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Did conservatism overreach?
October 9, 2008
It’s rarely a good idea to pick fights with one’s friends–especially the clever ones–but I’ll take issue with Gideon Rachman’s column, “Conservatism overshoots its limit“. Gideon writes:
The market for ideas – like the market for shares – always overshoots. Ideas become fashionable and get pushed to their logical conclusion and beyond, as their backers succumb to “irrational exuberance”. Then comes the crash.
What we are experiencing now is the bust that has followed the 30-year bull run in conservative ideas that began with the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of 1979-80.
You can get a sense of how quickly the intellectual atmosphere has changed by picking up a copy of Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence, which was published last year. Mr Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve from 1987 until 2006, heaped praise on the magic of financial markets and decried the foolishness of those who called for more regulation: “Why do we wish to inhibit the pollinating bees of Wall Street?” he asked rhetorically. Why indeed?
Mr Greenspan was considered such a guru that last year Senator John McCain suggested putting him in charge of a committee on tax reform, adding: “If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter. If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him.” But Mr Greenspan’s reputation is now on the slide and Mr McCain has reinvented himself as a champion of regulation – and is denouncing the “corruption and unbridled greed that has caused a crisis on Wall Street”.
This kind of ideological whiplash is what happens when an intellectual bull market crashes. The current financial crisis can be traced to three of the central ideas of the Reagan-Thatcher era: the promotion of home ownership, financial deregulation and a fervent faith in the market. Each of these ideas did sterling service for 30 years, increasing prosperity and freedom. But pushed too far – and combined – they have created a disaster.
This seems to me to conflate three quite separate points, one true, one false, and one questionable.
What is undoubtedly true is that intellectual fashions come and go. The default rhetorical position that many governments (by no means just conventionally conservative ones) have lately adopted–favouring market forces and competition, accepting of globalisation (with varying degrees of reluctance), sceptical about big regulatory initiatives–stands discredited all right. If ever an economic and political philosophy were out of fashion, this one now is. But I say “default rhetorical position” advisedly. What is certain is that the terms of political debate are transformed, and this will surely have consequences. I will come to what these might be in a moment. If Gideon had confined himself to what politicians say, as opposed to what they do, I would have been nodding in agreement all through the column.
What is false, I think, is the claim that pushing too far the central ideas of Reagan-Thatcher–said to be home ownership, financial deregulation and a fervent faith in the market–created this disaster.
I’m not sure even Reagan and Thatcher had a “fervent faith in the market”, but I would not accuse Bill Clinton, George Bush (1 and 2), Tony Blair or Gordon Brown of such a thing. And has the role of government been transformed by three decades of this fervent belief? I grant you privatisation: there has been a lot of that. But privatisation is regarded (even now, is it not?) as a mostly uncontroversial success. Is anybody in Britain calling for the steel industry to be renationalised? In other regards, though, fervent belief in the market has made rather small advances, I would say. I don’t see that public spending’s share of GDP (a vastly larger cake, after decades of growth) is much, if at all, lower anywhere.
As for policies supporting home ownership, these have been a bipartisan undertaking in the US, and if anything Democrats have pushed this agenda harder. Financial deregulation has happened–but not so much recently. It was certainly not a conservative project. In the US it was a messy decades-long process and arguably made its greatest strides during the Johnson, Carter and Clinton administrations. What drove it was not ideology but facts on the ground: the rules then in place were breaking down because of inflation (to begin with) and innovation. By the time the present crisis rolled in, banking was still the most heavily regulated industry in the country.
Ken Rogoff puts it well when he says that in the run-up to this emergency there was de facto, rather than de jure, financial liberalisation. In the past decade, innovation has overwhelmed the regulatory apparatus. Regulation did fail to keep pace, and it is true that key officials like Alan Greenspan rationalised their inactivity in pro-market terms. They were wrong. But did opponents of conservatism press for new regulation of non-bank mortgage origination and mortgage securitisation–the innovations that really did the damage? Just the opposite. Republican attempts to subject Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the essential quasi-public enablers of these changes) to tighter regulation were defeated by Democrats. They agreed with Greenspan: let that lending flow. Voices like that of Ed Gramlich, pointing to the dangers of the subprime explosion, were few and far between.
