I was bit disappointed with the discussion of Joe the Plumber in the last debate. But not because McCain chose to take from the discussion an issue that divided us: Should we “spread the wealth around” in a way that might seem be more equitable through a socialist-like redistribution of income? Nor was it because it propagated the fiction that there are lots of people just like us, teachers, fireman, and plumbers, who make $250,000 a year. I expected that. What disappointed me was that Obama didn’t take the opportunity to make a case for progressive taxation that was a foundation of the economic message in his book, The Audacity of Hope.
There are values that we all share. Values that define who we are as a nation: (1) The American Dream: that every American, no matter who they are or where they come from, can achieve a good life for their family it they work hard and play by the rules; (2) Fairness: Everyone should pay their fair share of the costs for the benefits they reap from our society; (3) We Are All in this Together: In America we rise and fall together. We don’t cut and run, abandoning those who stood by us in the social compact that binds us as a nation.
The case for asking Joe, or anyone else that rises far enough to make $250,000 a year, to pay more taxes than the rest of us has nothing to do with income equity and redistribution and everything to do with these basic values. Joe benefited from our educational system and from laws and regulations that kept the playing field level for people like him. Before he became successful, he couldn’t afford to fund these things from which he benefited as much as he can now. Does he really want to deny this same opportunity to those who, though no fault of their own, haven’t yet become as successful as he has?
Joe, because of his success, uses, and benefits from, more of the resources of our society than someone less successful. If you have seven houses, you benefit much more from the fire protection budget than someone with none. Joe has benefited more from the stable economic climate our military expenditures and economic regulations have provided. His fleet of vans and the chemicals he sends down drains cost us more as a society to clean up after than a teacher does. Does he really think it is fair to not pay his fair share for the systems he benefits from?
If Joe were to become old or disabled, lose his business, or face a catastrophic illness in his family, we as a society would not abandon him. We are only as good as we treat the least of our brothers, and only as strong as the weakest of our neighbors. He depends upon his neighbors being well off enough to buy his services. His quality of life depends on the people in his neighborhood having enough hope to keep them from turning to a life of crime or drugs. He is not an island: his customers, the people who serve him when he goes out to dinner, who bag his groceries, and valet park his car all affect him and make up his community. Now that he has made it, does he really want to abandon them? Will he really cut and run on the people with whom he lives? We are all in this together.
I thought Obama’s performance was good enough. But what I really would have liked to have heard in this time when fear is overpowering hope, what I really would have like to have seen, was Barack Obama’s calm face and warm eyes looking our from my TV screen and saying: “In America, anyone can become Joe the plumber. In America, if you play by the rules, anyone make a safe home for their family. In America, even in this time of trouble, we are all in this together. This isn’t just in Red America. This isn’t just in Blue America. It’s just America, and these are the values that define us.”
There has been a lot of ink spilled on conservative blogs about the recent gaffe in Israel where Obama claimed that the Senate Banking committee is “my committee.” Here is the whole quote: “Just this past -- this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon.” Here
Obama’s Camp has explained that he meant to say “my bill,” since he authored a provision (S. 1430) included in the bill on divestment.
Here is the page from his Senate site on the provision announcing that the bill made it out of committee: http://obama.senate.gov/press/080717-senate_banking/ .
Here is information on Obama’s provision: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1430 .
This seems to show pretty clearly both that the gaffe was an innocent slip of the tongue, and, more importantly, that Obama is serious about being tough with Iran and that the success of this bill is evidence of his action on this issue. This is in stark contrast to the McCain’s intentional misstatement of the timeline on the Surge and Sunni awakening (from which he as yet to back down)or his campaign’s claim that Obama had nothing to do with the passage of this bill. All of this merely takes attention away from the substantive debates about what to do in the future about Iran and Iraq.
