Doctor Cleveland's picture

    Run, Donald, Run

    So, Barack Obama has given in to the birther lunatics -- or rather, to their enablers in the national press -- and released his long-form birth certificate. Which of course, won't stop the lunatic birthers. But it's not clear that Obama actually intends it to. This is in many ways a classic Obama move. Obama does seem justly and genuinely exasperated with the press corps, but he also likes to position himself as the reasonable alternative to unreasonable opponents.

    More vexingly, at least on the surface, the timing of the release gives aid and comfort to Donald Trump, who is already taking credit for the release. That's very annoying, in that it feeds the national media's silly obsession with Trump and prolongs The Donald's free-media "campaign" for the presidency. It even makes it more likely that Trump will actually put his big money where is bigger mouth is, and attempt to get on primary ballots. He's riding high, and the media is stoking his already-formidable self-regard. If Trump's grandiosity is sufficiently cultivated, he may decide that the White House is his for the spending, and start staffing up.

    That result, as I say, would very annoying. But that doesn't mean Obama would be displeased. If the White House just released a document that seems to validate Donald Trump's candidacy, we might consider that the Obama people want to validate Donald Trump's candidacy.

    There's a saying that Obama's been extremely lucky in his opponents. And that's true. But it hasn't always been luck. He's shown a talent for attracting such opponents, and for subtly goading them into self-immolation. And he's certainly developed an appreciation for the pleasures of campaigning against a turbulent freakshow of an opponent.

    Donald Trump is the media freakshow personified. He's been doing reality TV since before reality TV was invented. He's spent decades making himself ridiculous on camera, and his special gift as a media star is his utter inability to realize how silly he is. The joke is on Donald, and the funny part is that he isn't in on it. He is not a serious candidate. He's not a serious anything. And if someone decided to run negative ads on Trump, the sheer wealth of material boggles of mind. Only another narcissistic buffoon could believe, even for a second, that people would vote for someone like Trump. That any media figures floated the idea only shows that they are doing entertainment and not news.

    Trump would be a dream opponent for Obama, a kind of white Alan Keyes. But more interestingly, he could be a monumental headache for Republican hopefuls in the primaries. If he actually took even a half-serious run in the primaries, he could make advertising in the earlier states crazy expensive. He's certainly capable of wasting a hundred million dollars, even if he doesn't actually have that much money to waste. And even if he doesn't run, he sucks up media oxygen that other candidates need, and he makes it even harder to placate the crazy part of the base by pandering to them so shamelessly. (Maybe you could say that The Donald is giving cover to the other Republicans by keeping them from press scrutiny. But the press doesn't do serious scrutiny any more. And if they do find a mini-scandal about a candidate not named Trump, the later it breaks the more it hurts.) Good luck trying to build name recognition when the TV is obsessing about Trump like he's a royal bride. And good luck trying to get past the crazy conspiracy theories in the primaries when Trump and the cable news hover over them like flies on a horse apple.

    Obama's deepest political instinct is to pose as the reasonable centrist, so that the other side has to either make a deal with him or risk looking crazy. This can be frustrating because it leads him to make deals again, and again, in order to perform his "reasonableness," even when the question should be out of doubt. Releasing yet another form of his birth certificate is like his various compromises over health care and the budget: splitting a difference that he long ago split. But where this should pay dividends is when the other side refuses to take the deal. Barack Obama didn't release his long-form birth certificate to prove that he was born in Hawaii. He released it to prove that the doubters are too insane to care about proof.

    What messes with this strategy is a press corps which is fundamentally unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality any more, a group that takes both reasonable and insane positions as equally valid, and presents them as equivalent. They can't tell a serious budget position from a cooked one. They can't bring themselves to cover national news instead of conspiracy theories. Almost nine percent of the country is out of work, at a minimum, and they want to talk about birth certificates. They have absolutely no idea how crazy they sound. Obama isn't just fighting the Republicans. He's fighting the press. What he needs to do is communicate past them to the American people, who actually care about actual things.