Conservatives did not create this disaster by pushing too far. They and their surrogates just happened to be standing there when the hurricane came in. Yes, they should have built the levies up when they had a chance to, and they failed–in one crucial instance, in the US, because Democrats got in their way. But it is wrong to say, as Gideon does, that they deliberately dismantled the levies. Regulatory failure in the face of bewilderingly rapid innovation is not the same thing as “deregulation”. And it is not a distinctively conservative trait.
The third point–the questionable one–concerns the nature of the coming backlash. Conservatism overreached, Gideon says, and now the liberals (US) and social democrats (Europe) will get a turn at the controls, and overreach in their turn. To repeat, Gideon is right about the rhetoric. That pendulum has already swung right back–taking McCain with it (as Gideon points out). But what about the policy pendulum? That is a very different thing. Especially in the US, swings in policy are usually very much smaller than you would expect, if all you did was listen to politicians.
Whatever happens, financial regulation will get a complete overhaul. As the details of this are worked out, however, the same difficult trade-offs that confound policymakers of every stripe will reassert themselves. There is no simple alternative paradigm–”re-regulation”–waiting to be taken down off the shelf. In other areas of policy, we will just have to see how much difference having a post-emergency market-sceptical Democratic administration in place is going to make.
In one respect–health care reform–I hope it makes a huge difference. But I don’t know whether the crisis advances or retards the prospect of real reform in that area. It could go either way. (See Robert Reischauer’s comment on National Journal’s new Health Experts blog.)
As for the rest, don’t take the rhetoric at face value.
Given the wretched state of our socialized healthcare, pensions and education systems in the US, I am not convinced “conservatism overreached”, but has been thouroughly trounced over the years on three major components of the economy.
Per the Kauffman Foundation, Americans as of the end of September still think higher taxes are the biggest danger to the economy. People are rightly skeptical of the lofty promises of big government coming from either party.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | October 9th, 2008 at 4:06 pm | Report this commentSurely, Clive, the Conservatives (ie Republicans) bowed before the financial market and legislated - or should that be de-legislated - away too much regulation, believing that market-forces were the superior means of control?
Posted by: Derek Tunnicliffe | October 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pm | Report this commentClive, in one case I think you are conflating conservatives with conservatism: “But did opponents of conservatism press for new regulation of non-bank mortgage origination and mortgage securitisation–the innovations that really did the damage? Just the opposite. Republican attempts to subject Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the essential quasi-public enablers of these changes) to tighter regulation were defeated by Democrats. ”
Does it matter if the conservatives were the Democrats (or more probably, the populists were the Democrats, enabled by conservative fashion).
But that is nitpicking. Call it conservatism or whichever else, as you correctly note there is no alternative ideology off the shelf. I also think the pendulum analogy is misleading. That is not how ideas advance. Rather it is by means of Hegel’s dialectics: thesis and then anti-thesis lead to a synthesis. We are constantly experimenting and learning about what works and what does not work. That is why, for example, it is improbable that this crisis will lead to a second great depression. We have already learned those lessons, the current synthesis encompasses all that.
Posted by: RCS | October 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm | Report this commentDerek Tunicliffe, the Republicans did not bow before the “financial market” in “legislating away” regulation so much as they grovelled to their big campaign contributors.
The Republicans are now desperately trying to avoid paying the electoral price for their complicity in corporate greed and corruption on a scale even greater than the Gilded Age of the 19th century Robber Barons by engaging in a smear campaign against Barack Obama that would make even the despicable, overtly racist, Willie Horton ads of George Bush Sr. look honorable by comparison.
