Reason Magazine - Contributors

The Perils of Hoping Against Hope

info@reason.com (Terry Michael) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:30:00 EDT

For free market and free mind types resigned to the political system we've got, not the one we want, Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) cynical choice of Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) as his number two sends a serious wake-up call. Never place much faith in a politician with no discernible political philosophy.

That may seem obvious to most libertarians, who are disposed to seeing career politicians as hacks representing a primal threat to liberty. But for pragmatists like me, who believe there's little choice but to use the give-and-take of a two-party system to squeeze as much personal freedom as possible from conventional politics, the decision by the ingenue from Illinois to choose the senior windbag from Delaware is a cold-water-in-the-face reminder that ideas, not men, are what matter most in determining whether the coercive power of the state constrains or allows individual liberty.

Strip away all the slogans about hope and change. Forget the youthful energy unleashed by a perfectly managed campaign. Set aside the historic opportunity to select a black man as leader of a majority white country. In the end, the single most important factor that moved Democrats to select Barack Obama was his claim that he had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq from the outset, when his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton, had endorsed it.

In his first test of leadership, however, Sen. Obama tapped the man whose failure of judgment as the Democratic Party's front man on foreign affairs led congressional Democrats into collusion with, rather than principled opposition to, the neoconservatives and their criminal enterprise in Iraq. That decision reveals a politician without a compass.

Know thyself is a pretty good rule of thumb for judging leadership potential. By choosing Biden, Obama tells us he doesn't have much of a clue about himself. Obama's fumbling attempt to balance his perceived weakness on foreign policy demonstrates a pitiful failure of nerve from a candidate who claimed he had solid judgment while the rest of his party exhibited wrong-headed experience. Obama's own choice underscores the problem a large number of voters have with the junior (now apparently very junior) senator from Illinois.

The obvious pick for Obama would have been someone who brought synergy to his ticket, a new face, rather than an old Washington hack favored by the party establishment and by neocons like columnist David Brooks, who wrote glowing praise of Biden just a few days before he was selected. Which isn't surprising, since Biden heads the neocon-lite wing of congressional Democrats, yet tried to back-pedal from his war support in a vain attempt to win the presidential nomination.

Of course, pragmatist that I remain, the alternative to Obama in November is even worse news for the republic: A career militarist infatuated with war-making; the co-author of the massive assault on free political speech known as McCain-Feingold; and a septuagenarian whose mental acuity should be of real concern to voters.

At least Obama's election by a mostly white electorate would end racial politics as we know it, striking a death-blow to the victimology practiced by the affirmative action reparationists who focus their narrow minds on identity groups rather than celebrate individual rights and opportunity.

And, as the Not-George-Bush candidate, the glamorous young black man would doubtless help restore America's reputation around the world.

But can a jilted supporter like me hold his nose and actually vote for Obama? Anger—more like fury—seized me this past weekend and told me no, at least for the time being. In the meantime, my advice to less practical libertarians: ideas do matter. Go with a protest vote for Bob Barr or sit this one out, if that's where your heart and your head lead you.

A former DNC press secretary, Terry Michael directs the non-partisan Washington Center for Politics & Journalism and writes opinion at his "libertarian Democrat" blog, terrymichael.net.

Obama as the End of Identity Politics as We've Known Them

info@reason.com (Terry Michael) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:00:00 EDT

We are nearing the end of American identity politics as we know it.

Bearing that gift to those who prize the individual over the tribal is a messenger who shared a Hyde Park neighborhood with Milton Friedman, though with a public record that suggests he is more statist than classical liberal.

But Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), can’t be categorized that simply. He is, rather, an intellectual and ideological work in progress. Not stuck in cable-babble caricatured time, he may be traveling the circuitous path many “liberal-tarians”—or libertarian Democrats like me—treaded as we grew and found our way back to the self-reliant values that informed our pluralistic democracy. We lost those values in the Industrial and Progressive eras, when advocates of centralized planning prized society’s perfection over individual liberty. While Obama’s positions don’t exactly channel the Cato Institute, his departure from usual Democratic Party left-liberalism is reflected in the left’s suspicion of him for not having all the 162-point plans of Sen. Hillary Clinton, or spewing the syrupy populism of trial lawyer to the underclass, Sen. John Edwards.

To me, this suggests the beginnings of a journey away from the Great Society mind-set of the Democratic Party. I was a 1960s teenage political junkie who wanted to complete the New Deal, with wealth redistribution and “social justice” managed from Washington. I morphed into a 1980s DLC centrist, embracing mushy “progressive” politics as a halfway house from statist liberalism. Now in my own sixties, I have rediscovered the founder of my party, Thomas Jefferson, in an information era in which we are desktop-empowered to seek our own way and make our own choices, much like the agrarian age inventors of our political system.

