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21 Apr 2008 06:49 pm

McCarthyite Pointillism

Ross defends the freak show:

Cast your mind further back, to 1992, and consider something as seemingly insubstantial as the controversy over Bill Clinton's draft-dodging - or something less substantial still, like the mini-controversy over Hillary (Rodham) Clinton's now-she-uses-it, now-she-doesn't approach to keeping, or not keeping, her maiden name. I think you can make a pretty strong case that Clinton's peculiarly Boomerish relationship to the military brass - the mix of suspicion, condescension and ignorance on both sides - had a more decisive impact on American foreign policy in the 1990s than, say, what Clinton-the-candidate said about China policy in the run-up to the '92 vote. And while there's a sense, obviously, in which nothing could be further from the actual work of governing than the question of whether the First Lady of the United States has her husband's last name, in hindsight I think that the mix of echt-feminist principle and political opportunism that Hillary displayed in her changing choice of last and middle names probably told us as much about her approach to politics than most of the speeches she gave in the course of the campaign against George H.W. Bush.

You can make the case that almost anything is relevant to understanding candidacies. And with hindsight, you can draw all sorts of lessons. The point is: the details that are currently being assembled to smear and re-define Obama are not just random small details that help us understand him more fully. They are a carefully choreographed series of anecdotes and details designed to tell a specific story: that Obama is a Marxian super-lefty with dubious ties to terrorists, an anti-American, an alien, an outsider, an elitist, a threat, and so on. This is McCarthyite pointillism. None of these specific details have been brought to the surface - in a life that is crammed with details - by accident. Some may tell you something, as in: Obama is a liberal who has long been at home with other liberals. But the idea that the Wright YouTubes tell us anything more real about Obama's faith experience than his own writings is silly. The idea that a lapel pin, or lack of one, tells us anything about Obama is absurd. That is should be the prime focus of the mainstream media in the week before a critical primary says much much more about ABC News than about Obama.

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