It only took six months, but the mainstream media finally accomplished what no conservative media outlet ever could have: it sent a reporter into the Columbia library. In October 2008, Andrew McCarthy complained that it was impossible to learn anything about Obama’s heady days of Ayers-inspired radicalism at Columbia:
As [Ayers] so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke” . . . Such statements should make Obama unelectable.
Time and again, conservatives have proven that Obama is Ayers is Alinsky is Annenberg is Hitler—all they were lacking was the actual proof. No more. Thanks to the Times, they now have the evidence they were always pretty sure existed. How did the Times get their hands on these hot documents? What did it do that McCarthy—a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York—could not?
It asked politely.
Question: May I use Columbia’s libraries if I am not a student, professor, or staff member at another academic institution?
Answer: If your public library does not have the specific title or material you need for your research, obtain a referral card from your public library. This card will give you a one-day pass to Columbia University Libraries.
All McCarthy had to do to stop a man he considered a monster from winning the White House was return to his old stomping grounds and ask a librarian for a day-pass to Columbia. All any conservative who wanted to stop a man they believed would destroy America had to do was to obtain a referral card from a public library. Instead, these intrepid citizen-journalists prattled on endlessly about the research other people declined to do; and now that someone did it, they are incorporating their lazy reliance on the mainstream media into another iteration of their tired jeremiad against it: “If only you had told me what I couldn’t have been bothered to discover myself last year,” they cry, “Obama might not be in Russia today sowing the seeds of our inevitable destruction.”
If you believed that a trip into the city and an afternoon in an archive would spare America four years of tyranny, would you do it? Would you fly into the city, rent a room, borrow a library card, request a day-pass under false pretenses, and spend an afternoon in an archive if you believed that doing so might save the world from nuclear destruction? Or would you whine because no one will silver-platter you a smoking gun?
We know what route the conservative punditry took, but who are we to begrudge them their moment of vindication? The Times finally got around to finding their smoking gun for them. They now have incontrovertible proof that Obama held, holds, and will forever harbor deeply radical thoughts; that he held, holds, and will forever adhere to an ideology hostile to American ideals and interests; that he held, holds, and will forever—but we should allow him the courtesy of hanging by his own rope:
The more sensitive among us struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves to our parents’ wartime memories, or incorporating into our framewotrk a reality as depicted by a Mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war—the sounds and chill, the dead bodies—are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experience down into our hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task.
I know one conservative who won’t be happy to see how rhetorically savvy Obama was as a senior. The pacing of the nested clauses, the balance of the alliteration, the oratorical flourishes of the parallelism—all the features of his later prose are in evidence long before Obama met Ayers. Other than that, we learn nothing new about Obama from this passage. He opposes the extrajudicial killing of noncombatants in Guatemala and believes that high culture can counter the effect of popular culture, such that The Naked and the Dead and Apocalypse Now work against First Blood by showing us the horror! the horror! of war. Neither position qualifies as a shocking revelation.
In fact, the only aspects of this well-timed find with which conservatives take issue are his “non-proliferation fetish” and the anti-militaristic rhetoric in which he couches it. They bemoan the senior’s support for “the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement,” and they mock him for insisting that focusing on arms control to the exclusion of larger economic and political issues might be, in his words, “another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.” These ideas, they suggest, are so far afield of the American mainstream that Obama is forced to quote a reggae singer to substantiate them—and as Jennifer Rubin points out, what the reggae singer doesn’t know could very well kill us:
[W]hat is naïve, of course, is to think that Iran and North Korea will be impressed by our disarmament efforts. No consideration is given, just as none was given by the nuclear freeze crowd a generation ago, to the possibility that disarmament will only embolden our adversaries and confuse our allies.
Their argument is that, then as now, Obama cannot recognize that being able to exterminate all life on Earth seven-hundred times over possesses a strategic advantage over only being able to do so seventy. Even absent a partner in our escalatory waltz, conservatives insist that pushing the decimal point one slot to the left of absurdity will embolden Iran and North Korea into—into—into what exactly? Defying international law? Refusing to crumble under international pressure? The young Obama understands what his opponents now do not:
Just because the status quo is more macho than its alternatives doesn’t mean it’s worth defending. In the same anti-masculinist vein, it’s not naïve to inform the Russians that there are still a couple of kinks in our missile defense system, because even if it ever successfully shot down anything, it was not designed to deter the Russians from attacking us:
More to the point, the so-called revelations from the article in the Columbia Sundial are only revelations to people who never read The Audacity of Hope, in which Obama addressed all of these issues, sometimes in a single paragraph:
The advent of nuclear weapons and “mutual assured destruction” rendered the risk of war between the United States and the Soviet Union fairly remote even before the Berlin Wall fell. Today, the world’s most powerful nations (including, to an ever-increasing extent, China)—and, just as important, the vast majority of the people who live within these nations—are largely committed to a common set of international rules governing trade, economic policy, and the legal and diplomatic resolution of disputes, even if broader notions of liberty and democracy aren’t widely observed within their own borders. The growing threat, then, comes primarily from those parts of the world on the margins of the global economy where the international “rules of the road” have not taken hold—the realm of weak or failing states, arbitrary rule, corruption, and chronic violence; lands in which an overwhelming majority of the population is poor, uneducated, and cut off from the global information grid; places where the rulers fear globalization will loosen their hold on power, undermine traditional cultures, or displace indigenous institutions.