    The question for the next two years is this. Will the real world pop the media bubble at last? Or will they manage to distort the debate so much that the voters lose touch with reality?

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    Comments


    I think you've made an important point--it is essential that Obama talk past the press to the electorate.
    It would be one thing if the press were dealing in substantial arguments. Instead they are giving substance to things like birtherism and whatever sideshow has been most recently presented by some loudmouth. 

    I think the third party Progressive fund raisers will be extremely important in dampening and skirting the media bubble. I recently contributed to Bold Progressives ,for the Wisconsin recall effort, which has been successful so far, which to me is extremely important (for example the Florida Republicans are rejecting some of Gov. Scott's attempts to undercut collective bargaining and it could be that Wisconsin's experience might have something to do with it), and which received very little coverage in the media.

    Good Post.

     


    "Barack Obama didn't release his long-form birth certificate to prove that he was born in Hawaii. He released it to prove that the doubters are too insane to care about proof."


    This seems right out of Cass Sunstein.  You can't convince hard core conspiracy theorists but you can marginalize them so that they can't spread their ideas.  Does Obama want to run against Trump?  I'm sure of it.  But it won't happen.  Trump called Romney a small businessman.  But it's actually the other way around, I think.  Romney will bury Trump and the Chamber of Commerce people will see to it.

    It's not just that Trump's a clown, remember -- it's that he's screwed a tremendous number of very influential people over the years.

    But hey, Obama can dream.



    I think Trump unwittingly helped Obama. It's like negative advertising, especially just before an election. The purpose is to make people sick of the whole thing and repress turnout. This came much too early for that objective and I doubt if the press will gorge on this again, though I could be wrong.

    Also, I think the book on Trump's m.o. is as you say.


    I think Trump unwittingly

    You could prepend that to anything Trump has done without changing the truth of the statement. Come to think of it, it would work with GW too.


    Oh, I don't think for a second that Trump will end up the nominee. His candidacy would be flawed in almost every facet, and if he didn't self-desctruct fast enough for the Party leadership they'd make sure to bring him down. But making a run would be, at minimum, a huge headache for the serious Republican candidates, and there's an outside chance it would damage the eventual nominee.

    The person who'd profit most from a Trump candidacy, I think, would be Palin. He takes up her natural slot in the Republican field, providing her the perfect excuse *not* to run, but continue playing out the grift she's been working. Reality TV is a much easier gig than the Iowa caucuses.


    I believe, like most, that Obama could have had that long form document released long ago if he had so desired. That would indicate that he held off for some strategic reason. It is not obvious to me that it was good strategy. Holding fire until you see the whites of their eyes [there may be a pun in there] doesn't guarantee a hit. I wish he had requested the release long ago.
     Trump getting any percentage of measurable support for becoming President is a sad commentary on our electorate, IMO.


    Don't fire until you see the whites and their lies.


    That's better.


    Did you see the link that I put up from Carville? http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/27/carville.birther/index.html

    He seems to agree with you, though I must say that your explanation is much more lucid than his.


    Wow. Carville and I are on the same page. That's always a little unsettling.

    Just as long as I don't have to be around Mary Matalin, it's okay.


    This is basically spot on, imho. I also agree with a pundit the other night that said if it wasn't Trump, then it will be someone else to step in to take 18% or 20% of GOP electorate that is looking for a politician willing to speak in the populist, subtle racist, wingnut conspiracy language.  In the end this kind of politican can't win in the long run, but can make some trouble in the primaries if they are able to pump up that facet of the base.  There was also some article can't find right now that saying the GOP strategists in DC are just hoping the birther issue would just go away because it makes the party look extreme to the middle of the road voters.  This makes The Donald a liability to their chances. 

    In regards to the last questions.  I would posit that the problem is that the voters really don't tune into the media when it come to politics.  Their reality is formed by Comedy Central or CSI or thechive.com. For example, Hillary Clinton was able to counter much of the "reality" created by press with one appearance on SNL. Those that do make up their minds early on, whether they read Dagblog or watch Fox News religiously.  So much of the media becomes just much ado about nothing.  The issue is that there is always the exceptions, as Kerry found out with the Swiftboat incident.  So a politican always has to sort of approach things as if it was the next case of Swiftboating and to make preemptive strikes with appearances on the David Letterman Show, etc. 


