« Department of Unintentional Irony | Main | Rocky Mountain High »

August 13, 2004

Tiresomely detailed political analysis: Barack Obama vs. Alan Keyes

NPR's Fresh Air had two interviews today: the first with Illinois US Senatorial candidate Barack Obama, the rising Golden Child of the Democratic Party, and one with opposing candidate Alan Keyes, perennial right-wing mouthpiece.

I want to analyze several things about the interviews today with the Democratic and Republican US senatorial candidates for Illinois, from the way each interview was handled, to the candidates themselves. I found it a particularly enlightening day. The contents of both interviews can be found here, in case you want to listen for context. I'm pointing to the archive in hopes that this will be a permalink and not be outdated by tomorrow. I apologize that the show is in audio format, but unfortunately, transcripts cost money.

Barack Obama

General Impressions: Obama seems like a genuinely warm, sincere person in an interview...which no doubt contributes significantly to his "warm fuzzy" appeal factor. Another is that he appeals to both white and black voters. He strongly purports to want to run a "clean" campaign - that is, one which focuses on the issues rather than attacking the opposite candidate. While superficially sincere, I have reason to believe that he is not entirely above a little mud-slinging himself. I'll get to that later. However, it's obvious that he's trying to angle for the fresh-faced reform campaign.

But man, did he ever get a fluff interview. The interviewer questioned Obama broadly on the memoir he wrote, and Obama used the wide-open opportunity to hold forth on his American Dream platform. More than 22 minutes of the 28 minute interview were largely composed of soft-pitch floaters about his father, his background, etc. It came off as an intimate "get-to-know-ya" talk, but there wasn't a lot of substance to it. The second part wasn't a whole lot better. Ostensibly, they moved the interview into the realm of the senatorial race, but they never actually touched on the issues.

Specific quotes and reactions:

Dave Davies at 18:55
It's interesting that you mention LBJ, because he's an example of a politician, as are a lot of very successful politicians, that are rooted in a place. I mean, we know he's a Texan. We know that Harry Truman came from Missouri. Um...your past seems almost rooted in ideas...I mean inclusion, diversity, hope.

Oh puhleeze. Davies might just as well have fellated him on the spot. Some specifics, please. Specifics are, in fact, what are painfully absent from this whole interview. It's as if they were chatting over a couple of umbrella drinks rather than conducting a political interview.

Barack Obama at 22:47
Well, he's [Alan Keyes] been here two days, and so far, he's compared me to slaveholders, Nazis, and has justified him coming in from Maryland by comparing the situation in New York after 9/11, suggesting that we were all New Yorkers then, and in the same way, he's an Illinoisian now, in doing battle with me. Y'know, that's Mr. Keyes's style. Y'know, that's his rhetorical style.

followed by:

Barack Obama at 23:28
What people really wanna see are politicians who attack problems instead of each other. I think people are just weary of this scorched-earth, slash-and-burn politics that demonizes whoever doesn't agree with you. And Democrats, by the way, are complicit in that. And I always tell my supporters and my fellow Democrats - or, not even Democrats, just people of good will who want to see the country move in a better direction - we lose when we engage in that sort of mudslinging. The people that I care about lose, because those are the people - the ordinary folks that are most apt to be alienated from the process in that kind of political environment. The people who thrive in those political environments are the professionals. They're the ruthless, and the cynical, and the people who've got a monetary stake in the outcomes and are gonna be working the back rooms and the corridors no matter what happens.

This was a shrewd, if not totally original, political speech. In one economical statement, he attempted several things:

1. to cement the idea that he is "ordinary folks," rather than a professional politician (which he is,)
   
2. to declare that he is going to run a clean campaign and focus on the issues,
   
3. to defend himself from Keyes's flaming rhetoric, and
   
4. to turn right around and sling some mud at Keyes by associating him by implication with "ruthless, cynical professional politicians" who make back room deals.

Smart speech. He's going to be a shrewd politician. He's not quite as much the Golden Boy Saint he'd like us to believe he is, but he is smart.

Alan Keyes

Hoo boy. Obama strikes me as being much, much more subtle and shrewd than Keyes. Such subtlety may not, however, be necessary for Keyes, as he appears to be a hard-line right-winger from the word go, and he is effectively parroting a lot of the neoconservative religious arguments that so much of America gets behind.

Personally, he strikes me as a loud, shrill, contentious ideologue literally imported specifically to out-shout Obama in the Senate race. His interview was considerably rockier. They started pitching him the hard stuff after a brief couple of questions about his family and ideological background (his interview was taped, incidentally, by the same interviewer after the Obama interview. I think the timing is significant.) To start off with, Davies throws him a question which might have been innocent, but ended up effectively contrasting him with Obama in the strongest possible terms.

