Obama and Nativism

I've been reading a lot on the web that it seems the dominant line of attack against Obama in the general election would be to challenge his patriotism and loyalty to the United States, with varying hues of sophistication. Hence the dissection of Michelle Obama's 'proud comment' and the circulation of pictures of Obama in traditional Somali clothing and the repeat use of his middle name.

I have a friend who's a Clinton supporter, and throughout the early primaries, he emphasized how most of Clinton's support seemed to be coming from the white Democratic working class rather than the more white-collared Obama supporters. While it seems this pattern was somewhat shattered on Super Tuesday, the argument gave me, as a former Edwards supporter concerned with growing economic inequality, some pause. Were Clinton's policies more pro-poor? Were working class people just more comfortable choosing the white woman over the black man?

I don't think the differences in their economic policies are significant, and I think racism transcends class differences in the US, it just may take different forms. I wound up leaning towards both a preference for competence/experience and nativism as the major explanations for the early class gap among white blue collar voters.

Over Christmas break, an aunt of mine who lives in Virginia told us that many of her friends didn't want to vote for Obama because "he was Muslim." I think that while it's easy for us to laugh off these stories-- or be disgusted by them-- inside DC, they have a real impact on many voters. However, it would be short-sighted and unfair to blame the current tide of nativism solely on shallow prejudice.

Over the past few years, the average American has not seem much good that comes from other shores. We can take 9/11 and the spectre of Islamo-terrorism completely out of the picture and still make this claim. People have gotten poorer, and I think they see their wealth going overseas in two ways.

First, while free trade is not the bogeyman in this election and seems unlikely to become one, immigration certainly has the potential to be. (My father commented that a lot of conservative pundits don't like McCain because they had hoped to make immigration the general election wedge issue that gay marriage was in 2004 and his vote on the immigration reform act this summer makes that difficult.) I think the following myth is fairly common: "I am worse off and my taxes are going to help out illegal immigrants."

Second, America is spending billions of dollars abroad fighting an unpopular and unsuccessful war. People see this loss both in terms of their tax dollars and in terms of the lack of social programs that could otherwise be in its place.

(On a slightly different note-- and discussing a different portion of the electorate--I think it's important to note that due to the weaker dollar, fewer Americans may be traveling abroad than in the past, and this may also weaken America's affection for the rest of the world.)

I think there are seeds for a preference for soft isolationism among both the Democratic and the Republican electorate, and the strategy to paint Obama as a foreigner-- a man who grew up outside of the US, who isn't white, who has a funny name and is from a rioting country-- could definitely continue to have legs. In 2004, the Manchurian candidate threat could have held more weight, but I think the bulk of the insinuation this time around can be much softer. "He isn't one of us; he's from somewhere else."

To me, this potential rising isolationism and nativism is one of the biggest battles we foreign policy people (SAIS kids who don't vote and liberal economists too) are going to have to fight in the next decade (and it's not one we can win, or even understand, by labling our opponents as intolerant or bigoted). It's not just about rebuilding the world's faith in America, but rebuilding our own faith in the world and our place in it.

I think it's actually one of the best reasons for Obama's candidacy. I think we need a candidate who can credibly assert that our relationships with the rest of the world can be based on more than fear and protection. Although I'm pretty weary of the hope rhetoric, I'd like to see a candidate inject a little hope into the foreign policy debate. I don't know if Obama will do this-- it might be a bold step when McCain's predictions are so scary-- but I think he has the ability and opportunity to.

(I hate to make grand speculations about what candidates will do [and Obama supporters are particularly guilty of this] but I do think Clinton has forced herself to play more of McCain's game on foreign policy because of her Iraq vote, etc...)

Otter Creek and Magritte

Earlier this week, I met some high school friends-- and their friends at SAIS-- at Brickskeller, a place in DC famous for having over 3,000 beers.

There was a temptation to try to show off by ordering Tusker or Efes or Mythos or Kirin, but I decided it was a good rule of thumb not to try to out-worldly future potential career diplomats, and I stuck to Otter Creek. It was also the cheapest thing on the menu.

(Otter Creek is a town near Burlington. Back when I was in high school, they had the best debate team in state for a year. Their champion debater had an extremely low, calm voice that really stood out as everyone else raised their voices as the round continued. I always envied that voice, and as a result, wanted to try the beer. Somehow, I don't think this has broad implications as a marketing technique.)