I can’t claim to know exactly where Obama is on this ideological continuum. He may not even know. But in his personal evolution, he has moved from the white world of boy Barry in Hawaii and Indonesia, to left-liberal enclaves at Ivy League colleges engaging with young conservatives, to a kind of noblesse oblige organizer bearing the white man's burden (half, in his case) on the streets of Chicago. He went from a young state legislator too aloof, in too much of a hurry for his colleagues in Springfield, to a failed U.S. House candidacy against former Black Panther Bobby Rush, hobbled by an inability to translate the language of the Harvard Law Review to the vernacular of the street. From that latter experience, he drew lessons allowing him to grow as a politician, hearing and incorporating some of the style of the black preacher—including the one who was to later cause him so much grief. He returned to Springfield after that failed congressional bid a different man.

He seems to be a grounded but still searching, an intellectually curious 46-year-old, with a breadth and depth of life experience that will help him make informed choices in a pluralistic democracy that demands its leaders split a lot of differences.

Compromise is a word doctrinaire libertarians find more appalling than appealing. But there's a lot that is appealing in Barack Obama.

Look at his health care plan. While it certainly won’t satisfy free-market purists, it relies on private insurance coverage, encourages portability and choice, promotes competition, and allows purchase of prescription drugs from other countries. It wasn’t by accident he proposed fewer government mandates for purchasing coverage—and was pummeled for it in every debate by the politician who, back in 1993, seemed to seek personal control of a big chunk of our economy. Though drugs and crime can be political minefields for an urban black candidate who has acknowledged marijuana and cocaine use, Obama has no hard line positions in favor of neo-prohibition and has made promising comments about pulling back from America’s status as one of the world’s most prolific jailers. Immediately, his election will restore America's reputation around the world as an opponent of interventionist elective wars.

But perhaps most important to libertarians, his election will put the Jesse Jacksons, the Al Sharptons, and the white identity politics liberals out of business. No longer will they be able to peddle victimology or mau-mau their way through the political landscape, demanding diversity training, minority contracts, or other tribal reparations from bigots they find behind every bush. The myth of unassimilable “minorities” dies when a majority white nation selects a leader “of color,” just as religious social distance was diminished when a majority Protestant country chose a Catholic a half-century before.

There is no perfect leader in the wings. I'll settle for one whose election will signal the end of the world of racial politics as we know it. And, with a nod to R.E.M., I'll feel fine about it.

Terry Michael is director of the non-partisan Washington Center for Politics & Journalism. He came to Washington in 1975 as press secretary to newly elected progressive Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), was a press spokesman (1983-87) for the Democratic National Committee, and now offers “thoughts from a libertarian Democrat” at his blog.

Who Says the Surge Is Working?

info@reason.com (Terry Michael) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:30:00 EDT

The surge is smirking.

When it comes Iraq, neoconservative true believers have been allowed to set the bar of "success" below ground level. In this, they're aided by media siding with power instead of challenging it, all while congressional Democrats cower in their cloak rooms.

Approaching the fifth anniversary of "mission accomplished," we are a few improvised explosive devices away from the moment a 4,000th young American will die on some desert roadside.

As that new level of tragedy looms, far too many Democrats remain frightened by their "weak-on-defense" Cold War shadows, apparitions raised not just by the no-time-to-surrender bluster of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, but by the neocon-lite faction of the Democratic Party itself.

"Third way" Democrats lost their national security minds somewhere around 1985, when the World War II generation played the role of swing voters. Promoting "progressive internationalism"—interventionism by another name—Beltway-based operatives like those at the Democratic Leadership Council hallucinate a political center of "Reagan Democrats," who in reality disappeared with the Berlin wall. The middle of the electorate is now made up of generally anti-war Baby Boomers, who came of political age in the 1960s and Vietnam.

It's difficult to report on a debate not taking place, especially when an influential rump group of the "opposition" colludes instead of opposes. Except for a few pieces in left-liberal journals and blogs, Democrats have simply allowed neoconservative propagandists to define the terms of what has become a one-sided monologue about "victory," voiced by elective warriors who employed deception about phantom weapons of mass destruction to market a multi-trillion dollar travesty; claimed a paper tiger thug was our enemy, when the real culprits of the 9/11 attacks still hide in caves, not spider holes; imagined Iraqi embrace of pluralistic democracy, in a tribal culture with no indigenous movement for it; and fielded an imperial American occupying force, drawing jihadists to Baghdad while fomenting civil war that raged outside a surreal "Green Zone," as our puppet government dithered.

