Steele carries the beakless soccer mom vote to victory

The GOP just elected Michael Steele (note: black dude) to the position of RNC chairman in a 6-way race that got much more publicity than one would normally expect for such intra-party politics due to the infamous choice by Chip Saltzman to rally support for his candidacy by sending out promotional CDs featuring song parodies, including one titled "Barack the Magic Negro".

Steele won on the 6th ballot over Katon Dawson of South Carolina who resigned from his country club last September and it was later revealed that the club's deed has a "whites-only" restriction and has no black members. Talk about your stark choices.

[Note: I am not saying that Dawson is definitively racist, but symbolism matters in politics and this looks horrible no matter what his actual personal ethics are.]

Wonkette covered the multiple roll-call votes with typical snarkiness. Although, being required to "live-blog" the voting for a new RNC chairman in order to earn a living would put almost anyone into a bad humor. To wit:

2:34 PM — Truly, these are the worst looking people in America. Even the “youngish” ones look old, they are pale and wrinkled, bad hair and schlubby suits, the few women have awful pinched little mouths, like anteaters, or beakless chickens.

A Six-Foot Black Woman Who Says What She Means

For those not familiar with Ta-Nehisi Coates, blogger and writer for the Atlantic Monthly, I can recommend you to his blog.

And, additionally, to his recent profile of the soon-to-be First Lady, Michelle Obama, from the magazine itself:

In most black people, there is a South Side, a sense of home, that never leaves, and yet to compete in the world, we have to go forth. So we learn to code-switch and become bilingual. We save our Timberlands for the weekend, and our jokes for the cats in the mail room. Some of us give ourselves up completely and become the mask, while others overcompensate and turn every dustup into the Montgomery bus boycott.

But increasingly, as we move into the mainstream, black folks are taking a third road--being ourselves. Implicit in the notion of code-switching is a belief in the illegitimacy of blacks as Americans, as well as a disbelief in the ability of our white peers to understand us. But if you see black identity as you see southern identity, or Irish identity, or Italian identity--not as a separate trunk, but as a branch of the American tree, with roots in the broader experience--then you understand that the particulars of black culture are inseparable from the particulars of the country.

Pop culture has laid the groundwork for that recognition. Barack Obama's coalition--the young, the black, the urban, the hip--was originally assembled by hip-hop. Jay-Z and Nas may be problematic ambassadors, but their ilk are why those who thought Barack and Michelle were giving each other a "terrorist fist jab" were laughed off the stage. We are as physically segregated as ever, yet the changes in media have drawn black idiom into the broader American narrative.

[snip]

When I saw Obama in Chicago and took her for white, it was not because of her cadences, mannerisms, or dress, but because of the radical proposition she put forth--a black community fully vested, no DuBoisian veil, in the country at large. A buddy of mine once remarked that Michelle "makes Barack black." But that understates things. She doesn't simply make Barack black--she makes him American.

[snip]

These heralds offer a deeper understanding of African American life, a greater appreciation of the bourgeois ordinariness of our experience. “People have never met a Michelle Obama,” the soon-to-be first lady said toward the end of our interview. “But what they’ll come to learn is that there are thousands and thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas across America. You just don’t live next door to them, or there isn’t a TV show about them.”

There is now.

There was some discussion during the primaries that Barack should find the opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment in order to distance himself from "blackness" or racial identity-based politics. There was also a certain mythology that merely the act of electing a black President would somehow magically heal certain lingering racial wounds in our society (allowing blacks to shed racial grievance, eliminate lingering white guilt).

One frequent suggestion was that Obama should campaign on a pledge to shift from race to class-based affirmative action policies. The thinking being (a la Nixon goes to China) that it will take a black Democrat to drive such changes through, since he will not be open to cheap charges of racism, given his personal identity.

For my money, I doubt that Obama will do any such thing, and moreover, I would hope that he would not. Any symbolic benefit to be obtained from him being our first black President is only going to be realized by his being an effective American President first and foremost, outside of simplistic racial classification. And, this is not because he must explicitly reject or negate any black identity, but rather that he simply needs to implicitly live it, as Coates notes, such that the "particulars of black culture are inseparable from the particulars of the country."

Any move he might make as President that reeks specifically as a self-conscious performance of his blackness, of using his racial identity (even if for presumed positive ends) as a political tool, will by definition retard any such objectives. At this stage, basic competence within the White House would be a massive step forward for the country in completely non-racial terms.

Or, as Chris Rock noted on Larry King Live:

KING: You must be … proud that at this stage in our history a black man is running for president on a major ticket.

ROCK: I’m proud Barack Obama [is] running for president... If it was Flavor Flav, would I be proud? No. I don’t support Barack Obama because he’s black.

KING: I said just as a proud feeling. That’s normal.

ROCK: There’s a proud feeling because of the character of the man.

I sincerely hope Rock is right, because with everything that is going to be on Obama's plate, we are going to need it.

On a side note, any of you who have seen me spend time with my own niece, Mahlia, will know that I have a soft spot for elementary-school and middle-school aged kids (like Miss Mahlia herself). I am not as naturally drawn to babies and teenagers, but I like kids a lot.

