How Republicans Think (Updated)

Here's a classic case of Republican projection of its own cynical thinking--Karl Rove predicting Obama's VP pick:

"I think [Obama's] going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice," Rove said. "He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president."

Rove singled out Virginia governor Tim Kaine, also a Face The Nation guest, as an example of such a pick.

"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years, he's been able but undistinguished," Rove said. "I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America."  (h/t TPM--also video there sourcing Rove's quote.)

Bush 1 picked Dan Quayle out of smug complacency; McCain seems to have picked Palin out of desperation. I'm not seeing the upside here for the GOP of this Palin choice. I know they have no problem picking unqualified ideologues to do important jobs. (Who cares if they screw up so long as those no-bid contracts keep coming?)  I know the McCain people are not politically stupid, but this is a play to the base when the battle is for the middle.  Do they think that this choice will attract enough women and angry Hillary supporters from the middle?  To me it's counterintuitive and enhances the McCain has bad judgment argument.  Anybody want to lay out the counterargument.  I haven't read anything yet I find convincing. but I'm sure there's a valid counterargument

***

UPDATE: RU Insane? How about this for twisted thinking that tries to justify the pick:

I am kind of amazed that the Democrats have decided to directly attack Governor Palin’s experience. Someone should remind them who they nominated for President.

In fact, I can see the GOP cutting an ad talking about how Sarah Palin made a difference in changing Alaska, and asking Barack Obama whether he’s done as much to change Illinois. The answer might well be: no.

I realize, of course, that she’s totally unqualified to be President at this point in time. If McCain were to die in February 2009, I hope Palin would have the good sense to appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President, on the understanding that she would then resign and be appointed Vice President by her successor. (Lest anyone say that this is an absurd, unconstitutional or undemocratic scenario, recognize that this is pretty much what would happen in a Parliamentary system where, if the head of government dies, a successor is chosen by the party.) Palin is absolutely not ready to be President now, but that is a problem that is very easily dealt with if she is and the governing party want to do so.  (h/t Sullivan)

The kind of argument that equates Obama's level of experience with Palin's inexperience is only convincing to seventh graders or people with the mind of seventh graders. Schmidt/McCain might be making the cynical bet that there are enough Americans whose thinking has not progressed beyond that level, but I think they have miscalculated. I know people have tried to make a big deal about Obama's inexperience, but isn't it more about being qualified? Experience contributes to one's qualifications, but it's not the only or most important thing. Does any serious person question Obama's qualifications at this point?  Does any serious person think that Palin is qualified to take over if McCain dies?

Apparently Palin enthusiast Millman quoted above doesn't think so. The whole resignation after appointing a successor pledge is a hoot, and a perfect example of the kind of intellectual knots a certain kind of conservative will tie himself up in to justify the absurdity of his positions. If we follow this guy's logic, Obama should resign on the first day of office so the more experienced Joe Biden can take over.

Comments

[Mike]

The distinction between experience and qualification is not quite so clear, in my opinion. A candidates experience has a lot to say about whether that person is qualified or not. Consider any given job posting and the number one requirement under the list of qualifications is typically experience. Furthermore, why is Obama so much more qualified than Palin? Because he is a lawyer? Or because he went to any Ivy league school? Or because he is an impressive speaker? While education is clearly an important qualification I don't think attending an Ivy league is a requirement for president.
Also, as to the point about this race playing toward the middle - Obama's choice was equally one for the base. You can't honestly say that choosing Biden, a consistently liberal democrat who has been in congress for 30 years, is in any way a bow to the middle.

[Brian]

The kind of argument that equates Obama's level of experience with Palin's inexperience is only convincing to seventh graders or people with the mind of seventh graders. Schmidt/McCain might be making the cynical bet that there are enough Americans whose thinking has not progressed beyond that level, but I think they have miscalculated.

I'd like to think so too, Jack. However, it's increasingly my belief that, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever lost an election underestimating the intelligence of the American electorate.

