In March, Geraldine Ferraro made the observation that "if Obama were a white man, he would not be in this position.” The charitable interpretation of Ferraro's comments - that the desire to elect our first black president was a factor in Obama's success - was no less plausible than the uncharitable one, i.e. that Ferraro was sounding the affirmative action dog whistle. Yet once suspicions settled on the later, Clinton didn't hesitate to "reject and repudiate”her surrogate's comments and toss the good Congresswoman under the bus.
Last week, Charlie Black suggested that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a “big advantage” for his candidate. Was this merely an acknowledgment of McCain's national security issue-advantage, or one man's prayer for a bloody October Surprise? That question was never answered, as McCain's disavowal
came so quick that no one had a chance to ask it.
Flash forward to Wesley Clark on Face the Nation: “I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Alongside the obvious truth of this statement, even the most tone-deaf observer can recognize the potential provocation and insult it implied. Once the outrage fires started burning, Obama did what any candidate would/should do - the same thing Clinton and McCain did before him - and he disavowed Clark’s comments without excuse or qualification. Fair or unfair, such are the laws of the political jungle. No one said a word in defense of Charlie Black, and Ferraro's cause of martyrdom was her's alone. So tell me: why is it that when Obama performs the same ritual distancing, all holy hell breaks loose?
Really: Since when was it Obama's job to make sure Wesley Clark was understood in context? Since when are candidates expected to waste news cycles doing damage control for their surrogates? The arguments favoring such a task for Obama are as dumb as the politics are self-defeating. To wit:
Chris Bowers argues that Obama must defend Clark to preserve Clark's rare stature as a national security spokesman: "No one in the entire country is more important to Democratic credibility on foreign policy than Wesley Clark. No one." Is that so? What about Barack Obama - the guy who who opposed the Iraq War at a time when Clark was still supporting it. Ironically, Bowers’s ends up endorsing McCain’s own premise here - reducing ‘credibility’ on national security to a function of combat experience alone.
[Matt Stoller manages an even more ironic/less self-conscious endorsement of McCainism with his claim that Obama’s tepid disavowal amounts to a character-assassinating 'smear', insofar as Clark “is a military veteran who had served his country with great distinction, returning home from Vietnam after being riddled with bullets”. Using Vietnam war wounds as a shield against criticism- now where have we heard that before?]
As for the idea that Clark's criticism of McCain is one Obama himself should be making, and that defending Clark's comments is in Obama's own self interest.....Count me as unconvinced. Remember that Clark's larger argument is that McCain "is largely untested and untried" in commander-in-chief settings; that "he hasn't held executive responsibility"; that his squadron "wasn't a wartime squadron"; that "he hasn't...ordered the bombs to fall." If these are valid critiques of McCain's commander-and-chief resume, certainly they are valid critique's of Obama's. Indeed, if wartime squadrons and bombing raids constitute the necessary qualifications for office, only one man truly passes that threshold: (vice-president?) Wesley Clark. And this, in the final analysis, is the greatest reason for not leaping to Clark's defense: the surrogacy in which he erred was surrogacy for himself.
****
Getting real for a second: I must say, as a relative outsider to this community, these recent "Free Clark" hysterics together with the wall-to-wall FISA kvetching have really shaken my esteem. Whether or not such issues represent a low point in Obama candidacy, they've certainly revealed a shallowness to the netroot's so-called "progressive" aims. There once was a time when the highest phase of development for the proletariat meant seizing the means of production and crazy, limitless group sex. In place of those once-lofty goals, what have we now? Defending the honor of diminutive NATO commanders and suing the pants off Verizon.
Sigh. All that is holy is indeed profaned...