amounts of value on hunting down and killing terrorists who fly planes into our skyscrapers and Pentagon.
I don’t know. But I see no contradiction between being the tougher, smarter party on national security and being the party that looks after kids and protects the interests of gays and women. Nor do I acknowledge that the GOP will be more macho simply by talking smack.
In rhetoric there are two basic elements: the best available means of persuasion, and what you are persuading — the object of the persuasion. I trust you don’t disagree with the object: to elect Democrats. As for the best available means of persuasion, that is pretty much determined by the audience. Which is what it is. After we win some elections and make the country a better and happier place, we can hope to change, to some degree, the weird mindset.
Digby, wring her hands about something? That almost never happens. Wait, no, what’s the opposite of “never”?
Gays, women, and kids? Sure, and non-whites, too. Minorities and women see the D’s as their party and see the R’s as the party of straight white men.
The triumph of identity politics over class.
Who are you kidding, BooMan, pretending you think the Democrats of today are the Democrats of FDR, Truman, and Johnson?
As for Dole, he was being a throwback to the isolationism of the Middle West of his youth.
His party has been the more bellicose since the Second World War, and it was in large part fear of losing elections to Republican chest thumping that led the Democrats to war in Korea and Vietnam.
As for you, you’re actually bragging not only about the Second World War but about Korea and Vietnam.
McCain would be proud to share a ticket with you.
who got Bin Laden?
OBAMA
who has decimated Al Qeda?
OBAMA
fuck these handwringers.
dammit.
I love that the President has taken away their foreign policy club..
AND
that he’s willing to beat the shyt out of them with it TOO.
FUCK YEAH!!
I’ve seen a proposed bumper sticker that says “Bin Laden’s Dead, GM’s Alive, Obama-Biden 2012”. I’d love to put one on the bumper of my 2012 Impala.
I totally think it should be on bumper stickers, t-shirts and mugs
Agreed, but I thought it particularly apt on the bumper of a car that wouldn’t exist if Romney were President.
As someone who felt that the US should have made a greater effort to capture OBL and bring him to Justice rather than just kill him, you might also expect me to oppose Obama touting his “success”. However once the killing was done you have to make the best of it, and the Rovian strategy of attacking the Republicans where they think they are strong can be just the ticket for demoralising and confusing them.
Just as RMoney wants to pivot to the centre, you attack him from the Right and make such a pivot even more difficult. In practice RMoney, the corporate raider has zero foreign policy or military credentials and shouldn’t just be given a free rife on national security issues just because the Republicans tend to talk tough and take the macho vote as their own. So I approve the strategy on limited tactical grounds even if I think it has a limited useful lifespan and hope it doesn’t reinforce an already way over the top macho political culture in the US.
Once you let the genie out of the bottle it can’t easily be put back in again. If the US were to suffer another terrorist outrage before the election it would be very difficult for Obama to maintain the calm, cool, calculating demeanour and not give into GOP calls for vengeance at whatever suitable target could be defined. Thus if Israel where to bomb Iran as an October surprise, is Obama now better or worse placed to avoid being dragged into another stupid war?
Having said all that, it’s time Democrats stopped ceding the macho vote to Gopers who tend to talk tough and act stupid. Much better to talk tough and act intelligently and effectively and to highlight that fact. Foreign Policy and National security is one area on which Obama should cede no ground to RMoney whatsoever, and at the moment it still looks like more favourable campaign terrain than the economy or healthcare.
So choose your battleground and choose your weapons carefully. OBL and a more effective campaign against terrorism is a good place to start.
You can’t be serious. He had justice.
Summary execution is not justice. And besides, you might have learned some things from his trial. Some things you might not want to know – for instance – the extent of the US and Saudi involvement in the setting up, arming and funding of Al Qaeda and their connections to Bush senior. It is always easier to spot the evil in your enemies.
In any case due process is was marks out civilisation from barbarism. You missed an opportunity to demonstrate that, and the fact you don’t seem to get that indicates that maybe you have more to learn than you realise.
Given the circumstances, I disagree. Getting him out of there would have been very risky indeed. More important was documents and such. He convicted himself by videotape over and over, so your squeamishness is entirely unnecessary.
I agree with you in generalities, but not in this instance. Despite Greenwald’s arguments to the contrary (though I haven’t seen him address the point I’ll bring up in a second) — and my incessant desire to agree with him — it was an either or: either you kill him, or you let him live. There was no bringing him back. Terrorists have been documented to be carrying explosives like that on their person. Even if he wasn’t “visibly armed,” he could have been armed and taken everyone out.
That’s too much of a political risk, I’m afraid.
We’ll probably never know the precise circumstances of his killing and whether capturing him was feasible or an undue additional risk to the lives of his killers. I certainly wouldn’t expect the soldiers concerned to put their lives at significant further risk in order to capture him.
However my larger point is that – had it been possible to put him on trial – it would have been hugely beneficial to the American body politic to have gone through that process. Part of the reason US politics is so poisonous at the moment is that people have been led to believe that every problem can be solved by identifying someone – anyone – as responsible and killing him.
The US kills more civilians every day than Al Qaedi ever did and feels utterly justified in doing so because of a sociopathic lack of empathy with the needs and rights of non-American peoples. Sure ABL was an evil SOB, but he was “successful” largely because he tapped into an entirely understandable vein of anti-American feeling that is widespread throughout much of the world and which the Obama administration has only been lightly able to ameliorate.
If you want to be a force for good in the world you do not replicate the methods of some of your most evil adversaries…
I find it hard to disagree with you, Booman.
I’m not big on parading our enemies’ heads on pikes as someone said, but we’re not really doing that considering OBL was dumped into the bottom of the sea. Obama is doing the right thing here. The GOP has been using that’weakling’ line for way too long against him, and smacking them upside the face with an actual accomplishment is well within the bounds of legitimate politics. I would also expect FDR, were he alive, to point out that the Democrats won the war against Hitler with the GOP tried to keep us out.
And while I do have some very strong issues with Obama’s assassination policy, I really don’t extend it to Mr. bin Laden who can rot in hell for all I care.
My sentiments exactly, Brendan.
Never mind the “weakling” line against Obama; it’s been used with a big assist from the media since McGovern ran. Why else would they so readily trumpet Rmoney’s invocation of their Jimmy Carter boogeyman?
Spam alert, Boo.