Policy And Priorities In Politics

National Review Online: Presidential Elections Are Not Referendums On Policy Papers

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Jonah Goldberg.

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The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a sideshow, a distraction, a sham, and a shame. So sayeth many of the brightest stars in punditry. How sad that we wasted so much time on what Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post called an “absurd digression.” Barack Obama himself frets that we are “caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics,” which “trivializes the profound issues.” Yes, by all means, the profound issues are what the campaigners should grapple with. Grapple away on matters of substance and policy. Bread-and-butter concerns. Kitchen-table topics and pocketbook issues.

And what are those? Well, according to Obama and Clinton alike, gas prices top the list.

On ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos opened an interview with Clinton by asking how she can defend her proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer when everyone knows it won’t lower gas prices. “Nearly every editorial board and economist in the country has come out against it,” Stephanopoulos noted. “Even a supporter of yours, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, calls it pointless and disappointing.”

Her response in a nutshell: Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.

Clinton says she doesn’t mind if economists agree that her proposal would do nothing to alleviate high gas prices. Indeed, when Stephanopoulos pressed her to name one - just one! - credible economist who thinks this idea has merit, she responded: “Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.” Instead, she explained, she’s going to break with the “government power and elite opinion” and side with the little guy.

Unlike the proposal by John McCain, who also stupidly supports a gas-tax “holiday,” the Clinton plan has the added benefit of punishing those evil oil companies by making them pay the tax, even though those pointy-headed economists say it will actually reward them. Big Oil would simply pass that cost back to consumers, and the “holiday” would artificially hike demand for gas so that pump prices would jump right back up. But never mind all that.

Oh, let’s also point out that, as a matter of political reality, Clinton might as well be calling for a ban on the use of unicorn meat in dog food, because there is no way her proposal can actually, you know, happen.

Now, in fairness, we should point out that Obama opposes the Clinton-McCain proposal for many of the reasons stated above, and that speaks well of him.

But there’s a larger point here. Clinton’s new populist demagoguery is entirely symbolic. The “substance” is stage dressing, no more real than the scenery in a play. She’s trying to tell blue-collar workers that she’s on their side. The language may be economic, but the message is about values. It’s I-feel-your-pain treacle gussied up as tax policy, devoid of anything approaching intellectual seriousness. Who cares if even liberal economists like Krugman concede the stupidity of her idea; she’s taking the side of the Bubbas against all the fancy pants.

The same goes for the Daedalian debate between Obama and Clinton over health care that consumed many of the early Democratic primaries. In a riot of intellectual vanity, vast amounts of time were wasted on parsing the fine print of their respective policy proposals, with earnest journalists wading hip-deep into the actuarial tables, as if either plan would actually survive its first encounter with Congress intact. Who cares? We’re talkin’ substance here!

Presidential elections are not referendums on policy papers. Rather, policy papers are themselves mere hints, sometimes very poor hints, of where a candidate’s priorities lie. This is not to say that candidates should not offer details, but let’s do away with the charade that the dots on the “i” and the crosses on the “t” are the stuff of Serious Politics, while discussions about a candidate’s “non-economic” values are somehow irrelevant. It’s all the same conversation.

Whatever the true import of Obama’s relationship with Wright may be, or whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites “cling” to guns, religion, and bigotry because they’ve suffered under bad economic policies, or, for that matter, whatever Clinton’s “sniper fire” story says about her, it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance.

We pick presidents for their judgment and values. Anything that gives us a clue as to what those might be is not only fair game, it is the game.

[glock4me]

WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERS THROWING THIS ELECTION?????


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Posted by truthyness at 04:49 AM : May 09, 2008



They couldn''t do a better job of throwing the election if they tried. Any idea why they would do this?

[joyous88]

why do we need more tripe from clowns like goldberg,

people like him are what is wrong with america today,

he is just another greed driven republicon conservative

like him, like bush, vote gramppy mcsame four more

[truthyness]

WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERS

THROWING THIS ELECTION?????

[samthetvcat]

I feel the need to reiterate that I find the author if this piece to be kind of creepy when I see him on tv, but anyway . . .

I was channel surfing last night and Karl Rove was on Dumbo Reilly, and he had that exact same look on his face that Bill Clinton did when he was standing behind Hillary on Tuesday night after the Indiana results had come in . . . like somebody had kicked him in the gut and he knew it was essentially over.

Like Rev. Wright totally didn''t take, the William Ayers story didn''t take, flag pins, etc all got trumped by the gas tax issue. He probably know just like Bill does too that once all those 60''s organizations like NOW and Emily''s List tap into the fact that McSame is looking to recriminalize abortion, Hillary''s base is going to be behind Barack 110%.

It looks like we Dems have got it!

[Razzl]

If recent political history hadn''t been twisted by the right-wing''s ******* "swift boat" and "gotcha" politics, we wouldn''t have a generation of politicos like the Clintons who, as Obama said, "can''t imagine any other form of politics". What we need, of course, are candidates brave enough to stand forward and recite the fundamental beliefs of the party:

1. The clear evidence from nature is that humanity is a family, not a crowd of competing individuals. The nation is an extended family. The public and the state must respect the rights of those who don''t wish to participate in civic affairs, but all citizens have moral and legal obligations to their fellow citizens, whether they like the idea or not.

2. All people have fundamental needs which the society has a moral obligation to ensure are provided: food, housing, medical care, education for the young, security.

3. The social, economic, and political order must be arranged so that the obligations are fairly and completely met.

4. Resources can only be private to the extent that their holders responsibly control them with public need in mind and pay their fair share of taxes.

5. The state is the set of institutions charged with ensuring the moral obligations mentioned above are met and must be treated with respect and given the necessary resources to do their job.

If we could get candidates to discuss these important values out loud, there wouldn''t be any need to hide behind gas taxes and lapel pins...

[bluestardad]

CHECK OUT WHO WROTE THIS STORY!

ANOTHER DUEL PASSPORT HOLDING ISRAELI AMERICAN!

THAT SHOWS YOU WHO IS BEHIND OUR MESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND PROVES OBAMA IS NOT BOUGHT BY THE ISRAELIS LIKE CLINTON IS!

AMERICA STAND UP OR SHUT UP!

[sparks224]

Boo Hoo! They tried so hard to smear Obama with the Rev Wright thing and it didn''t work, it was perfectly good dirt but it didn''t work! Boo Hoo Hoo!

[haidessalami]

Here we go. I guess we can look forward to daily rants from the NRO and Weakly Standard. Looks like panic is beginning to set in among the neocons.

[trillion1]

''Policy and priorties''? I figure the American worker is at the bottom of both lists.

[mcvet]

The Fascist Press just does NOT know what to do with the FACT that their WEDGE issue simply didn''t take. The PEOPLE failed to bite on another Swift Boat Attack and they simply can''t figure out what to do...how to defend the Record of the Republicans and Bush over the last 8 years.... HOW can anyone defend that?

[samthetvcat]

--"Whatever the true import of Obama%u2019s relationship with Wright may be, or whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites %u201Ccling%u201D to guns, religion, and bigotry because they%u2019ve suffered under bad economic policies, or, for that matter, whatever Clinton%u2019s %u201Csniper fire%u201D story says about her, it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance."--

Ever seen this Jonah Goldberg guy on tv? omg, he''s so strange . . . it''s curious how sometimes the weirder a person is, the more that person is embraced as saying something ''novel'' . . .

So in this guy''s mind, a person''s preacher sheds more light on a person''s policy judgment than a person''s thought process when it comes to policy judgment? Psycho!