Obama's Font

In a presidential campaign, no detail is too small not to be subject of an article in a major American newspaper. The LA Times, in the "Image" section of its Sunday edition (a section dedicated to all things superficial but somehow fascinating), devoted an entire page to the question of which fonts the various campaigns have adopted. Hillary uses "New Baskerville," which is "commonly used by book publishers, law firms and universities," and has its roots in a font developed in 1757. Not exactly cutting edge. McCain uses Optima, described as "classic, quirky, elite and just a bit old-fashioned." Just like guess who!

But Obama, of course, is the hippest. His font, Gotham (just a smidgen bit of irony there that it's also another name for New York) is only seven years old. The latest and greatest in the world of typography!

John D. Berry, author of a series of books on typography, calls Gotham the font of 2008. "It's the hot one," he said. In a discussion of presidential branding on NPR's "On the Media," Gotham garnered praise for looking classy and clean with one commentator likening it to an Armani suit.

The Armani comparison may be a bit much. But it's another sign of Obama getting it right. A great politician knows that it's not enough to talk about the big picture and get the vision thing right; you have to sweat the small details. Particularly the fine print.

Democratic Candidates and Technological Metaphors

The NY Times proposes a technological metaphor and asks "Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?" It's not hard to see the analogy - Obama is young and hip, Clinton is the establishment candidate.

But I think a better analogy is between the candidates and search engines. In this comparison, Clinton is Yahoo and Obama is Google. I like both sites and I use email at both. I started out at Hotmail (which I still use), switched to Yahoo, and just recently started using Google. The differences are clear. Yahoo is superior to Hotmail, which feels a little creaky at this point, but Gmail is much better than Yahoo (except that Gmail, for reasons that seem to be utterly inexplicable, does not use folders. It uses "labels" to sort emails. I find this very frustrating.)

Clinton and Yahoo are both products of the 90's. They were both insurgents once upon a time. Both have become, in a very short time, the embodiment of a traditional way of doing things. Obama and Google, on the other hand, are both products of the 21st century. Both came from nowhere to challenge the established order.

Clinton and Yahoo both made the mistake of taking their supporters for granted, and not empowering them. I like Yahoo for a lot of things. I buy all my domain names through it, because it's ridiculously easy. I once bought dingbathermeneutics.com because I thot that sounded cool. But this blog is hosted at Blogger, which is owned by Google. I use it because I tried to set up a blog on Yahoo, and ended up feeling totally overwhelmed by the technical details. Blogger makes maintaining a blog very easy.

Clinton and Yahoo have both concentrated on media rather than technical superiority and executing a superior strategy. Hillary assumed that the air campaign, i.e. advertising, would win her the nomination. Obama, the former community organizer, understood that having people knocking on doors in their neighborhoods and making phone calls for you is vastly more effective than just paying for ads. His ground game, which requires more attention to detail, is better. Yahoo made the same mistake that Clinton did - they hired Terry Semel, a movie studio executive, to run the company. The Yahoo home page is chockablock with media items that visitors can click on and watch or read. It's a good strategy - I occasionally click on things I see there. And Hillary's strategy would have been a good one as well - if Barack Obama hadn't had a better one.

Google's strategy is obviously different just from the home page, which is almost pristine. No clutter or mess there! Unless you have an iGoogle page. But behind that pale facade, Google is much more technologically advanced than Yahoo. Most important, Google uses the technology to empower users. This blog is a great example. I once even almost sort of kind of had a blog at Yahoo - I had a Geocities account for years. But I put up all of two posts before I abandoned it, and that was years ago. Yahoo paid a fair chunk of change for Geocities way back when, but then never did anything with it. Even after other social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace or Facebook took off, Yahoo let Geocities languish. Google, of course, owns YouTube, one of the best user-enabling Web sites ever.

Obama's Web strategy, as the Times article points out, set the standard for empowering volunteers, giving them the tools to connect with other Obama fans, set up parties, raise money, etc. Very Googlish - develop cutting-edge technology, and let it loose into the world for the masses to have fun with it.

How far can I take this analogy? I'm only vaguely familiar with the different technologies that each site uses, but what I do know is that Google takes advantage of the networked aspect of the Web to find Web sites - the more links to something, the higher it is in the Google results (or so I understand). Obama's campaign is, again, something like this - by empowering individuals, it encourages them to take advantage of their own, preexisting, networks. Clinton, on the other hand, took advantage of the network that she and Bill have. That's incredibly extensive, but there are limits to how many people a couple can connect with. The Clintons have a great machine, but Obama's campaign was more organic. And it blossomed, when the Clinton's machine started to break down.

I actually got an email from Yahoo the other day about my Geocities account. It was a notice that, since I haven't used it in years, it will be deactivated in three days if I don't do something with it. Apparently someone at Yahoo is cleaning house, clearing out the old Geocities accounts that have been taking up server space for years. It's about time.