[Jack Whelan]

Mike--

Teddy Roosevelt, big time; Warren Harding small time. Abraham Lincoln, big time; George Bush, small time. FDR, big time; John Kerry, small time. JFK, big time; Dan Quayle, small time. Barack Obama, big time; Sara Palin, small time. Do you really think there is an equivalence between the two?!

Most people recognize there's difference, and with each you could get into seventh-grade level arguments about whether Abraham Lincoln was really that great--it's a big myth. "Did you know that he had ambivalent racial attitudes and a problem with depression...," etc.

What distinguishes big timers from small timers has less to do with experience and more to do with qualities of soul. If you don't see that Obama is a big timer in that respect, I don't know that I can convince you. Either you get it or you don't. Palin seems feisty, but anyone with her worldview and background is by definition small time.

There are lots of people who have tons of experience, and that's the least significant thing about them. They are shriveled souls, and the Republican party is run by them. The Democrats have their fair share--Pelosi, Reid, Bayh, Hillary, Kerry, but they were able to nominate someone who isn't. And they did it at a time when the best the GOP can come up with is McCain, Romney, and the other empty suits that were vying for the GOP nomination.

And if you think Biden is left of center, you also probably think the Washington Post is part of the liberal media, Fox News is fair and balanced, and William Kristol is a thoughtful, reasonable, and highly respectable columnist for the New York Times--that other bastion of political liberalism.

[Jack Whelan]

Brian--

Americans are slow on the uptake, but they get it sooner or later. It's later. If they fall, once again, for this cynical nonsense, I will be surprised. But posts like Mike's there show that even reasonably intelligent people are all too ready to bite.

[Mike]

Brian- the kind of argument that simply states that the opposing argument is only convincing to seventh graders is precisely what a seventh grade argument is. If you think the case is so cut and dry, spell it out in a reasoned and non-condescending fashion and I will be happy to agree.

Jack,
I find it amusing how you criticize "cynical nonesense" while lamenting the possibility that Americans will fall for it. Is that not a little cynical?

I think it is fine that you see Obama as "big time" and Sarah Palin as "small time." Now, don't get me wrong. I am by no means saying Palin is the best choice or most qualified. What I am saying is that such a "big time" "small time" distinction is pretty amorphous and about as subject to personal opinion as anything I can think of, at least at the point before either of them has truly had an opportunity to leave their mark on history.

Finally, I am not saying Biden is ultra-liberal or anything. I am just saying he is liberal. Is that not what a Democrat is? It would be hard to make the case that Biden is not left of center (on the whole), just look at his voting record. My point was simply that Obama's pick was no more or less a play for the center than McCain's pick.

[Jack Whelan]

Mike--

I've written frequently here about the distorting lens of the conventional conservative/centrist/liberal way of categorizing our political discourse. But rather than my getting into it again with you here, I'd suggest your spending a few hours in your local library reading back issues of The American Conservative magazine. Most of what is written there is done by principled conservatives. I contrast principled conservatism with the kind of right-wing propaganda that passes for respectable opinion in The Weekly Standard, National Review, or Commentary. Being conservative is respectable in a democracy; being rightist it is not. For the man of the right, power is the only thing that matters, and might makes right. The philosophy and attitutdes of the right are diametrically opposed to the flourishing of a healthy democracy.

In any event, after reading through The Amercian Conservative, you might come away with the insight that it is not about being liberal or conservative but about being a small 'r' republican or being complicit with an right-wing agenda to erode what's left or our democracy.

The GOP is no longer conservative in any principled sense of the word; it has a radically rightist/authoritarian agenda and thrives on the manipulation of the fears and resentments of the ignorant. That's what makes this Sarah Palin choice so cynical. It's all about tactics and winning the news cycle. As Karl Rove projected onto the Democrats in the first quote in the post above, this move is not about what's best for the country, it's "an intensely political choice, not a governing choice."

But don't take it from me. You'll see basically the same arguments I'd make to back up these assertions in The American Conservative. Maybe that would be a more credible source for you.

