For the most part, I agree with much of the political assessment in For gay GOPers - now what?, by former Log Cabiner Kevin Ivers, now among the bloggers at Citizen Crain. Except for the last paragraph, where he flirts a bit with the idea of some gay Republicans supporting Obama. I just don't get the swooning. Obama as Orator-in-Chief I could maybe go along with, but his voting record in the Illinois state legislature and during his brief tenure in the U.S. Senate fully justifies his support by Ted Kennedy and MoveOn.org. He wants to unite left and right, black and white, gay and straight, blue and red, in order to…pass the same old stale, left-liberal bigger-government, more power to Washington agenda.
I distrust charisma, especially when it's not accompanied by a record of leadership and competence. Count me out.
More. Bruce Bawer tells Why I Haven't Caught Obama Fever.
Also worth reading (though published last year), David Ehrenstein's Obama the Magic Negro. (Ehrenstein, a former writer for The Advocate, is black.)
Rick Rosendall strongly disagrees (in our comments), and makes his case for Obama here.
And a clear-eyed Obama analysis by Fred Siegel in City Journal: "[W]hile he has few concrete achievements to his name, he does have a voting record that hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left and Right." Hardly, indeed, but man can he make the crowds swoon.
16 Comments for “And Now?”
posted by Ashpenaz on
My life is made simpler by the fact that I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. There–I said it–I went there–I don’t hate Hillary. I don’t love Hillary. I like Hillary. I think she’s intelligent, compentent, ambitious, and largely on the right side of the issues. Electing her would be like having Hermione Granger as President–shrill, annoying, unpopular, but always there with her hand up, getting things done.
I don’t get the whole Obama thing. It’s like listening to a high school graduation speech over and over again. And I doubt if the Republicans are going to ignore the whole polygamist Muslim father thing.
posted by KamatariSeta on
Yeah, I’m also in an easier place by not hating Hillary. She’s my pick, but I don’t dislike Obama either. I think a lot of the Clinton hatred in general is kind of irrational, and their faults are blown waaay out of proportion.
posted by Jorge on
I’m devestated. I’ll definitely be holding my nose as I cast my vote (it won’t be for McCain). With all the other Republicans being at least marginally against gay rights causes, if I were voting based on that, I’d have to look at the character of the person.
What I will say is that not all politicians who are politically against gay rights laws are personally against gays. I don’t think the things debated politically are always relevant. I try to look at what it looks like they believe about gay people. If someone is trying to use gays as a wedge issue, I don’t respect that, no matter which side the politician is on. If the politician treats gay people with the respect due honest allies or opponents, I do respect that. This year the Democratic candidates did the best.
posted by Richard on
Senator Obama has a largely centrist record, which is why he has appeal on independent voters, even some Republicans.
He probably got the Kennedy nod, because Obama has youthful good looks, sunny optimism.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Steve (Miller), in light of the recent discussion in response to Steve Swayne’s latest contribution to IGF, I would be a little nervous if I were you at being in the same camp as Ashpenaz. But of course politics makes strange bedfellows.
I appreciate your reference in another blog entry to the diversity of views among IGF contributing authors. It’s a pity that the diversity of views concerning 2008 presidential candidates cannot be reflected on IGF (that is, more prominently than in a comment like this one). BTW, for those interested, my column endorsing Obama can be found in the current issues of Bay Windows (www.baywindows.com), Metro Weekly (www.metroweekly.com), and Seattle Gay News (www.sgn.org).
As to McCain, I urge those across the political spectrum who are drawn to him to examine his record and not just Obama’s, including his (McCain’s) having made two commercials in 2006 touting Arizona’s anti-gay ballot initiative.
As to Giuliani, I myself have noted in the past that his positions on gay issues were virtually indistinguishable from those of Hillary Clinton (though that was before he started pandering a bit to the social conservatives for the sake of his presidential ambitions; though in counter to that, of course, is the past duplicitousness of the Clintons, which though primarily the responsibility of Bill Clinton, is fair to bring up since he seems to be running for co-president). My opposition to Giuliani was not gay-related, but resulted from the fact that he is a vindictive, authoritarian-minded bully who surrounds himself with sycophants, and participated in the primary-season competition among GOP candidates to see who could outdo the rest in their enthusiasm for torture, pre-emptive wars, and suspension of habeas corpus.
Regarding your sneering dismissiveness toward Obama, I will let my own column (see links above) speak for me.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Regarding Bruce Bawer’s harsh review of Dreams from My Father: I have read the book too, and from Bruce’s reaction it seems that he and I read very different books. (I should point out, I suppose, that I wrote a quite favorable review of Bruce’s book, “While Europe Slept,” which review I believe is reprinted on IGF.) In general I think highly of Bruce, but in this case I could not disagree more. I got none of the same impressions as he. Many comments below his article from people who read Obama’s first book noted a similar marked contrast between Bruce’s impressions and theirs.
It is not at all unusual for a memoir to be disproportionately concerned with what the writer lacked, which in Obama’s case was a father in his life. I read the reissued version of the book, so perhaps that had more material on his mother and grandparents, but in any case I recall glowing comments about them from Obama. As to his discussion of “brothers” and such, one of the main themes of the book was his coming to terms with his mixed racial identity. How one could take away from the book the notion that Obama himself held racist views I just cannot fathom. I honestly think that Bruce badly misread the book, and is being terribly unfair to its author. I was highly impressed by Obama’s candor and introspection. As to his use of composite characters, Obama was up front about that in the book, as Bruce noted; it was a literary device for the sake of a cleaner narrative, and as long as the author discloses it, I see nothing wrong with it. Unlike his second book, the first book was not written by someone about to launch a political campaign. Well. I am just amazed at the contrast between my own very positive reaction to Dreams from My Father, and Bruce’s.
posted by Mark on
8 years of Bush “conservatism” has given us a $3 trillion dollar budget, an evil and unnecessary war, a sinking dollar and economy, brazen lawlessnesss and disregard for the Constitution and an explosion of government spending and regulation. And Obama is supposed to be worse?
