This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
The 2008 presidential election may have been the beginning of a new era in presidential politics where assumptions and ground rules which we have known for decades will have to be revisited but, in at least some respects, the 2008 election looked quite similar to other recent elections. At least some of the things we knew about presidential elections remain relevant even after this election that seemed to have changed everything.
Perhaps the best model for Barack Obama as he begins his presidency is an obscure pitcher named Ernie Shore who threw his last pitch in 1920 and is remembered by only the most intense baseball historians and sabrmetricians. More than 90 years ago, Ernie Shore was brought in to a game after the starting pitcher, whose first name coincidentally was George, had give up a walk to start the game. Shore proceeded to pick the runner off first base and retire the next 26 batters, essentially throwing a perfect game. This remains the greatest single relief pitching performance in baseball history and a task comparable to the one that now faces Obama. To continue the baseball imagery, if George H.W. Bush was, as Jim Hightower famously described him, a man who was born on first base and thinks he hit a triple, than Barack Obama is like a relief pitcher who was brought in to pitch with his team down by about ten runs and is somehow expected to lead his team to victory.
Perhaps Bush hopes or believes that at least for the foreseeable future, scholars and others will borrow a line from the former Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai who when asked, in the late 20th century, what he thought of the French Revolution said it was too early to tell. Perhaps Bush believes that, as the now back in fashion economist John Maynard Keynes wrote more than eighty years ago, "in the long run we are all dead." More likely, as a baseball fan, Bush is placing his faith in the frozen ice ball theory. This theory, alternately attributed to one of two left-handed pitchers from the 1970s, Bill Lee or Tug McGraw, is essentially that in millions of years the sun will go supernova, the earth will turn into a frozen ice ball and nobody will care what Reggie Jackson, Tony Perez or anybody else did against Tug McGraw or Bill Lee with two men on in the World Series. It is probably true that several million years from now, nobody will be around to care about how bad a president George W. Bush was, but I wouldn't want to hang my legacy on that.
Managing expectations, as we saw again in 2008, is a key part of presidential campaigns. If a candidate is unable to meet expectations, a minor defeat, or even a narrow victory can be a serious setback. The most historic example of this was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president after the New Hampshire primary where the peace candidate, Eugene McCarthy, didn't actually beat President Johnson but merely exceeded expectations by coming within six points of the incumbent president. New Hampshire was again the place for unmet expectations this year when a somewhat unremarkable victory by Hillary Clinton, in a state she had long been expected to win, breathed new life into her campaign because in the few days leading up to that primary, Obama had been expected to win that state
The most commonly used argument against Caroline Kennedy is that she hasn't earned it, which is another way of saying she hasn't worked her way up through the party structures. To this I would raise the question "So What?" Why should any voter care about whether or not a candidate has earned anything? Being appointed to the US Senate is not like receiving a scholarship to college or even a job promotion, although being a senator is a great job. In other words it is not a decision that should be based retrospectively on merit, but prospectively on what that candidate will do in the Senate, and the notion that great senators need to have years of experience in elected office should not be just taken at face value. If Paterson thinks Caroline Kennedy can do the most for New York and for our country than he should appoint her. Obviously, political considerations, a balanced ticket, future electability and the like are all important too, but nobody is saying Kennedy is a bad candidate because she will bring the party down in 2010.
Now that the presidential campaign of 2008 has been over for more than a month, it is possible to begin to get some perspective on that extraordinary election. All presidential elections are different and, almost by definition, historic, but this one was particularly groundbreaking, not just because of Obama's victory but because it forces us to rethink many of our assumptions about presidential elections. Many of the things that strategists, pundits and other observers knew about presidential elections were proven wrong during the last twelve months.
In recent weeks, as part of an uncanny attempt to behave as generals fighting the last war, many in the Republican leadership have been floating Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, as the next Republican hope, or even the Republican Obama. The thinking behind this, while not particularly sophisticated, is, at least on the surface, easy to understand. Jindal like Obama is well educated, young and has an attractive family.
San Francisco was a different town thirty years ago. It still had not become the city that Harvey Milk helped build, but never saw. San Francisco in 1978 was a city in transition; and Dan White, the man who had assassinated the Mayor and Harvey Milk was fighting against that transition and that progress. Dan White represented the reactionary and hateful elements that feared Harvey Milk who, in turn, feared nobody. Thirty years later, it is hard to imagine that San Francisco of the late 1970s was a city that was in some real ways was still divided. While the City Hall demonstrations against Dan White remain important images from that period, it is occasionally forgotten that strong reservoirs of support remained in several parts of San Francisco for the policeman turned city supervisor turned cold-blooded killer.
There was one part of this election season, however, which was a real disappointment. That, of course, was the Republican primary. For pure theater, the cast of characters seeking the Republican nomination promised perhaps even greater drama than the Democratic primary. The Republican primary had a 1970s style curmudgeonly Cold Warrior, a slick and well-spoken 21st century capitalist, a charmingly reactionary evangelist, a perpetually angry former mayor of New York City whose personal life had been an ongoing soap opera for years, a very thoughtful and serious 19th century Whig, and, for good measure, a conservative southern senator who almost literally came from central casting.
One important component to reducing the aggressively partisan climate of American politics is to hold politicians, and others, accountable for their often hyperbolically divisive rhetoric and attempts to question the integrity and patriotism of their opponents. Politicians would be a lot less likely to use defamatory, vicious and untrue attacks if they knew they would be held accountable for what they said during the heat of campaigns. For example, John McCain's concession speech was certainly gracious, but perhaps we should pause a second from congratulating the senator from Arizona for the class he exhibited in conceding defeat to ask him about what he said during the campaign.
