Obama Does Understand War, Which is Perhaps Why He is Vilified by Warmongers

Eliot Cohen whines in the Washington Post,

Abraham Lincoln hated war as much as Barack Obama does. He saw so much more of it firsthand, lost friends in it and waged it on an immensely vaster scale than Obama has. And yet, almost exactly 150 years ago (Aug. 17, 1864, to be precise), he wrote this to the squat, stolid general besieging the town of Petersburg, south of Richmond: “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog gripe, and chew & choke, as much as possible.” And so Ulysses S. Grant persevered.

Therein lies the difference between Lincoln and Obama, which explains much of the wreckage that is U.S. foreign policy in Gaza and elsewhere today. Lincoln accepted war for what it is; Obama does not. The Gaza war is a humanitarian tragedy for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. It is also a barbaric conflict, as leaders of Hamas hide their fighters behind children while baiting their enemy to kill innocents. But first and foremost, it is a war, a mortal contest of wills between two governments and two societies.

In his eager regurgitation of propaganda against the Palestinian people, Cohen tells us more about himself than about the President. Hamas is vile enough without the endless justifications of the killing of Palestinian civilians, especially children. Perhaps that's Cohen's primary objection -- that people are looking at the morality and proportionality of the conflict, rather than buying into the "Anything goes" attitude that he would have us ascribe to Lincoln.

For all of his warmongering, Cohen can't bring himself to explain why the President is wrong, or what he should have done differently -- other than, perhaps, endorsing "more war" as a one-size-fits-all solution to world crises. Cohen complains that the President doesn't give rousing speeches that cause the nation to rally behind wars in nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, or to rally behind new wars in nations like Syria and Libya, never mind that the reason that the public doesn't presently rally behind wars is the pathetic incompetence of the administration he served. Cohen has conveniently forgotten that the President ran in part on an anti-war platform, his rejection of Bush's war of choice in Iraq, and that since McCain's defeat the nation at large has consistently rejected those who favor Cohen's views. Let the next Republican presidential candidate run on a promise of more and larger wars, regardless of their impact on the U.S. economy and let's see how far he gets.

The President is palpably smarter and more thoughtful than Cohen, which could explain part of the difference, but I suspect that the larger conflict is in fact that the President prefers to prevent or end wars, while Cohen is happy to play the role of the useful idiot.

Soldiers Dying in Vain

Commenting on the story, "Lone Survivor," Jim Gourley takes on the conventional wisdom, that it should never be suggested that a soldier died in vain:

Yes, Marcus. Your friends died in vain. They went selflessly. They fought bravely. They sacrificed nobly. They lived in the best traditions of duty, honor, and country -- hallowed words which dictate what every American can and ought to be. But they died in vain for the exact reason that they went where their country sent them and did what their country told them to do. America failed you because it failed its obligation to those principles. It gives me no pleasure to write these words, because it applies as much to the friends I lost as it does to yours. But it needs to be said, because the sooner we acknowledge it as a country, the more lives we might save....

[General George Casey] excused himself from proposing a time in the future when that might hold true. And just last year Adm. Mike Mullen expressed the idea in the most definitive of terms: "How could it be that in a democracy -- a free society -- men and women may risk their lives to defend that freedom and lose those lives in vain? It cannot be so."

That was a bastardization of the Gettysburg address. His thesis ran contrary to Lincoln's original remarks. In Lincoln's view, the fallen "consecrated [the field of battle] far above our poor power to add or detract," but the domain of their honor went no further than the burial ground. The president stated explicitly that the cause for which they died could only be made worthy by the citizens who survived them. "It is rather for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that these dead shall not have died in vain...."

Throughout history, our nation's greatest leaders have understood on a deeply personal level that however honorably a soldier acquits himself, he can die in vain, and that it is the responsibility of the leaders and citizenry to see to it that they don't. Our country has lost its sense of that responsibility to a horrifying extent. Our generals have lost the capability to succeed and the integrity to admit failure. Our society has lost the courage and energy to hold them accountable. Over the last decade, our top leaders have wasted the lives of our sons, daughters, and comrades with their incompetence and hubris. After each failure, our citizens have failed to hold them accountable, instead underwriting new failed strategies as quickly as their predecessors with our apathy and sense of detachment. And then we use the tired paeans of "never forget" and "honor the fallen" to distract ourselves from our guilt in the affair. When we blithely declare that they did not die in vain, we deface their honor by using it to wipe the blood from our hands.

