Legal Commentary

Politics Has Always Been Stupid

By Big Tent Democrat

Bob Herbert seems shocked to discover politics is stupid:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again. . . . We’ve forced Barack and Michelle Obama, two decent, hard-working, law-abiding, family-oriented Americans, to sit for humiliating television interviews, reminiscent of Bill and Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes” at the height of the Gennifer Flowers scandal.

(Emphasis supplied.) I am not sure if Herbert is saying the Wright story is less substantial than the Gennifer Flowers story in 1992 but it is a strange juxtaposition. But I must say, when Barack Obama gave the "greatest speech ever" about race relations (and never to return to the subject afterwards), Bob Herbert did not think that was overkill. Indeed, just a few weeks ago Herbert wrote:

Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy.

While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily. The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can’t be ignored by the press.

Voters want more from Senator Obama. He’s given a series of wonderful speeches, but he has to add more meat to those rhetorical bones. He needs to be clear about where he wants to lead this country and how he plans to do it. That’s how a candidate defines himself or herself.

(Emphasis supplied.) Obama's has presented shallow empty post partisan Unity Schtick that has been short on substance. So when Herbert says today:

The challenge for the working press right now is to see if we can force ourselves past the overwhelming temptations of Wright and race and focus in a sustained way on some other important matters, like the cratering economy, metastasizing energy costs, the dismal state of public education, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or the damage being done to the American soul by the endless war in Iraq.

It seems to me that he is letting Barack Obama off the hook. It has been Barack Obama's decision not to focus on issues, instead promising "change" and "unity" and "coming together." Of course Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor of 20 years, was preaching a different message. It seems hard for me to see how the Media could ignore the contradiction.

Herbert has always been a columnist focused on issues and substance. Barack Obama has been a candidate who has avoided issues and substance for branding and feelgood imagery. Obama understood the choice he made. He is a politician after all. and Wright is part of the picture now.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 03, 2008 (boomark / email).