Let's Talk About Beer

Frank Rich writes today about the Beer Summit, President Obama, Sgt. Crowley, Prof. Gates, and Vice President Biden having some beers together at the White House. I agree with Rich, as I usually do. His main point is that powerful white people can't deal with the fact that this country is becoming increasingly diverse. Right.

But reading it, I realized I had read a great deal of commentary about the "Beer Summit," including some obnoxious defenses of Crowley from some right-wingers on various blog boards. What I hadn't done was read an account of the event itself. So I found the NY Times's live-blogging record of the event. The best quote of the day was from Gates:

“We hit it off right from the very beginning,” Professor Gates said. Laughing, he added, “When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”

Gates also looked to the future:

“I said we both had been cast as characters in other peoples’ narratives that we couldn’t control,” Professor Gates said. “If we take control of our own stories, we can take control of narrative.”

I feel an odd sense of relief reading that, because it's one of the only times in my life that an idea vaguely reminiscent of postmodern literary theory may actually prove to be useful. Gates puts it well, but he doesn't really sound like much of an elitist, Harvard professor when he says it. It's very helpful that he's right.

What would that narrative look like? It's not that hard to figure out, and Gates again explained it well:

“Through an accident of fate this guy and I are linked together,” he said, “and the question is how can he help end racial profiling and how can I help members of my community be sensitive to the concerns of the police? If we can do that, then James Crowley and I will have taken control of our lives and our peculiar experience together and move it out of a Tom Wolfe novel and into a positive impact.”

This began as a dispute, two men diametrically opposed, even violently opposed. We have heard a great deal of noise and angst and inflammatory rhetoric and denunciations of the other side (by both sides). All of that obscures a larger truth: both sides really do ultimately want the same thing. Cops, at their best, want to keep society safe. African-Americans, at their best, want to be safe.

The noise also obscures the fact that the two most powerful men involved in this drama - Gates and Obama - are African-American. This ended peacefully, almost comically. Those facts - that the powerful, elite men are black, and that it ended well - are indications of something good: there has been a great deal of progress on this front. The fact that it was a controversy at all is a positive sign, because it means that people are worried. The white cop really, really does not want to be seen as a racist. That's a good thing. The black man who was arrested was released quickly. That's a good thing. The present is painful because the past is painful. But the present is less painful than the past, and the future will be better because of the present.

But we are already in the future. The arrest took place on July 16, which is now last month. The narrative has already changed.

Naturally, there has been all kinds of discussion about what kind of beer each of them had, and the symbolism of those choices. Ta-Nehisi Coates linked to James Fallows, who linked to another post on The Atlantic Wire, which linked to an article in Slate that examined the history of beer in presidential politics.

None of which had anything to do with racial profiling.

I'm not sure if Obama intended this, but inviting Gates and Crowley to the White House had the great effect of shifting the conversation. Is it just me, or are many people looking for an excuse to talk about beer rather than racial profiling or elitist Harvard professors? Not everybody. Frank Herbert, to his eternal credit, does not let go of these topics. Talking about the beer rather is one way to talk around the history of racial profiling, rather than addressing it directly. But it's also a way to talk about what they Gates and Crowley have in common. At the very least, they both had a beer with the President and Vice President of the United States.

I'm not a big beer drinker, but I have learned a huge amount about it from my best friend from high school, who brews an incredible range of beers at a brewpub in Michigan. One thing I have learned is that there is a huge amount of - oh yeah, I'm going to use this word - diversity in beers, even more so today, with the proliferation of brew pubs and microbrews. Which diversity is appreciated by many, many Americans. Don't think I need to push that line of analysis much farther.

One fact that has been totally overlooked in this brouhaha is that there was a very significant development in this area - much, much more important than what happened in Boston - out here in LA recently. The LAPD had been operating under a consent decree, imposed by a Federal judge, which required the department to reform a number of its practices. The decree was recently lifted, because the judge decided that the LAPD had, in fact, changed for the better. It's not entirely gone; there is still some supervision, particularly on the issue of racial profiling. The ACLU is not completely convinced. But this is clear and concrete evidence that, in the country's second-largest city, the future has begun to arrive. Even without beer.

This would be a good time not to panic

Finally - FINALLY! someone in the news media gets Barack Obama. At long last. Not too surprisingly, it's Bob Herbert.

There is always a tendency to underestimate Barack Obama. We are inclined in the news media to hyperventilate over every political or policy setback, no matter how silly or insignificant, while Mr. Obama has shown again and again that he takes a longer view.

There was no way, for example, that the Daschle flap was going to derail the forward march of a man who had survived the Rev. Jeremiah Wright fiasco. It’s early, but there are signs that Mr. Obama may be the kind of president who is incomprehensible to the cynics among us — one who is responsible and mature, who is concerned not just with the short-term political realities but also the long-term policy implications.

The parallels between Obama and Reagan occasionally bear revisiting. I think liberals still underestimate Reagan, even after he's long dead. Conservatives are going to be underestimating Obama for a very long time. That, of course, is fine with me.