[Valerius]

"What distinguishes big timers from small timers has less to do with experience and more to do with qualities of soul. If you don't see that Obama is a big timer in that respect, I don't know that I can convince you. Either you get it or you don't."

It's sort of funny that your reasoning as to the worth of a person is 'peering into his soul.' Was it not President Bush who peered into the soul of Vladimir Putin and saw good things!

But more seriously, I agree with Mike in his assessment that looking into one's soul and 'getting it' is terribly subject to the whims and caprice of the observer. More importantly, it strikes me as awfully dogmatic and a crude tactic toward removing discussion away from rational or empirical evidence. "Either you get it or you don't!"

[Mike McG...]

Mike:

There is an enormous amount to be learned from afterthefuture essays and the responses they elicit. My wife and I need the perspective we get here but can find nowhere else. But in order to benefit one has to get beyond what appears to be trash talk about regular folks as ignorant and bigoted.

Jack takes aim at the architects of conservative governance; neither he nor those who from time to time post here are really targeting rank and file conservative folk. It is just that contempt for this kind of American...those who might respond to Palin's candidacy with anything other than dismissive contempt, for example...is simply in the air in progressive circles and inevitably seeps into progressive discourse. In such precincts even the best efforts to understand such people paint them as dupes while the worst paint them as quasi-fascist.

No harm in this venue. But the adoption of this tone has broad ramifications in the national political conversation. As progressive blogger Kevin Drum wrote after Kerry's defeat in 2004, mocking such people is great fun but may have cost us the election. Expressions of contempt are a gift to the Republicans. The greatest irony: it's not where Obama lives!

[Mike]

Jack,
Thanks for the reference to the American Conservative. I will be happy to read through it some when given the opportunity. I am fairly new to this forum and am not familiar with your perspectives on the problems with categorizing our views in political discourse. I would further agree that the right/left or conservative/liberal distinctions we make today are less about political philosophy and more about issues. While it is true that for some Republicans, government is a means to gain power, I would argue that is the case for some Democrats as well. For me, part of the conservative philosophy is LESS government (and therefore less power for those in government). While liberals will often argue for more government (effectively giving those in government more power). Of course neither party is very consistent, and in many ways Republicans have been even worse.

"The GOP is no longer conservative in any principled sense of the word; it has a radically rightist/authoritarian agenda and thrives on the manipulation of the fears and resentments of the ignorant." As to this quote, I do not really like this kind of rhetoric. Again you are being fairly condescending by suggesting that American are so easily "manipulated" by certain arguments or positions. If we are to use your lens would Obama not be a manipulator? After all it is only now that we are beginning to hear what his actual policy positions are. His calls for hope and change are great, but one has to ask- Hope in what or who? What kind of change? If people support him based solely on promises of hope and change, does that not represent some level of ignorance? After all, he is only human and as susceptible to fallibility as any one of us. If they support him based on his policies or philosophies, then that would be very different. My point is that we should not be afraid of ideas, and not assume that others have such weak minds that when they adopt ideas contrary to our own they are in need of protection.

[Jack Whelan]

Mike McG:

Thank you for your message of forbearance. I think you have the right attitude in approaching what I write here, which is to accept that I just call it as I see it. And I don't apologize for its fundamentally subjective nature, because, like Kierkegaard, I believe that the deepest truths are subjectively grasped. It's like faith, or love of poetry and music. Either you get it or you don't. When people challenge me on something that is so self-evident and which has stood the test of time and so many other challenges, it's like trying to defend my love of Bach to someone who finds him boring. Is there any rational way to do that? (That's an oblique response to Valerius.)

People like me are not in the business of trying to rationally persuade anybody, but rather in business of trying to articulate in as compelling a way as I can how things look from a certain point of view. If that interests people, they, like you and your wife, keep reading, even if they find my style offputting from time to time. If the other Mike, even if he's somewhat put off by my style, finds it interesting, he'll keep reading, too. But I'm not in the business of coddling my readers. I try always to be civil, but I will not tolerate ideas that from where I stand appear as complete nonsense.

