Academic

In Defense of "Fast Eddie Obama" and Shame on David Brooks

By Robert Justin Lipkin

Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don't go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He's spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama's got more money now.

And Fast Eddie Obama didn't just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa's final steps to sainthood.

However, my central objection to Brooks piece is this: His position calls for campaign perfectionalism. Never break a promise. Never veer from you articulated course. No matter what. Stick to your "principles" no matter what the consequences. Why even if you start a war which was ill-conceived, and a "foreign policy blunder" stick it out! Stay the course! Just who is an exemplar of Mr. Brook's' conception of competent and morally grounded presidential leadership.

Tactical decisions must be made daily in campaigning for president. Without the ability to make some unappealing, yes, even morally wrong, decisions, a political reformer is simply a Utopian who perhaps has wonderfully idealistic strategic goals, but is too quixotic to ever win an election. It's convenient--perhaps too convenient--for a self-avowed conservative, like Mr. Brooks, to urge Obama to retain his ethical perfectionist virtues and lose the election as a result. Moreover, no one is qualified to be president without being ready to make some morally ugly choices. Such an individual would be unable to run the nation's domestic affairs nor defend the nation from foreign predators. This doesn't mean that such an individual simply sells out.  There is a quantitative dimension here.  How often is the imperfect reformer inclined to break his word.  Most of the examples Brooks uses can be interpreted in a plausible non-hypocritical fashion. Regarding Rev. Wright, Obama simply had too much.  Who knows Obama--any reasonable person--might have denounced his grandmother if she acted in a similar manner.

And consider that Obama's choice to opt out of public funding for his campaign may have just won him the election. Is that the reason Republicans like Lindsay Graham and Brooks are so offended. Does Brooks prefer a reformer who stays completely true to his principles and loses or one who sometimes retreats and wins. What if the individual were a Republican candidate? The more one thinks about Brooks' piece the more won wonders about ulterior motives.

Anyone who believes that a self-avowed reformer will never act contrary to reform principles is living in a hermitage. Moreover, there are times when even reformers should make such choices. The question for American citizens is not whether Obama betrayed one of his "core principles," but rather whether he is inclined to make a habit of it as do other politicians. If the reformers principles generally are attractive and if he or she generally stands by those principles, the reformer is still better than an ordinary politician with non-reformer goals. Let's be grateful for Fast Eddie Obama unless he emerges too often. Wait! Perhaps that's Brooks' point. Let's stop Obama from betraying his principles because then the next Democratic reformer might act for the most part on his reform principles and reform is not what we Republicans want. Who is the greater hypocrite here? Obama or Brooks?

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Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).