If the globe can’t vote next November, it can find itself in Obama. Troubled by the violent chasm between the West and the Islamic world? Obama seems to bridge it [bold mine-DL]. Disturbed by the gulf between rich and poor that globalization spurs? Obama, the African-American, gets it: the South Side of Chicago is the South Side of the world. ~Roger Cohen
You know, the South Side has its share of problems, but this is ridiculous. Obama “gets” the problems of globalisation because he lives on the South Side? Or does he “get” it because of his ancestry? Do all people living on the South Side possess such special globalisation-understanding powers?
Also, what is all this talk about Obama bridging the “violent chasm” between the West and the Islamic world? How does he do that? By saying, “I used to live in Indonesia, but by the way, in case you were wondering, I am not and never have been a Muslim”? Perhaps he bridges the chasm by reminding inattentive foreign audiences that he supported the bombing of Lebanon, has proposed sanctions and divestment schemes aimed at Iran and has vowed to launch strikes on Pakistani territory without that government’s permission. How’s that bridge looking now?
The other problem with this talk of Obama as a bridge-builder with the Islamic world is that people might take it rather too seriously and see him as being too close to the Islamic world. The logic of “only Nixon could go to China” applies here as well. Someone who is already seen, rightly or wrongly, as personally close to or understanding of the ‘other’ has much more difficulty engaging in the kinds of negotiations or contacts that Obama proposes to have. This may seem like an absurd aspect of domestic politics, but if Obama’s supporters were interested in his chance at being a viable national candidate they would stop saying these things right now. Having combated the false reports that he was a Muslim as a child, Obama has also been conflated or associated with two major hate-figures in the American mind, namely Hussein and Bin Laden. To portray him as the natural bridge-builder with the Islamic world unwittingly reinforces the negative associations that various chain-mailers, bloggers, pundits and candidates have been making. Above all, it stresses how dissimilar and to some extent unique Obama’s background is for most Americans, which makes for interesting magazine copy and punditry but does very little for a candidate’s electoral prospects. “Vote for Obama–he’s not like you in so very many ways” is not a winning slogan in a mass democracy. Identitarianism is one aspect of democracy that is one of its most deplorable features and one of its most basic and unavoidable. Being able to identify with a candidate is essential, and anything that weakens this hurts the candidate. Selling a candidate who already has a reputation for being a bit aloof and “above it all” by referring to his ability to understand other parts of the world makes the candidate seem even more removed and distant from the crowd. (Today’s lesson: democracy typically produces poor leadership for sound foreign policy–which is not to say that Obama’s foreign policy is sound.)
Michael Ignatieff, never tired of being absurdly wrong about matters outside Canada’s borders, is quoted saying:
Outsiders know it’s your choice. Still, they are following this election with passionate interest. And it’s clear Barack Obama would be the first globalized American leader, the first leader in whom internationalism would not be a credo, it would be in his veins.
It seems to me that this is a very tricky and potentially politically suicidal line of argument to use if you actually want Obama to win any of the primaries. When Obama advances this idea, he does it in a smarter way by stressing that “his story” is an “American story.” Most Americans are souring on certain aspects of globalisation, so what makes anyone think that portraying a candidate as a ”globalised leader” is a good idea? Obviously, Obama is embracing the “nation of immigrants,” “diversity is our strength” rhetoric that we hear all the time, and for a sizeable portion of the population this is an attractive or at least unobjectionable message, but even here he is on potentially treacherous ground.
What Ignatieff said, and what Cohen is arguing, exposes Obama to a rather fierce backlash if people begin to believe it: having “internationalism in the veins” may imply some kind of hybridity that reduces the person’s connection to his country (this is the “vaguely French” attack against Kerry taken to the nth degree), and simultaneolusly identifies a policy perspective with ‘otherness’, which unwittingly hints that this “internationalism” is not really fully American. Many of the arguments advanced in Obama’s favour along these lines are rather recklessly identifying in Obama things that I am not sure that he would even say about himself. Armed with quotes about his being a “globalised leader,” you can just imagine what his opponents would say in a tough general election fight. Obama’s actual policy positions on immigration, for example, will be hard enough for him to overcome in a general election (should it somehow come to that) without foreign observers taking about how agreeable he is to foreigners. The attack ads write themselves. Remember Kerry’s ill-fated boast about all of the foreign leaders who supported his election? This does not play well in most parts of America.
Then there was Mexico’s foreign minister, in what I have to assume is an unwitting display of irony:
My sense is the symbolism in Mexico of a dark-skinned American president would be enormous. We’ve got female leaders now in Latin America — in Chile, in Argentina. But the idea of a U.S. leader who looks the way the world looks as seen from Mexico is revolutionary.