    I was going to do a blog on the The Donald but got side tracked by a book I just received which I may do a review on. So thanks for doing this.

    I found this piece in the British paper The Independent. And this part I think sums it up well.

    Trump probably won't become the Republican nominee, but not because most Republicans reject his premisses. No: it will be because he states these arguments too crudely for mass public consumption. He takes the whispered dogmas of the Reagan, Bush and Tea Party years and shrieks them through a megaphone. The nominee will share similar ideas, but express them more subtly. In case you think these ideas are marginal to the party, remember - it has united behind the budget plan of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan. It's simple: it halves taxes on the richest 1 percent and ends all taxes on corporate income, dividends, and inheritance. It pays for it by slashing spending on food stamps, healthcare for the poor and the elderly, and basic services. It aims to return the US to the spending levels of the 1920s – and while Ryan frames it as a response to the deficit, it would actually increase it according to the independent Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Ryan says "the reason I got involved in public service" was because he read the writings of Ayn Rand, which describe the poor as "parasites" who must "perish", and are best summarized by the title of one of her books: 'The Virtue of Selfishness.'

    The tragedy is that Obama needs serious opposition – but not from this direction. In reality, he is funded by similar destructive corporate interests, and has only been a few notches closer to sanity than these people. But faced with such overt lunacy, he seems like he is serving the bottom 99 per cent of Americans much more than he really is.

    The Republican Party today isn't even dominated by market fundamentalism. This is a crude Nietzscheanism, dedicated to exalting the rich as an overclass and dismissing the rest. So who should be the Republican nominee? I hear the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were considering running – but they are facing primary challenges from the Tea Party for being way too mild-mannered.

    And Trump personifies it to a tee.


    "...but he likes to position himself as the reasonable alterative to unreasonable opponents."

    "Obama's deepest political instinct is to pose as the reasonable centrist..."

    When did acts of rationality become seen as a tactical maneuver? Perhaps when a person consistently acts in a rational manner it is because that person is, in fact, rational.


    Actually, I think Obama is a profoundly reasonable person, and his rational approach to problem-solving is likely a core element of his personality. What's remarkable is that he has also developed a set of political tactics that leverage his cool rationality to his advantage. Not many rationalists can do that.

    Look, I think Mike Dukakis is an eminently reasonable guy, but he hasn't turned it into an act that works in national politics. And there are lots of extremely rational thinkers who end up policy types, rather than politicians, because a logical approach to policy is easy but sophisticated logic gets drowned out of the political arena. And there are plenty of successful politicians who take a coolly rational approach to policy, but campaign in a way that's about emotionalism and gut feeling more than reason. (Think of Bill Clinton, for example.)

    Obama is interesting because he's turned his Square Mr. Cool act into a successful political persona. Because that persona (and the campaign tactics it enables) is so different from the usual profiles, the moves that Obama makes tend to be different from a Clinton/Reagan/Bush II gladhander type, and therefore hard to recognize as moves.

    A true rationalist, after all, would just have refused to release the long form, because the short form was clearly proof enough. But that's not what Obama was doing.


    Agreed. Politics and rational thinking are rarely used in the same sentence. Actually politics and thinking are rarely used in the same sentence with out eliciting a laugh.

    Until recently society was pretty good at dismissing and ignoring people who made crazy statements. We should revisit that. I personally wouldn't have shown a certificate or even acknowledged what these people were saying. Many people are under the impression that truth is determined by consensus and unable to grasp how foolish they look throwing out such outlandish accusations.

    Anyway, good piece as usual. I always enjoy hearing your thoughts. They are always pleasantly and refreshingly rational. :)


    You know Doc, I think Trump has awoken every goddamnable day of his life with one thought:

    How can I make the World a worse place!