The only issue left in this campaign is whether the American people, once again, will let themselves be deluded into ignoring their economic pain by appeals to ignorance, fear and prejudice. This has worked for the Republicans so many times. But now the economic crisis is too great to be ignored, no matter how often the McPalin campaign repeats the vicious smears and lies about Obama’s connection with a widely respected educational leader and teacher who threw bombs when Obama was 8 years old, or about Obama’s religion, background, name and, above all, race.
On November 4, the American people (even though hundreds of thousands of their votes will most likely be thrown out illegally by Republican campaign officials and by defective or rigged voting machines without paper trails manufactured by Diebold and other heavy Republican campaign contributors) will show the Republican smear machine that it has reached the end of its slimy road to nowhere.
Posted by: algasema | October 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pm | Report this commentalgasema conveniently ignores the difference between W and Clinton. The latter started a trade war with EU over bananas to benefit one of his biggest campaign contributors at the expense of the poor inhabitants of the West Indies (particularly the former French and British colonies) while the former stood back and allowed the Justice department to prosecute Ken Lay & co although they had contributed to his campaign.
Posted by: John | October 9th, 2008 at 8:55 pm | Report this commentOh and who started the smears about Obama? The name starts with an H, not a J.
Defective voting machines? Cook County? Incidentally the investigation into Florida 2000 financed by a group of, overwhelmingly pro-Democrat, newspapers demonstrated (i) that Bush won and (ii) that Democrats inspecting ballots showed significant reporting bias compared to Republicans or uncommitted/neutral (Republicans also showed a bias, but not a significant one)
I have reasons to hope Senator Obama wins, despite his pandering to the economically illiterate protectionists in the Democratic party and US trade unions, but stupid smear tactics by his supporters are certainly not among them.
If algasema is genuinely anti-racist, I should like to see his eulogy of Moshe Dayan combined with a condemnation of Sharon, Begin and Netanyehu and anyone in-between…
Maybe the above is a little OTT, but it is difficult to discuss CC’s blog, let alone the oversights in young Gideon’s (e.g. the assumption that Thatcher invented Council House sales that were common before he was born) while faced with an irrelevant diatribe intended to influence voters in another country.
“health care reform”
Marx of course argued that the de facto economic system determined the professed and acted-upon policies of politicians in power and created the dominant ideology, rather than the other way around.
The interplay of vested economic interests and ideology is evident in healthcare reform discussions in the USA, overwhelmingly so.
I checked the weblog in the National Journal referenced by Mr. Crook. I respect Mr. Reischauer’s knowledge and opinions, but the “comments” in that weblog are boilerplate from the mainstream of non-thinking by long-term participants in healthcare policy matters - all of whom have one private interest to protect or a particular “free market” ideology to defend. Behind the defenders of that ideology is of course the money of those who benefit from the gross “waste” in the current “system” not those - the 300 million USA residents - who pay the bills.
The reality is that the market for “medical services” - more accurate than the term “healthcare” - is not and will not be anytime soon a competitively-determined market. Therefore any argument - such as the healthcare proposal promulgated by Senator McCain and his campaign - that “the free market” (assumed to equate to a competitive market in the sense that suppliers have no control over price) is sheer nonsense.
Literally all empirical and theoretical evidence points to the need for a single payer/insurer scheme for the funding of medical services. The USA is the sole country in the world where private insurers provide anything other than a miniscule portion of the funding to pay for medical services. In the USA that portion is over 50%. The cost of this to USA workers is staggering. Otherwise unnecessary direct administrative costs of private insurance easily contribute 15% to the aggregate spending on medical services in the USA of $2.2 trillion annually (and rapidly rising). There is no question factually about this.
Yet despite the facts, the conventional wisdom is that voters will not accept ideologically a single payer/insurer system, because a sufficient number believe the unending propaganda that such as system is “socialist” under the connotation that “socialist” is “evil” even though every tax-payer and employee would benefit from the hundreds of billions of dollars of savings that would result from such a system.
