In 2000, there was a debate in Harlem between Al Gore and Bill Bradley. Bradley had high profile endorsements from prominent black athletes like Bill Russell and Michael Jordan, but polls indicated that blacks the Congressional Black Caucus overwhelmingly supported the vice-president. Asked why this was the case, Bill Bradley replied that blacks the Caucus would support him if they had an opportunity to compare their records. Gore, sensing an opening, suggested that Bradley was calling blacks Caucus members stupid and ignorant (I’m paraphrasing from memory here’s the transcript). It was a very effective debating tactic, and Gore probably won the debate on that answer alone. But it’s a tactic more commonly used by Republicans, and Michael Gerson uses it in today’s Washington Post.
In this case, Gerson leapt on a comment that the president made at a Massachusetts fundraiser.
“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,” he recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, “and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”
Let’s unpack those remarks.
What does the president mean when he says that the Republicans must think that Americans have amnesia? He means that they really do seem to have amnesia. The Republicans keep cutting taxes without cutting spending and running up staggering debts that they pass on to Democratic administrations. And then they turn around without any shame whatsoever and blame the debt on big spending Democrats and run campaigns based on stripping the federal government down to the bone. Why does it work? Because a lot of people are stupid and think with their lizard brains. Is that elitist to say? No. It’s just a factual observation that explains why the Republicans can get away with rank hypocrisy and the crassest kind of cynicism.
It’s not a good idea to call the electorate stupid, but only an idiot would take the Republicans’ arguments about the budget seriously for a microsecond. So, why are people taking them seriously? Gerson seems to know:
Obama views himself as the neocortical leader — the defender, not just of the stimulus package and health-care reform but also of cognitive reasoning. His critics rely on their lizard brains — the location of reptilian ritual and aggression. Some, presumably Democrats, rise above their evolutionary hard-wiring in times of social stress; others, sadly, do not.
Though there is plenty of competition, these are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.
Actually, Gerson has exactly defined what’s going on, despite his effort at snark. Some of us, presumably Democrats, are quite capable of doing simple arithmetic and realizing that the Republicans are proposing to create a four trillion dollar hole in the federal budget by extending all of the Bush tax cuts at the very same time that they are promising to balance the budget, oppose any new tax hikes of any kind, preserve defense spending, and protect Medicare and Social Security. We have their historical record and we have their impossible promises, and we don’t need much more to dismiss them as a group as a bunch of lying demagogues. Then there are those who are persuaded by their bullshit. They’re stupid.
It may not make political sense to point this out, and Gerson, like Gore, knows that he can make some hay by calling the president a snob. It doesn’t mean that the president isn’t correct.
