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Michael Barone: The Netroots Put Winning Ahead of Convictions
“I am a pessimist by nature, which is why I have spent my life as a journalist instead of trying to be a leader, which requires optimism.”
So wrote Robert Novak, who died Tuesday, in his 2007 autobiography The Prince of Darkness.
Novak’s voice was mostly stilled after he was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2008 — he seemed to adhere to his long-standing practice of never writing a column in which he did not break news — but he surely anticipated the problems now facing President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, optimists all.
Not that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the only optimists who have been flummoxed by the obviously spontaneous outpouring of opposition to Democratic health-care bills — and to the whole package of Democratic programs, starting with the $787 billion economic stimulus, which threatens to increase the national debt from 40 percent of gross domestic product to a World War II level of 70 percent.
Among those optimists are almost all of the Washington press corps and a large proportion of the 53 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Obama last November, as well as some nontrivial proportion of the 46 percent who voted for John McCain.
Foremost among their number are the netroots — the young enthusiasts who flock to the Daily Kos blog and are ready to take direction from MoveOn.org. As my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York reported on Tuesday, the netroots, once almost totally preoccupied with the war in Iraq and suffused with hatred of George W. Bush, have now moved on.
They show little interest in Iraq, now that Obama is seeking (though carefully refraining from using the word) victory there, and little more interest in Afghanistan, where Obama has sent more troops and installed a new commander to pursue a new and, the president hopes, more successful strategy.
Instead, the netroots say their chief goal is “comprehensive health-care reform.” No. 2 is “working to elect progressive candidates” in 2010.
To me, this looks less like conviction politics and more like team ball. I can’t help doubting that these activists have given long and deep thought to “government option” health insurance or negotiating, as the Obama White House has, nonaggression pacts with pharmaceutical lobbyists and the like.
They sound much more like a crowd at a stadium, eager for a touchdown and not caring much whether it’s accomplished by a quarterback sneak or a runback of a punt. There’s always an element of team ball in politics, and in the past decade polls have shown that those identifying with both parties tend to support with suspicious regularity just about every jot and tittle of their side’s platform.
But the netroots seem to have cared more about Iraq than they do about health care. It’s plain that the netroots and those millions on the Obama campaign’s e-mail lists have not been motivated enough about health-care legislation to show up at town hall meetings in any significant numbers — unless they’re transported by union or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now buses. They may be optimists — their team has put a lot of points on the scoreboard in recent electoral contests — but they seem puzzled by how hard it suddenly seems to move the ball.
In contrast, those who are opposed are motivated to show up and express their anger, and in far greater numbers than the hapless Republican Party or the various health-insurance companies could ever muster. Many denounce Republicans as well as Democrats — they’re not playing team ball. Rather, they seem focused on the ways that public policy will affect their lives and those dear to them. They seem to be pessimists, but pessimists who are determined to resist what looks like a nightmare.
So the fight is between those who care about the specifics of health-care policy and those who care more than anything else — as many Americans on all political sides do — about the image and aura of the man who is inevitably the symbol, here and abroad, of the kind of nation we are.
Novak in his half-century of Washington reporting found that the fondest hopes of optimists usually turned out to be unrealistic, and that the astringent analysis of pessimists often turned out to be accurate. And, as we are seeing on health care today, though optimists can prevail in a campaign, the pessimists can still affect policy.
— Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. Click here to contact him.
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» on 08.21.09 @ 01:43 PM
“Not that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the only optimists who have been flummoxed by the obviously spontaneous outpouring of opposition to Democratic health-care bills…”?
Where in the 7th dimension does Mr. Barone live when his brain isn’t being force-fed by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh?
“Spontaneous outpouring of opposition”?
These “Tea Parties” and their shout-down the town hall meetings ilk, are shabby, Karl Rove clothing from the conservative right, and the Mitch McConnell Republican rear-guard.
They were networked, written with identical cheat-sheets, choreographed from the
same people, and funded by the same ultra-conservative Texans who funded the
weirdly named “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” five years ago.
There is nothing in this “Let’s make ‘health care reform’ Obama’s Waterloo,” smear and panic campaign that is not scripted, let alone “spontaneous”. Except maybe for Barone’s NRA friends, who picket outside town hall meetings packing heat, like the
insurance industry’s brown shirts.
Robert Novak was an articulate, life-long conservative voice. He was also a religious
gentleman.
So I imagine, about now, he is being asked to explain why he leaked the identity of Valerie Plame? Why he did so many gratuitous nasties in so many tv appearances and news columns?
And if Novak was right in his faith, those queries are coming from a Judge whose verdict not even Wayne LaPierre, John Roberts or Antonin Scalia can reverse. Good luck.
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» on 08.21.09 @ 03:30 PM
blah bla blah Fox News Rush Limbaugh blah bla blah right wingers blah blah Haliburton blah bla Cheney Bush .... blah blah Sarah Palin…blah blah waaa waaa
It’s gettin old dude.. still want to impeach Bush?
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» on 08.21.09 @ 03:34 PM
This article might have been a little easier to follow if he started by explaining what in the heck a netroot is.
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