Score One for Human Decency

     I've promised one of our faithful readers, who took me to task for the flippancy of the post on voting for Caligula's horse, that I'd write more seriously about the fascinating things occurring this year in the Democratic and Republican parties.  Truth to tell, I'm cheered by Barack Obama's victory over Mrs. Clinton.  So are a lot of people who call themselves conservatives, and that demands some explanation, given that on social issues, on taxes, and on immigration, Mr. Obama's positions are impossible to separate from Mrs. Clinton's.  What is going on here?

     Well, one thing that's going on is that people are feeling the fresh breeze of justice.  The media won't talk about it, but the Lewinsky affair was one of the smaller and less vicious of the scandals of Clintonia.  My own favorite among them all was the acquisition of 900 or so FBI files on leading Republicans, and then the files' disappearance, so that every Republican who was anyone could consider himself compromised, though no one would ever know exactly who, or exactly how.  Machiavelli would have approved.  It may be, it just may be, that Americans have grown weary of the dirty tricks -- the same old pucker-faced manipulators, not sated with eight years in the White House and another eight years in the Senate, weeping on cue, "apologizing" in ways that deny any guilt and continue to cast aspersions on those they have offended, and even descending to the race-baiting we've witnessed in the last week.  And they've gotten the thumping they deserved.

     But the personalities involved fascinate me, too.  Here you have Mrs. Clinton, an economic conservative in her (early) youth, after the fashion of her Republican father: a hard-driving, ambitious, Ivy League woman, working in the wings to bring down that paranoid liberal, Richard Nixon -- a man of immense talents who, outside of the realpolitik of international relations, had no idea what was going on in the culture of his day.  One of the great ironies of our time is that Mrs. Clinton herself bears a great resemblance to Mr. Nixon, I mean in the paranoia, the destructive tendency to mistake political opposition for personal attack.  And she also has not the slightest idea on what precipice her culture stands.  (Eugene McCarthy had that slightest idea, maybe more than that.)  But Mrs. Clinton rode both the old fashioned Powerful Husband train and the newfangled Feminist train to success.  In a way that cripples her maneuverability, she is defined by that conflict, caught in the synergistic ideologies of feminism, statism, and sexual antinomianism.

     But the voters have not flocked to her.  Indeed, she is most fortunate to be alive in the race still, having won New Hampshire by a tiny percentage of the vote, and having sort-of won Nevada by an even tinier percentage.  Over against her stands a man who embodies the single group of people hurt the worst by those synergistic ideologies: black men, who in the fifties could drive the length of North Carolina and not find a decent motel to sleep in, but a third of whom, in the nineties, in the balmy days of Clintonia, found that decent motel at one time or another in places like Leavenworth and San Quentin.  Black men couldn't ride on a lot of buses then.  Nowadays they have been thrown under the bus.  Barack Obama must know this, on some level.  Or it is at least possible that he may come to see it someday, if he is no longer beholden to his party, but his party is beholden to him.  Goodness knows there are plenty of black men around who would be willing to show it to him.  And perhaps, after the recent baiting, he may gather that, after all, the Ivy League lady never has done a darned thing for him and his people; that she and her husband have condescended to them, treating them as mascots; and that, when the days in the White House were over, she did not move back to Arkansas, did not move to live among them, but fled to the whitest of white suburbs of New York.  I don't know.

     I do know that if Mr. Obama is elected president, there is a chance, the slightest of chances, that he may help return the Democratic party to its old and somewhat self-contradictory position as the party of government intervention on behalf of small communities -- and I mean real communities, with all their local and parochial values.  I am not saying that such a position is workable.  But often reform comes with a look backwards, to see what or whom you've forgotten all about.  It used to be that small town Catholics, for instance, voted for the Democrats, and the Democrats, inconsistently to be sure, favored the interests of those small towns, while a Republican secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, would appeal to Darwinian economics, and declaim, for the benefit of the small farmer, "Adapt, or die."  It used to be that Margaret Sanger, peddler of poison for the poor, received splendid welcomes from Republican women's groups -- but that was a long time ago.

