The Chicago Way:
Senator Obama, as quoted at the top of his anti-smear website:
What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics... that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize.
The New Republic, arguing
against a potential Jim Webb vice-presidency on the grounds that he was a "reactionary":
Then there is his glorification of violence. It is one thing to accept a certain level of state-sanctioned violence as necessary to the preservation of a just order--to endorse certain wars abroad or certain police strategies at home. But it is quite another thing to glorify violence, to celebrate it, to elevate its practice into a virtue--which is exactly what Webb seems to do in his books.... For a liberal, violence may sometimes be a necessary thing. It may even lead to good outcomes. But while those outcomes may be worth celebrating--and while the people who do the fighting may be correctly labeled courageous or even heroic--the violence itself is never worth celebrating. Webb's outlook flies in the face of this liberal ideal. He seems to be very much in love with violence.
Senator Obama,
on the upcoming contest:
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, according to pool reports.
Taylor Mars,
celebrating that stance:
So when I read this quote it made me smile. "New kind of politics" has nothing to do with it. It's the Chicago way, baby. I just want us to win.
Proposition: The kind of liberal that agrees with TNR are fools who have never won an election -- let alone a war, success in which is what allows a government to form and hold elections in the first place. Jim Webb is absolutely right to glorify, not violence, but a capacity to perform it when called upon by honor or self-defense. He is right to celebrate that capacity being located in the individual citizen, and not only in the machinery of "state-sanctioned violence." That has produced the United States Army (happy birthday) and the Black Watch, but it has also produced every kind of tyranny. The citizen's capacity is a useful counterweight, the thing that makes the US Army what it is.
A good liberal ought to know that, in fact: the US Army's principal business from the end of the Indian Wars to 1900 was breaking strikes by early unions. If it doesn't do that now, it is chiefly because citizens fought back both through politics and in fact. These violent citizens -- perhaps they would be more sympathetic to TNR if we called them "the workers" -- are owed something better from the modern liberal than a refusal to glorify them, or to scorn them as "violent," though they certainly were violent. Every political power the liberal has to exercise is founded on that resistance, the organizations and machines it built. Every subsequent success came from that, and rests on it.
That said, TNR was right in their basic concept:
To explain just what it is about Webb that bothers me, I need to distinguish between philosophy and policy. It's hard to know what any candidate will do on any particular issue once in office. This is not to say that the stands a candidate takes on specific policy questions are meaningless. But the political world is unpredictable--alliances shift, circumstances change, things turn out to be more complicated than expected. This is why the best voters can hope for is a candidate whose underlying instincts about the world we basically trust. At this point, I am confident that Obama's underlying worldview is that of a liberal. Of course, there is plenty of room for disagreement about what it means to be a liberal--on foreign policy, on economics, on social issues. But, whatever your views on humanitarian intervention or health care mandates or gay marriage, if you call yourself a liberal then chances are that you recognize clear similarities between Obama's basic instincts about the world and your own.
If Obama is a liberal -- which he absolutely is, given the evidence of his life, the few pieces of legislation he has pursued, and his stated plans for the future if elected -- then what kind of liberal is he? This is the problem that is so difficult to sort out given his conflicting statements.
Is he a Chicago Way liberal? If so, he'll be dangerous and tough, and any gentle words are only a veneer. Those are the old union machines. They are corrupt to the core, power-centered, willing to bend or break any rule to get their way, ruthless, and violent. The Rev. Mr. Wright is one of that stripe -- a former Marine and Navy Sailor. He's a hard-swinging character, who views himself as the advocate of a part of America against the rest of it. Nevertheless, he's a fighter, and I know that if a man like him were President, he'd fight for the thing he led.
Arguing in favor of this proposition: His attachment to the Chicago machine, including the Daley family and the Rev. Mr. Wright. His connections with Tony Rezko.
He tells us these things are not important, but if he is a man of the Chicago machine, we cannot trust his word.
On the other hand, if he is the well-meaning idealist he presents himself as being, he really could be telling the truth. It could be he went along with the Rev. Mr. Wright because his wife wanted him to do so. He took a land deal with Rezko because it seemed handy, and he didn't look too closely at it. He worked with the Daley family (and Wright, to some degree) because they were the powers that be, and he had no choice.
Is Senator Obama a TNR liberal? If so, his real instinct is to try to talk his way around problems, and the "knife/gun" comment is just an attempt to sound tough to reassure people like Taylor Marsh. He doesn't mean it as anything more than a symbol. He has faith that he'll be able to float through the McCain fight like he did the Clinton one, never really getting himself dirty, standing on the power of his rhetoric.
Arguing in favor of this proposition: his memoir, which is reflexively idealistic. His arc through life: the Ivy Leagues often produce this kind of liberal. He has sought power through the legislature, but hasn't gotten his hands dirty with it -- he has accomplished very little except to run for higher office, making an attempt for another rank every three years.
Also arguing in favor: his reaction to the Rev. Mr. Wright's appearance at the National Press Club. He turned his back on the man who gave him his start and supported him every step of the way, scorning him as a sort of lesser creature. This is precisely how TNR treats the men who actually made their sort of liberalism possible and practical. He and they seem to have the same basic attitude about the fighting men on whose shoulders they stand.
In this case, he believes his own rhetoric about "not demonizing" people (the "gun" he will bring is merely a symbol of a metaphor). People who want to see him succeed for their own reasons often do rough stuff to help him. He doesn't see this, and so his frequent refrain about associates, even longtime ones -- "he is not the man I thought I knew" -- is genuine also. He hasn't really paid attention to who they are.
The problem before us is that there really is no way of being sure which of these types is closer to the real Senator Obama. Is he a hard-hitting machine politician who has simply managed to keep an easy, bright face on for the public? Or is he an idealistic, ambitious man who has managed to look away from much of the ugliness of modern politics, and sincerely wishes to change it?
I can't say I know. I know my instinct is that he isn't a fighter, but a talker. I think he's the TNR-style liberal, who is being put forward by the men of the machine for reasons of their own.
In my opinion, that's the worse of the two for the job he's after. If I'm right, he's a somewhat better man -- weak and lacking the virtue of courage, but having other virtues that machine men do not.
He is still the less fit for a deadly and perilous duty.