I would also say that this is not a space where a moderate tone should be expected. We are living in the middle of a very significant crisis, and we need more John Adams spunk and less Tory complacency. Make a choice; take a stand. Did the Tories in the runup to the American Revolution have legitimate concerns? Of course, but at a certain point you have to choose which side of history you're on. The Tories were on the wrong side of history, and anybody who can seriously entertain the prospect of four more years of Republicans in the White House is in my opinion a contemporary Tory who is simply on the wrong side of history. I cannot take people like that seriously at this point in the game. Listening to people defend Republicans is to me like listening to people defend segregation. There were all kinds of reasonable-sounding justifications for it, but it was just wrong, wrong, wrong. In twenty or thirty years, if we have found a way through this crisis, we'll look back at this period and this Republican regime will be judged as criminally wrong in the same way we see Jim Crow today. There's no moderate way to put it.

Maybe I misjudge him, but from the evidence provided so far, I see the other Mike as a Tory, and that's the source of my impatience with his comments. If I were a better Christian I might manage that impatience better, but I see the Tories, decent folk though they might be for the most part, as wittingly or unwittingly colluding in the destruction of our democracy. They don't see anything like that happening, of course, and so they find such assertions over the top over-reactions. But that's how Tories always respond. They read the score, but they can't here the music. They find the John and Sam Adams types so unreasonable, but they are tone deaf to the song being sung by the spirit of the times. And there is a time for moderation and there is a time to raise the alarums, and our time is the latter. So that's what I do here. Go to Ambivablog if you want intelligent, literate, Tory moderation. But I just see it as fundamentally wrong, and I no longer have the patience for it.

PS: Even thought the term "fascist" is often imprecisely used, I would defend my use of it as precise. Moderates don't like the use of the word because of its ugly historical associations and don't see that kind of ugliness here yet, but every society has its fascist factions. What's worrisome to me is the kind of incipient fascism that has taken hold of the Republican Party.

[Jack Whelan]

Valerius--

Here's another analogy that might be apt if you know anything about tour golfers. The difference between Obama and Hillary is to me a lot like the difference between Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. Now let's say you had to bet your house on who would have the better career, but you had to judge Tiger at twenty vs. Furyk at 37.

With the latter you know pretty much what you're going to get. Furyk is a known commodity. He's a very competent golfer, has been ranked in the the top five for several years now, but he's simply not in the same class as Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus.

Tiger, on the other hand, was exciting at twenty because he even then had the potential to be in that upper echelon; at twenty it was just a question whether he would realize his potential. Nevertheless, when it comes to betting our house, I see a a guy like you betting on Furyk. I'd be willing to take my chances with the unproven Tiger.

Like Tiger at twenty Obama has shown he has plenty of game and that he has the potential to be what journeymen politicians like Hillary or Palin or McCain could never be. The only question is whether he will realize his promise. He's a politician, and he has to play by the rules as they currently exist, but if he's the guy I think he is, then he has the ability to change the game by playing it at a different level than everyone else.

I want to give him that chance knowing full well he may turn into an utter disappointment. Tiger on a bad day is better than most journeymen on their best day, and that's how I think we'll come to see Obama if he gets his chance. He is only at the beginning of his growth curve. He has to be judged not on what he is but on what he has the potential to become.

[Brian]

FWIW, Jack, here's a comment I found from a Detroit-based forum I visit from time to time, concerning Obama's chances among blue-collar whites:

"I am the Director of Quality at a manufacturing company in Macomb county. I'm out on the shop floor all the time, and like here, politics is often the main topic of conversation. In past election the guys out on the floor were pretty much split between the two parties on their vote, with a slight edge to the Democratic side. These guys all know I am a conservative, and in the past have taken great pleasure in rubbing it in that they were voting the other way. However, with this election I haven't heard one guy say he supports Obama, but many of them are saying there is no way they could vote for him."

http://www.motownsports.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64351

Take it for whatever it's worth, but I have a very sinking feeling about November, and it keeps getting worse every day.