The other half of the medical services issue - the delivery of medical services - is much more problematic, but there are any number of intelligent proposals that, if pursued, would reduce the cost of medical services in the USA dramatically while improving quality at the same time.
The resistance to reform on the delivery side of medical services comes primarily from specialists and from hospitals which benefit from the current system of payment which is either controlled by the recipients themselves or “gamed” by them through the administered payment mechanisms of DRG (diagnosis-related groups) in the case of hospitals and the RBRVS (resource based relative value scale) system for that is the basis for physician payment.
I will leave details on these until Mr. Crook addresses the issue in a future posting.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 9th, 2008 at 9:31 pm | Report this commentJohn: JBP? “the investigation into Florida 2000 financed by a group of, overwhelmingly pro-Democrat, newspapers demonstrated (i) that Bush won and (ii) that Democrats inspecting ballots showed significant reporting bias compared to Republicans or uncommitted/neutral (Republicans also showed a bias, but not a significant one)”
This is false. Read Jeffrey Toobin’s book on the subject. There is no question that Gore won the 2000 election. The antics of representatives for both Parties are superbly recounted in Mr. Toobin’s book. Astonishing intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court that ultimately led to the election of President Bush, although while its role was decisive, the issue could and should have been decided by Floridians themselves - on the basis of actual votes cast that is.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 9th, 2008 at 9:37 pm | Report this commentJohn’s rant is typical of right wing tactics accusing anyone who disagrees of being a foreigner. For his information, I am an American, my family has been in the US since the late 19th century, and the last time that I visited Israel, a country John seems to think I live in, was almost fifty years ago.
However, I will admit to a connection, if one can call it that, with Moshe Dayan, whom he mentions in his post. I once met General Dayan’s daughter at a party when I was a teenager and chatted with her for about 15 minutes.
At least John is consistent, however. His comments about the American political scene are as full of inaccuracies as his delusions about my own background.
Posted by: algasema | October 9th, 2008 at 10:51 pm | Report this commentalgasema: Where is your praise of Moshe Dayan? I would happily read it, but I do not see a reference for it.
I assume “John” is not JBP? I still have faith in JBP to see the “light”. Not likely, but still possible.
Despite my skepticism of mindless support of Likud-driven policies in Israel, I think that the precepts of Judaism have much to offer the world as do the efforts of the Israeli Army to protect its fellows.
I also think that the efforts of the kibbutzim in Israel to turn desert into a productive economy are remarkable and praiseworthy. I want to believe that knowledgeable Palestinians agree with the remarkable achievements of the Jewish immigrants.
The best qualities of Judaism are to be admired, as in fact are many Christian and no doubt Moslem principles.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 9th, 2008 at 11:24 pm | Report this commentWendell, when I met Dayan’s daughter at a party in Tel Aviv around 55 years ago, I probably may have told her that I admired her father, as did just about everyone else in Israel and every supporter of the then very new Jewish state around the world, as far as I knew. That is the only comment I can remember making about him in my lifetime to date. I have never written any article about Dayan or any other Israeli leader. I am no expert on Israel.
John must have mixed me up with someone else, just as he has mixed up who really got the most votes in Florida in 2000.
Posted by: algasema | October 9th, 2008 at 11:47 pm | Report this commentThis is just more negative talk from liberals who hate America, and the troops.
Posted by: John | October 10th, 2008 at 12:48 am | Report this commentExcellent piece Mr. Crook; however sometimes policy does dramatically change beyond just the rhetoric of the politicians. The 30s to the 70s were the era of government regulation and intervention. During the 80s and 90’s the market ruled.