In general, the SAIS kids didn't vote and were proud of it. I promise, this is not my only topic of conversation, and in this case, I didn't bring it up, I swear, but of course, once it came up it had to be argued about. It's really depressing that people who will probably have a fair share of influence over American foreign policy-- and would certainly like to, at least-- don't think it's important to make it to the polls.

On the bathroom wall, someone had written "this is bathroom graffiti." Someone else (A 20th century art student? A freshman encountering Foucault for the first time? Someone with a brand new and tantalizing sharpie who was too drunk to be clever?) wrote under it "This is not bathroom graffiti." I thought it was just a Magritte spin off and then I realized it was different from the painting of the pipe. The painting was not a pipe because it was a painting. The bathroom graffiti was bathroom graffiti. I spent a little while trying to think what this meant. Then I was glad I didn't major in philosophy.

Another Reason Florida Mattered

I was talking with my friend Rachel the other day, who's considering going into electoral reform activism. I think electoral reform is really, really important, but it's not something I ever want to do myself, so it's a little like playing tag. If I convinced her to do it, I wouldn't have to feel guilty about not doing it. She believes the job of an organizer is to bring together and empower grassroots movements, and a lot of her hesitation about taking up the issue was she felt like there was no grassroots movement to back it and that it was mainly a concern of the elite. She might be right, but I think there's a lot of evidence that the average voter (especially the average minority voter) worries about disenfranchisement.

One of my friends voted in a historically black neighborhood in Atlanta and said the young woman in front of him brought four photo ids to the polls because she was so worried someone would keep her from voting and she wanted to vote for Obama so badly.

In PA, there were frequently reports from minority would-be voters who had been registered but mysteriously never received their voter reg card.

The other day, I was meeting a bunch of friends for breakfast and didn't feel like getting properly dressed so I just threw on my Dean sweatshirt. On the train, the guy sitting next to me asked who I was voting for. When I responded, he said, "well, I'm not going to vote for Obama just because he's black. I'm going to vote for the person who promises me my vote is going to get counted. Why doesn't anyone talk about that anymore? I haven't heard anything about that. Bush stole the election in 2000, you know that? I haven't voted since then. Not going to vote this time, either."

He was from New Orleans and he still didn't have a permanent home. There were a myriad of reasons he could have been angry at the government. The one he picked was the very oldest scandal, the Supreme Court decision that won Bush the presidency, the failure to recount the votes of Florideans.

I made some pretty feeble "not voting isn't a good way to protest the system" arguments but he got to me a lot more than I could get to him. If you're afraid your vote isn't going to count, why vote?

Mambo Vipi Kweli, Tanzania?

President Bush has spent the last five days visiting
Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia. I'm a little bitter it takes being a lame duck and plummeting approval rankings to get the President to make his second (somewhat promotional) trip to African in eight years, but it's something...

(The title from the entry comes from the fact I'm actually kind of impressed Bush greeted Tanzanians with the hip "mambo vipi?" Most Americans say "Jambo," which is acceptable in Kenya but considered a little rude in Tanzania, where people prefer the more formal "Hujambo?" The "kweli" means really or truly, but I might have put it in the wrong place. Eleuthera?)

I think it's interesting Bush is entirely bypassing Kenya. If the trip took place three months ago, I wonder if he would have visited Kenya instead of Tanzania. For the most part, conflict in Kenya is bad for Tanzania, but on the other hand, it may mean Tanzania can seize more of Kenya's tourism, marketshare, and headpatting for being a beacon of democracy in East Africa.

The tour is primarily promoting the Millenium Challenge goals and counter AIDS/malaria relief rather than confronting the political turmoil. I think there's space to criticize the Millenium Challenge goals-- the program reminds me a little of No Child Left Behind in that it incentivizes "good results" without providing the tools to get there-- but I think it's done more good than ill and is one possible way to combat corruption. Based on my time in Tanzania, it was hard to see how this translated into any poverty reduction, but I didn't have an comparison point.