[Valerius]

Jack,

The comparison of Obama with Tiger Woods is a bit unfair. Even at twenty, Tiger Woods had accomplished things no other golfer in the history of the game had accomplished. He won three straight US Junior Amateurs followed by three straight US Amateurs, with an NCAA championship thrown in on the side--by the way, I read somewhere that he still considers his three US Juniors to be his greatest golf accomplishment.

Obama seems to be more like betting on Michelle Wie when she was a young teenager. Wie was clearly physically-gifted, but she lacked the grind and killer instinct characteristic of Tiger. If anything, Wie provides a more apt analogy because she, like Obama, hadn't really accomplished anything substantive, even though both are clearly talented people. We'll just have to see how Obama pans out.

Back to your analogy of Bach, the crucial difference is that aesthetic judgments seem to rely on the subjective experience of the observer to derive authority (it seems you agree with Kant in this regard), while judgments of character seem to rely more on assessing past actions and accomplishments, which are not subjective in nature. This is not to say that Obama doesn't possess a quality of soul greater than past presidents, it's just to say that there should be a little more modesty (not necessarily in this forum) about his truly transformational character.

To Brian's point, I too find it disconcerting that so many people who should support the Democrats based on policy are leaning toward McCain for the simple fact that Hillary didn't get the nomination and that Obama didn't pick her as VP. This fact struck me especially hard after attending a house-warming party for my cousins where my aunts and I discussed the political scene--this was post-convention. I had been incredulous to the concern that Obama would have trouble attracting the Hillary supporters prior to this point, but, my God, my aunts were terribly resentful of Hillary not getting the nomination and not being selected for VP.

[Jack Whelan]

Wie doesn't work; she's not even twenty yet, and she may well turn things around by the time she's Furyk's age. Sergio Garcia might serve your argument better. He's had a real chance to realize his potential, and he's been a disappointment. Obama might very well turn out to be a Garcia.

But if we substitute Garcia for Woods, and put his potential at 19 or 20 against Furyk's known accomplishments, I'd still have bet on Garcia. He may not rise to the level of the greats, but he won't be any worse than Furyk.

That's my point. It's a question of going with the potential rather than going with the known quantity. There's little downside, and a hell of a lot of upside.

Regarding subjective/aesthetic judgments--in my experience my intuitions/hunches in interpersonal matters usually turn out to be more accurate than any cold analysis of their resume. I'd say its 70% intuition; 30% checking to see if there is any evidence to suggest the intuition is flawed. And then time will tell. In Obama's case, there is no significant evidence to suggest my fundamental intuition about him is flawed. The FISA vote gave me pause, and still does, but compared with the competition, he still blows everyone out of the water.

As to Brian's point and your experience with your aunts, if Obama loses, it will because old ladies and certain blue collar types still feel uncomfortable with the idea of a black guy in the oval office. Doesn't sit right with them, and they'd probably be hard pressed to explain why. They don't think of themselves as racists, and they're not in any vicious way. So that's going to be a factor, and that's what's going to keep it close, but I think that if McCain keeps stumbling as he seems prone to do, and if Obama gets better known, he'll make some inroads. I still feel fairly confident he can pull this off. He knows what he's up against, and he'll find a way. If he doesn't, I guess that means he's Sergio and not Tiger, and, alas, we'll see Hillary in '12 if we're still holding elections then.

[Chris C]

I have to think that for Obama, any opponent going on about experience is just what he wants. Because his argument is that it's beside the point if, with all your experience, you get the big things wrong.

Ask Hilary how well her experience campaign worked for her. Ask Biden. Both claimed Experience, Obama replied Judgement. Game over.

I think McCainCo recognizes that, and so tried to change the equation. But they've done such a bad job they now have to defend Palin's experience in a proxy air war to defend McCain's. And I suspect it will work as well as it did for Hillary.