    Oh sure, I liked it when he would purse his lips and tell us how George W. Bush was the single worst president in the history of the USA.

    Some arsehole on cable was talking about how Trump is spewing racism--but of course Trump is not a racist. Hell, I was reading Slate and MJ and a bunch of blogs about how this sonofabitch was being sured and cited by the Feds for discrimination as soon as he took over daddy's biz.

    The guy is slime.

    How the hell can the family values peeps back a guy who goes to Vegas and his every other word is fuck?


    I can't wait to see how Dondi gets out of this latest revelation about his many deferments getting him out of the service during the Viet Nam years.  He didn't actually lie about his low number, he just neglected to mention that it came long after he had already dodged the draft many times.

    Good post, Doc, as always.  After GWB I like the fact that Obama is a reasonable man.  But I want to see him insist that everyone he deals with is just as reasonable.  If they're not, all bets are off.  (But of course that won't happen.)


    The Donald is the guest of ABC News at the White House Correspondents Dinner Aside from providing all the details one would want to know about the Royal Wedding, the press is not very useful.

    Trump's most recent excursion into the crazy was a profanity laced stump speech given on April 16th in Las Vegas.

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/donald-trump-drops-f-bombs-in...


    Nice piece. I like your theory of how he is using the Donald to mess with the GOP presidential field. Nothing drives the crazies crazy like sanity.

    Still, I'd take issue with your more general remarks towards the end. I agree that Obama's overarching strategy is to appear reasonable - to start with a moderate position, and then move rightwards in the interest of compromise. The operative word here is 'appear', since there need be nothing actually reasonable in the final compromised position he ultimately endorses. But then, as you say, this strategy only works if the mediators of public impressions - the MSM - play along and present his actions as reasonable. And of course ... they aren't doing so.

    So what does that mean? He has a strategy that (i) sounds awesome, but (ii) will only work if the media plays along, and (iii) he knows the media isn't playing along. Hmm, that is starting to sound like a really dumb strategy.

    Then your solution is that he "communicate past them to the American people, who actually care about actual things". But that makes no sense to me. What is he supposed to communicate - his own 'reasonableness'? He can't just say 'I am reasonable'. That won't work. He can't actually state the reasons for his positions, because ... well the ACTUAL positions as we all know (budget, finreg, hcr, etc) are not ACTUALLY reasonable. So maybe you mean he should just ... lie.

    Dunno.

    But, that aside, there is the further vexed question: how does one go about speaking directly to the people, unmediated by the media? Town hall meetings? Podcasts? Again, that is unlikely to work, unless the policies he is pushing are ACTUALLY good and thus attractive to the American people who actually care about actual things. But, again, his policies aren't attractive.

    So if you agree with this train of thought, what you should have said is that he should start doing stuff that not just "appears reasonable", but is ACTUALLY reasonable, and so satisfies the needs and values of the people who care about ACTUAL things.

    In short, what you should have said is that his strategy sucks.


    Oh dear: Obey deconstructs politely!  LOL!


    Obey, I don't think that the doctor was suggesting that media is presenting Obama as unreasonable but rather that it is presenting inane conspiracy theories as reasonable. Thus, the point is that Obama needs to appear more reasonable than the press as well as the Republicans, which frankly isn't all that difficult under the circumstances.


    Hi Genghis. I wasn't saying the media presents him as UNreasonable. Rather he just gets no special credit from them for his "reasonable" overtures to the GOP.

    In my thinking, I was refering to this bit of Doc's argument:

    Obama's deepest political instinct is to pose as the reasonable centrist, so that the other side has to either make a deal with him or risk looking crazy. This can be frustrating because it leads him to make deals again, and again, in order to perform his "reasonableness," even when the question should be out of doubt. Releasing yet another form of his birth certificate is like his various compromises over health care and the budget: splitting a difference that he long ago split. But where this should pay dividends is when the other side refuses to take the deal.