I can't help but sympathize with Gourley's observation that politicians now employ the notion that it is a terrible thing to suggest that a soldier could die in vain as a shield against valid criticism of their own decision-making, and also of the popular outcry that enables that conduct rather than requiring accountability.

What a Surprise

When you skip the droning, Richard Cohen tells us his fundamental problem with President Obama: Obama doesn't spend enough time flattering Cohen and making him feel important.

Here is a man who is supremely gifted as an orator but dreadful as a schmoozer.

Another President Cohen likes,

But Lincoln’s other talent was talking, telling stories, sharing tales — and listening and listening and listening.

Politicians cannot ignore politics, and an ideal politician will be able to work a room as well as Clinton, write a speech as well as Lincoln, and form policy as well as... how far do I have to go back? I have sympathy for the President - I don't have Clinton's gift for glad handing, nor Lincoln's for listening to the endless droning of somebody who has access to me not by virtue of merit, but by virtue of wealth or position, and find that type of encounter to be wearying.

It's great that Cohen wants to feel important, but it's problematic that he does not appear to care about whether or not a President forms good policy as long as the President makes him feel important, returns his calls, and avoids looking bored when listening, and listening, and listening to whatever it is that Cohen wants to say.

How the Republican Party Can Appeal to Minority Voters

In her "What if Barack Obama had been a Republican" column, Kathleen Parker, well, doesn't quite get it. She claims,

Obama was elected not only because of his attractive eloquence but because we are fundamentally a good people who value fairness and equality. Electing Obama was part of our reward to ourselves. It allowed us to feel that we were this good and this big.

She credits the President with devising a campaign "message of hope that felt like honey after eight bitter years of terrorism and war" and of appealing to "our best instincts" and desire to "become a purple, post-racial nation, never again to be divided", concluding with the rhetorical question,

Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

Perhaps she's speaking for herself, but I'm recalling a bitter, partisan election fight in which Obama was attacked and ridiculed, called a lightweight, a celebrity, and in which (shocker) his supporters were accused of only voting for him because they got some sort of thrill out of voting for an African American President (and you know those African Americans - they always vote on race, right?) The notions that Republicans pushed during the campaign - that Obama wasn't a "whole-blooded" American, that he didn't get our values, that he didn't understand business, that he was a socialist, possibly a Muslim, if not a terrorist himself certainly a guy who "pals around" with them, coalesced into the nastiness that is encapsulated by birtherism - with our reaching the point where one Republican candidate for the presidency was a birther, and the guy who came out on top attempted to rally his supporters with a birther joke (his after-the-fact attempt to explain it away being wholly unconvincing). Some people, Dinesh D'Souza comes to mind, are continuing to rake in millions by launching scurrilous, fabricated race- and ethnicity-based attacks on the President, who cares about the facts. A Member of Congress felt at liberty to break more than two centuries of comity and screech, "You lie" during a State of the Union Address - and became a Republican Party hero.

For that matter, has there ever been an incident analogous to Jan Brewer's disgraceful finger-jabbing at the President of the United States? For Justice Scalia's embarrassing rant from the bench, not over the case he was deciding but over the President's role in current events in the political world? What of all of the yammering about teleprompters, flag pins, not knowing how to behave in the Oval Office, bowing, fabricated stories about "apologizing for America"?

How does Parker summarize that history?

Republicans were certain that Obama was all style over substance, but their criticisms quickly were interpreted in some quarters as racial animus.

Calling the attacks on Obama an accusation that he puts style ahead of substance is... a rather disingenuous summary of what actually occurred. And while Parker's acknowledgment that "some who call themselves Republicans also can be called racist" is true, that would be an example of what is called "soft-pedaling". This goes way beyond the parameters of "racist content of some political dialogue" that is "out there" "on the Internet".