And now Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. I have no idea why, but I'm not optimistic - Microsoft doesn't exactly have a great reputation for moving fast these days or for empowering users. Maybe Yahoo and Hillary Clinton's Presidential ambitions will have the same fate this year, one disappearing forever, one being absorbed into a vastly larger enterprise. Personally, I would be psyched if Apple bought Yahoo, but I doubt that's going to happen. All I know is that I ignored the email from Yahoo about an account I had almost forgotten that I had. Go ahead, delete my Geocities account. I like Yahoo. I have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton. But I live in the 21st century.

On Nader

A friend asked me what I thot of Ralph Nader's exploratory committee. My first reaction is that I look back on his run for President in 2000 from the perspective of 8 years' distance. Nader made the argument that there was no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, between Gore and Bush. After 7 years of Bush, that argument is hard to take seriously. Bush leads a party that tries to deny the existence of global warming - Gore has made that his raison d'etre. I think we can safely assume that Al Gore would not have invaded Iraq or used torture.

But, again from the perspective of 8 years away, I can better appreciate Nader's position. To me, the argument that there was no appreciable difference between Dems and Republicans was hard to understand - I can see lots of profound differences. But I'm a total political junkie, and I pay very close attention to politics, so my perspective is different from a lot of people's.

But the key point that I think Nader missed is that Clinton had to deal with a Republican Congress. The President does not propose legislation - he takes what Congress sends him. In his first term, Clinton fought Republicans successfully on some key issues, particularly on the budget. He raised taxes to balance the budget, and did so despite fierce opposition from the GOP.

In 1994, the Republicans took back Congress. They had not been in control of the House for 40 years. The Democrats were completely blindsided - they had no idea what hit them. Clinton had no plan on how to deal with a Republican Congress. He had to fight them, and did, sometimes successfully - he won the showdown over shutting down the government. But Newt Gingrich set the agenda for a large chunk of Clinton's presidency.

So when Nader claimed that there was no significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans in 2000, I think he was ignoring the fact that the Republicans were setting the agenda. If one party controls one house of Congress and the other party controls the other, each party has a chance to pass their own legislation and force the other to deal with it. A Democratic House can force a Republican Senate to compromise. The Republicans controlled both - Democrats could do nothing but fight back. Sometimes they fought back successfully, sometimes they lost, sometimes they gave in.

Nader is right about one thing: sometimes the Democrats caved because they were just scared of Republicans, and were unwilling to fight on principle. A great example is the Defense of Marriage Act, which was an anti-gay piece of legislation. Clinton signed it because he didn't want to be defined as "anti-family." Politically, it was expedient. But as a matter of principle, it was horrendous.

Ralph Nader's campaign for President in 2000 fits into one of the basic templates that define American democracy: the eternal conflict between compromise and principle. There will always be people who prize ideological purity above compromise, and there will always be people who compromise too easily. Nader does not believe in compromise. But he has the luxury of not being an elected official. Clinton compromised because he had little choice. But Clinton also had to compromise, in part, because of his personal failings. He never had a strong mandate. He never won a majority of the popular vote (Ross Perot helped him out there in both elections). And, particularly after Monica Lewinsky, he did not have much moral authority.

I didn't agree with Ralph Nader's decision to run for President in 2000, and I still think it was a mistake, although now I have a better understanding of why he did, of why he was frustrated with Democrats. I think he took away enough votes from Gore to make Bush President, which has been an unmitigated disaster. This time around, I think he has even less justification for running, essentially because Obama has two qualities that Clinton lacked. First, Obama has the moral authority that Clinton lacked. Second, Obama is not afraid of Republicans. Obama understands that if he is not afraid of Republicans, that he can set the agenda, and force Republicans to react to him. Hillary does not understand that. She still reacts, often out of fear, to Republicans, and does not try to set the agenda on her own terms. Obama claims that he can change the terms of the game. I get the impression Hillary isn't even sure what he's talking about.

Finally, I have one particular issue with Ralph Nader. As I said above, I think he has some responsibility for Gore losing. Not complete responsibility - Gore did not run a particularly good campaign, and, let's face it, the man is not a great politician. What bothers me about Nader is that he refuses to take responsibility for Bush being President. Doesn't even seem interested in discussing the possibility. This strikes me as arrogant and self-righteous. I have a great deal of respect for Ralph Nader's career - he's done a lot of good for the world. But taking a position of ideological purity carries its own risks. That kind of position gives someone like Nader a license to pass judgment on other people. Passing judgment on others is an exercise of power. As such, it is subject to the laws of power. Specifically, it can corrupt. Ralph Nader has a great deal of moral authority as a result of his long career. He deserves it. What he doesn't seem to appreciate is that that moral authority, like any kind of power, carries with it a certain amount of responsibility. I think his ego has gotten in the way of his ability to affect real and substantive change.

