fouling in the endgame

Posted on by

The score is 86 to 79, and there is a minute and a half to play in a game between two big-time NCAA basketball teams. The game is a regular season game, no more of a must-win for either team than any other, but the losers have already started to foul the winners. Each time the winning team gets the ball, the member of the losing team with the lowest number of infractions scored against him fouls the member of the winning team with the poorest record at the foul line. The fouled player goes to the line, makes one or two points, or none; and the losing team gets the ball back and a chance to score a two- or three-point field goal. The losing team scores or not, gives up the ball, and fouls again. This scenario will repeat itself until the final buzzer.

Most basketball games end this way these days. It’s normal, what we expect, not remarkable. If a losing team should opt out of the procedure and play out a game without fouling, fans and sportswriters would call them losers, accuse them of lacking in competitive spirit, or worse yet, lacking a proper work ethic. Their coach would be vilified for failing to teach them proper values, and perhaps be fired. The fact that this style of play is unsportsmanlike, involves intentional rule breaking, and is something that a society that values fairness and the rule of law ought to reject, has never seemed to occur to anybody since the practice began forty or fifty years ago. By now, as I say, it’s normal, what we expect. A species of flagrant unsportsmanlike conduct has become the right thing to do.

If I ask myself why this should be so, part of my answer has to recognize that we live in a society in which winning trumps everything else. It’s so important to be a winner, to be associated with winners and winning (and even more important, not to be a loser), that when some curmudgeon like me questions some injustice that is broadly perceived to be an enabler of winning, I (or whatever person does this) will automatically be accused of 1) not understanding how things are and what’s really important, 2) being a wimp or a wuss (that is, a loser), or at a certain level at which this discourse is sometimes pursued, 3) being un-American or unpatriotic.

We live in a time in which the Presidency of the United States (at certain times in the last century called imperial), has largely become a criminal enterprise, pursuing an illegal program of domestic spying, detaining foreigners without due process of law, engaging in criminal torture, and pursuing a foreign war that has no strategic or other value to this country outside the interests of a venal military establishment and the presidency’s own need for legitimacy and a second term in office. The president who led us into this situation is now vastly unpopular. It ought to be possible to deconstruct the moral pretensions of his administration and put right at least some of its most egregious wrongs.

But apparently not. George Bush is unpopular because he didn’t win the war in Iraq, not because his depredations have offended the moral sensibilities of a great number of Americans. John McCain, who aspires to be Bush’s Republican successor, tells us that we can still win the Iraq war if we just hire him as the new coach; and he has now backed away from any criticism of the war or opposition to torture, echoing the president’s claim that waterboarding is a crucial tool in the war on terror, so as to appear tough and patriotic — to look like a winner, one supposes. Even Barack Obama, perhaps the war’s most serious critic among remaining presidential candidates, has criticized the war on pragmatic, not on moral, grounds.

Looking like a winner can be as important as winning in today’s high-stakes political arena. Ron Elving reviews the results of the Texas Primary/Caucus at npr.org and argues that the Clinton campaign had anticipated a split decision before it occurred.

That’s why efforts had been made to discredit the caucuses in advance. Her campaign complained that the caucuses were too small to be representative and too random in administration to be fair.

On caucus night, her campaign held a stormy conference call with reporters to say Obama forces were attempting to hijack the proceedings at specific sites. Similar complaints had been lodged against caucuses in other states in January and February, as the Obama campaign racked up consistent wins in delegate counts.

The Clinton campaign have consistently followed an endgame strategy of fouling their opponent, gaining whatever short term advantage that strategy can produce, in order to look as much like winners as possible. Clinton even gave a victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, and has continued to follow that strategy as she has lost contest after contest. With respect to Texas,

. . . most of the country will go on thinking that Senator Clinton collected a bonanza in Texas . . . . So even if she didn’t, and even if she did not quite meet her own goal . . . , she got her momentum back . . . .

That is: she started to look like a winner again.

yesterday I was wrong

Posted on by

In a New York Times op-ed piece today, entitled “Playing by Clinton Rules,” David Brooks says a number of very practical and true things about my guy’s campaign. One of these things that cuts through a welter of punditry is that the consultants advising Obama to mount a negative campaign are pursuing an interest of their own.

The consultants, needless to say, gravitate toward the tactical interpretation. And once again the cry has gone up for Obama to get tough. This advice gets wrapped in metaphors. Obama has to start “throwing punches” or “taking the gloves off.”

Beneath the euphemisms, what the advice really means is that Obama has to start accusing Clinton of things.

I signed on to this advice yesterday, having been momentarily persuaded that Obama needs to fight back, but I shouldn’t have. It’s bad advice.

The main reason it’s bad advice is that if Obama turns negative, he betrays his own core message. Here’s how Brooks describes that message:

Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the past 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington.