Dave Davies at 3:35
You've been known for advocating an approach for issues in the United States, but African American communities in particular, of valuing the family, of personal responsibility, of moral clarity. Are there experiences that sort of crystallized that view for you? Where did you really pull that together?

Bolding mine. So far, everything sounds great. Family? Check. Personal responsibility? Sometimes used as a code word for a "let them eat cake" attitude, but still something most folks can get behind. It's that last one - moral clarity - that was thrown in there as a ringer, and it's that tangent that Keyes takes off on. That gets him into trouble. The question also had the added rhetorical benefit of establishing an immediate contrast with Obama. To wit:

Alan Keyes at 3:57
I wouldn't say, though, that it's experience. I mean, a lot of what I think is the result of...thinking. It's a result of trying to look at facts and information. I mean, I wrote a book some years back, Masters of the Dream, and it was during that period of working on it - it took several years - that I really spent a lot of time delving into the history of black Americans, from slavery forward. The question I had in mind at that point...

He speaks at length about the role of faith and family in the survival of African Americans here. Feel free to listen to the rest of it, but my main point here is that he immediately established himself as not a down-to-earth "man of the people," but as a cold, aloof intellectual. Uh oh. This is a prime reason I don't think he's nearly as shrewd as Obama. Politics is very much a popularity contest. If the people don't like you, you're sunk. Take Dukakis for example. He ran a strong race, but in the end, he got the labels "cold," "passionless," and "technocrat" attached to him, and that was all she wrote.

That is, incidentally, the main concern I have about John Kerry's campaign as well.

Given that the interview was taped after the Obama interview, and the fact that a later question shows that Davies did some background work on Keyes beforehand, I wonder if Davies led Keyes down this path quite purposefully.

Dave Davies at 9:39
You were quoted as saying in the year 2000, 'I deeply resent the destruction of Federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness to go into a state she doesn't even live in, and pretend to represent the people there.' You're from Maryland, running in Illinois. Have you changed your mind, or are the standards different in your case?

Zing! Fast curve ball to the inside! Keyes takes a swing at it, and in my opinion, misses badly, making himself look like a hypocrite.

Alan Keyes at 9:57
Oh no no no. The standards are the same, and I have not changed my mind, and I think that what Hillary did I would still criticize roundly. Because she self-evidently, uh, shopped around America, looked carefully to pick a state that would serve her personal ambition, prepared the ground, went in in order to construct a basis for pursuing her personal ambition, and was consciously translating her national standing and reputation into a bid for a seat of power, regardless, really of the principles of representational integrity and state sovereignty. That is not what I'm doing.

He then goes on to explain that he did not decide to do this on his own, that he was approached by the "people in Illinois" (presumably the Illinois Republican Party,) making it consistent in terms of sovereignty, and also that his move was somehow related to the other part of Federalism as he defines it, "national unity." This falls far short of an adequate explanation, IMO, because:

1. it appears to be a rationalized excuse cobbled together out of makeshift definitions,
   
2. it makes him out not to be a self-guided political opportunist, but nothing more than a political mercenary...a hired gun. I mean, Hillary showed some political spine. Keyes is just shouting his rhetoric on whatever street corner he's told to.
   
3. it espouses an insanely subtle difference between the two cases. I'm not even sure I fully understand what he's saying the difference is, and I'm pretty sure most voters aren't going to even put as much thought into it as I have. A lot of folks are just going to think, "Bullshit. He's an arrogant hypocrite." Which, admittedly, is pretty much the conclusion I'm forced to come to.

The very next question is a question about Keyes's now infamous comparison of Obama's position on abortion to the "slaveholder's position." Keyes defends this with a complex set of, in my opinion, highly spurious and questionable arguments:

Alan Keyes at 11:52
Not so much [awfully strong words], just logical, just rational - it's an argument. Because the slaveholders' position as reflected in, say, the position of somebody like Stephen Douglas - he was a pro-choice candidate back on, on slavery. He said he didn't care if it was voted up or voted down, as long as it was done by popular sovereignty.

I take issue with Keyes's comparison of abortion to slavery. The differences in the two issues are too numerous to dwell upon. Slavery, for example (the 3/5 Compromise, etc. notwithstanding, as they addressed blacks' status for purposes of taxation,) had no scientific grey area concerning what qualified as human life. Nobody can answer that question adequately, and Keyes's evocation of slavery is just a bit intellectually dishonest.

