There’s something to this concept, but in the end I think it’s more of a “mental” bubble than an actual one.
One of the surprises coming out of last nights highly successful (at least to me) State of the Union Address, is that an CBS Instant Poll (and y’all know how much I loooove instant stuff) gave the President 83% Approval for his policy proposals.
That’s a whopper of a number. Even I, Mr. Sunshine, was expecting at most the high sixties. But more polling is sure to come later today, and I expect it to be mostly positive.
What happened last night, to paraphrase the West Wing yet again, is that people were reminded why they like the President so much. (Sorry, I can repeat that line in sign-language…regular West Wing watchers will know what I mean). I think another reason for the (presumed) polling success of the speech, is the that the people felt like they were heard last night. The people got through the “bubble” and got through to the President. The polling should reflect that:
One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted -- immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.
But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. And for those who'd already known poverty, life has become that much harder.
This recession has also compounded the burdens that America's families have been dealing with for decades -- the burden of working harder and longer for less; of being unable to save enough to retire or help kids with college.
So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for President. These struggles are what I've witnessed for years in places like Elkhart, Indiana; Galesburg, Illinois. I hear about them in the letters that I read each night. The toughest to read are those written by children -- asking why they have to move from their home, asking when their mom or dad will be able to go back to work.
For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough. Some are frustrated; some are angry. They don't understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded, but hard work on Main Street isn't; or why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems. They're tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can't afford it. Not now.
At the same time, I would like to respectfully remind my fellow citizens that the bubble cuts both ways. That sometimes (actually a lot of times) what the President says to the people doesn’t get through to them.
Ahhh, remember all those times the President said that turning around the economy “was going to be tough”, and that “it took us a long time to get into this mess, and its going to take us a long time to get out of it”, and he was going to “make mistakes”??
It was like the American people heard that. Let that sink in for about two days, and then started asking “WHY HAVEN’T YOU FIXED THE ECONOMY, YET?!?!?” They also seemed shocked that the President made a few mistakes along the way.
By way of example let me present you a quote from last night’s speech, specifically on America’s Foreign Policy:
As we have for over sixty years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right. That is why, as we meet here tonight, over 10,000 Americans are working with many nations to help the people of Haiti recover and rebuild. That is why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.
Now, I took that quote as a statement on America’s role in the world, and why its important to stay involved, and more importantly, reminding America that even in these tough times, doling out Foreign Aid was pretty damn important, and has important consequences.
Juan Cole, who’s forgotten more about the Middle East than I will ever know, took it another way:
The attempt to position the US military occupation of Afghanistan and the sabre-rattling and threatened sanctions against Iran as somehow beneficial to women in those countries is a continuation of Bush administration rhetoric that is unworthy of Obama. These themes may appeal to the Mavis Leno faction of American feminists, but are unconnected to Afghan and Iranian women's lived reality. The position of women in Afghanistan is better now than under the Taliban, but the new Afghanistan is still an Islamic republic, and president Karzai pandered for votes among the Shiite Hazaras by allowing Shiite law to operate among them on personal status issues, rather than national law. One implication of this step is that Hazara women are now liable to marital rape. So this is the liberation the Obama administration is bringing Afghan women? Moreover, Obama's escalation of the war will have a negative impact on women and families caught in the crossfire. It is a foolish argument to make because so easily disproven.
I’m not trying to dismiss the concerns Dr. Cole is making, but…that’s not the point President Obama was making in that phase of the speech. America is spending money, money it could be argued, is best spent in areas of domestic concern right now. He needed to stand up and say: “Hey, I know this money isn’t being spent here, but it’s going to do long term good around the world, and its going to make us friends that we’re going to need into the future."
What Dr. Cole does here is telescope everything through the lens of his particular field of expertise, and in no small way, crowding out all the other information therein. I don’t want to call it disingenuous. It's not. It’s a natural enough habit (particularly for University Professors -- yeah, I'm talking to you, Dad), but it doesn’t provide a fair reading of the speech.
We also have the usual critics and pontificators rambling on and on. Dana Milbank thought it was long detailed and tepid. Marc Halperin was baffled by it. How Mark Halperin isn’t baffled by spelling his name correctly eludes me, but someone appointed Mark Halperin an expert on Politics. Someone ought to clue the Mainsteam Media that that person was Mark Halperin. Ross Douthat thinks if Obama keeps going this direction, he’s going to lose reelection. But…Douthat’s an asshat, so…
But there were people who got it, and absorbed it in the way I thought (and Obama hoped) it would be absorbed…
Joe Klein:
It was a terrific performance. He almost seemed to be having fun up there; he delivered the speech in a free, almost informal manner. It was easily digestible, user-friendly...but it was also a fighting speech. Certainly, he stuck the needle time and again into the hides of the recalcitrant elephants in the room. It started early in the speech when he recounted the numerous tax cuts that had been passed in the past year as part of his much-distorted Stimulus Plan, to applause from Democrats and silence from Republicans, and he ad-libbed, staring at the Republican side of the room, "I thought I'd get some applause on that one."
Andrew Sullivan:
This was the president I supported and still support and will support because he alone is calling us away from the cynicism, the ideology, the rhetorical poison, and the red-blue divide that keep us from the reform we desperately need.
Josh Marshall:
Listening to this litany, I'm reminded how Republicans are on the wrong side -- just politically, let alone on policy -- of most signature issues in a populist economic moment. I think there were zero Republicans standing up on any part of Obama's financial reform agenda -- something that polls exceedingly well in addition to being good public policy.
I’ll admit it. I got most of these highlights from Andrew’s blog, but they’re some of my favorite writers, and they all saw it pretty much as I did.
Then there was Chris Matthews...forgetting the President was black.
Yeah.
As I mentioned before, I sure as hell didn’t forget the President was Black. I can’t. I’m black. I see the way he’s attacked, and I can’t forget.
But Chris? Really? You want to go there??
I could say a lot at this point, but TaNeishi Coates said it first, and better:
I think it's worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn't trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it's worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he's done for race relations. (See Matthews' clarification here.) But I think it's most worth noting that "I forgot Obama was black"--in all its iterations--is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it's really dishonest.
One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we've been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We've also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you'll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, "Wow, I forgot you were a woman." Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.
The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one's "woman-ness." So if football and beer don't fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim "I forgot you were a woman," as opposed to "I just realized my invented truth was wrong."
Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.
I'm put back in the mind of the The Wire, when Slim Charles tells Avon that it really doesn't matter that our wars are based on a lie. Once we're fighting, we fight on that lie until the end. I would submit that a significant number of white people in this country, can not stop fighting on the lie. They can't cop to the fact that they really have no standing to speak on Obama's relationship to blackness, because they know so little about black people. It's always hard to say, "I don't know." But no one else can say it for you.