Parker attempts an artful dance around race issues, but her column is consistent with the right-wing trope that President Obama managed to be elected not based upon his skill as a politician but because white people felt guilty, and ignores the fact that, whether you like or hate those accomplishments, his first term accomplishments stack up impressively against pretty much any modern President. And that, despite inheriting a disastrous recession and a Republican Party that perceived great reward in trying to damage the President and obstruct his agenda - and reaped that reward in the midterm election. It's also more or less what Karl Rove is presently arguing, not a racist argument as such, but,

[S]peaking about racial politics clinically, astringently, the way political professionals do -- it is a shorthand that, as his audience's knowing laughter suggests, all these politicos comprehend. The same sort of analysis leads operatives of all stripes to make recommendations about how to energize target groups by exploiting race and class divides. That's the campaign we're all experiencing.

More directly, compare Parker's argument to Rove's description of North Carolina:

There, he said, in 2008 "New South independents" (meaning, I think, white independents) who were "racial moderates, economic conservatives" had supported Obama in the belief that "this will be really good for the country -- let's put the issue of race behind us." But now they are disappointed in Obama because he's "done a lousy job on the economy, and he's not a fiscal conservative." This analysis tells a story that Obama was elected, in the first place, because of his race, but that whites now think this was a failed experiment. The echo is pretty hard to miss: We gave a guy a boost he didn't entirely deserve in order to correct a historic wrong; too bad he wasn't up to it. Are white voters ready to conclude that Obama is an affirmative-action president

Although I think both of them know better, neither Parker nor Rove are willing to publicly articulate a theory under which the 2008 election was simply another election in which the better politician won. And no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Parker and Rove are simultaneously advancing the argument that "Obama's really an affirmative action President", an argument that has previously been raised less artfully by others, just as we enter the last few months of the 2012 election campaign.

Parker offers a, dare I say, whitewashed history of how the Republican Party found itself at a disadvantage with minority voters:

Republicans can honestly boast of having once been the party of firsts. The first Hispanic, African American, Asian American and Native American in the Senate were all Republicans. But that was before the GOP went south, banished its centrists and embraced social conservatives in a no-exit marriage.

Actually, through the Reagan Presidency, the Republican Party included a great many centrists. While Parker is correct that most of them would be purged from the modern party in the name of "social conservatism", the fact is that many (using Parker's phrase) "blacks and other minorities" are both socially conservative and deeply religious, so the realignment of the party in that direction would not of itself create a race issue. The unmentioned history? The Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights, and the Republican Party's conclusion that it could rise on the basis of its "Southern strategy". Parker knows this:

African Americans are not a monolithic group, obviously, and many likely would find comfort in the promises of smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets, school choice and so on that Mitt Romney put on the table Thursday night.

Parker notes that "appearances matter", but the problem is much less one of appearances and much more one of policy. The transformation of the Democratic Party to the adaptive, inclusive party that Parker describes was the product of a policy change. In terms of elections, it was a mixed bag - had the Republicans not pursued the Southern strategy and instead embraced the civil rights movement, Parker would not be writing this column and her fantasy of having an inclusive Republican Party might be our reality. She would not have to be brushing off dog whistles as "exaggerated sensitivity", for the same reason that Republican attacks on Joe Biden's "chains" comment failed - the Party of Lincoln needs to recall this political insight: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The solution to the Republican Party's conundrum is not to invite people of color to its convention, then declare,

The impression that Republicans don’t welcome blacks and other minorities is, however, demonstrably false. Note the number of minority Republican governors recently elected: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

The solution is to declare that the Southern strategy is an artifact of the past, that overt racist acts and statements are career-ending, that speaking in code on racial issues will not be tolerated, that there is to be no more assumption or argument that anybody of color on the other side's team succeeded only because of white guilt and affirmative action, and that the party's official platform will explicitly embrace civil rights and equality.

Are any of my suggestions difficult to implement? I don't think so. Costly? In dollar terms, they're cheap. Controversial? They certainly shouldn't be. So let's give 'em a try and see what happens. Deal?

Update: Via Atrios, a quote from Lindsey Graham that echoes Parker's sentiments:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

I'm surprised Graham was so candid, even more so that he was that candid on the record. The line about "generating enough angry white guys" sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Graham might be well-served to reflect on how the GOP's efforts to manufacture outrage among white males play into their problems attracting minority votes.

Mastering Your Demons

Ah, the good old days, which David Brooks told us were all about wrestling with sin:

The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.

