Everyone has a different way of interpreting the data that the world presents to them and that is what makes the world so interesting. My mind tends to look at power in terms of structures: what are they, whom do they represent, what do they do, and how can they be changed?
If I’m thinking about progressive politics, I think about the power structures that oppose or stand in the way of progressive policy. And aside from some breaking news pieces, pretty much everything I write is designed in some way to attack the power structures that stand in the way of progressive power.
If I am writing about the history of the CIA or FISA and the Church Committee, it is to attack the power structure that wrote the political narrative (or history) of the last 40 years.
If I write about candidate recruitment it is to attack the leaders of the DSCC and DCCC, who have repeatedly shown favor to less progressive candidates.
If I write about ostensibly left-wing columnists like Joe Klein, Maureen Dowd, Richard Cohen, and David Broder, it is to combat the impression that they actually speak for the left.
If I write negatively about the DLC and their members, it is to combat their influence within the party.
If I write about our ‘forward-basing strategy’ it is to challenge the bipartisan foreign policy consensus about American empire.
It’s all part and parcel of the same struggle.
So, I understand why it is annoying when a candidate for office, like Barack Obama, reinforces the political/academic/media false history about the Ronald Reagan years. Amending and revising that false history is fundamental to what the blogosphere is all about. Contemporary history would be much more right-biased if it were not for the blogospere’s ability to correct the record in real time as it is being written (by mostly corporate media). That didn’t happen in the 1980’s and the result is that we’re left with a very distorted picture where the extant record is almost indistinguishable from hagiography.
I think BooTrib commenter Alice put it best when she pointed out the fait accompli of that hagiography in our current culture.
I think we can still have hope that a black man may be elected president of our country where millions of people worship the memory of Reagan.
I mean, what’s the guy gonna say? – “Your God is bullshit.”
And the answer is: ‘No, that’s our job.’ Barack Obama is running for president, not chairman of the history department at Harvard. He has to speak to the public as he finds it, not (to use some Rumsfeldian language) as we might wish it to be. But isn’t there a problem here? Hasn’t Obama attempted to take the mantle of transformation? How can he lead a transformative administration if he will not engage in transforming false-narratives about Ronald Reagan?
I admit, there is something troubling about a candidate that breezily accepts false narratives. In doing so, he reinforces them, making our job infinitesimally harder to accomplish. But, frankly, running a presidential campaign is largely about marshaling limited energy and resources in productive ways. The point is communicating with brevity and conciseness, and a candidate cannot get bogged down in questioning the premise of every dubious question thrown their way.
None of the candidates are going to invest any time in trying to tear down Reagan’s reputation in this campaign. They would be fools to try. We might ask them not to reinforce false narratives, but it really is not too important in the overall scheme of things. What is far more important is the end result. Will a Democrat get elected? Will that Democrat push progressives aside in the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC and put in people like Terry McAuliffe, Harold Ford, Jr., and Mark Penn? Will the Democrats win eight or more seats in the Senate? Notice that red-state Democrats like Tim Johnson, Kent Conrad, Claire McCaskill, Tim Kaine, and Janet Napolitano have all endorsed Obama. What does that tell you about their estimation of the race and how coattails will affect their states? These are the kind of structural issues that will determine what kind of chance progressive policies will have in the next eight years. Obama’s admiration for Reagan’s political skills will have no bearing whatsoever.