Lawrence Lessig says that the Obama campaign has been Self-Swiftboating.
"Swiftboating" is (1) attacking the strongest bits of a candidate's character, with (2) false or misleading allegations. That was what Kerry suffered -- attacking his courage as a soldier, the characteristic that distinguished him most from Bush, with misleading (at least) allegations by some who knew him when he served. Self-Swiftboating is to Swiftboat yourself: For a campaign to do something that has the effect of undermining its own candidate's strongest characteristic, with actions that are (at best) misleading."
I agree that Obama's strongest characteristic is that he appears to be a new kind of politician and the best hope to bring about change in how Washington functions. That's not just new policies, but a change in how policies are made. For example, his fund raising via small donations from many, could actually help remove the influence of money from poicy. That's a lot to ask, but I think that's what a lot of people are looking for.
"The Obama self-Swiftboating comes from a month of decisions that, while perhaps better tuning the policy positions of the campaign to what is good, or true, or right, or even expedient, completely undermine Obama's signal virtue -- that he's different. We've handed the other side a string of examples that they will now use to argue (as Senator Graham did most effectively on Meet the Press) that Obama is nothing different, he's just another politician, and that even if you believe that McCain too is just another politician, between these two ordinary politicians, pick the one with the most experience. The Obama campaign seems just blind to the fact that these flips eat away at the most important asset Obama has."
He goes on to argue the best example is his flip on Telco immunity in the FISA bill. While most people don't understand or know of the issue at all, this gives the Republicans the ability to attack him as flipping and just another politician. I can see that, but I also think the fundamentals in this case are very wrong. The bill is not a compromise, it's a cave in to Bush and Telco immunity is bad.
Ars Technica describes how The new FISA compromise: it's worse than you think. "Specifically, the new legislation dramatically expands the government's ability to wiretap without meaningful judicial oversight, by redefining "oversight" so that the feds can drag their feet on getting authorization almost indefinitely. It also gives the feds unprecedented new latitude in selecting eavesdropping targets, latitude that could be used to collect information on non-terrorist-related activities like P2P copyright infringement and online gambling. In short, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 opens up loopholes so large that the feds could drive a truck loaded down with purloined civil liberties through it."
10 comments:
I think the most recent Borowitz report best summarizes the chatter on the blogosphere about Obama. Excerpts:
Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election
The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election...
"Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes," wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. "He must be stopped." ...
"Increasingly, Barack Obama's message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful," he wrote. "Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal." ...
I can understand moving to the center. But this seems an unnecessary surrender of civil rights, on an issue that people don't understand and that separates Dems from Reps. It does involve a flip by him and supporting this is supporting Bush. Why would voting against this bill be so bad?
BTW I don't like to FISA bill, and don't like what has happened to civil liberties in the US since 2001, but the best way to change this is by getting Obama elected, and running as a liberal is not the way to win.
Why? The majority of the country is unhappy with the current Bush policies? I would think running against them is a path to victory. See my other post, apparently even McCain's camp doesn't want to be equated to Bush.
OK just saw your response after I posted. I haven't followed FISA closely enough to debate its use as a political wedge issue, and you may indeed be right that Obama should have made a principled vote against here.
My original comment was meant to be a comment on what I perceive as a vocal segment of Obama supporters who seem disappointed that Obama may actually be a post-partisan centrist, and not a "traditional liberal", even though this is just how he ran in the primaries.
I just reread the post. I agree the FISA amendment has problems, and that there may be a case for Obama to have voted against it. But that is not the main thread of the post.
In my mind "Swiftboating" is character assassination, pure and simple. Lessig first gives his own somewhat different definition: (1) attacking an opponents strength (2) with false statements. Let's start with that as the premise. Obama's greatest strength in the primaries is that he was post-partisan, and wanted to move the country past the partisan warfare of the past decade. So what does he do? He supports a compromise, that is also supported by Nancy Pelosi of all people.
So if we follow this line of thinking, Obama is "swift-boating himself" because Republican/independent voters who are considering voting for him because he promises to move past partisan bickering will have second thoughts because he actually did so?
I am sorry, Lessig is not making a coherent argument in what you cited.
I think Lessig (and a lot of others in the liberal blogosphere) are annoyed that their candidate doesn't agree with all their positions, and are arguing he will lose the election if Obama doesn't support these positions. Which may be a valid point. On the other hand, Obama has run the best political operation in my lifetime, taking down the previous title-holder (the Clintons). Obama may know a thing or two about winning elections that Lessig doesn't.
I spent 15 minutes on-line learning what I could on-line about FISA.
I agree that there are provisions that provide too much discretion/not enough oversight to the executive branch. These should be changed.
I also think that telecom immunity, properly constructed, is an absolutely reasonable, laudable, and bipartisan objective. If a US government law enforcement agency makes a request of private company to enforce a law, said private company should be able to assume in good faith that the request is legal. If the request is illegal, it should be the government agency that is the subject of any redress. A private company should not have to take on the burden of determining the legality of a request of a government agency, the effort of refusing the request, and the threat of civil litigation for doing what was requested of them.
This is an instance of bipartisan tort reform - you shouldn't be able to go after ancillary parties (for example telecom companies) just because they are an easier target than the US gov't agency that made an illegal request.
There can certainly be problems with Lessig's argument, and Obama might know a lot about winning elections. I agree with his definition of swiftboating. I don't think this bill is a compromise, see my previous post here.
Reps have historically attacked Dems as weak on defense. When planning to campaign Dems sometimes counter this by voting for things they wouldn't. Hillary's vote on the AUMF comes to mind. Kerry's vote on funding the troops made sense (the first bill paid for the funding, the Reps killed it, the second bill didn't paying for the funding the Reps voted for, Kerry against). In both cases the Dem candidate got into trouble by Reps and then the media for being inconsistent in their votes, and therefore unprincipled. In both cases the candidate couldn't coherently explain their vote. Hillary wouldn't even admit a mistake with the info she knows now and Kerry babbled (though Edwards could explain it and ask the Reps why they voted against funding the troops the first time).
In this case Obama doesn't adequately explain his vote and change in position. He says it's a compromise, but by all factual evidence it's not, it's another Dem capitulation getting nothing in return. If someone would explain how this is a compromise, I could possibly get behind it.
Note my Hillary and Kerry examples are not swiftboating, they aren't turning an important strength they have vs a weakness of the opponent (Kerry a war hero, Bush being possibly AWOL) against them. But for Obama, falling into the same Dem pattern is going against his post-partisan strength.
I could potentially accept a compromise on telecom immunity. But I do have a problem with saying that if the government tells you it's legal, you have no culpability. Then if the government wants to do something illegal they just need to get some actor do it for them. This bill isn't giving immunity to all parties that do something potentially illegal if they have a note from the government, it's only giving this immunity to telecoms.
And as we've seen with this administration, getting the information to go after the original source can be impossible. In this case the large telecoms really should have known their actions were illegal, they've been through this before and at least one telecom (IIRC Verizon) refused to participate. Yes one way to think of this bill is that telecoms acted in good faith thinking the gov't did too, but good faith is usually something for the courts to decide. Another way of thinking of this bill is protecting the administration from the only path left to find out what crimes they may have committed.
This is the argument.
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