The timing of the financial crisis of 2008 may result in a landslide for the Democrats. Although we have not reached a national consensus about changing the role of government, there is a consesus that the nation is on the wrong track. It will be interesting to see if the left, once in power, can impel the policy pendulum to swing their way without yet a majority of the public expressing faith in their ideas. To persuade a skeptical public to follow would require leadership of the Thatcher and Reagan sort. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi have not used this election cycle to make that case. I’m not sure what their mandate will be, so I guess I end up agreeing with your conclusion after all. Nevermind.
Posted by: Ted | October 10th, 2008 at 4:54 am | Report this comment“During the 80’s and 90’s the market ruled”. Can someone explain further what this wonderful “market” was? Was it anything different from putting the whole power of the US government behind big corporations that tried to force the rest of the world to submit to their will? Read Naomi Klein.
Posted by: algasema | October 10th, 2008 at 7:53 am | Report this commentalgasema,
Following the Six-Day War Lyndon B Johnson is said to have commented that if he ever finds out who began the war, he’ll take out his other eye…
Posted by: RCS | October 10th, 2008 at 8:35 am | Report this commentalgasema,
Posted by: John | October 10th, 2008 at 2:41 pm | Report this commentI did not mean to suggest that you were a “foreigner” and if I did so I apologise. In fact I apologise for phrasing things so badly that my words could be read in that way.
However I have never read of Senator McCain indulging in racist smears, merely of his being a victim. So, since you have on a previous occasion paraded your Jewishness on ft.com, I thought you might find better targets for a campaign against racialism.
As to inaccuracies about the American political scene: can you indentify one and supply me with accurate information? I am always willing to learn.
However interesting Mr Toobin’s book (and its accounts of the antics of party representatives) may be, I prefer to read the data produced by a serious academic research outfit (NORC) which shows that, regardless of who “should” have won, Bush actually did, than a work of fiction.
Is this the same “John”? Do not think so. Apology to other “John”. Confused the two without taking more care to distinguish the two.
“I prefer to read the data produced by a serious academic research”
Clearly you have not read Mr. Toobin’s book. It is outstandingly researched and well-written. Nothing fictional about it. Very clearly depicts what occurred.
“Oh and who started the smears about Obama?”
Reprinted article from today’s (October 10, 2008) WSJ below. The behavior of the McCain campaign particularly when the “cheerleading” in the slander is Governor Palin, who clearly relishes this role, borders on that of lynching mobs from the USA South not too many years ago. It is completely out of hand and utterly reprehensible. It is shocking in fact.
Top McCain campaign officials are grappling with how far to go with negative attacks on Sen. Barack Obama in the final weeks of what is turning into a come-from-behind effort.
Sen. John McCain has allowed a series of increasingly harsh broadsides in new campaign ads and in speeches by his wife, Cindy, and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin. But the Arizona Republican has rejected pleas from some advisers to launch attacks focusing on Sen. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Some McCain campaign officials are becoming concerned about the hostility that attacks against Sen. Obama are whipping up among Republican supporters. During an internal conference call Thursday, campaign officials discussed how the tenor of the crowds has turned on the media and on Sen. Obama.
Someone yelled “Off with his head” at a rally Wednesday for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin in Pennsylvania. Later that day in Ohio, a man stood outside a rally holding a sign that said “Obama, Osama.” At a rally in Jacksonville, Fla., on Tuesday, someone in the crowd wore a T-shirt depicting Sen. Obama wearing a devil mask.
The Obama campaign, with widening leads in several national polls, dismissed the attacks. “Sen. McCain’s campaign has admitted that if he talks about the economy, he’ll lose, so we fully expect him to continue his angry, personal attacks,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said. “Barack Obama will continue to talk about his plans to strengthen our economy and create jobs because that’s what American families care about.”
Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, says Sen. McCain is “happy” with the campaign. “We believe we can turn this around and fight our way back,” Mr. Salter said.