In short, conservatives are using the “discovery” of this article to show Americans that, in opposing Reagan, Obama proves himself to be just another acolyte of the pacifistic hippie radicalism that almost lost us the Cold War. What I find remarkable is not that the political formula developed by Reagan worked at the time, but just how durable the narrative that he helped promote has proven to be. Despite a forty-year remove, the tumult of the sixties and the subsequent backlash continues to drive our political discourse. Partly it underscores how deeply felt the conflicts of the sixties must have been for the men and women who came of age at that time, and the degree to which the arguments of the era were understood not simply as political disputes but as individual choices that defined personal identity and moral standing.
Wait—who wrote those last three sentences?
Well, whoever it was, he was some sorta prescient.
(x-posted.)
26 comments
July 7, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ahistoricality
quibble: I always thought that First Blood was about the horrors of war, and our failure to actually do anything about them.
July 7, 2009 at 6:11 pm
SEK
But it glorifies violence in a way that the Mailer and Coppola don’t.
July 7, 2009 at 6:14 pm
G.D.
You have been killing it lately.
July 7, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Charlieford
“. . . lands in which an overwhelming majority of the population is poor, uneducated, and cut off from the global information grid; places where the rulers fear globalization will loosen their hold on power, undermine traditional cultures, or displace indigenous institutions.”
There he goes again, preemptively bashing Sarah Palin. Has the man no chivalry at all?
July 7, 2009 at 6:44 pm
PorJ
First Blood is an undeniably complex movie that got ruined completely by the later Rambo franchise.
And Mailer subtly glorifies violence in The Naked and the Dead in the same way its glorified in movies like “They Were Expendable” – the brotherhood of combat and all that, even if the mission is insane and the soldiers are condemned to hell. The sacrifice, in itself, is heroic and tragic. Its why you actually cry when Snowden’s guts spill all over the airplane’s floor in Catch-22. Yes, its the Madness of War, but its not necessarily going to be read as “anti-war” by millions of people (polysemic readings and all that).
Tangential comments to a great post.
July 7, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Walt
You’re not saying that your reading applies to Catch-22, are you?
July 7, 2009 at 7:14 pm
urbino
The Guatemalans collect morality statistics?
Also: someone should remind Commentary that that Reagan fellow was also a nonproliferation fetishist.
July 7, 2009 at 7:48 pm
SEK
Thanks for the vote of confidence, G.D. I’ve been feeling that my posts read too much like my dissertation of late: eighteen strands of criticism that I hastily tie together at the last minute and am dissatisfied with the instant I press “Publish.”
PorJ, I have to admit that my take on First Blood is colored by the other films, which I saw first. (I was five years old in ’82 and had responsible parents.) I grabbed it mostly because it’s directly contemporaneous with Obama’s article, but you’re right, I need to reconsider it as an object in and of itself. The Mailer, though . . . that’s a conversation for another night.
urbino (urbino! so good to see you again!), corrected and, yes, Reagan was not as macho as they remember him being.
July 7, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Ahistoricality
I have to admit that my take on First Blood is colored by the other films, which I saw first. (I was five years old in ‘82 and had responsible parents.)
Oh, I spent the entire ’80s thinking that it was worthless posturing. Then, at some point, I actually watched the first half-hour again in the light of some of the social theory and psychology of the ’90s, and I actually got to a point where I felt the movie actually had an immense amount to offer. The discussions of Agent Orange and PTSD were years ahead of their time.
July 7, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Fatedplace
Great post! I have to wonder, however, what role is played by those conservatives who see the escalation of proliferation as one more sign of the end times. Certainly this has been a major theme (regarding Iran lately) of the supposed threat that all Muslims pose to the US. I’m not so sure it’s the same conservatives who supported the arms race during the Cold War who are now worried about Obama’s steps toward reducing our arms. The lack of overlap in your graph suggests this disconnect.
I think after 8 years of W we might consider that the religiously connected hawks have displaced the hawks motivated by the desire to confront Communist states with nuclear threats. Where does their worldview come from that Obama does not share it? I think it has to be something more than radical experiences in the 60s and 70s. How do they sustain the hope that bombs will defend us against modern warfare? If they haven’t noticed, bombs haven’t been much help to us in our two most recent conflicts.
July 8, 2009 at 4:51 am
lt
Gosh, the snarkiness in that Times piece awful. Obama’s tone in the Columbia piece was ‘edgy with disdain’? Seriously?
