Greenwald on Obama,Palin and Bush

Greenwald finds similarities between the President, the former President, and the would-be President. Or at any rate, among their fans. He's been watching a video of interviews with Palin supporters:

Most of them profess their deep respect and admiration for Palin even though they're barely able to defend a single substantive position she holds. The video is clearly intended to depict Palin supporters as some sort of uniquely ignorant and vacuous fan club devotees more appropriate for a movie star than a politician.

Indeed, at first, I was mesmerized by the video. After all, these were not just random, politically apathetic people selected off the street. They are politically interested and engaged enough to spend hours waiting to see Sarah Palin. They have deep convictions about politics and overwhelming faith in her judgment and abilities. And yet they have virtually no ability to justify any of her specific views on issues. They don't really care about those. What they know is that she's a culturally familiar and admirable person. They share her values and know she's a good person, and thus trust that she will "do the right thing" on specific issues regardless of whether they agree or even understand what she's doing. They have a personal connection with her that makes them place their faith in her.

After watching slack-jawed for a few minutes, I quickly realized that there was nothing unusual at all about their reaction to Palin. This was exactly what led so many Bush followers to defend him no matter what he did -- as he tortured and invaded without cause and chronically broke the law. He was, like most of them, a "good Christian" who had a nice family and meant well, and thus, while he might err, he was not capable of any truly bad or evil acts. Anyone who criticized him too harshly or too viciously was, by definition, revealing something flawed about themselves. None of the specific arguments mattered. None of it had to do with reason. Like Palin's admirers, Bush's were convinced of the core goodness of his character, and they thus loved him and hated those who suggested that there was something deeply wrong in what he was doing.

The similarity between that mentality and the one driving the Obama defenses ... is too self-evident to require any elaboration. Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom see Obama as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They're also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who -- like a loved one or close friend or religious leader -- must be protected and defended at all costs.

Greenwald's point of departure was a pair of Andrew Sullivan posts; see here and here; cf. here. I haven't quite sorted out what I think of it yet, but I can start with this: I'm not quite as unhappy with Obama substance as Greenwald is, yet I've had to swallow a few shocks along the way. Rattled as I may be, I'd have to say (a) we get only one President at s time and he deserves a decent chance to make it work (in a long-distant time, I even felt this about W); and (b) I haven't seen anything close to the mendacity, cynicism and sheer corrruption in the Obama White House that we came to see in his predecessor--with, of course, feeds back into (a).

I think I have said before that I'm surprised and disappointed at Obama's low level of political skill--his considerable incapacity to sell himself or generally to make it happen. This may sound like sheer nattering over process, but it's more than that: the job of a leader is to lead, which includes being able to explain and justify an agenda, and to convince the Folks tht it is worthwhile.

And in an odd way, this seems to turn the "nice man" argument on its head. I think there is fairly general (certainly not universal) agreement that Carter and Hoover were "nice men" in the sense of being decent and honorable and loyal to their families (though you can get carried away here: Hoover was apparently a pious gasbag, and Carter had a mean streak). Yet in the end, nobody gave a damn: we remember them as prisoners of events, just out of their depth.

Mrs. B, a more charitable soul than I, says I am being to hard on Obama. Yes, he has made rookie mistakes, she concedes, but he is a rookie. He'll learn. Well, I hope he'll learn, is learning. And some people do grow into it. Yet he'll never have as much opportunity as he has had during the last 11 months, and it is a rotten shame how much of it he has thrown away.