First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

on November 19, 2008

in Elections, Inside Prospect and United States

. 1 Comment

Obama: liberalism's saviour?

Despite his lofty rhetoric and the frenzied excitement surrounding his campaign, Obama is no radical; argues Michael Lind in this month’s cover story, Obama’s policy proposals have been modest, and his movement so far has been a personality cult, not a true movement with a substantive agenda, Lind says—but extreme events can force politicians to be bold, and the new president now has a chance to redefine American liberalism.

Plus, Prospect experts weigh in on what Obama means for the future of America. Beltway insider Martin Walker looks at how Obama’s gang will change Washington society, and Thomas Wright, a democrat foreign policy analyst, says that an Obama presidency might mean a better transatlantic relationship, but only if Europe keeps its end of the bargain—which will be a challenge.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Derbyshire talks to a number of leading black American thinkers about the future of America’s fraught racial politics: is this the beginning of a brave new post-racial era—or the opposite? And Prospect’s James Crabtree looks at what Obama might do for the economy; the warring ideological factions within Democratic party have declared a truce for the moment, but it is unlikely to hold.

Also, exclusively online this month, ABC’s foreign correspondent Jim Sciutto argues that Obama will struggle to make friends in the middle east, Erik Tarloff dissects the Republican’s Palin problem and Stephen Boyle explains why the congressional Democrats might turn out to be Obama’s own worst enemy.

Let us know what you think about any of these pieces below.

Obama, Lincoln, Clinton, and new team of rivals

Published

on November 18, 2008

Continue reading ‘Obama, Lincoln, Clinton, and new team of rivals’

. 1 Comment

The declaration of intelligence

This morning’s papers are full of the Clinton saga - the one which will never die - reborn. Beneath it, though, is a more interesting story, of Obama’s reading habits, the renewed influence of authors in the Oval Office, and Obama’s modelling himself on Abraham Lincoln.

President Bush occasionally let it be known that he was reading something; normally a religious text, or a neocon tract like Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy. Yet, even without getting sidetracked into Bush-knocking, its worth noting that Obama is an unusually studious politicians. His first book, Dreams of My Father, was lyrically written, and heavy with references. He also recently set tongues wagging amongst Washington wonks by referencing a few works that avoided the normal mix of populism and posturing common in political bedtime reading: Blair flicks through the Koran, George Osborne loves Nudge, and so on. Instead, Obama cited a difficult and interesting book by a political scientist at Princeton, Larry Bartels’ new Unequal Democracy. And now, some might be surprised to learn, his decision to pick Clinton - barring unforeseen clangers from her husband’s fundraising - has been substantially informed by a reading of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals.

Seven thoughts on the election

Published

on November 5, 2008

Continue reading ‘Seven thoughts on the election’

. 2 Comments

Cheers!

It’s all over; let the parsing commence. The political equivalent of skiing in fresh powder-commentators out doing themselves to find the most compelling, counterintuitive narrative to explain “what just happened”-is now the sport of the moment. David Brooks is in there early. Having been the commentator who did most to popularise the notion of an exurban revolt in 2004, this time he sees three seismic shifts:

Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968.

Not to be outdone, here are some quick, mid-morning thoughts on last night.

First, don’t entirely write off the divided nation. Obama won, but he didn’t “win big.” He is likely to win fewer electoral college votes than Clinton in either 1992 (370) or 1996 (379.) His 52 per cent of the vote, while a clear mandate, is only a single percentage point more than Bush in 2004. In short, after two close polls and the embedding of a notion that liberals must always win or lose by inches, this is not an epic change in the political georgraphy of the United States. It is what a relatively normal Democratic victory look like.

Second, while McCain clearly ran a poor campaign, he did no worse than median expectations. Indeed, he did better than Bush Snr, and Bob Dole, in their respective defeats. Very few of the “stretch” targets for the Obama campaign fell. Florida went, as did Elizabeth Dole’s Senate seat. But Georgia and South Carolina didn’t. Equally, some wilder hopes—Democrats to pick up the Senate seat of Mitch McConnell, for instance—also didn’t come to pass.