As strong as the parallels with Reagan are - consistently underestimated by opponents, confounding cynics, radically transforming political assumptions - the contrasts with George W. Bush are just as striking. I love Herbert's description of Obama as inscrutable to cynics because he is responsible and mature, capable of thinking about policy in the long-term. Bush, of course, is none of these, but many people have not yet made the adjustment from thinking about Bush to thinking about Obama. It's actually not that unusual for a political leader to be mature and responsible. Much as I didn't like her, that's a good description of Maggie Thatcher.

I've read several columns and blog posts worrying about Obama's agenda, his momentum, his ability to push through his program. The man has been president for three weeks. He's got at least three years, eleven months, and one week to go. I'm not interested in being on an emotional rollercoaster for that entire time.

This would be a good time not to panic. Obama won a decisive victory. He has large majorities in Congress. The last time we had a Democratic president with majorities in the House and Senate was when Clinton was first elected in 92. Then the Republican took control of Congress in 1994, completely blindsiding Clinton, and making like very, very difficult for him. The Republicans are not going to do that to Obama. They are not going to retake either the House or Senate for a very long time.

Eyes on the prize, folks. Obama and the Dems compromised to get the stimulus through the Senate, but that's normal. Republicans fought it as hard as they did because they know that this is not an ordinary piece of legislation, or even an ordinary stimulus package. With this bill, Obama achieves what Reagan did with the Kemp-Roth bill in 1981 - he resets the priorities of government. When Reagan cut taxes, he made that the defining issue for the government, and Democrats could mostly just react. By spending a huge amount of money to get things done, Obama has accomplished a shift of similarly tectonic proportions. Yes, there are some tax cuts in the package, but the emphasis is on using the government's power to create jobs, solve problems, get things done.

With this package, Obama changed the terms of the discussion. It is no longer "should the government intervene," but "how should the government intervene." This is one of the first manifestations of Obama's victory. Republicans are simply terrified.

But Democrats should not be. There will be many, many more such manifestations of Obama's victory to come. Obama knows what he is doing, and he is - once again, the beautiful contrast with W. - capable of changing course quickly. Tom Daschle's tax problems got a lot of publicity because there wasn't much else to talk about. Once the stimulus package passes, and money starts to flow, and projects start to be funded, and potholes are filled, the terms of the conversation will shift again, and this time it will be to Obama's turf. Republicans are hoping that the stimulus package won't work because they hope Obama fails - because they are scared of what will happen if he succeeds. Which is why they are panicking. Which is why Democrats shouldn't.

Bob Herbert is willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, cynicism isn't always the best approach when dealing with Obama. Mature and responsible adults are not all that uncommon in America - there are millions of them. Many of whom see themselves in Obama.

This would be a good time not to panic. You know what other times would be good times not to panic? Every day for the next four to eight years.

Bob Herbert's first Obama column

Pundits in the mainstream media take a fair amount of abuse. I thot it would be nice to take a look back at someone who got something right.

This is the first line of Bob Herbert's first column about Barack Obama, published on June 4, 2004, before Obama even gave that famous speech at the Democratic convention.

Remember the name Barack Obama. You'll be hearing it a lot as this election season unfolds.

This is his last paragraph:

However this election goes, Mr. Obama's effort to connect in a more than superficial way with people across ethnic, economic and geographic lines should serve as a template for future campaigns in both parties. Politics that are increasingly ruthless in a country that is increasingly diverse is a recipe for disaster.

Good job, Bob.

Mr. Herbert is disappointed in Mr. Obama

Bob Herbert is disappointed that Barack Obama has allegedly changed his position on a number of issues.

Bob Herbert is angry. This is not even remotely surprising. Bob Herbert is very often angry.

I find this idea that Obama is "lurching" to the center patently absurd. On the death penatly and gun control, he has been consistent; he supports the death penalty for extreme cases (which I find surprising and disappointing) and he believes that the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to own guns. I intend to write about both of those at greater length later, but for now I want to point out that the president's position on those is actually mostly irrelevant: most death penalty and gun control legislation is passed at the state level.

Bob Herbert would be well advised to pay attention to this article in his own newspaper:

Barack Obama had heard quite enough of the complaints that he is pirouetting, leaping, lurching even, toward the political center.

He is at heart, he told a crowd in suburban Atlanta, a pretty progressive guy who just happens to pack along a complicated world view.

“Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he said. “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”

What I think has liberals riled up is the discovery that Obama does not have the assumed liberal positions on these issues. He has not changed; what changed was that people started paying attention to these issues, mostly because of a couple of Supreme Court decisions, and suddenly they discovered that they disagreed with him.

Welcome to democracy, folks.

I find it bizarre that people would express such profound disappointment at such an early stage of the campaign. The man has not even won election yet. Hold your fire and keep your powder dry, people, and save the outrage for the big fights, when he's actually trying to get legislation passed. Right now, people like Bob Herbert sound like they are crying wolf.