Decisive Issues, Part III: Moral Authority

Moral authority is one of those things that change with perspective. One person's heroine is another's shrill harpy. It's also one of those things that is very hard to earn, but very easy to lose. It's recognizable in part because of the absence of something else, namely self-interest. People recognized as having moral authority are often exhorting us to act against our own - and, usually, their own - best interests. Saints inspire to put aside our differences and recognize what we have in common with others (I'm listening to Jesus Christ Superstar while I'm writing this). Saints don't make it politics very often because politics is where come to fight for our own interests first. Of the three candidates I am evaluating, Barack Obama takes the "common ground is the best ground" approach. Each has a unique claim on moral authority: John McCain has seen and survived the worst that human beings can inflict on each other and has consistently challenged the bizarre tendency in conservative circles towards supporting and even demanding the use of torture. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have survived and prospered as an African-American and a woman in contemporary America, and each can claim to have won through to their current positions despite the obstacles of racism and sexism in America. Each can also claim to speak for a group previously underrepresented in this country. The presence of either in the White House would go a long ways towards healing ancient wounds.

Here are my comparisons:

McCain v. Obama: These guys are ideological opposites, but have some interesting political similarities. Both are at once insiders and outsiders. McCain is the son and grandson of Navy admirals, i.e. he's very much steeped in military tradition and history, but he occasionally challenges his party's orthodoxy and establishment. Barack Obama, as an African-American, is something of an outsider (fortunately less so now than when he was born), but he's a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law. Like McCain, he sometimes takes on sensitive topics in his party. For example, he recognizes and argues against homophobia in the black church. Neither McCain nor Obama demonizes the opposition, and each makes an effort to break out of the politically convenient but restricting rhetorical straitjacket of using euphemisms and nuance, the kind of language that earns politicians as a class their reputation for lying. Neither is always successful, but each makes the attempt to be honest when possible. Which honesty occasionally gets both in trouble.

Both are adept at using humor to defuse tensions when confronting difficult situations. Both have financial scandals in their background, although McCain's - being part of the Keating Five - is much more significant than Obama's, working with the developer Rezko. And both have strong track records on ethics and campaign finance reform. One difference between them is their emphasis on working with the opposition. McCain can work with Democrats. He can go beyond partisan differences, but does not place much emphasis on it. That may be a function of where the base of the Republican party is right now - purity is more important to many conservatives than compromise. Obama, on the other hand, has made resolving differences a core part of his campaign. This doesn't play well with some progressives - Kos accuses him of not running as a Democrat in the Democrat primary. But Obama challenges Democrats to think beyond their own self-interests. Advantage: Obama

McCain v. Clinton: Up until about a year ago, I would have figured out a way to call this even. I would have dismissed all of the minor scandals during the Clinton Administration as products of that infamous "vast right-wing conspiracy." Heck, a couple of months ago I would have argued in favor of Hillary’s ground-breaking role as the first woman president.

But a couple of things have changed the equation. Substantively, I thot her mailer in New Hampshire questioning Obama’s pro-choice credentials – despite his 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood – was beyond the pale. I realize that politics can be hardball, but that kind of behavior diminishes her moral authority, and with it her ability to enact her agenda if she is elected. And then . . .

And then there’s the big dog, Bill. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to realize why conservatives don’t like the Clintons. And, at the end of the day, the man lied about sex. That is a stain that can never be erased. I’ve dismissed the importance of that before, but I’m having a harder time doing it now. So in terms of moral authority, McCain vs. Hillary, McCain wins. Decisively. Advantage: McCain

Let's get started

For my first blog post, some background. I've been interested in politics for as long as I can remember. Particularly Democratic, liberal, progressive, change-the-world politics. I've been involved off and on for many years - I've worked on campaigns, hung around lots of political activists, made my opinion known to lots of people.

As of now, January 2008, I'm volunteering for Barack Obama. I believe him when he says that he can bridge gaps between political parties and ideologies. I also like the fact that he seems to enjoy the game of politics, and can respond to his opponents with a sense of humor. That's a great quality, in my book.

I think Hillary would probably make a good president. She's smart, disciplined, hard-working, and, in the end, I think she's trying to do good things for the world. But, like a lot of people, I just can't relate to her all that well. Which is somewhat surprising, because I was a big fan of Bill. I even worked for him back in 1992. I was on the Transition Team; I answered his mail. I didn't follow through and get a job in the administration, but I'm glad that I can say that I worked for Bill Clinton in 1992-3.

But having said that, one reason I'm not supporting Hillary is that I have been very disappointed in Bill Clinton's performance during this campaign.

I still think Bill Clinton did a lot of good work to update the Democratic party. I remember resenting all of the right-wing attacks on him. But by the time 2000 rolled around, I have to admit that I really didn't mind that Bill Clinton couldn't run for reelection. He did some good things, his time was over, it was time, as a certain organization's title says, to move on.

I was relieved that I didn't have to think about any of that ever again. It was water under the bridge.

I was relieved that I would never again have to worry about whether or not it was worth it to defend Bill Clinton.

But unfortunately, it looks like the answer to that question today - whether or not it is worth it, now or in the future, to defend Bill Clinton - is no. The Clintons' behavior in Nevada - when the teachers' union sued to block caucuses from being held in casinos - was both wrong and idiotic. Neither Bill nor Hillary was directly involved, but it clearly was done for their benefit. And then Bill Clinton tried to deny it. What fools does he think we are? That was embarassing.

I ask myself the question: do I really want to see Bill Clinton in the White House for another four or eight years? The answer is, most unfortunately, is no.