     If I were a betting man, I wouldn't lay a hundred dollars on the possibility that Mr. Obama would try to reconnect his party with the localist and populist strain in it, not to mention the unabashed Christian patriotism.  I might bet ten, though.  For one reason only: no one could say him nay.  If he listened to those black ministers, and there are plenty, who point out that the most dangerous locality for a black American is his mother's womb, he would have the moral authority to put the brakes on the Democrat party's rush to approve everything and anything that Americans want to do to children, or to marriage, or to the family.  He could, admittedly from the left, begin to rediscover what a community really looks like.  I'm not saying that he would, or that he probably would.  But as for the woman who wrote that it takes a village to raise a child, and whose whole career has been about nothing other than the co-opting of the village's authority by the leviathan State, and who has spent her life fleeing the village and its healthy parochialisms, she could as soon do it as she could deny what had brought her to her throne.  Mrs. Clinton cannot look to the distant past.  Mr. Obama can.  Whether he would or not, of course, is a different matter.

Comments

[Judy K. Warner]

I want to say something else about Rush Limbaugh, particularly to Greg, who thinks that his coming from a wealthy family makes him unsympathetic to people in economic trouble.

During the early 1990s when we were in a recession, there was a lot of media attention given to middle-class people who had lost their jobs. Rush devoted an entire 3-hour program to calls from people who had lost their jobs at some point in their lives and gone on to start their own businesses or find better jobs. Some of these people had stories of terrible hardship, but they had picked themselves up and gone on to become successful. It was one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard. He received calls for years afterwards from people telling him how much that program had helped them. Rush's attitude has always been that America is a land of opportunity, and you may have hard times, and you may fail many times (he did himself) but if you keep trying you have the opportunity to succeed. This is not a fashionable message because we have been Oprahfied into thinking that expressing sympathy and pushing for direct aid to those down on their luck is the only proper response to a hard-luck story, and this is where Huckabee excels.

[GL]

Judy,

First, I cannot find a source for my mortgage burden stats. I'll withdrawal those. (I will add, I cannot find anything that refutes them, either, but I have the information orally from someone I trust, but who data I cannot verify, so I'll not use it.)

Second, I don't doubt what you say about Rush. My point is that Rush, despite his carping about the Republican establishment, is part of the Republican establishment and his family has been a part of it for at least three generations. His grandfather, Rush, Sr., was a very prominent player in GOP politics in my home state, Missouri. I knew who Rush, Sr. was long before anyone outside local radio markets had ever heard of his grandson, Rush, III. Rush's uncle, Steven Limbaugh, Sr., is a federal district court judge, now on senior status. His cousin, Steve, Jr., is a judge on the Missouri Supreme Court and has been for about 15 years. The Limbaughs are a well-to-do, long standing, establishment Republican clan. There is nothing wrong with that, but you would be hard press to know this about Rush's family if you only listened to him on the radio.

Rush is not attacking McCain because the establishment Republicans want him and he is fighting for the out-of-power, mom and pop conservatives; he is attacking McCain because the establishment Republicans don't want McCain. (By that, I mean the country club Republicans who don't give a rat's rear end about abortion or same-sex marriage, but are concerned about their taxes and returns on investment and have been holding out the carrot for social conservatives for three decades while doing little to actually address those concerns.) Rush is and has for more than 20 years been playing a part. He is playing the role of conservative populist looking out after Mr. and Mrs. Grass Roots America while promoting the interests of the Republican establishment.

If you doubt this, ask yourself why Rush hasn't railed on Romney's p*** poor record while governor on issues that matter to social conservatives and why he dismisses Huckabee who has a solid record on those issues. The reason is because the priority with the Republican establishment of which Rush is a part is the economic issues. They may lean toward the social conservatives (some do and some do not), but those issues are, at most, of secondary or even tertiary importance to them. Thus, we have seen far less progress on those issues than on the economic ones. Rush and Sean have shown their hand on who they have supported and why now that we have no pure conservative candidate. They had to choose between a national defense conservative (McCain), an economic conservative (Romney) and a social conservative (Huckabee) and they chose the economic conservative. What do you expect from establishment Republicans.