Changes to Gov. Palin’s role were a topic during the conference call Thursday led by campaign manager Rick Davis, according to one person familiar with the discussion. Participants concluded that the Alaska governor had been “overscheduled.” They agreed that she would hold rallies directed at the conservative base in certain key states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire. She also has a few more fund-raisers to headline during the next week.
View Interactive
Watch the campaign ads released so far this presidential election season.
The McCain campaign’s decision to go on the offensive came after a high-level, all-day meeting last Friday in Phoenix. Top advisers agreed they would stick with that decision in an effort to regain ground.
Some in the McCain camp are concerned that time is growing short. “The economic times are the reason our numbers are down,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Sen. McCain’s best friends. “I want John to have a positive approach to solving America’s problems, but John has to show that there’s nothing mainstream about Sen. Obama.”
The McCain campaign released a new video attacking Sen. Obama for his contacts with Williams Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, a radical group tied to bombings during the Vietnam War era. Mr. Ayers is now a professor and a figure in mainstream Chicago politics.
But Sen. McCain vetoed proposals to attack the Illinois senator for his 20 years as a member of the church led by Rev. Wright, whose harsh comments about racism in America and other issues created problems for Sen. Obama during the Democratic primary contest. Sen. Obama publicly severed ties with Rev. Wright earlier this year.
Sen. McCain has said Rev. Wright is off limits.
That decision, and the worry that the campaign could open itself to accusations of racism, has kept Rev. Wright out of their strategy.
One McCain senior adviser said the difference between Mr. Ayers and Rev. Wright isn’t race, it’s religion. “It’s not appropriate to attack someone’s faith,” he said.
Some longtime Republicans are befuddled by the decision not to go after Rev. Wright.
“If you’re going to go down with Ayers, you might as well go with Wright too,” said Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican strategist and former Reagan White House aide who ran Mike Huckabee’s campaign during the primary.
Mr. Rollins said that, although accusations of racism would undoubtedly arise, Sen. Obama’s longtime connection with Rev. Wright made the relationship fair game.
Rev. Wright is a name voters recognize, while Mr. Ayers is a much more obscure reference, Mr. Rollins said.
At a rally in Waukesha, Wis., on Thursday, James T. Harris, a radio host in Milwaukee who is African American, took the microphone and professed his full support for Sen. McCain’s candidacy. He urged him to talk more about the “shady characters” — naming Rev. Wright specifically — “surrounding” Sen. Obama.
“I am begging you, sir, I am begging you,” he said, as the crowd went wild.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Sen. McCain “has spoken to the Rev. Wright issue” and declined to comment further.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm | Report this comment“Since you have have on a previous occasion paraded your Jewishness on ft.com”. Whether this comment by John crosses a certain line of propriety for comments on this site is a question best left to others.
I have, in a different context, proudly referred to my Jewish background. John, evidently, assumes that being Jewish makes one an automatic authority on Israel, if nor a supporter of its current policies. I am neither.
Moreover, since I have been an actively practicing Buddhist for the past 25 years, my religious beliefs, which are in any event totally irrelevant to the issues on this site, are certainly different from those of most Israelis, all of whom I wish a very happy New Year.
As far as Wendell Murray’s Ayers/Wright comments are concerned, I detect a conflict of sorts between McCain and Palin. McCain wants to focus on Ayers, which might be called “smear lite”. As even the right wing neocon Republican commentator William Kristol pointed out in the New York Times, Obama has only a casual connection with Ayers, who threw bombs when Obama was 8 years old.
Palin, obviously, is an advocate of going all the way down the slime and sleaze road to nowhere, because she wants to revive the Wright smear, with all of its racist connotations, as Kristol disgracefully suggested that she should do in the same column.
If one were a cynic, one could argue that McCain put Palin on the ticket so that he could get away with using smear tactics against Obama while still looking “decent” by comparison with his running mate, who has already shown in her short time on the national scene that there is no despicable lie that she will refrain from resorting to in order to win an election.