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Here are examples of some of the hysteria about this gaffe:
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2008/07/24/obama-gaffe-o-meter-barack-obama-claimed-he-is-a-member-of-the-us-senate-banking-committee/
http://www.gop.com/Blog/Read.aspx?GUID=1189a50a-ee9a-47c8-b322-af428fbbd6ec
This blog entry does a nice job of tracking down the truth, and the following CNN entry at least updates the original story with the truth. I haven’t seen updates from any of the other outlets that love to report these gaffes.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/barack_obama_gaffe.html
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/23/obama-incorrectly-claims-membership-of-senate-committee/
Barack Obama won my support when he came on the Daily Show in August of 2007 and said “What people are frustrated about in politics is that so much of what we talk about, so much of what we say: It’s not true. People know it’s not true. All the insiders understand that we’re just game playing. And, in the meantime, we’ve got these hugely serious problems, which are true.”(Appearance on Daily Show, August 23 2007, http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/66569/detail/ ) In today’s political space, frank discussion of the real problems that face us seems impossible because saying the truth about these problems can be politically dangerous. In a world where a significant number of voters have an acquaintance with the candidates based only upon the superficial appearance of a few brief media encounters, the appearance becomes more important than the reality.
This explains much of the recent back and forth during Obama’s trip to Iraq about the success of the Surge. John McCain recently misstated (whether on purpose or accidentally) the timing of the Surge and the Sunni Awakening, in response to Obama’s claim that it may be the Sunni Awakening, a change of allegiance of the Sunni chiefs, that caused much of the reduction in violence in Iraq, rather than the Surge. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ilan-goldenberg/not-a-gaffe-a-fundaemtnal_b_114394.html ) McCain falsely claimed that the Surge came before, and made possible, the Sunni Awakening. The truth here takes a back seat to the appearances in the “I was right and you were wrong about the Surge” game. You could see the same forces at work in the Katie Couric CBS interview with Obama. Couric relentlessly tried to get Obama to admit that he was wrong about the success of the surge. While Obama made valiant attempts to avoid the appearance of admitting that he was wrong about the Surge, or of failing to credit the work of the troops during the Surge, he, unlike McCain, was careful in trying to situate this appearance game in the larger strategic truths about the war on terror. Almost certainly, both McCain and Obama agree that both the Sunni Awakening and the Surge played a role in the reduction of violence levels in Iraq, and the actual proportions of their contributions is of no real importance apart from the appearance it presents about who wins the “I was right about the Surge” game. Two recent articles by Howard Fineman (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25800799/ ) and Thomas Friedman (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/opinion/23friedman.html?ref=opinion ) have argued that even if McCain was right about the Surge, that the conditions have changed in Iraq so as to make Obama’s strategic position to be the correct one even to the Iraqis and to the Bush and McCain camps.
The standard procedure in politics has become to ignore the details and context of a set of remarks and to attempt to spin it or present in a way that casts an unfavorable appearance to someone not playing close enough attention to see the underlying and obvious truth of the remarks when seen in context. (See for example the recent attack by the McCain camp on Obama’s remarks in Israel about the Holocaust: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/23/mccain-camp-attacks-obama_n_114486.html ) The callous and cynical disregard for truth and for the voter that this strategy reveals hardly qualifies a politician as fit to govern. To the contrary, in the Bush era, where political campaigning becomes the paradigm even for governing, it threatens to render a politician incapable of ever grasping and responding to the central truths that define the problems that face us. What makes Obama remarkable as a politician is his thoughtful insistence upon bringing the discussion back to the underlying central truths that shape the issues, his ability to get to the heart of the matter and talk frankly about the facts that define a situation, even when a statement of these truths can be taken out of context in a way that casts an unfavorable appearance. He did this in his interview with Couric on the Surge, in his speech on Race, and in his rejection of the gas tax holiday.
Apart from demonstrating his superior strategic judgment on foreign policy to those who are paying close enough attention to follow the arguments and distinguish the appearances from the reality, Obama’s performance on the recent trip has demonstrated an even more important qualification for leadership: a clear and compelling regard for the truth. He is a new kind of politician, one that sees political reality as defined by the truth, by the facts that control our destiny; while the politicians with which we have become familiar see the truth as defined by politics. Every new attack draws the contrast more starkly. Obama’s careful, thoughtful insistence that we come back to the basic realities that govern our problems is like a breath of fresh air. The truth will be nice for a change.