    So it might well be a smart strategy when - like with the birther issue - he goes the extra mile and his opponents still refuse the gesture. Then it is hard to see the situation otherwise than Obama being reasonable and his critics being unreasonable. But it is a strategy that fails in all the other instances where his opponents ... accept the gesture. The budget cuts, the HCR bill, Finreg, tax cuts for the rich, tight monetary policy, judicial activism - in all these fields he has bent over backwards to accept the GOP framing if not their actual policies. And then the objective real-world effect of these policies on voters matters much more than any ephemeral impression that he was at the time sounding "reasonable".

    That, in any case, was my objection to Doc's general point. Like I said, I think the strategy works well in specific cases - like his present birther boosterism.


    I see what you're saying now. Fair point.

    One caveat: character perceptions are global, so it's the sum of the actions that count. Overall, I would say that Obama comes off as being more reasonable than the Republicans.

    A caveat to my caveat: The Republicans are not monolithic. Though Obama certainly comes off as more reasonable than Donald Trump and the Tea Party hardliners, Boehner does too. (Heck, even Charlie Manson might.)

    Another caveat to my caveat (the original caveat, not the second-level caveat): One man's "reasonable" is another man's "patsy."


    You slapped yer paw in the honey jar in that 3rd paragraph.

    The Republicans trot out madmen and maniacs, and let em run to the right. The Dems then get to shout about how crazy the Republicans are. The "Sensible" Republicans move just the one step to the Right, and suck uop more funding, media time, and usually the nomination. Win or lose, they get some power, and the sensible Democrats then decide to move one step to the right to compromise. And thus, the whole dance moves right with them. And so, even though we all end up in the warm embrace of crazy, the sensible people, the rational people, have seemingly done nothing but what rational, sensible, people would do.


    Too complicated.

    Rule 1. People do things because they want those things to be done.The reason  Obama showed  the birth certificate proving he was born in the US  was to prove he was born in the US...

    But do you deny he was also trying to also affect the Republican race?

    In April 2011? Forget about it.

    Andrew Card , about W's  getting us into Iraq:

     ' You don't start a sales campaign in the summer"

    Put another way, there are just too many news cycles between now and when the Republican primary voters start thinking about how they will vote in the primary.

    So why did Obama show the certificate now? 

     As Mark Shields says  the one lesson of 2004's Kerry  swiftboating  was..................

    Rule 2 Every day a charge is ignored is a day that some voters come to believe it. Forever..The rebuttal never fully catches up with the charge.It's hard work changing your mind. And once you come to believe something bad about somebody you want to keep on believng it .

    Doesn't  Rule 2 contradict Rule 1?

      Nah. When you're trying to convince someone to do something positive -like vote for Trump, or Romney, or God help us : Bachman , timing is all...But when you're trying to destroy somebody, the sooner the better. If you're lucky his campaign manager might advise him not to dignify the attack by responding to it. So he'll lose..


    I overheard someone say; when you look closely at the long form certificate

    You can make out the imprinted name "Jason Bourne"

    Is Obama the victim of the rightwing; making him one of us? 


    I'm pretty sure Trump's glory days are over. He just got chomped and stomped by the prez and Seth Meyers over at the WH Correspondents Dinner. It was hilarious! Especially his pouting during the whole thing. I heard he got booed as he came in. And at the end he hurried out, scowling, and nobody talked to him.


    Of course, but seriously, what's with the hair?


    He apparently is so taken with himself he thinks people should pretend to believe the comb.


    Seriously, it looked like a Viking helmet.


    his pouting

     

    he was grim


    There is a method to this madness.

    Obama can say “mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all” 

    Obama’s team will fight, to disallow anyone to the left of Obama to run.

    Making him the fairest of them all. 

    Reminds me of the episode Mirror, Mirror (Star Trek)

    Spock: (Explaining to Kirk how the mirror versions were so quickly spotted)

    It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men.” 

    Obama is so reasonable, he IS the fairest of them all.

    I am not saying that he is vain, he just knows how to win.

    But what are WE the People winning?  Win The Future, but forget about the present?

    HOPE

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PzL8aL6jtI

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhzbzwPNgXA

     


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