Posted by: algasema | October 10th, 2008 at 3:43 pm | Report this commentI have read Wendell Murray’s latest post three times and I still see no evidence of Senator McCain indulging in racialist smears.
Posted by: John | October 10th, 2008 at 3:50 pm | Report this commentThere are two “John”s on this blog: I am not John Powers (and the other one does not sound like him), and I have not read Mr Toobin’s book but I have read the data on Florida, I can do sums and it shows Bush won. If you exclude W, include X, assume Y and mind-read Z, using a biased sample of mind-readers, you can come up with a claim that Gore should have won. It is possible to argue that if the Democrat-controlled county of Palm Beach had designed the ballot paper better then Gore would have won (although even that is debatable). However what the numbers show is (i) the democrat-affiliated scrutineers had an observable (not necessarily deliberate or even conscious) bias and (ii) Bush actually got more valid votes on election day.
Wendell,
Not sure what else I could do to express my diametric opposition to most everything you write, but I will try harder to dissuade you of any bleak hope that I am a closet Leftist.
I am all for McCain Palin bringing up Bill Ayers and Rev. Wrigt every time they speak. The media refuses to publish the fact that Sen. Obama is a Leftist. The UK business press (The FT and the Economist) try to explain away Obama’s anti-trade policies (and complete inaction on immigration reform) as some type of “noble” behavior….turning away from 160 years of championing Free Trade in the case of the Economist, to support a Leftist wrecker.
The media is in the bag, the issues are buried under $500 Million of Obama PR. The best bet for McCain is the show voters that Obama is the candidate of Rev. Wright, Fr. Pfleger and Bill Ayers. The coincidence that this is also a fact, and the Obama campaign desperately wants to avoid facts, should work in McCain’s favor.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | October 10th, 2008 at 3:51 pm | Report this commentJBP: Rest assured: I am joking about the “closet leftist” suggestion.
You certainly seem to be serious and conscientious and have first-hand knowledge of Chicago politics which I do not doubt is unpleasant to observe for anyone with integrity and honesty.
On the other hand, Senator McCain (forget about Governor Palin who is turning out to be a wholely despicable person on top of a know-nothing politician) has no consistency in anything as well as no principles.
Bringing Prof. Ayers (whom I know nothing about and of whom I have no interest) and Reverend Wright into the discussion is ludicrous, not to mention irrelevant.
As others have pointed out recently in various media, the current, recent and past involvement of both Governor Palin and Senator MCCain with truly dangerous fringe political groups such as the Alaskan Independence Party are much more indicative of “character” and association than tenuous links between Senator Obama and those two individuals.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 10th, 2008 at 4:09 pm | Report this comment“I have not read Mr Toobin’s book”
Then read it, it is excellent, full of factual detail and well-written.
I do not recall writing that Senator McCain uses “racialist smears”. However, there is no question that the McCain campaign does whatever it can to awaken racial (i.e. anti-color, aka anti-black), religious (Senator Obama is a “secret” Muslim) and ethnic (equating of the name “Obama” to “Osama” and repeatedly mentioning “Hussein” through surrogates recently) prejudice among any potential voter in its current solely defamatory campaign against Senator Obama. But that is the standard of Republican campaigns going back to Richard Nixon. This time however pandering to racism and hatred of others is all the McCain Campaign is - nothing whatsoever of substance.
algasema: where did the issue of your “Jewishness” come up? News to me. I do recall some mention in a comment in the past in one of these weblogs that you have some Jewish ethnicity, but it went in one ear and out the other. I am sure it was relevant in the context given that arguments about Israel and Judaism occasionally erupt unexpectedly in the Rachman and Crook weblogs, but the comment from “John” does seem to be odd and out-of-place.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 10th, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Report this commentI am wondering if “John” is the FT Weekend
Posted by: J.J. | October 10th, 2008 at 4:46 pm | Report this commentcrossword expert from “The Armpit” - one of The Don Boys? Curiosity is nearly killing me.
