Huckabee wins Iowa for the
Republicans, Obama for the Democrats. “Change” is in the air. The
Commentators, TV and print (even Frank Rich, with whom I seldom disagree) tell
us that what is going on is all about “change,” for that is what the American
people want. Well, for one thing, assuming that there is no successful
CheneyBush coup beforehand, change is what they are going to get in the White
House at noon on January 20, 2009, regardless of who wins the election.
They are surely going to get a change in the personage. They may get a
change in policy too. That is not so sure. However, if there are
going to be changes in policy, only a few of the candidates on either side talk
much about them in any detail (except when Hillary Clinton, suddenly trying to
be relevant, gets bogged down in way too much detail). But the
Commentators are all focused much more on the personages, on how they deliver
speeches, on their “freshness” or lack thereof, on whether they are “of the 90s”
or “of the New Millennium.”
And so Huckabee is “so honest,” he’s
so funny, he’s so relaxed, he is so “just folks,” he is “all about change,”
while Romney is too “processed,” Mc Cain is getting old or at least old hat,
and Giuliani is a “bit too tough.” Obama is “inspirational,” “young,” “vibrant,”
“getting his sea-legs,” while Clinton is too processed, Edwards is too angry,
and Richardson is just a “nice guy” although the latter two are about “change”
too. “Change,” of course, is a process. By itself, there is no
substance in it. Elections ought to be about the substance, not the
process except as the latter serves meeting the needs encompassed by the
former.
However, since Reagan, and this
was a very conscious strategy developed by the Republicans, first under Lee
Atwater, then under Rove, American elections have become about process, not
substance, to the extent the Republicans could make them that way. Why?
Because if in any election the real Republican substances were on the table,
were part of the agenda for the American people to consider, the Republicans
would lose every time. For example, the real Bush agenda was war for oil,
and Permanent War if necessary and possible, cutting taxes for the rich so as
to further increase the gap between the rich and everyone else, further
facilitate the export of American capital (and with it American jobs), continue
crushing the unions, to ensure the profits of the drug and health insurance
companies making sure there would be no national health insurance, and so on
and so forth. Did they run on that? Oh no. They ran, the
first time at least, on Bush’s supposed “really nice” personality as contrasted
with Al Gore’s supposed “stiffness.” The Democrats fell into the
let-the-Republicans-set-the-agenda trap, as they always do, and we all know
what happened.
And so, even with one of the least
popular Presidents in American history, the Republicans are doing it again and
the media for the most part go right along with it. And so here we have
Huckabee talking about “change.” And since he seems to be a nice guy (who
has lost a lot of weight and so far kept it off) the questions he gets are
about the process, “how did you do it in Iowa,” “how will you stay close enough
in New Hampshire,” “you should do well in South Carolina, shouldn’t you?”
He is a Republican, but nevertheless “we’ve got to change the way things are
done in Washington,” which he says all the time, is just left to lay there. Never mind that “Washington” was controlled
very tightly by his party from 2001 to 2007 and only slightly less tightly
(because of minority rule in the Senate) since then. Nothing about the
substance of what he would change and how he would go about doing that
specifically, especially with the control of the next Congress almost certainly
to remain in Democratic hands. And certainly nothing about what his own agenda is.
Actually, Huckabee would change
things alright. But the real changes would not
be so “sunny,” although you would never know that from the way the media go
about things. This “really nice, funny, down-to-earth” guy would move
things sharply to the Right, if you can imagine that. His principal
foreign policy advisors are John Bolton (yes, that John Bolton who moved from
leading the physical charged that stopped the Dade County recount in December,
2000 to leading the charge to fictionalize intelligence and make sure the US went
to war in Iraq), and Frank Gaffney, who has been strong for attacking Iran both
before and since the issuance of the famous Iran-doesn’t-have-a-nuclear-weapons-program
NIE. Huckabee believes that the Ten Commandments would make a fine set of
principles for governing America. Huckabee himself has said that he has
fully supported Bush’s Iraq policy since the beginning and would continue the
occupation, or whatever you want to call it, indefinitely. He is for a
national abortion ban and against gay rights. He is for abolishing the
progressive income tax entirely and replacing it with the most regressive tax
imaginable, a national sales tax.