Open your eyes folks. If you are a social conservative, Rush Limbaugh (married and divorced four times and found with an ED drug while married to no one) does not place highest priority on your issues. Sean Hannity (a cafeteria Catholic who shamefully treated a priest for daring to point out that Hannity was promoting scandal by openly and publicly opposing Church teaching on contraception) does not place highest priority on your issues. If they did, they would be spending their time attacking both McCain's and Romney's positions on social issues and lauding Huckabee's positions on those issues.

[GL]

Just to be clear, I understand that while Huckabee's heart is in the right place on helping working families, his proposed solutions reflect a poor grasp of economics, particularly his zany tax proposal which would hurt working families more than it would help them. None of these guys are perfect, or even close to perfect. As I have said before, it's a toss up as to who one should support and I am not criticizing anyone for choosing McCain or Romney over Huckabee. I am merely pointing out what Rush and his Little Mes are up to.

[Nick]

GL,

First let me establish my peace-and-love-Republican creds, having lost Fred I just filled in the Huckabee box on my ballot. I'm feeling guilty for not marking Fred anyway...but this is merely to establish my credentials.

Now lets get to your post:
With all due respect, I am not talking about the poor, I am talking about the working class. It now takes mom and dad working to make ends meet for these families and they now have no more than 2 kids (the average is less than 2), instead of the 3.5 their parents have. So, even with two parents working, they still cannot support as large a household as their parents did.

I think you're pursuing the wrong goal here. I have relatives that make a bare 25-30K a year and have, literally, thousands of dollars worth of XBox games. The wife, a very-very-very close relation of mine cooks meals once in a blue moon. Its not that they are not wealthy, they're effective rent-to-income ratio is less than 10%, but they haven't a clue how to *spend* money. Part of this is the problem of another very-very-very close relation of mine that did a lousy job of instructing her daughter about how to be a wise and well domesticated wife. We tend to forget that throughout history and through our modern era women spend almost all household income. They can allow or purchase for their hubbies food or games. We have chosen to, as a society, strip any hope of good ol' home education that will assist them in making the right choice.

A generation ago, the average household sent 10% of their income to make their house payment. Today, they send 30%.

I'm going to allow for the sake of argument that this is true. Might this also be the case because the purchasing power of the dollar for all other items has increased? That is your personal communication device is no longer a fifty pound radio. It is:
* An iPod
* A car stereo
* A home stereo
* A TV
* A cell phone
* A home phone
* A cell phone for the husband

And the whole list is cheaper than the old radio. Again, said relative has all of these things.

When I went to college 25 years ago, tuition was very low at state universities. Today, tuition increases have outstripped inflation for well over a decade, with no end in sight.

Again, might another cause explain this? For example a ridiculous increase in demand? We've convinced everybody that they have to go to school. Worse, its their right to go to school. This has caused a level of demand that was unheard of twenty-five years ago. We now require college degrees for clerks that could have gotten the job with a diploma.

And let's not forget, that it is largely working class families that are losing their homes to foreclosure.

Again, might the data be read differently? Those working class families you cite would most often be renters in the past. They couldn't have afforded a 20% down payment. We see them now in the loan crash because they are the easiest hit but they wouldn't have been there twenty five years ago at all. Also, more than a few investors have been hit hard by the foreclosure crash.

And sorry, but relative wealth does matter. There is a large and growing distance between what the upper middle and upper class make in income and what the working class does. That's not populist rhetoric, those are the facts.