If Wendell Murray refers back to the start of the thread he will see “McPalin campaign repeats the vicious smears and lies about Obama’s …. name and, above all, race.”, and that my reply to this pointed out that the smears were originated in the Democratic party Primary campaign.
Posted by: John | October 10th, 2008 at 5:14 pm | Report this commentAs I said before I have seen no evidence of Senator McCain copying the Democrat primary campaign by indulging in racial smears (and as far as I can see Senator Obama has honourably declared Governor Palin’s family “off-limits”). So I can see better targets for a campaign against racialism than Senator McCain.
There has been a lot of meat in the McCain campaign, but it has got lost/overlooked in recent slanging matches.
John: The McCain campaign of course has policy statements. I wish the McCain campaign would concentrate on better articulating those and arguing why they are superior to the benefit of the voters than those from the Obama campaign rather than reducing its campaign simply to smearing Senator Obama. I assume that is the “meat” you refer to.
FYI, if Senator McCain were a true “maverick” I have noted in other forums related to healthcare policy that he could steal thunder from the Obama campaign by advocating a single insurer/payer plan with support from the business community in whose interest it is to have such a system. There are other policy areas where he could show true “maverickdom” that benefit all parties in general but of course remove the perquisites of vested interests.
Alas, no chance of that at this stage of the campaign.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 10th, 2008 at 7:21 pm | Report this commentThis debate to have been channelled entirely into the economic sphere (encompassing economic ideas). Mr. Rachman’s original piece also made (briefer) mention of other ’signature ideas of the Reagan- Thatcher era.. scepticism about environmentalism and democracy promotion’ as well as ‘Anglo-American political leaders much more relaxed about the use of military force. Too relaxed’. Does the silence on these points signal acceptance, deference (to Mr. Rachman’s formidable knowledge and insight perhaps), or disinterest?
Posted by: Aidan | October 11th, 2008 at 1:04 pm | Report this commentDear Aidan,
Posted by: John | October 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm | Report this commentIn my case, simply the lack of any superior knowledge. I do care about the environment and I do not wish any leaders to be too relaxed about the use of force (I support Douglas Hogg’s view on the invasion of Iraq). However I and my sparring partners tend to argue or teach each other about economics and the politics thereof and I suspect that these represent the special expertise, but not necessarily the interests, of the majority of the readers of Mr Rachman’s blog.
Regards
John
PS I did not reply to Wendell Murray’s post because I agree with most of it - except that it is a mistake to overlook the work Senator McCain has done throughout his political career to defend the “little guy” against vested interests since this is a large part of his appeal
Posted by: John | October 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm | Report this commentOn November 4, the American people (even though hundreds of thousands of their votes will most likely be thrown out illegally by Republican campaign officials and by defective or rigged voting machines without paper trails manufactured by Diebold and other heavy Republican campaign contributors) will show the Republican smear machine that it has reached the end of its slimy road to nowhere.
Mr. Algasema we meet again… Per your reference to the 2000 election, your extremely biased partisan slip is showing. I distinctly remember Democrats putting forth a quite an effort in that election to have all the thousands of overseas Military votes for Florida thrown out (the military usually votes more Republican). This shows the hypocrisy of the left’s cries of disenfranchisment of voters. The antics of ACORN also show that the left has no problem corrupting the voting process as a means to an end. The elections in the Florida precincts in question in the 2000 election were all run by Democrats, so it makes no sense that they were out to skew the election for a Republican win. I wasn’t happy with the outcome of that election either as my guy didnt’ win. However I do not believe for one minute it was because of voter fraud or rigged elections, but rather disillusionment with the Clinton administration. As they say it’s ‘de ja vu’ all over again. I predict that voters unhappy with Bush and the current economic meltdown (caused by officials on both the right and the left) will ensure an Obama victory this election.
Posted by: James Dean | October 13th, 2008 at 8:02 pm | Report this comment