The Nature of "Post-partisan"

I've been thinking a lot about this. I think it both frames the rhetorical debate that fuels the current campaign and it might forecast the kind of substantive policy achievements that will be possible under a future Democratic administration. I think the Clinton camp's essential argument is: "The enemy is real and will not go away. You cannot play nice with them or they will destroy you. Our sad experience over many years teaches us this. It won't be pretty, but it is necessary. You have to beat them." The Clintons themselves are the perfect embodiment of this argument. I think the essential Obama message, straight from the 2004 speech, is: "It doesn't have to be this way. There are no red states or blue states, but a United States. There is no enemy. We can find a way forward, together." Obama is also a perfect embodiment of this argument, which is what makes this campaign almost mythic. More after the fold...

Obviously, these are extreme characterizations--Clinton can claim to be able to work across the aisle, and Obama can insist that he will not be naive or exploited--that he can fight when necessary. And we can assess the credibility of these claims, which others have done.

But what does this mean for policy outcomes? Obama critics say he will simply get his butt kicked; Clinton critics say she will continue the partisan quagmire that keeps anything important from getting done. Neither of these critiques is very deep.

I am definitely an Obama backer, but I want to take seriously the cost of all that hope. It's about chipping away at ossified definitions that turn labels into straitjackets. Here's the easy side: we'd like conservatives to loosen up a little. I'm sure you all know that surly Uncle or coworker who snorts at any mention of health care reform and shouts out, "Socialized Medicine!" Or who thinks that Unions ruined this country. Or they use some code to talk about welfare and personal responsibility when what they mean is that Black people are lazy. What we call tax fairness they call class envy. I'm sure you've noted, either quietly or out loud, that little of this is about whether any particular substantive policy suggestion will actually have the feared consequences. It's an ideological narrative that is more or less internally coherent.

The promise of post-partisanship is that maybe we can get past the rigid categories. Evangelicals can discover that they value environmental stewardship of God's good earth. What exactly is the problem with having universal health coverage? Maybe we can respond to specific concerns with specific policy shifts--it is true that we have to take into account market disincentives and public employee accountability. The outreach to independents and "Obamacans" is not based on the idea that they have seen the light and are now what we would call progressive. The offer is that if they listen to us without attaching labels they might like parts of what they hear. The tradeoff is that we promise to listen to them without preconceptions.

Yes, we don't just get to convince them that we were right all along. We have to listen. We have to consider that there may be points on which they were right all along. This brings us to the part that is harder for us. What are our blinders, where are our ideological blind spots? Is there nothing to the argument that an abortion is a tragedy that is sometimes carried out carelessly? Does the commercialization of sexuality not have adverse impacts on human integrity? Does free trade at least in some circumstances increase global productivity to the benefit of consumers and the international labor force? Has the structure of labor organizations sometimes impeded economic progress? If you are starting to sputter and your brain is producing counterarguments and indignant replies, believe me, I've already thought of my own. This paragraph was hard for me to write.

What we are asked to do is to winnow out the responses that are the products of our own powerful internal narratives and consider the issues on their own merits. This is difficult. It may even be impossible. I often insist that historical context is everything, and I am very committed to certain storylines.

Moreover, there is risk. The other side may be feigning cooperation to get concessions. We may be needlessly conceding in order to cooperate. But unless you think that the battlelines are eternal, that good and evil are arrayed clearly, and that you and yours have a privileged capacity to discern which is which, then there must come a time when the narrative changes. If Bush has taught me anything, it is the peril of seeing the world through the lens of absolute good and absolute evil.

It's not that we can escape narrative, it's that we can write new ones. My support for Obama is based on being willing to give up certain cherished themes in search of a new one. I see signs that there are some on the other side whose weariness of the old battles is sincere. I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to stick to their guns and keep slugging it out. But I'm hoping we find the courage to change.

I'm pretty new here, and I know this entry is a little self-indulgent. Let me know what you think.