He has apparently read just two
parts of the Constitution. First is the Second Amendment which he claims
supports unlimited gun ownership rights (when it is actually about militias) up
to and including who-knows-what kinds of weapons (tanks, machine guns, SA-7
anti-aircraft rockets?) Second is the Tenth, which in the language of the
segregationists he interprets as an all-powerful delegation-to-the-states
clause when in fact it begins by clearly referring to the set of powers
delegated to the Federal government. Finally, according to Christopher
Hedges, Huckabee has been associated with Dominionism, which calls for Biblical
Law to replace Constitutional Law for the United States. It should come
as no surprise that 60% of the Huckabee vote in Iowa came from the bloc that
the media kindly refer to as “the evangelicals.” Since there are all
stripes of evangelicals, and many, such as the Latinos, are not Republicans,
the name for the Huckabee types should really be “Right-Wing Christian
Fundamentalists,” but heaven help us the media should call a spade a spade.
So Huckabee is for change alright, a change further to the Right. But you would
never know that from the coverage he gets, which just fits right in with the
Republican
just-focus-on-process-folks-because-if-they-ever-get-to-focus-on-substance-it-will-kill-us
election-control system. So where do the Democrats come into this at this
time? Well, at least until now, the two top candidates have fit right
into the same mold. So Hillary has been running on “experience,” and “leadership
abilities,” and “making the tough decisions,” (sometimes not so subtlety) “I’m
a woman,” “I’m going to change things in Washington.” Obama has been
running on “youth” and “vigor” and “freshness” and “hope” and “I’m going to
change things in Washington.” (Of the three leading candidates, only
Edwards has been running primarily on substance, on jobs, and national health
insurance, and (finally) ending the US occupation of Iraq sooner rather than
later. But the primary characterization you see about Edwards is that he
is “angry” and once upon a time had a $400.00 haircut.)
Once again, change is a process
not a thing. What the Democrats need to do is focus much more on why
change is necessary and what the changes to be made will be. (Again,
Edwards has done this much more than the other top two, although Obama, as he
and his advisors sniff a possible win, is starting to come around [and if he
wins New Hampshire, this being written the day before that primary, he will
start being more open about the “whats”].) But that means really running
against the Republicans and what they really stand for, both now and in the
general election. It means hanging BushCheney around the neck of every
Republican candidate. It means dealing directly with their fear-mongering, which means attacking on defense, a subject
I have written about more than once on the pages.
Kucinich, Biden and Dodd were
indeed about substance. So is Richardson. So is Edwards. So
far, Obama has been primarily about process, viz. his “acceptance speech” the
night he won the Iowa Caucuses. This won’t do it, folks. If the media
won’t do it for them, and apparently they won’t (have you heard any commentator
ask Huckabee about his comments on the Ten Commandments or his relationship to
Dominionism or creationism, for that matter?), the Democrats will have to move
beyond process and get the primary focus on substance.
Poll-and-focus-group driven Clinton inherently cannot do this except when she
gets bogged down in delivering what sound like working-plan memos.
Edwards has been there all along. Obama, the primary beneficiary of the
process movement on the Democratic side, has, as noted, finally begun moving to
substance, for example on the War on Iraq.
I still think that the Republican
ticket will be Giuliani-Huckabee. While I would like the Democratic
ticket to be Edwards-Obama, unless Clinton recovers her traction in time for
Super Tuesday, it looks more and more like Obama. If that’s the case, I would love Edwards to become the first candidate for the
Vice-Presidency to run with two different candidates for President. And
what a coup it would be for the ticket to become a first-in-history threesome,
with Richardson on it as, well, “running” for Secretary of State. Now
there’s a Trifecta for you.