Instead of making a case against the war, congressional Democrats shift their poll-driven attention to "the economy, stupid." Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who provided initial anti-war leadership, muzzle themselves with half-hearted statements like one she made on television February 10. "The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time...to bring reconciliation to Iraq. They have not done that." But then, she hastened to add: "The troops have succeeded, God bless them." So which is it, failure or success? Democratic "leaders" try to have it both ways, reminiscent of John Kerry in 2004.

The "liberal" newspapers which could have challenged the surge have used it either to justify their own support for the war, or have averted their eyes. The Washington Post's befuddled neocon editorial page engages in tortuous revisionism, pointing a finger at everyone except itself for failures of the war it helped cheerlead.

The New York Times, theoretically anti-war, fails even to attempt rational argument against the surge's "success," and yields precious column space to an architect of the war and editor of its propaganda organ, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

Taking cues from the neocon play book, cable-babbling correspondents and print reporters ask simple-minded questions of squishy Democrats, phrased something like this one from CNN's Joe Johns at January's Democratic debate in South Carolina: "Now that the surge is succeeding, how are you going to counter John McCain's case for the war?"

So the war rages on. Weak-kneed Democrats fail to stand against it, and Republicans act like the jilted lover in British singer Dido's "White Flag," taking comfort in denial: "I will go down with this ship. I won't throw my hands up in surrender. There'll be no white flag above my door. I'm in love, and always will be."

The neocons will never give up their love affair with a fatal fantasy. And they'll take the rest of us down with their ship, as long as timid Democrats and a compliant press let them.

A former DNC press secretary, Terry Michael directs the non-partisan Washington Center for Politics & Journalism and writes opinion at his "libertarian Democrat" blog, terrymichael.net.

Where Are The Democrats?

info@reason.com (Terry Michael) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:36:00 EST

It's hard to get out of a deal with the devil. That's the congressional Democrats' dilemma as they continue to treat the Iraq war as a speed bump on their pathway to the perks of restored power.

Take Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Asked on one of the Sunday venues for pompous pontificators how he would respond to any attempt by President Bush to escalate the war in Iraq (to "surge," if you prefer it in Newspeak), the Democratic "leader" on foreign policy responded, "There's not much I can do about it."

This is a man who sees a future president during his morning look in the mirror. Sadly, the glass reflects an empty suit who embodies the congressional Democrats' decision to reduce action on Iraq to a political calculus appropriate for the highway appropriations bill, not a moral imperative to challenge a policy that has sent thousands of twenty-somethings to their deaths in the desert.

You certainly can do something about it, Senator. It's called leadership. You rise on the Senate floor. You say you were out of your mind to write a blank check for this hideous abuse of American military power. And then you propose immediate withdrawal, just slow enough to maximize the safety of the 135,000 young men and women you helped put in harm's way by your collusion with this elective war. You do what Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon had the guts to do last month, stopping just short of accurately labeling this public policy obscenity a criminal enterprise.

I have lived in the 10 surreal square miles of D.C. for more than three decades, usually playing by the rules of decorum dictated by the political and media classes, first as a young congressional aide, later as a national party committee and presidential campaign operative, and now as an aging educator of journalism students who want to spend their careers interpreting politics.

But like millions of other Americans, I can no longer contain the primal scream I want to direct at the members of my party who declined to engage in a real debate in the run-up to this completely avoidable misjudgment of old men and women. Nonexistent, and certainly nonthreatening, WMDs. A secularist paper-tiger dictator, despised by the Islamist lunatics behind the September 11 attacks. A tribal culture with zero indigenous movement for pluralistic democracy.

All of those things were knowable when congressional Democrats such as Biden had an opportunity to stop this madness before it started. Some of them actually shared the neoconservative pretensions of a new American imperialism. But most just quaked in their permanent campaign boots, fearing being labeled Cold War-style liberal wimps. They averted their eyes and closed their mouths instead of acting like a responsible opposition party.

Now, trying to finesse their way out of their Faustian bargain, Democrats engage in a transparent anti-war vamp, with limp proposals to implement the 9/11 commission report and half-measures opposing escalation. And they receive aid and comfort from misguided and timid editorial pages, like those of The Washington Post and The New York Times, which also colluded with power in the run-up to the Iraq war instead of challenging it and which now circumscribe discourse with the narrow frame of how best to muddle through rather than promote an honest debate about whether to stay or go.

Where are the Gordon Smiths in the Democratic Party? Where are the politicians of conviction? Where are the institutions of media power with the courage to say the emperor has no cowboy boots, no jeans, no garments at all-just a hideous, stubborn smirk that is making this country ill and squandering our reputation around the globe?

The only place I can find truth speaking to power is on a cable TV comedy channel, not in the chambers of what used to be called the greatest deliberative body in the world. Is anybody out there willing to lead?

Terry Michael, former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, directs the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism and blogs at terrymichael.net. A version of this article also appeared in the Washington Times.