The dream come true

Published

Jonathan Power

on November 5, 2008

Continue reading ‘The dream come true’

. 0 Comments

American Graffiti

If only Martin Luther King could wake from the dead! And his faithful deputy, Ralph Abernathy. And Bayard Rustin, who organised the Great March on Washington in 1963 that roused American public opinion to push for an end to segregation. And the militant Stokley Carmichael who led the students, both black and white, to knock on every black door in the small towns and byways of the South to mobilise them to vote. And, not least, President Lyndon Johnson who, putting his own racist past behind him, used his formidable political energy to push through Congress both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

If only they could rise up now, what would they see? Would they believe that one Barack Hussein Obama, son of an African, educated as a small child in Indonesia where he was registered in school as a Muslim, and brought up later in Hawaii by his 100 per cent white, mainstream grandparents, could be today elected as president of the United States? The “dream” come true when, as Dr King prophesied, “every Negro in this country…. will be judged on the basis of the content of his character rather than the colour of his skin.”

Prospect online this week: America (and Glenrothes) decides

Published

on November 4, 2008

in British politics, Elections, Inside Prospect, Media and United States

. 3 Comments

David Cameron's cup of tea?

While the eyes of the world have been trained on America’s bellwether states, Prospect has not forgotten that a “bellwether” by-election is also taking place in Scotland. Jamie Stevenson argues that Cameron’s Tories have most to gain from a resurgent SNP; even if this means a successful independence bid in 2010. And Alice Onwordi looks at the party most auspiciously absent from the Scottish fray: the Greens. Although the Greens have grown significantly in the last 5 years, with the combined threats of a resurgent BNP, mainstream parties stealing their policies, and their own hopeless disorganisation, they have a tough battle on their hands to remain Britain’s fourth party.

Plus, not wishing to neglect the other election taking place this week, Erik Tarloff will also exclusively report from inside the election night party at Obama HQ in Chicago.

McCain tops the windbag index

Published

on October 28, 2008

. 0 Comments

Who blows hardest?

It’s official. Thanks to this comprehensive lexical analysis of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, we now know that John McCain is, empirically, more of a windbag than Barack Obama.

Proving cass sunstein wrong

Published

on October 28, 2008

in Elections and Media

. 4 Comments

After yesterday’s mini-scoop on the Economist’s mildly anticipated decision to endorse Obama, we are considering updating our magazine slogan. Out goes “Britain’s Intelligent Conversation”; in comes “Prospect: always first with the stories that matter to middle America.” Today, we also have something of an exclusive. Sadly, it is only obliquely related to news from America, which currently focuses on the cratering McCain campaign. (Sarah Palin has, so it seems, “gone rogue”—she is off message, and continues to talk about her recent wardrobe malfunction—while fivethirtyeight keeps the contest on a knife-edge with its odds that Obama has a mere 96.7% chance of victory.) Instead, it is this excellent video mapping tool I was sent by a friend this morning, released overnight, which allows the discerning 2008 procrastinator to optimise their election-related time wasting, by viewing the relative popularity of various political YouTube clips.

It’s quite fascinating—in particular because of the way it helps lift the lid on the right wing videos— those on the right hand side of the graph above. Worryingly, despite having what must amount to a chronic YouTube condition, I had barely seen any of them. Why worrying? Cass Sunstein’s Republic.com argued that self-chosen media spaces, in which one was insulated from opposing opinions, were the principal danger of the information revolution. The internet, he argued, allows people to avoid serendipitous encounters with ideas they don’t like: gun nuts only see pro-gun websites; liberal pinkos stick to the Daily Kos, and so on. Rather disturbingly, it seems this rule applies to my election video watching also. Having visited the site, however, I have been happy to learn the truth behind Obama’s enthusiastic support for infanticide, in addition to seeing a hot new video doing the rounds, from a 2001 interview, in which the young Obama scandalises America by coming out in favour of mild progressive taxation. Catching up on right-wing videos: not a bad way to spend the day, as I’m sure Mr Sunstein would agree.

(Ps - in exchange for our constant stream of internet scoops, we need your help. In our next edition, we may do a round up of the best internet things of the election. If you have any favourites, please leave them in the comments. I’ll start the ball rolling with mine: this fabulous Mike Huckabee parody, from way back in December 2007.)

Who will the Economist endorse?