There's a lot to criticize about PETFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In addition to funding delays and dependence on expensive antiretroviral drugs rather cheaper South African generic drugs, PETFAR shifted funding away from AIDS programs that promoted condom use to programs that emphasized monogamy and abstinence. I wrote a column last year
that criticizes PETFAR. It was my first column, so it's a bit too dry, but it explains some of the reasons the plan isn't as good as it sounds.

Of course, no one in Tanzania is going to say that because money is better than no money and a president visiting is better than no president visiting. There's this hope, that maybe if they are very welcoming and maybe if he sees just how hard things are, maybe the United States will help a little bit more. (How can it not?) And if not, then they can tell their children they saw the American president. The American president can get coverage more friendly than he's gotten in months. And for the most part, everything will stay the same.

I don't mean to be cynical, I'm just sad.

Why Do Gyms Have Free Coffee, Anyway?

I've made two exciting discoveries about my gym over the past month;
1) There is good free coffee
2) The conditioner is higher quality than the conditioner I buy for myself.
Given that I'm both a caffeine addict and I have a lot of hair, I figure I can turn my gym membership into a way to save money. By showering there, I'll go through conditioner at home more slowly and my hair will look better. I can save the money I would have otherwise spent on coffee, and the whole system further incentivizes going to the gym. (This sounds a little like something Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist would have done. Oh dear.)

I'm not that cheap, I just like buying shoes and Ethiopian food more than I like buying conditioner and coffee.

Argonauting

I figured it was time for a location update. Although at this point, I don't take anything for granted till I have the plane ticket in my in-box, I'm pretty sure I'll be in Greece for the summer. I'll be in DC until late April or early May (and can see the famous cherry blossoms, hurray!) and then will be on the road again.
I imagine blogging will pick up again then. It's harder for me to do in DC without falling into the trap of blogging about the primary. I'm certifiably obsessed with the primary, but really can only act as an internet echo machine (which I do anyway), so I probably won't post more than once or twice a week until I have a lot of slice-of-lifey things to write about again.

When the NATO project was first discussed, I wasn't thrilled by it because my academic interests have more traditionally been tied to the developing world. The more I think about it, the more excited I get, though. I was reading an interesting article in The Economist at the gym about how, in the event that Kosovo declares independence from Serbia, this may have some bearing on other "frozen conflicts" within Europe, particularly the Georgia-Ossetia conflict because it will change the precedent. (Nationalism is a contagious, contagious business, apparently.) I don't know very much about this, but plan on reading more this weekend, because Serbia forecasts Kosovo will declare independence in the next twenty-four hours.

My mother pointed out that being in Greece makes my blog title extra appropriate. I originally came up with it just because the argonauts traveled (I think the VT part is self explanatory). Then, boredom in the UAE drove me to wikipedia the argonauts, and I discovered the golden fleece is sometimes seen as an allegory for truth. I love being accidentally profound.

Access versus Depth

I'm from Vermont, so I have a sentimental attachment to town meeting day. It seems almost as close to pure democracy, bypassing the representation, that exists. For a while, I thought caucuses were almost like town meetings-- a chance to interact with other people and discuss candidate preferences gives each person the opportunity to express a more nuanced political opinion than pulling a lever. I love the way systems like instant run-off voting let voters rank preferences rather than just vote for their top candidate, and in a sense, caucuses are closer to this model.

However, caucuses are not a discussion of issues and solutions, or an airing out of concerns. They take much longer than the two minutes required to rank candidates and leave the voting booth. Instead, they are a multi hour process completely inaccessible to those who can't find a sitter for their small children or can't get the night off work. They are unappealing to those who work long hours and dread the thought of tagging on a few more. They're a challenge to people who plan to vote differently than their boss, husband, or best friends-- all people who may caucus at the same place.

Because of the time and political capital investment required, caucuses substansialy increase the cost of each individual's vote. They limit the types of individuals who can participate in the political process.

All these points about caucuses have, of course, been made over and over again by people far more knowledgeable and articulate then me. The point I want to make is not that caucuses are less democratic than primaries, but that in their best forms, a caucus and a primary represent two different democratic ideals. Is it more valuable to have a deeper discussion that may allow for a more nuanced representation of issues or to allow more people to participate? I tend to favor access over depth-- I think it's just a more democratic principle-- but I do think there's a real debate to be had there.