I wish Ron Paul had a chance, but Obama certainly can only be an improvement over Mc Muffin and the sordid GOP he represents.
posted by Avee on
Richard: “Senator Obama has a largely centrist record…”
Not according to the National Journal, which analyzes Senate voting records from a nonpartisan perspective, and finds Obama’s to be the most liberal in the whole Senate.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Many people are disputing the National Journal’s claim that Obama is the most liberal senator. For example, here is Alex Koppelman at Salon:
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/01/31/obama_record/
“… the big finding the Journal is trumpeting this time around is that the Senate’s most liberal member in 2007 was Sen. Barack Obama. That puts him ahead of, for example, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold. Oh, and it also puts him ahead of an actual socialist, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. And then there’s the man at No. 3, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, hardly known as a raging lefty. Biden comes in ahead of both Feingold and Sanders as well. (Sen. John Kerry was ranked as the most liberal in 2003, another distinction that seems dubious and became a campaign issue.)”
posted by Richad J. Rosendall on
Oh, here we go with the “Magic Negro” critique. This idea (having nothing to do with Obama in particular) has been a topic in African American criticism for many years (and it has been picked up by some conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh). I think there is clearly merit in the general thesis, given the number of examples in film and television over the decades that line up with that interpretation. However, it can be taken too far. There are some critics who see a Magic Negro everywhere they look, so that black actors hardly have a chance–no matter what kind of role they play, it will be viewed through that interpretive prism. Hey, folks, like it or not, any black presidential candidate must perforce appeal to a predominantly white electorate. It is hardly fair on that basis to reduce him to a Magic Negro.
posted by Brian Miller on
More to the point, both the Obama and Hillary candidacies underscore the “achievement bankruptcy” of the Democrats’ putative party.
Neither candidate has done much of note. Obama graduated with a middling cumulative score, to enter into the Illinois political machine and climb his way up to a junior Senate seat.
Hillary Clinton married an up-and-coming politician and rode his coat-tails to a seat in the Senate and her own chance to grab at the brass ring.
These two are truly the “best” that the Democrats can offer? How sad it must be to be a Democrat, in that case.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Brian, I don’t like Hillary very much, but I have long told people that they made a big mistake if they underestimated her. Your comment about her, which suggests she is nothing and her husband everything, is so at variance with her immense observable skills that it can only result from prejudice and not from any kind of honest observation.
As to Obama, the mediocrity you describe is so at variance with the gifted man I am listening to right now that there is little point in arguing with you, since if you were honestly paying attention you would treat him a little more seriously. I will only note that it will be greatly satisfying to have a president who has taught the Constitution and respects the Constitution, instead of one in the habit of shredding it.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Steve, regarding your quote from Fred Siegel: I think you’re seriously underestimating Obama. He is not just making people swoon and offering liberal-style government handouts. He demands personal responsibility, as with his national service requirements in return for college tuition. He challenges his audiences’ prejudices, as he did at Ebenezer. And a number of Republicans who have dealt with him have praised his across-the-aisle efforts. I don’t think you’re really interested in understanding him; you’re just cherry-picking reasons to dismiss him.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
He demands personal responsibility, as with his national service requirements in return for college tuition.
Actually, that’s a great example of how Obama works.
There are innumerable programs out there already that will forgive tuition for people if they work in inner-city schools, go into law enforcement, serve as doctors in rural communities, and so forth. Heck, the military in that sense is the largest “do national service, get free tuition” thing out there.
But when Obama suggests it, people act like he just invented it. Same as his pronouncement over which people swooned that companies should offer retirement accounts that they contribute a fixed percentage into annually; the collective sound you hear was people laughing over the fact that a Harvard-educated lawyer had apparently never heard of a 401(k) plan.
But they didn’t laugh too loudly, because that would be racist.
I could go on — his claiming that his living in a Muslim country when he was six years old makes him the most qualified candidate for diplomacy springs immediately to mind — but I think you get the point; the man is banking on Americans having been so saturated with decades of white liberal guilt that they equate questioning a black man’s qualifications or credentials with racism.
And before you start, Jesse Jackson did the exact OPPOSITE of Obama; he not only told people what he believed, but what exactly he was going to do. Obama tells people what he allegedly believes and leaves them to project onto his speech the messy details of how he’s actually going to do it, helped along by their subconsciously WANTING to agree with him because he’s black.
Matter of fact, that IS very Kennedy-esque.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
ND30, there is nothing new about common sense either, but some people are better at encouraging it than others. As to his alleged policy vagueness, visit barackobama.com.
posted by Brian Miller on
Your comment about her, which suggests she is nothing and her husband everything, is so at variance with her immense observable skills that it can only result from prejudice and not from any kind of honest observation.
Au contraire. In fact, you’re completely wrong — I find her to be formidable and believe she’ll be in the White House before long.
However, it doesn’t change the fact that without riding Bill’s coattails, she wouldn’t be in her present position of power.
I think it’s a pretty damning state of affairs for the Democratic Party, to see how patronage and connection to the DNC machine are more valuable for tools to gain their presidential nomination than actual experience and life achievements outside of the Machiavellian halls of DC.