Content by TomlinsonDouthat
Posted at 4:35pm on Jun. 26, 2008 Christine Reagan
By TomlinsonDouthat
On June 26, 1947, Christine Reagan was born. On June 26, 1947, Christine Reagan died. She was the daughter of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.
Her death cannot have been a surprise, for her birth was premature—a precarious circumstance even with today's advanced medicine, and all the more in 1947. Whatever warning her parents may have had had, it cannot have made her death any less heartbreaking. This is one of the worst things that can happen to anybody. Nothing, surely, can prepare one for it, and nobody can walk away from such an experience unaffected.
But nobody is affected by such a tragedy in precisely the same way. We suffer according to our character, and we respond to our suffering likewise. Jane Wyman was a private woman, and so the particular nature of her suffering is none of our business. Ronald Reagan, however, was a very public figure, and one of the most influential men in American history. It is our task to understand his suffering, so that we might better understand him and the influence he still has upon this country.
Posted in Life Issues — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:04pm on Jun. 19, 2008 "Social Conservatives" Overflow Thread
By TomlinsonDouthat
The conversation here has passed the infamous 300 comment mark, and it was getting a little hard to follow anyhow. Maybe things will be go along more smoothly if we move the discussion over here.
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Posted at 4:26pm on Jun. 7, 2008 One in Five Kentucky Democrats
By TomlinsonDouthat
It's not entirely fair of me to pick on Richard Cohen for repeating a meme that seems to have been embraced by much of the liberal intelligentsia. But I have to pick on somebody, and he's as good as any. With a tip of the hat to gamecock, I refer to this:
I loathe above all the resurgence of racism — or maybe it is merely my appreciation of the fact that it is wider and deeper than I thought. I am stunned by the numbers of people who have come out to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. I am even more stunned that many of these people have no compunction about telling a pollster they voted on account of race — one in five whites in Kentucky, for instance. Those voters didn't even know enough to lie, which is what, if you look at the numbers, others probably did in other states. Such honesty ought to be commendable. It is, instead, frightening.
[My emphasis.]
In fact, the one-in-five figure Cohen cites is true over the entire Kentucky Democratic electorate. Specifically, the exit poll he in referring to (found here) indicates that 21% of all Democrats said that they voted on the basis of race. This electorate was 89% white, but the 9% of the electorate that was black seems to have voted on the basis of race at about the same clip: The poll says that seven of those percentage points said that race was not a factor in their votes, and two said it was. But since blacks supported Obama over Hillary Clinton at a rate of 90%-7%, we can presume that almost all of this race-based voting was in Obama's favor.
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Posted at 1:26pm on Jun. 3, 2008 "Social Conservatives Are Uncompromising Absolutists"... Or Maybe Not
By TomlinsonDouthat
Statements like the one in the title of this piece are common in today's political discourse. On the basis of such sentiments, it is often argued that the Republican party and the conservative movement, for the sake of the popularity of their respective causes, should distance themselves from the uncompromising, extreme, and hence unpopular faction of social conservatives, and that they should largely cease addressing the issues that social conservatives care about. And it is also argued that social conservatives should be happy to go along with such a plan, lest they be deprived of any political allies whatsoever. If we accept these premises, then this would amount to a profound change in strategy for the Republican party, the conservative movement as a whole, and social conservatives in particular. It is important, therefore, to consider whether statements like these are, in fact, true.
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Posted at 12:44pm on May 27, 2008 To Defend the Republican Party
By TomlinsonDouthat
In 1988, George H. W. Bush campaigned for the White House on the promise of "a kinder, gentler nation"—kinder and gentler, that is, than it was under Ronald Reagan and the crueler, rougher version of the Republican party he led. In 1996, the rationale behind Bob Dole's candidacy was that he was most decidedly not Newt Gingrich, that he did not partake of the partisan zeal that, while exciting to most Republicans, was presumed to be frightening to swing voters (even though they kept voting in Republican Congresses, but not for Bob Dole). In 2000, George W. Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative"—as opposed to the uncompassionate conservatives that still formed the GOP base. And today we have John McCain, who is... John McCain.
Those looking for an explanation for the recent decline in the reputation of the Republican party—the Republican "brand"—need look no further than this, I think. For the past twenty years (and the roots of this phenomenon stretch much further back), the standard-bearers of the Republican party have been making their careers—their personal brands—by distancing themselves from and implicitly denigrating their own party. The virtual motto of these campaigns has been, "Most Republicans are horrible, but I'm not like them." And in open, free, and fair primary elections, Republican voters have consistently chosen candidates who, to varying degrees, disdain them. It is amongst voters who came of age in this era—who have never in their adult lives seen a leader of the Republican party make a sustained case for the Republican party, but only for themselves at the expense of their party—that the reputation of the GOP seems lowest. After all, if Republicans do not believe in themselves, why should anyone else?
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Posted at 12:56pm on May 20, 2008 Stuff Bitter People Cling To #8: Thermostats
By TomlinsonDouthat
If you ever go into a bitter person's house, one of the first things you will notice is that the temperature is at a comfortable level. In the wintertime, scarves are unnecessary on the inside of a bitter person's house, and in the summertime, warm weather outdoor performance clothes can be reserved for the outdoors.