For some time now, I’ve thought there are two parts to Obama’s theory: first, the one that Brooks identifies, that there is a strong backlash in the country against what Obama has described as the old politics of negativity and ideological posturing; but second, and equally important, that a grassroots rejection of the old politics is possible: that is, that citizens can wrest control of this country and their own destinies away from the elites who are presently in charge. And not just from the Bush regime — as the argument over delegates to the Democratic Convention and the present structure of the Clinton campaign both illustrate, there are powerful forces in the Democratic party ranked in opposition to Obama’s grassroots appeal.

Like Brooks I think Obama stands or falls on the basis of his core message. I’ve said earlier that he can lose even if he wins. The worst loss would be for him to abandon his principles and get into the knock-down-drag-out Clinton has been trying to draw him into since Iowa. Here’s Brooks again:

Clinton can’t compete on personality, but a knife fight is her only real hope of victory. She has nothing to lose because she never promised to purify America. Her campaign doesn’t depend on the enthusiasm of upper-middle-class goo-goos.

Leaving aside the gratuitous swipe at Obama’s core constituency (which, by the way isn’t true; most of the people I saw at the Obama rally in St. Louis weren’t upper-middle-class goo-goos, nor am I such a person). But leaving that aside, and leaving aside the claims that Obama has promised to purify the country and that Clinton’s personality is unattractive (also untrue in my view), I think Brooks is right in saying that Clinton has everything to gain from a dirty, negative campaign, at least in the short run, and Obama has everything to lose.

Instead, the Obama campaign might consider trying harder to connect with those groups among the electorate with whom Obama tends to do poorly. This might turn out to be very important in Pennsylvania. As Brooks puts it, Obama needs to explain “how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona,” linking Pennsylvania with Ohio where primary results might be taken to illustrate Obama’s characteristic weaknesses. According to Eugene Robinson, Obama needs a new speech, needs “to find a way to speak to white, working-class, high school-educated voters about their anxieties and their aspirations.” Robinson seems to think that winning in Pennsylvania might sew things up for Obama. I’m not that optimistic. I think Clinton will fight to the end and that her ultimate weapon will be to attempt to persuade the party elite to take her side because she is “best” or “most electable.”

So — Obama and his movement must overcome entrenched elites in at least three places if they are to succeed in changing the country. First, they must overcome the organization and leadership of the Democratic party in order to get the nomination; second, they must overcome the leadership of the Republican party and its able standard bearer, John McCain (whose campaign against Obama has already been scripted by the Clinton forces in the Democratic party), in order to be elected; and third, they must overcome the gridlock in Washington with its hyperpartisanship and institutionalized incumbency, in order to govern.

It’s a big job. Maybe it’s too big. But if that’s so, it’s too bad. It means that our politics can no longer be renewed by an appeal to democracy. And it means moreover that the political decadence we have witnessed since the Reagan years has become the rule in American life.

double-teaming

Posted on by

Stanley Fish is always interesting, even when he is wrong-headed, and for my money that’s pretty often. Last Sunday’s Think Again blog in The New York Times is no exception. I don’t agree with most of what Fish says about Obama’s present fortune in the campaign for the democratic nomination, or with Fish’s main argument that McCain will beat Obama easily in the general election. But consider this comment about how the Clinton campaign has created opportunities for McCain:

Indeed, every criticism Clinton has made of Obama – he lacks experience, he is all flourish and no substance, he gives shoot-from-the-hip answers to serious questions – falls into McCain’s lap, ready for instant use in the general election.

Here, Fish has it dead right. Obama is being double-teamed. And the question in my mind is why. I don’t think there’s any vast right-wing conspiracy to defeat Obama. Exit polls after the Texas primary have shown that fifty-two percent of Republican crossover votes were cast for Obama, against Rush Limbaugh’s advice. But I think it’s a fair question why Clinton’s campaign against Obama so neatly parallels McCain’s, and why Clinton seems to be willing to give McCain talking points to use against their common opponent.

Perhaps part of the answer is that Obama is their comon opponent. He has bracketed Clinton and Republicans together as practitioners of the old politics. And maybe it’s true that Clinton is, in fact, a practitioner of the old politics, especially of the smash mouth, do-anything-to-win politics of Tom Delay and Carl Rove. But I think it’s also true that Clinton is running to the right of Obama, particularly with respect to national security and foreign policy issues, where she continues to claim particular expertise.

I don’t think Obama has challenged Clinton enough on this score. It’s an opportunity for him to bring the connection with Bill Clinton back into the campaign, by asking what foreign policy experience Clinton has that uniquely qualifies her to answer the red phone in the middle of the night. If the answer is that she gained privileged experience as first lady, the question becomes, how was that so? Or how was it appropriately so? Of course Bill Clinton’s, “We’re back!” whizbang, and the idea of a co-presidency may appeal to more voters than I think it does; but Bill, himself, backed away from talking about it pretty fast.

I’m thinking that Obama is right to go after Clinton about her experience now, just as she has gone after him about his eloquence. He should keep up the pressure about the tax returns; though if there’s something crooked there it’s likely to be too complicated to make good campaign fodder. But he should really go after her about what she has claimed makes her unique — and then go after her judgment again.