Also, he misrepresents Douglas's position badly. Douglas was not "pro-choice" on slavery - at least, not in the same way as the term applies to abortion. To be the same, Douglas would have had to supported the rights of each individual person to either have, or not have, slaves. This point can't even be interpreted the same way as in abortion, since to be "pro-choice" in slavery means you're pro-slavery. Nobody is "pro-abortion." They're for the choice to have an abortion. Given the grey area previously mentioned about the scientific qualifications for human life, it's not nearly so cut-and-dried.

Alan Keyes at 12:30
The notion that somehow you can look at the life in the womb and say the mother's choice determines our respect for it when our principles say that every human being, regardless of circumstance, development, or condition - the worth of that human life comes from the creator - that's what the Declaration states. So just as the slaveholder and people like Douglas were willing to disregard the worth of black Americans, on the basis of their choice, so we have people like Obama today saying, 'We can disregard the God-given worth of that baby in the womb because of our choice,' and in doing so, they reject the fundamental principles that Lincoln asserted, that Martin Luther King asserted, that Frederick Douglass and others asserted, that we must respect the conscience shaped by the Declaration on which this country is founded. I believe that, ad I think it's clear that Barack Obama does not. And so I'm not calling him names or anything, I'm just saying, 'Look, the principle at stake is the same, and his position is like the position of Stephen Douglas and others, who were the slaveholders' favorites in those days.

What a mess. In the first place, our "common principles" (whatever they are) don't say anything in one unified voice about "development." That's why the issue is - say it with me - controversial. Second, our "common principles" (whatever they are) don't say anything in a unified voice about a creator. Once again - controversial. Third, the Declaration of Independence is not, I repeat, not the foundation of our national conscience. Finally, slavery is not the same as abortion. Jesus.

He then claims (seriously) that his introduction of the slavery comparison has nothing to do with a cynical ploy to bring a racial element into the argument...to play the race card. He jumps through a series of hoops to establish that all he really means is that it's a human-decency issue, not a race issue (while nimbly playing the race card by declaiming that since his ancestors were slaves, he oughta know.) Strawman. Poor argumentation. False analogy. Blegh. He's not fooling anyone, of course. His analogy was rather carefully developed for precisely that rhetorical reason.

He goes on to say that he would ban abortion in the case of rape and incest as well, launching into a diatribe about how it is fundamentally against our principles of justice (assuming that an embryo is a human life, I presume, at the moment of conception. Again, controversial. Remember?)

After all this, he drops the Bomb:

Alan Keyes at 15:30
See, people like to make assertions. He [Obama] makes assertions. We should make arguments for the positions that we take, because otherwise, we're just engaging in name-calling. And I say I make an argument for what I believe. Let him come forward with a valid argument for what he believes, and let's compare the two.

As if anything he's said is anything more than airy, flimsy assertion based on bad logic.

To wind up the interview, Keyes excoriates Obama for

Alan Keyes at 16:15
...saying that he respects the family, but being against everything - the Defense of Marriage Act and the Federal Marriage Amendment - that's being done to defend the family.

In my socially liberal opinion, this is pure insanity. Obama is not even pro-gay marriage! He's actually against gay marriage, but pro "civil unions." When confronted about why gay marriage is a threat to traditional families, Keyes responds that

Alan Keyes at 17:05
Marriage is about procreation, and people who cannot, in principle...procreate, cannot get married. It's very simple. It makes marriage an absurdity. It means that marriage is just the relationship of two individuals for the sake of what? Hedonistic self-gratification.

Uh, where does he get his definitions, cause they're crazy. Assuming for a moment that "hedonistic self-gratification" is not a good reason to get married (who gets married for hedonistic self-gratification, anyway?,) he commits a beauty of an Excluded Middle Fallacy. The truth is that people get married for any number of reasons, from Twue Wuv all the way down to base greed, and as long as the parties involved are male and female, whether their purposes are procreative or not, it's perfectly legal.

Conclusion: Barack Obama is a shrewd, subtle politician, regardless of his assertions to the contrary, but I don't fundamentally think I learned anything about his politics in the interview. He seemed to be there as a foil for Keyes's ridiculous pseudo-intellectualism, and that can't ultimately be anything but good for Obama. Alan Keyes is a self-righteous, arrogant blowhard who will ultimately hang himself with his wild-eyed rhetoric, and it was difficult to find anything in his spittle-flecked diatribe which I didn't think was stark, raving insane.

Advantage: Obama.

Keyes will get his ass handed to him on election day.