So, I am all in favor of the coming Cuteness Stimulus, as Yglesias has termed it:

Obama transition team acts to counter national cuteness deficit by posting photos of Sasha and Malia getting ready for their first day at school

Michael Goldfarb confirms my omnicient demigod status

Close followers of this blog (ha ha) will note the following interview with Goldfarb was posted 1 day after my spirited defense of John McCain's honor with respect to the issue of Jeremiah Wright.

Goldfarb:

We were prevented from mentioning it and that was very frustrating to a lot of people on the campaign.

[snip]

Everybody wanted to go in that direction, besides John McCain, I think.

Now obviously, there is a potential argument to be made that the decision was less about McCain's personal honor and was simply good political tactics, if one takes the belief that the blowback would have been worse than any potential benefit of whacking Wright around like a pinata all campaign season long.

Chris Bodenner takes this tack on a guest-post titled "Pragmatism, Not Honor" on Sullivan's site:

John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected.

Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons.... "I said 'Look, if we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,'" recalled McInturff of the internal discussions about cutting attack ads with Wright. "If [McCain] had used that issue that way, you’d already be delegitimized as a president. You couldn’t function as government."

Ultimately, for me, I think there is too much evidence in McCain's own life and political career that highlights his deep sense of honor, his war-service chief among them, to think that he is nothing more than the most cynical self-serving politician (see Blagojevich, Rod). One of the most humanizing things about him is the various confessional moments he has had where he publically regrets and recants things he has said or done in pursuit of political goals. Every politician is forced to compromise his/her principles to a degree, but McCain seems to struggle with it much more than most.

Yet, somewhat oddly, it was his seeming commitment to national honor (a national greatness conservative in the Teddy Roosevelt strain) that made me even less disposed to him than I may have been otherwise. His frequent appeals to "bring our troops home with honor" from Iraq (while I acknowledge this was simply a campaign talking point) reflected in my mind McCain's belief that this was an objective that was worth fighting for, literally.

From some of his statements, I get the sense that he would have been willing to sacrifice another 58,000+ American lives in Vietnam if that would have guaranteed an "honorable" victory. But, for me, I think there is a muddy line between adherence to principles and blind dogmatism.

The "domino theory" that underpinned the strategic necessity for the Vietnam war turned out to be incorrect. Vietnam fell and all of Southeast Asia, and shortly thereafter the world, did not fall under the grip of Communism. And, those in power that clung blindly to the belief that we could not afford to show any weakness protracted the conflict at great cost.

In short, I don't think countries have honor. People do. Soldiers do. But, countries only have interests. And it is the firm commitment to the maintenance of abstractions such as "national honor" that leads to hubristic over-reaching, especially in the area of military affairs.

Thus, fast forward to our case in Iraq. I am most concerned that we get as many of our soldiers out alive as possible and that we leave the place in as peaceable a state as possible given the severe trauma that society has experienced both before and after our invasion. And, I don't much care (rhetorically speaking, of course) whether we do it by honorable or dishonorable means.

It is the ends (and lives it takes to reach them) that we should be worried about.

Revenge is a dish best served cold

I never felt that the McCain campaign was intentionally playing the race-card in its attacks against Barack Obama during the election season.

It was simply running the same tired Republican playbook of characterizing him as a snobbish, limp-wristed, liberal, proto-socialist boogeyman who doesn't share or appreciate the values of "real Americans." This was exactly the same way they sought to frame John Kerry, though obviously to much greater effect.

However, in the attempt to "other" Obama, it made it seem as if they were subtly trying to point out (wink wink nudge nudge) that, well, he's a black guy. And, so the typical campaign playbook routine had a boomerang effect by implicating the campaign itself for stirring up some of the racial epithets that were heard at the rallies and made such big national news.

But, I don't think this was the intent. If they had wanted to play pure racial politics, there would have been a 24x7 Jermeiah Wright channel on my cable network. From what I understand, it was McCain himself who said that Wright was essentially off-limits as a campaign topic.

Witness this priceless display by Michael Goldfarb, McCain Campaign Spokesman, who simply won't bring himself to say Wright's name even when practically ordered to do so by the CNN interviewer.

CNN: "Well, say it!!"
Goldfarb: "We all know who we are talking about here."




Now, it's not to say that there wasn't some ugly reactions by a few McCain supporters towards Obama that were clearly racially motivated. It's just that those people weren't going to vote for Obama anyway.

And, the massive news storm that followed some of the incidents could have only hurt the Republicans with the swing voters they would have needed to win. How many sub-urban soccer moms find the prospect of lynch mobs to be appealing?

So, while I don't blame McCain personally (and in some ways I laud him for trying to take the issue off the table), obviously one can't have any sympathy for those of his supporters who eagerly DID attempt to trade in racial or religious prejudice as a way ginning up fears of Obama and votes for McCain.

And, it is to those reprobates that I gleefully dedicate the following:

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, President-elect Obama said that "when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, he plans to be sworn in like other presidents, using his full name: Barack Hussein Obama."

While most presidents use their full names, there have been recent exceptions: In 1977, James Earl Carter was sworn in as president as Jimmy Carter. And in 1981, Ronald Wilson Reagan simply went by Ronald Reagan.

While awaiting the inauguration, I myself am going to be reading up on my Sharia-law statutes, just to ensure I've got all my bases covered.