July 8, 2009 at 6:28 am
PorJ
The discussions of Agent Orange and PTSD were years ahead of their time.
My memory of First Blood is that its anti-government/libertarian. He’s a beat-up vet who was abandoned by his lying government. The Richard Crenna character is his only true connection (the brotherhood of combat, etc.) to the USA. There’s the whole “they did it to me first” theme in the movie. The State basically destroyed his humanity than chases him down and all he wants to do it survive. Its bizarre how this character suddenly becomes Captain America a few years later. Kind like Reagan using “Born in the USA” – its easy to forget how unpopular Ronald Reagan was in the early 1980s in a lot of popular culture. First Blood is sort of a hold-over from the 1970s, but Rambo is pure 1984, “Morning in America.”
And I’m curious what you might point out as a truly anti-heroic American war novel- there’s no American equivalent (I would argue) of Guy Sajer’s work, or even “All Quiet on the Western Front” or “Paths of Glory.” The closest (I’m guessing) might be “Red Badge of Courage” or Tim O’Brien’s “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.” But books proclaiming to be anti-heroic (“Dispatches”?) often have the opposite effect of glorifying the sacrifice and romanticizing the brotherhood.
July 8, 2009 at 6:54 am
rmg
Leaving aside the actual substance of Obama’s writing (which you’ve explicated wonderfully), my main beef with the line of argument coming from the right on this is far simpler: Obama was what–20? 21?–when he wrote this? It’s not an article. It’s not a “piece.” It’s a freaking senior paper! Get a grip people! The man has had a lifetime of experience since then, and maybe it’s confirmed in him the same sentiments expressed in this essay (phew, I say), but the fact that “OMG Obama supported X cause when he was in college!!!! He can’t possibly be competent to run the country!” is just ridiculous. How many of us did things or espoused views in college that we’d never do now? How many Neocons, for that matter, were raving lefties in college (not to point fingers, of course). Please. This entire line of inquiry has always struck me as totally ridiculous. It’s obvious to me why historians would want to see the writings of the young Obama. It’s not the slightest bit clear why we should think that they necessarily “prove” anything about his current views or fitness for office.
July 8, 2009 at 7:03 am
Anderson
a truly anti-heroic American war novel
You mean, besides A Farewell to Arms?
I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
Not sayin’ it’s in the same league as Remarque, but it surely qualifies.
July 8, 2009 at 7:42 am
silbey
Catch-22?
July 8, 2009 at 7:52 am
Tom
a truly anti-heroic American war novel
Well, someone already mentioned Catch-22, where the dying Snowden is tragic for the very simple and human reason that he’s a kid dying, not for any quasi-heroic martyr in wartime stuff.
Slaughterhouse Five would also qualify, I think.
July 8, 2009 at 9:49 am
Mr. Sidetable
“a truly anti-heroic American war novel”
Half of the novel is fairly typical 19th-century sentimentalism, but the war scenes in John DeForest’s “Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty” are amazing, and quite anti-heroic. They’re way better than anything in “Red Badge,” and written almost 30 years earlier.
July 8, 2009 at 12:57 pm
joe fischer
“a truly anti-heroic American war novel”
It wouldn’t be expected on the list, but I’d nominate Peter Straub’s “Koko.”
July 8, 2009 at 6:26 pm
SEK
Was it my oversharing or Literature Itself which killed this thread? The world will never know.
July 8, 2009 at 8:48 pm
PorJ
SEK, you’re overthinking it. As I said above, I had little to add to your excellent post so I nit-picked a digression, hijacked the thread, and killed it.
But it is curious why some threads live in infamy and others die out quickly and quietly. I would argue it has little to do with the quality of the post.
July 8, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Ahistoricality
Likewise: excellent post, except for that quibble.
PorJ: I think it has to do with too many things to quantify. The quality of the commenters (and a troll or two counts), the salience of the topic, the academic calendar, the zeitgeist…. Also it helps if I didn’t write it.
July 9, 2009 at 9:32 am
Charlieford
What does any of this have to do with Ron Paul?!
July 9, 2009 at 9:47 am
eric
We’ll always have Ron Paul.
July 9, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Jon H
rmg wrote: “It’s not an article. It’s not a “piece.” It’s a freaking senior paper!”
No, it’s not a senior paper, it’s an article for a school paper type thing. The senior paper is something else.
July 10, 2009 at 7:29 pm
TF Smith
Anti-heroic American war novel – The Sand Pebbles?
As far as First Blood goes, the novel was written as a thriller with a late ’70s social/critical frame; I heard a talk by the author once and his idea was that the protagonist was not a buffed-out super soldier, but was actually just a fairly “average” looking guy with long hair, who didn’t really stand out in a crowd…but whose experience/skills and lack of affect made him even more frightening.
July 20, 2009 at 9:26 pm
jrc
Blood Meridian
Unless war requires two armies of white people in uniforms.