Published

on October 27, 2008

in Elections, Media and United States

. 7 Comments

And the result is in

It’s endorsement season in America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his commanding poll lead, Obama has to date matched his favour with wavering voters with a knack for tempting skeptical editors. The running tally shows the Democrat ahead 179 - 60 in major editorial endorsements. This is interesting, for a number of reasons. Such liberal bias is relatively recent. A reliable source told me a while back that until Bill Clinton, LBJ in 1964 (in the aftermath of an assassination) was the only postwar Democrat to gain more endorsements than his Republican opponent. This changed with Kerry. Now Obama has a handy lead. Such a situation makes the decision of right-leaning publications more intriguing. Some are predictable. Few can have been surprised by last week’s lengthy Obama hagiography in the New Yorker; it also would be a stretch to describe the Guardian’s endorsement as coveted. Others are more interesting. The Financial Times for instance, sometimes a swing endorsement, came out for Obama.

Were Prospect to endorse candidates, ours would clearly be hotly anticipated. Our studious neutrality in such matters, however, means the The Economist is perhaps the most interesting decision. The magazine—socially and economically liberal—would like to endorse a socially-liberal republican. It would probably have liked the 2000-era McCain, but instead gave a hearty endorsement to Governor Bush. It has recently run a fairly tough editorial line on Obama, criticising his positions on trade and the economy in particular. And its editor, John Micklethwaite, wrote a (very good) book in which he predicted the long-term ascendency of American conservatives, a notion which has perhaps been slightly undercut by the recent implosion of that movement. The decision is one which I have a small insight into, as a former Economist intern. Under the previous editor, Bill Emmott, a poll was taken of the Economist’s hundred or so editorial staff. (In 2004 this was said to overwhelmingly favour Kerry.) This informed the decision, but ultimately the choice was for the editor alone. In 2004, in a rather woosterish editorial, Emmott sided with his staff and went grumpily for Kerry. What of this year? Obama’s lead, his self-evidently superior candidacy, and the need for newspapers to side with a winner, give three strong reasons to suspects an Obama nod. I’d be surprised if they don’t. Nonetheless, the Economist’s political staff tends to be more right-wing than its ordinary writers, its editor is a thoughtful, principled centrist conservative, and the magazine has traditionally taken a hawkish, McCain-ish foreign policy line on Iraq and Iran. Perhaps there is room for a very minor October surprise after all.

UPDATE: reliable sources tells me that the decision is made; in news unlikely to much bother the swing voters of rural ohio, the editor announced to his staff meeting this morning that Obama will, this Thursday, be able to count The Economist among his official backers. With back to back endorsements for Kerry and Obama, perhaps we should see it as a Democrat-leaning newspaper after all?.

The view from Gary

Published

Avirook Sen

on October 3, 2008

. 0 Comments

The last time Indiana voted for a Democratic president was in 1964. But with McCain only 2 per cent ahead in the polls, it is increasingly becoming as a battleground state.

If Barack Obama is to win here, the 100,000 odd people of Gary, Indiana will have a lot to do with it. Gary’s mayor, Rudolph Clay, claims that there’s hardly a vote that won’t go to Obama. In the Democratic primary, the town turned out a nearly 100 per cent vote for him.

Part of this has to do with the fact that Gary has the highest proportion of African Americans (about 85 per cent) of any city in the United States with a population of over 100,000. It is a town that has changed colour dramatically over the last few decades. Unfortunately, almost everything else that’s changed during that time has changed for the worse.

In the 1960s, the steel mills that lie around the city began cutting jobs. So when Obama talks about people who grew up on food stamps near the shuttered steel mills of Chicago’s south side, it has resonance in Gary, which is just 40 minutes away.

Its politics changed during that decade as well. In 1967, it became the first major American town to elect a black mayor. In 1972, Gary hosted America’s first National Black Political Convention. What followed was “white flight”: money moved out. A quarter of the people here now live below the poverty line.

Almost every shop on the west side of Broadway, the main street, is shut, and has been for the last quarter of a century at least. At the Palace theatre, it still says the Jackson Five are playing tonight.

The Jacksons did live here once, but by the time Michael Jackson was recording Thriller, Gary was topping the US crime rate charts and seemed in terminal decline. It remains among the 20 most dangerous towns in America. Last year, there were 71 homicides. Nowadays, the only place with a buzz—and a queue outside it—is Payday loans.

Unsurprisingly then, Obama’s message of change has resonated here. But change doesn’t just mean electing a black man. It means jobs; fewer visits to Payday; the opening of shops on Broadway, and if all goes well, even the Palace theatre.

But should Obama win, Gary’s voters will place a crippling burden of expectation on Obama. They wait for November like they wait for that loan, and they will be intent on collecting on every promise. He is set up for failure like no other candidate could be.

Flaming for Obama

Published