The Los Angeles Times endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President on its website yesterday, February 1, 2008. Interestingly, the editorial bears a February 3 date, meaning it is calculated to appear in tomorrow’s Sunday print editions, no doubt for maximum impact.
While I am not surprised that the Times editorial board chose to endorse Obama rather than Clinton, I was a bit surprised by some of the board’s logic or its absence. I confess that my surprise was slight as I recently read the board’s editorial in support of proposition 93 on term limits and found it unconvincing and based on faulty reasoning.
I recognize, like almost everyone else, that Obama is a gifted public speaker, has inspired a following and has excited many during this campaign. He and I are not far apart on most public policy issues and I would likely vote for him in the national election were he to be nominated. But, he is not my candidate of choice and I am one of those who believe that he has not been subjected to the kind of public and media scrutiny that a serious candidate for president should be.
I find that Obama is an inveterate user of “buzzwords” (e.g., common purpose) and slogans (e.g., Yes We Can), not unlike the current president. I believe that politicians use buzzwords more to manipulate than to persuade, and more to appeal to the emotions than to reason. Bush apparently became convinced long ago that using certain powerful buzzwords such as “liberty” and “democracy” to describe the reasons for his Iraq policies and his foreign policy in general would lead many Americans to support him. Obama has chosen other buzzwords that have tended historically to touch an emotional chord among Americans. Obama frequently invokes in his oratory calls for unity among Americans, pursuit of a common purpose, and transcending the bickering and divisions between blue and red states. To be sure, given the impact of buzzwords and slogans, I don’t expect Obama or any other politician to abandon them soon. But I think it’s important to recognize them for what they are and to ask more of our candidates than their constant repetition.
The Times, like others, celebrates Obama as a breath of fresh air, an “inspiring leader” with a “deep knowledge of foreign relations” and someone who will turn the page of history rather than return us to the “political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons.” But where are we to find evidence of Obama’s deep knowledge of foreign relations, let alone other evidences of real leadership, courage and accomplishment?
The editorial board, also like others, makes much of Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War in 2002 at the same time that Hillary Clinton was voting to give the President discretionary authority to act militarily toward Iraq, even if she claims it was not to go to war at that point. But, while Bill Clinton was critically assaulted when he termed Obama’s opposition record on Iraq a “fairy tale,” I remain one of those not persuaded that Obama has shown any particular insight or leadership qualities whether on Iraq or on other public policy issues.
In mid-December 2007, blogger eriposte shared some interesting history on Obama on his web page: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011525.php. I think the credit given Obama for his bravery and insights vis-à-vis Iraq are overblown as are, in my view, his qualifications to be president.
I am also struck by similarities between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, despite their obvious profound differences when it comes to oratory, familiarity with English grammar and many areas of public policy. George W. has none of the charisma, articulateness, eloquence or capacity to mesmerize that Obama has but George W. ran in 2000 on many of the same criticisms and promises about Washington and its political class that Obama is advancing today. George W. was the outsider who had worked well (or so he claimed) with Democrats in Texas to reach political compromise and move forward with bipartisan legislation and he promised to come to Washington and overcome the destructive, divisive partisanship and gridlock between the two political parties, objectives that he, like previous presidents who made similar promises, has failed to accomplish. Bush's representations sounds extraordinarily similar to Obama’s warnings and promises except that Obama has now been in Washington for three or more years and his successes to date in overcoming the blue state/red state divisions and political gridlock are not particularly noticeable.
Finally, in backing Obama, the Times concluded:
An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.
The reference to “race” in this political campaign has been a source of considerable discussion, rancor, condemnation and self-righteousness. Here the Times seems to make Obama’s race (“a man of African descent”) a prominent part of the argument for voting for him. That is disconcerting as are the arguments advanced in the rest of the quoted paragraph. We’ve had African-Americans in high places in the current Administration, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as successive Secretaries of State, yet that hasn’t necessarily diminished “anti-American passion around the world,” assuming such passion is as widespread as the Times editorial board would have us believe. I was struck even more by the Times’ statement “nor could any political experience surpass Obama’s life story in preparing a president to understand the American character.” What in the world were the Times editorialists thinking? How does Obama’s “life story” (most of which most of us know hardly anything about), a man born of a bi-racial couple in Hawaii and raised for a number of years in Indonesia among Muslims, a Harvard Law School graduate who did community organizing in Illinois, prepare him to understand the American character or at least understand it any better than any of the rest of us?
The Times, which I have been reading for more than 30 years, has been experiencing enormous displacements in recent years -- changes in ownership, rapid turnover in key leadership positions, and sudden departures from its editorial board. I’m not sure who the current crop on the Editorial Board is but I think they need to go back to the drawing boards or recruit more insightful members.⌂