You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric

That probably helps explain why, as the sin-centric model of maturity faded from public consciousness, the middle class stagnated and died, American industry failed, the economy collapsed, and... Oh, wait. I got that backwards. But then, this is David Brooks lecturing me about "satanic temptations" - It's unfair of me to pretend that he is being sincere.

Brooks tells us of Lincoln's inner struggle:

In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”

Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”

Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”

He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.

Climbing out of that type of madness may have more to do with somebody saying, "Mr. Lincoln, perhaps you should stop taking mercury pills" than it did with clobbering back an inner beast. I'm not sure if David Brooks is aware of this, but mercury is poisonous and mercury poisoning leads to a cluster of symptoms evocative of Lincoln's melancholy - depression, anxiety, insomnia, intestinal problems, tremors, fatigue, fits of anger, loss of weight.... (The expression, "mad as a hatter"? It's about mercury poisoning.)

Let's also be honest here, Brooks did not pick Lincoln for his example because he desires a President who has struggled with and apparently overcome significant mental illness and suicidal impulses. He picked Lincoln because he's Lincoln, as part of his effort to advance the prospects of the so-called "Party of Lincoln." If a Democratic presidential candidate had in his background the type of psychological episode Brooks identifies in Lincoln, Brooks would happily join other right-wing columnists in declaring him unfit to govern. He would not be suggesting that it is somehow a "good thing" that the candidate called his wife "mother". Brooks focuses on ravages of the soul, not ravages of the body, because otherwise he would have to bring up the disease-related struggles of FDR and JFK.

There's also something utterly dishonest in this type of column, that has nothing to do with Brooks' politics. Columns like this are produced on a regular basis, declaring paths to maturity that would somehow make our society better.

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

The greedy, shiftless, ungiving baby boomers, finally being replaced by "young people" devoted to "service"? How nice. But why is it that these calls - mandatory military service, mandatory national service, struggles with inner demons, or even something as soft as a putting "service at the center of young adulthood" - almost always come from people who have never lifted a finger to do the very things they demand of others? And while it's nice for Brooks to part from the standard by claiming that young people now value public service, it should be remembered both that (as usual) this appears to be something Brooks made up on the fly, and also that his primary purpose in this piece is to undermine a presidential candidate who happens to be a boomer.

The column also advances an utter fantasy, that the public at large knew of Lincoln's troubles and voted for him anyway - or perhaps even in larger numbers - due to his successful battle. As if Lincoln ran campaign ads, "I used to take lots of mercury pills and wanted to kill myself, but I'm stronger for the experience. Vote Lincoln." There may well be politicians on the national stage who have struggled with mental illness, and one day we may learn of it through their biographers, but it's not going to be a centerpiece of their campaigns. Brooks' preferred candidate, John McCain, has made a point of contending that, despite six years as a P.O.W., he returned home in exactly the same state of (perfect) psychological health as the day he left. Anger problem? That's a fiction created by his opponents.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Because Brooks' entire column does just that, and doesn't invite candidates to lead him by using the sugar of his own fantasies? Did you see how Brooks elided from history the G.W. Bush narrative that he did engage in a struggle of the soul, beat back the demon rum, found God, and became a greater man for his struggle? It's only as Bush is about to leave center stage that Brooks has noticed that Bush in fact remained intellectually incurious¹ and gripped by narcissism?

All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings.

Um, yeah. Because you wouldn't want to close with the impression that the whole column is a partisan jab at Obama, this generation's presidential candidate from Illinois.... Let's all vote for the candidate with the least talent!
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1. Brooks actually describes G.W. Bush as displaying "intellectual insecurity". I don't mean to misrepresent Brooks by instead referencing incuriosity, but I have yet to see any evidence that Bush is even slightly consciously insecure about his intellect.

Past Presidential Races

First off, you have to remember that my opponent is a trial lawyer. A trial lawyer. Can we really afford to elect a president who is a trial lawyer?

Second, I have to say that my opponent doesn't talk straight. He uses complicated words to weave around the issues. I talk about my parents, he's talking about his "forefathers". I say "eighty-seven years ago", he's going on about "four score and seven years ago". What's up with that?

Third, and this is a big one, he's a flip-flopper. One day slavery is morally wrong, the next day he wants to keep it in place. Which one is it? This isn't a little issue, folks, whatever you think of that Dred Scott decision. I offer moral clarity.

Did I mention he looks funny? Does he even look like a President?