The Obama family captures what is best about America and the American dream. Both Barack and Michelle Obama show us, and the world, that in the US if you work very hard and get a few breaks you can make it-regardless of who you are or who your parents are.
Obama's victory, however, does not just belong to him. It also belongs to many Americans who are no longer with us-not only the Martin Luther Kings, Thurgood Marshalls, Paul Robesons, Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders, but also for anybody who ever marched for the right to vote, got arrested for fighting for equality, or believed enough in the ideals of the United States to fight and sacrifice for them. Obama's victory is a victory for all Americans who have ever worked hard to get into a good school, get a good job or get ahead, worked to raise their kids with a belief in hard work and the value of education, were naïve or innocent enough to believe in the American dream or that in Obama's famous words "in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
Sarah Palin and John McCain are beginning to remind me of an old, and dumb joke, that I remember from my childhood which goes something like "What does Smokey the Bear and Alexander the Great have in common?" The answer is, of course, their middle names. It seems like everybody in Sarah Palin's world has the same middle name. On the one hand, it is easy to laugh at the vice-presidential nominee's ability to take the politics of George Wallace and put it in the language of Richard Scarry, but the Republican focus on the Joe the Plumbers of America would not help that party win this election, even if they were running a better campaign.
Russia is not, at this time, a democracy, nor is it likely to become one anytime soon. The restriction on individual, associational and media freedoms, the close relationships between business and the government and the weakness of the rule of law are just some of the things that preclude Russia from being called a democracy. Moreover, it is inaccurate to continue to view Russia as a country in transition. The regime seems quite stable; with little real movement towards democracy. Russia is a largely consolidated illiberal semi-authoritarian regime.
The Republican campaign has collapsed among a sordid and backward looking combination of incompetence, red-baiting that feels bizarrely anachronistic and almost quaint, the growing acceptance among many in the Republican establishment that Sarah Palin is about as qualified to be president as I am to play first base for the Yankees, an adolescent, but deeply disturbing attempt to fake a racially charged attack on a McCain supporter, attempts to suggest that the Democratic president is a supporter of terrorism essentially because he has an unusual name and through ugly anti-Muslim bigotry. Lastly, the dreaded October surprise that many Democrats feared would turn this election upside down and defeat Obama turned out to be a shopping spree in which Republican handlers bought Sarah Palin $150,000 worth of clothes and makeup.
We are on the cusp of a very special moment in the US. Barring extremely unusual or dramatically unforeseen circumstances, we are less than two weeks away from a great day for the United States as we definitively close the book on the dishonesty, incompetence, belligerence and ignorance which has characterized the Bush administration. Election Day will not just mean the end of almost a decade of dysfunctional Republican governance, but will also show that Americans are ready and anxious for progressive and thoughtful leadership.
That is not, however, the reason, I hope McCain dwells on this issue. The Bill Ayers issue underscores just how out of touch John McCain is with the country he seeks to lead. To McCain's ears, Bill Ayers and the Weatherman conjure up images of dangerous radicals seeking to overthrow the American government, which is, to a large extent, what the Weatherman were. However, for many Americans, Bill Ayers and the Weatherman are something from the history books, and probably from a chapter they didn't bother to read. The Weatherman were, after all, a fringe group and largely a footnote to the history of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Political slogans are usually vague and devoid of any real meaning. Neither Obama's nor McCain's slogan are any real exception to this. However, there is something particularly disturbing about the slogan "putting country first." When I first saw it I winced, but attributed that to the slogan being so embarrassingly childish, although in fairness I don't think any of the students in my son's 4th grade class would come up with something quite so meaningless. It also struck me as a bad riff on Bill Clinton's 1992 slogan "putting people first."
An Obama presidency will, almost no matter what, be a welcome relief and major improvement on the current administration. The impact of that alone should not be understated. If, however, Obama is a four year interlude between Republican administrations like Carter was, or if, like Clinton, he fails to pass any major legislation or build the party, Obama will have been a disappointment. Moreover, a truly successful Obama administration will not only succeed legislatively, but strengthen the Democratic Party moving forward.
Interestingly, pundits focused on expectations while voters focused on mundane things like positions on issues and knowledge of these issues. While the punditry seemed to agree that Palin did not verbally implode and therefore had exceeded expectations, a CNN poll showed that voters viewed Biden as having won the debate by a margin of 51%-36%. A CBS poll showed that among uncommitted voters, Biden won by a substantial margin of 46%-21%. Tellingly, the same CNN poll showed Palin won the all important likeability question by a margin of 54%-36%. This demonstrates that a fair amount of voters like Palin but don't want to see her in national office.
Among the emails, phone calls, and notes congratulating us after my younger son, Reuben, was born was one from one of my oldest friends from San Francisco, asking if I had named him “after the pizza guy.” Reuben was named after my wife’s grandmother Ruth. But after he was born, and as we began to call him Ruby, I found myself thinking more about “the pizza guy.”
“The pizza guy” was Danny Rubinstein, known as Ruby. I had worked for him for one summer, at his restaurant Ruby’s Gourmet Pizza, fifteen years before Reuben was born. Ruby’s Gourmet Pizza was one of San Francisco’s—and perhaps America’s—first restaurants that sold pizza made from gourmet ingredients. A not-particularly-large slice piece of pizza at Ruby’s ranged from $2.35 to $3.25, a lot of money for a piece slice in 1986—even one with sun dried tomatoes, smoked salmon, pesto, or escargot.