I think one problem too many liberals have is that they are simply too accustomed to automatically criticizing politicians, so their knee-jerk response when something happens that they don't agree with is to wail and moan and make grand pronouncements. You wonder how these people make it through the day.

I think Obama should propose legislation mandating prescriptions of Valium for all liberal political commentators. So they can learn to chill out.

Another problem is that too many liberals simply have no experience with a president, or even a major politician, that they can really trust. They're so used to being profoundly disappointed, they don't know how to deal with trivial disappointments.

On the big issues, like withdrawing from Iraq or achieving universal health care, Obama has not wavered. He believes that we can withdraw troops from Iraq at a rate of 1 to 2 brigades a month, and that at that pace, we can have all troops out in 16 months. That is the message that he has been sending on this issue ever since the campaign began. On health care, he hasn't wavered at all.

Here's some more perspective. I am strongly opposed to the death penalty, and had two internships in Washington, DC, opposing it. I'm also in favor of gun control. But neither of those two issues has ever directly affected me, and, God willing, neither of them ever will. But health care affects me constantly.

By far the biggest issue that I have with Mr. Herbert's column is that the idea that Obama is moving to the center and flip-flopping on key issues is part of the Republican's attacks. And the worst possible thing that Bob Herbert can do for Barack Obama is to perpetuate John McCain's ridiculous attacks on him.

Bob Herbert nails the Clintons

I've been resisting commenting on Hillary's comment about how her support comes from hard-working white Americans, because I feel like I have been beating up on her, and I would like to be gracious as this comes to a close.

But Bob Herbert puts it perfectly. This is Hillary's original comment, in USA Today:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Charlie Rangel, the man who first suggested to Hillary that she run for Senate in New York and a diehard supporter, was just a little disappointed:

“I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”

The first problem is that she implies that somehow there is something different about how hard-working Americans are white Americans. She doesn't say anything explicit, but it's a strange association. As if Asian Americans aren't hard-working Americans? She's supposed to be ultra-competent and very smart, but this is not a good way to express yourself if you want to be president.

There are two ways to look at the charge that Obama's support among white working class people is weakening: either that is his fault, or their fault. If it's his fault, that means that he's not communicating with them effectively, or at least not as effectively as Hillary is. But if it's their fault, then they are judging him as somehow not their kind of candidate. The injection of race makes it sound as if they are not willing to support an African American candidate.

Here's where Herbert nails it, and writes what I have been thinking:

But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

I've known racist white people, a few scattered here and there. But I know far more white people, of all classes and backgrounds, who are not racist, and understand that racism is wrong. The vast, vast majority of white people that I have known think that. Even, what do you know, working class people without college degrees. Partially because many of the white working class people I have worked with worked with working class black people. And, as colleagues often do, they usually ended up getting along and respecting each other.

What's amazing about this is that at this point, several days later, Hillary has not apologized for this comment, which implies that she has no clue what a faux pas it is. The theme of Herbert's column is that the Clintons have no class, particularly when it comes time to leave. He recounts several incidents at the end of Bill's tenure that I had forgotten about or ignored. Which brings up another problem: by continuing her campaign, Hillary gives the press and her opponents ever more excuses to bring up embarassing moments or inconvenient facts from Bill's Presidency that the rest of us have tried to forget. She keeps saying that she has been vetted. But that implies that she has also been acquitted, that her sins have been forgiven. No, they haven't. Some of us tried to forgive, and we tried to forget. Now I will never do either.

I was one of those people who defended Clinton from his critics on the left. I don't hate the DLC or moderate or centrist Democrats. But I think, in the final analysis, I have to agree with Bob Herbert:

The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

Bob Herbert on Jeremiah Wright

I'm not a huge fan of Bob Herbert. I respect him for his passion and willingness to fight for what he believes in, but he's not the most interesting columnist around - too often I find myself reading his columns and knowing exactly what he's going to say. But sometimes I don't.

Today was one of those days. He has expressed some disappointment with Barack Obama, but would obviously be thrilled if Obama won the presidency. So his criticism is usually from the perspective of a concerned friend. Today, however, his target was Jeremiah Wright, and Herbert was not happy.

The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

Herbert makes it crystal clear that he thinks Wright is acting like a narcissistic fool, preening for the cameras, all at Obama's expense.

This may be one of the benefits of this controversy for Obama - it is going to force African American moderates, like Herbert, to come out of the woodwork and denounce people like Wright. Not that Herbert would be coming out of the woodwork - he's got a fairly strong record to run on. But denouncing Wright will make it clear that Obama is right - it's time to move beyond the polarization left over from the 60's, and there are lots of people like Bob Herbert - deeply aware of and concerned about the legacy of racism in this country - who nonetheless will side with white people and "mainstream America" over a divisive figure like Jeremiah Wright.

Which disagreement might be a new experience for a lot of white people. Too many people see Jeremiah Wright and assume that he does, in fact, speak for the black church. This may be a great opportunity to Obama to make it clear that there are literally millions of people who agree with him, but not Jeremiah Wright, on some very important issues.