I disagree. It is my responsibility to feed and cloth the poor. I can feed a poor person for close to $100-200 a year. Clothing, if I'm frugal can be for as little as $300-400 a year. This is not a happy life. The diet will be primarily dry goods, but it can be done, just like it was done for most of our history. I'll more than happily invite them to my table, and have done so, where the annualized cost of food is much higher.

However, I have never bought the poor a cell phone, tv, or computer(1) nor do I feel compelled to do so. As technology increases the accessibility of services, the gap will grow. It will grow because being poor no longer means starving and the wealthy have no responsibility to help the poor live in luxury.

On a more social friendly GOP

That at least I can agree with you on. I am probably a closet European Christian Democrat with a strong Neo-Con public life. It is by far preferable that we connect people with the potential for wealth. I'm not sure how to do that.

(1) I have instructed the poor in the use of computers. I spent some time trying to teach a young very bright but lazy fellow how to program. The West coast is still open to developers without degrees and he lived in the Silicon Valley. He unfortunately wouldn't apply himself.

[GL]

Nick,

Well, we voted for the same candidate at least. And like you, my preferred candidate, by a country mile, was Fred. It is no one's fault but his that he fizzled.

I also agree that many of the folks losing their homes should have been renters to begin with or, at least, should have waited until they could afford a hefty down payment before trying to buy a home. I also believe that government should have regulated the mortgage business more tightly, requiring some minimal percentage of down payment before any loan would be granted, limiting loan periods to no more than 30 years, and requiring even better credit standards for those wanting ARMs over those who wanted conventional loans. The situation was a disaster for the unsophisticated waiting to happen and I predicted as much several years ago. Further, the unrestrained lending practices led to a grossly overheated demand which pushed prices for homes well above sustainable levels in many areas, making a correction inevitable. This too was predictable and predicted.

I will agree that some working class folks spend money very unwisely. Many do not. And, worse, many of those of us in the middle and upper middle class flaunt our success in front of the working class instead of leading more modest lives like my parents' generation did even when they could have afford to have lived more openly luxurious lives. Or maybe that was just the way it was in the rural Midwest where I grew up. I read an article in the WSJ a few months ago about how Midwest farmers who are enjoying really good times because of commodity prices go out of their way to continue living modest lives, not wanting to show off for their neighbors who are still struggling. Were that everyone had this attitude.

[DGP]

>>And like you, my preferred candidate, by a country mile, was Fred. It is no one's fault but his that he fizzled.

Ahem. The voters might have contributed their small part.

[Nick]

DGP,

His campaign, having had some experience with it, was disorganized to say the least. He also blew it when he went after Huckabee rather than his friend McCain and the other frontrunner, Romney. That said, I'll cross my fingers and hope for a veep spot.

[DGP]

Nick,

I wholeheartedly agree. I objected to GL's phrasing, "no one's fault but his." If democracy is at all possible, it means popular responsibility for government. No one's off the hook, not even those who vote against the winners: There were always other possibilities, alternative candidates, unimplemented campaigns, etc., might-have-beens from which no citizen can absolve himself.

[GL]

I agree, DGP. My point was that Fred ran a very lackluster campaign. Had he not withdrawn, I would have voted for him nonetheless.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Judy,

I'll continue our off-line conversation about Swiftboats and McCain there.

As for Limbaugh, I've heard him at length several times. True, he's not Ann Coulter. But I think that Al Franken has made exactly one true statement in his life -- Rush is a big fat idiot (though Franken is a much thinner imbecile). Add "venal" and to that description as well. I have no use for the media rabble-rousers of either the Left or the Right.

And thanks to GL as always for his comments here as well.

[Judy K. Warner]

No betting on McCain, huh? Or is it illegal to bet on the internet?

[GL]

This will be my last post until Lent is over.

Per my earlier comments about the pressure on the working class and the need for Republicans to address their concerns if they expect to win, see Most middle class still can't buy a house: Prices have fallen but not by enough to make it possible for nurses, fireman or teachers to buy homes of their own says a new report, available at http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/29/real_estate/Housing_unaffordability_persists/index.htm.