A U.S. leader who “looks the way the world looks” is supposed to have great symbolic resonance. That’s the other side of Obama-as-international-wonderworker argument. It is necessarily a superficial and rather insulting thing to say about the rest of the world: you cannot identify with America because we just haven’t elected the right symbolic candidates, and now you can!
There is also the small matter that Obama’s foreign policy, which does stress interdependence to the point of insanity (”the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people”), is one of the craziest, most hubristic and dangerous foreign policies on offer in this election cycle. If the rest of the world is hoping for Obama to win, maybe they should think again.
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November 15th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
DaveZ
It should be noted that Ignatieff is usually also wrong about matters inside Canada’s borders. Actually, Ignatieff ought to know better than most how being a “globalized leader” can be a major political liability. When he ran for the leadership of the Liberal party, one of the main criticisms he faced was that he had spent the last 20 years out of the country and didn’t seem to have much attachment to Canada. In response to questions as to why he returned to Canada, his answer was to say that while the U.S. is a nice country to live in, Canada has gay marriage, so he thought he’d come back and run for prime minister. Not even Canadian liberals could stomach Ignatieff’s sappy internationalism, and he lost the leadership to an even worse candidate. If Ignatieff’s example has any relevance for Obama, then one assumes things will not go well for him.
November 16th, 2007 at 6:08 am
black sea
The comments of Cohen, Ignatieff, and Jorge Castenda represent the typlcally brainless, politics-as-blood-mysticism school of governance. One might as well argue that George W. Bush has the Executive Office in his veins. In additon to “41,” Bush’s mother Barbara is a member of the Pierce family, which spawned Franklin Pierce. So as you see, George W. has “greatness” in his veins! On both sides!
The only problem is that, despite the bloodlines, he’s a disaster.
Why not nominate Schwarzenegger so as to rebuild our bridges with European allies, or Bobby Jindal, Lousiana’s Indian-American governor, to signal to the rising Asian economies our openess to investment and trade? Or maybe we could appoint an utterly undistinguished Hispanic judge to the position of Attorney General in order to send the message that . . . oh wait, never mind.
This sort of approach doesn’t even rise to the level of thought, and yet it seems to be a staple of the NY Times Editorial Board, which explains a good deal.
By the way, in Cohen’s piece, former Mexican foreign minister Castenada is quoted as saying, “My sense is the symbolism in Mexico of a dark-skinned American president would be enormous. We’ve got female leaders now in Latin America — in Chile, in Argentina. But the idea of a U.S. leader who looks the way the world looks as seen from Mexico is revolutionary.”
So, when, exactly, did Mexico last elect a president who “looks the way the world looks as seen from Mexico”?
Felipe Calderon? Vincente Fox? Gee, from the shores of Mexico, the world must look a whiter shade of pale.
November 16th, 2007 at 11:31 am
empiricus
Black Sea -
I agree with pretty much all of what you say - and I agree that these various sorts of cabinet level affirmative action schemes are ridiculous. On the other hand, a president who didn’t have so damned (expletive retained) much American exceptionalism in his neorcortex (or amygdala in GWB’s case) would be a big improvement (I really don’t care about the veins; one of many reasons why I’d never be a paleo) . In that regard (Bill) Clinton strikes me as rather better than average, with Eisenhower probably the other best postwar pres. GWB in regard to exceptionalism as in so many other ways appears to represent the all time low of the Republic; any other nominations? Wilson comes to mind as probably the leading contender.
To nitpick a couple of points, of course Ahhnuld is constitutionally unable to be elected, and some parts of the Constitution still sort of matter.
And re Mexico, one might note that their presidents/dictators seem to be getting whiter on average: Benito Juarez was of course full blooded Indio, and a few of the other post-Reform presidents were pretty dark too (e.g. Huerta). But the only one I can think of in the last 50 years who looked decidedly non-European was Diaz Ordaz.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Daniel Larison
The strangest thing about the “Obama will improve our standing in the world” is that it simply projects onto Obama whatever it is that the person saying this thinks needs to be changed about our foreign relations, and then assumes that an Obama administration will then govern according to the projection that the observer has made and thus improve relations with other countries. This is the very complex theory of international relations that says, “If I like my President and what he represents to me, the rest of the world will feel the same.” I was trying to allude to the absurdity of Castaneda’s remarks, but I think I was not blunt enough here. Obviously, the idea that a black President *improves* our relations with most governments around the world takes no account of the attitudes of the nations involved. Of course, I agree that a move away from exceptionalism would be most desirable, but Obama does not really depart from that tradition–he simply reformulates this same bad habit in a different way.