Guess Which Amendment is My Favorite

One thing I regret not studying more in college was democratic theory. I had this mistaken conviction that democratic theory classes would focus on, say, GOTV techniques. Whenever people start to explain GOTV to me, I zone out, furtively try to figure out where they put the Box o'Joe, and impatiently wait for them to finish and give me my walk sheets. Said exercise did not seem like the best use of college tuition.

My senior year, I took a Latin American comparative politics seminar that clued me in on the fact that democratic theory was not, in fact, about which doors to knock on. Nor was it just about elections, period.

Increasingly, I realize that just as I thought democratic theory was the study of electoral engagement, the United States seems to think democracy is elections. I don't think a democracy can exist without elections, but I have no doubt elections can exist without democracy.

Elections are often (and this goes back at least to El Salvador two decades ago; it's not a new phenemenon in Iraq and Afghanistan) hailed as not only a signpost on the road to democracy, but as the pinacle symbol of a democratic society. I think in part this is because elections are so tangible; one can quantify their success by the turnout, the lack of violence, the level of enthusiasm. A couple bloggers and authors also argue the United States tends to focus on elections because we have for so long; we know how to build reliable election systems (really?) whereas developing a participatory society from scratch is something that a) outsiders are less equipped to do and b) we've been a democracy for too long to understand. Personally, I'm a sap for the lovely romance of one man, one vote-- the idea of each and every person having the same amount of voice to make their own private choice (we'll leave campaign contributions and the electoral college out of it). It's hard not to be touched-- nor should we be anything but-- by the stories of formerly disenfranchised people, allowed to vote for the first time ever, lining up outside the polls.

The emphasis on elections as the hallmark of democracy rather than, say, a deeper democratic society is one reason we are quick to uphold results-- people voted, right?-- even in cases, like the recent Kenyan election, where it seems clear there was a lot of fraud. (There's probably space here for a whole separate digression about whether we value stable, predictable outcomes over democracy...)

(I think there are some interesting challenges involved in elections themselves: what do ballots look like in a country with a low literacy rate? If political parties don't exist and there are hundreds of candidates-- as was the case with the 2006 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan-- how can people possibly vote on anything other than tribal affiliation? Historically, in Mexican elections, voters have a finger inked at the polls to prevent voter fraud and repeat voting. However, this also allowed the PRI to check up on voters and punish non-voters. If we assume the decision to not vote is a legitimate one-- and that the choice is private-- then to mark voters contributes to potential coercion.

For the most part, though, challenges associated with elections themselves are technocratic and specific rather than philosophical.)

The challenge I find the most gripping is how to create a climate in which elections are meaningful. A friend of mine who's family is originally from China argued that democracy just wouldn't work in China because people weren't interested in events outside of the family and didn't think about how things should change. My Latin American politics teacher convinced me that democracy is not neutral but is a value-driven system, but I don't think I'll ever be convinced it's a peculiarly western institution.

I think it's impossible to make claims about what people think or do not think in a nation in which free speech and free of press and freedom of access to information don't exist. I believe these freedoms are the basic foundation of democracy and must be in place before one can even talk about elections. (Even without a structural move towards elections, I think freedom of expression would eventually lead to a change in goverment; I know some people argue that this is not the case if the country is well off enough-- people don't riot over votes, but instead, bread shortages. However, if this was the case, there would be no need for repression and censorship in the UAE.) There can't be a developed meaningful difference of opinion-- key to a legitimate election-- without speech. Issue based platforms and corresponding support can't exist without the ability to discuss possibilities different than those currently persued by the government.

Corresponding conditions are wide access to information (radio's great) and a state monopoly on force. A constitutional guarentee of free speech becomes meaningless if paramilitary gangs can punish you for its execution.

I guess one could argue that free expression is a pecuilarly western institution, even if democracy is not, but I think it's important to remember that free speech is relatively new, somewhat rare, and very fragile throughout the west as well.

In the end, I think supporting democracy is a worthy goal for American foreign policy, I just think our current instruments and assessments are ill-suited to achieve it. Generating support for free speech overseas is much subtler than supporting elections. I think at the very least, we need to strengthen domestic civil liberties so as to be able to lead by example, and we must resist the urge to bolster stability at the expense of democratic processes abroad.

(I also like the 13th-15th amendments a lot, especially their mid-century rediscovery.)