This is because bitter people are very fond of using their thermostats. One of the things that makes bitter people most bitter is not having control of things around them — like the economy, young people, and the BCS ranking system. But thermostats allow them to control the temperature of the air around them, and this makes them slightly less bitter.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:53am on May 16, 2008 Obama and Elitism
By TomlinsonDouthat
Stanley Crouch recently defended Barack Obama from the increasingly common criticism of him as an elitist:
Columbia- and Harvard-educated, bad-bowling Obama is an elite, the conservatives—and the Clintons—claim. He is out of touch with the working class, they say.
It has become commonplace for the predictable millionaire puppets of Fox News and their conservative talk radio counterparts to present themselves as the voices of the working class in combat with an educated elite from places like Harvard.
But beneath those clichés fester ideas that are deeply anti-democratic.
They are anti-democratic because they scoff at this basic truth: Education is the key to social mobility in our country. The stereotyped working class has no innate limits. It has produced the majority of doctors, engineers, architects, educators and others who realized the dreams of their families by studying hard and moving into careers quite different from those of their parents and their neighbors.
Crouch is absolutely correct in the last three sentences of this passage, but I think he misunderstands the nature of the charge of elitism. One does not become an elitist by going to an Ivy League school, nor by doing very well there. One does not become an elitist by making a million dollars. One does not become an elitist by excelling in one's chosen profession. Nor does one become an elitist by believing that such accomplishments are worthy of respect, as they very often are.
Rather, in a subtle but important difference, elitism is the belief that the people who have such accomplishments to their credit are more worthy of respect than those who, for whatever reason, do not. Elitism is not a matter of who you are or of what you do—nor of being "out of touch" with people who are different from you—but of how you treat your fellow man, which is the essence both of politics and of morality. Elitism can make itself known in a variety of ways—from a condescending attitude towards one's supposed social inferiors, to treating these supposed inferiors as mere instruments of one's own ambitions, to matters of public policy of great and grave importance. Barack Obama has displayed the full spectrum of elitist behavior.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:31pm on May 9, 2008 Notes on the Theory of Crypto-Bigotry
By TomlinsonDouthat
1.) By crypto-bigotry, I mean the phenomenon of people holding bigoted views against certain groups, but trying to keep these views secret from all but trusted, like-minded intimates, due to the various pressures against bigotry in modern society. By the theory of crypto-bigotry, I mean the belief that this phenomenon is common today and that this affects the workings of modern society in various, significant ways. One of the effects most commonly alleged is that politicians play to the crypto-bigotry of their constituents by uttering "code words," sending hidden messages, and supporting policies designed to harm the groups targeted by crypto-bigotry, but the effects of crypto-bigotry are also alleged to be seen in the media and elsewhere.
The belief I refer to here as the theory of crypto-bigotry is rarely expressed explicitly or explored systematically, but it clearly serves as an implicit premise to much political discourse today.
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Posted at 3:59pm on Apr. 24, 2008 What is John McCain?
By TomlinsonDouthat
There are many political issues. If you know someone's position on a single given issue, you can make a reasonable, though far from certain, guess as to their positions on other issues. If you support the Iraq War, for instance, then you are likely a conservative and take conservative positions on other issues. However, this is only a likelihood. There are liberals and others who support the war in lower numbers, and there are conservatives who do not. If you know someone's position on three issues, you will have a better sense of where they will end up on other issues. If on five issues, even better than that. And if you know someone's position on every issue but one, you can generally deduce with great certainty the nature of the exception.
The reason for this is ideology. In general, we do not pick our opinions at random. Rather, our opinions are the product of deeper opinions and inclinations. There are many ways that these deep inclinations might manifest themselves in practical terms, but these ways are finite and tend to organize themselves into families, making the full spectrum of political opinion generally comprehensible. Understanding what ideology motivates someone—especially someone in high office—can be important not only in that it allows one to predict where he will end up on an unknown issue, but also to determine at what priority he will hold the various matters before him, how specifically he might address them, and generally what makes him tick. Due to the great scrutiny they are put under, it's usually pretty easy to get a fairly good sense of the ideological orientation of major presidential candidates.
John McCain is an exception to this. All of his positions are well-documented, but they do not fit together in any way that I can discern. If you don't happen to know McCain's position on, say, the minimum wage, you would have no basis for guessing at it with any more certainty than a coin flip. (Indeed, he doesn’t seem all that sure himself, having voted both for and against.) Though his positions on existing issues can be found, there is no way to predict how he will react to any new issues that might arise in the future, and we only have limited understanding of what makes him tick. And whatever McCainism is, we do not have the advantage of any McCainists—other than McCain himself—who might be able to shed light on the subject with their own words. Instead, he has had only a series of sidekicks who have tended drift off after a few years of service in this capacity: Fred Thompson, Chuck Hagel, and now Lindsay Graham. In an effort to start the process of coming to understand what, ideologically speaking, John McCain is, let us examine some of the options that are closed to us.
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Posted at 5:57pm on Mar. 27, 2008 Obama, the Weathermen, and Sister Souljah
By TomlinsonDouthat
The question immediately before us is why Barack Obama has been so weak in his response to revelations of things like his links to former Weatherman Bill Ayers. On the Ayers matter, his campaign's reaction was merely to play down the closeness of their relationship and to make a perfunctory denunciation of political violence. Why not take this obvious opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment? There is, I think, a reason for this, one that has fairly deep roots, and which might be more broadly applicable through the upcoming campaign. But first, a little background—no, make that a lot of background: This is pretty long.