The Anit-Ideological Ideology of the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Joseph McHugh
February 28, 2008
Barack Obama will be a great President.
How do I know?
I feel it.
Really, that´s it. I feel it. It´s a gut thing.
Tell you more?
Well, he is black you know. And you know, his name sounds foreign, like he´s so cool, you know.
If I were a Barack Obama supporter, God help me, that´s how I would sound. The entire Obama phenomenon has been a collective primal scream from an apparently large group of people who believe that if they feel something strongly enough it must be true. Scratch the surface of an Obama supporter and you´ll find, well, not much.
Obama is the ultimate candidate of the modernists. To the modernist intellectuals nothing is real and feelings dictate truth. In philosophy absolutes are out and subjective feelings are a guide to reality. In economics irrational consumer preferences and mindless producers govern economic laws. In art subjective whims guide esthetic choices. And in politics, where heretofore we looked at the views and experience of the candidates, now, apparently, we are to feel our way to timeless policy truths.
And the Republicans are no better.
If there is one theme to this presidential year it is the reification of the ideology of anti-ideology. Obama tells us little about his views, and urges us simply to "hope." "Hope" for what? God knows.
John McCain is a hopeless eclectic. His main claim to fame is that he is a war hero. (No argument here with that.) But more importantly his entire public career has been devoted to "getting things done." What has he gotten done and why? What an unpragmatic question! He gets things done. That´s all that matters. Besides all those anti-ideological middle of the roaders love him.
There are two words that explain the reason for this anti-ideological move on the part of the electorate:
George Bush.
It is Bush with his swagger and certainty that gave principled ideas a bad name. Why? Because he almost never held them consistently, and the one time he did, he was misguided.
Whatever happened to the Bush Doctrine? Anyone remember the "Axis of Evil?"
Like Herbert Hoover before him, who was considered an ardent capitalist while pursuing massive statist policies, George Bush has spoken in broad ideological terms and yet hardly pursued them seriously. For years the failures of Hoover were falsely blamed on the failures of Capitalism. The failures of Bush are now being blamed on excessive ideology. He may well have set the cause of pre-emptive strikes and true national defense back a generation, much as Hoover gave capitalism a bad rep.
As I wrote in the spring of 2007, of George W. Bush´s legacy: "Historians may note his loud pronouncements of policies such as preemptive strikes… but without follow up or success neither will ultimately be remembered."
Perhaps, I was slightly wrong. What will certainly be remembered are the loud pronouncements, and as I stated, what will be totally forgotten is the lack of follow up. The Axis of evil stands. Iran still kills our soldiers with impunity. North Korea toys with us over nukes. Are we truly convinced that states like Pakistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have been neutralized? "If you´re not with us you´re against us." Really?
With the exception of the awful and foolish nation building idea in Iraq, Bush has backed away from Ideology wherever he could. Indeed the bloody misadventure in Iraq, a policy designed not kill terrorists, but to build a nation, was the one area where Bush hewed to an ideology. But ideology was and is not the problem here. Wrong ideology is the culprit.
The American people were misled from the start on Iraq. We were told in the beginning that it was a war for our security, specifically the eradication of weapons of mass destruction-a laudable, though it need not have been primary, goal. But soon we were into the nation building business, the main goal all along.
Americans still have not caught on to the fact that Iraq is not about military conquest and pacification but charity (which allegedly, somewhere long from now will make us safe.) They still blame the problems there on an ideology of belligerence.
But pragmatism is far more prevalent in this administration than any ideological aims. Witness the ridiculous Middle East conference idea. This is not a belligerent President. He´s not even original. But boy does he talk the talk.
And, thus, the American people think that we´ve been victimized by too much ideology.
It seems as though the American voters now prefer sweet nothings, rhymes and ballast.
But anti-ideological ideologues are living, breathing oxymorons. To be truly anti-ideological is a contradiction in terms. Everyone holds some view of the world, however muddled it may be.
What will be the result of this year´s anti-ideological crusade? That is the subject of my next article.
How do I know?
I feel it.
Really, that´s it. I feel it. It´s a gut thing.
Tell you more?
Well, he is black you know. And you know, his name sounds foreign, like he´s so cool, you know.
If I were a Barack Obama supporter, God help me, that´s how I would sound. The entire Obama phenomenon has been a collective primal scream from an apparently large group of people who believe that if they feel something strongly enough it must be true. Scratch the surface of an Obama supporter and you´ll find, well, not much.
Obama is the ultimate candidate of the modernists. To the modernist intellectuals nothing is real and feelings dictate truth. In philosophy absolutes are out and subjective feelings are a guide to reality. In economics irrational consumer preferences and mindless producers govern economic laws. In art subjective whims guide esthetic choices. And in politics, where heretofore we looked at the views and experience of the candidates, now, apparently, we are to feel our way to timeless policy truths.
And the Republicans are no better.
If there is one theme to this presidential year it is the reification of the ideology of anti-ideology. Obama tells us little about his views, and urges us simply to "hope." "Hope" for what? God knows.
John McCain is a hopeless eclectic. His main claim to fame is that he is a war hero. (No argument here with that.) But more importantly his entire public career has been devoted to "getting things done." What has he gotten done and why? What an unpragmatic question! He gets things done. That´s all that matters. Besides all those anti-ideological middle of the roaders love him.
There are two words that explain the reason for this anti-ideological move on the part of the electorate:
George Bush.
It is Bush with his swagger and certainty that gave principled ideas a bad name. Why? Because he almost never held them consistently, and the one time he did, he was misguided.
Whatever happened to the Bush Doctrine? Anyone remember the "Axis of Evil?"
Like Herbert Hoover before him, who was considered an ardent capitalist while pursuing massive statist policies, George Bush has spoken in broad ideological terms and yet hardly pursued them seriously. For years the failures of Hoover were falsely blamed on the failures of Capitalism. The failures of Bush are now being blamed on excessive ideology. He may well have set the cause of pre-emptive strikes and true national defense back a generation, much as Hoover gave capitalism a bad rep.
As I wrote in the spring of 2007, of George W. Bush´s legacy: "Historians may note his loud pronouncements of policies such as preemptive strikes… but without follow up or success neither will ultimately be remembered."
Perhaps, I was slightly wrong. What will certainly be remembered are the loud pronouncements, and as I stated, what will be totally forgotten is the lack of follow up. The Axis of evil stands. Iran still kills our soldiers with impunity. North Korea toys with us over nukes. Are we truly convinced that states like Pakistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have been neutralized? "If you´re not with us you´re against us." Really?
With the exception of the awful and foolish nation building idea in Iraq, Bush has backed away from Ideology wherever he could. Indeed the bloody misadventure in Iraq, a policy designed not kill terrorists, but to build a nation, was the one area where Bush hewed to an ideology. But ideology was and is not the problem here. Wrong ideology is the culprit.
The American people were misled from the start on Iraq. We were told in the beginning that it was a war for our security, specifically the eradication of weapons of mass destruction-a laudable, though it need not have been primary, goal. But soon we were into the nation building business, the main goal all along.
Americans still have not caught on to the fact that Iraq is not about military conquest and pacification but charity (which allegedly, somewhere long from now will make us safe.) They still blame the problems there on an ideology of belligerence.
But pragmatism is far more prevalent in this administration than any ideological aims. Witness the ridiculous Middle East conference idea. This is not a belligerent President. He´s not even original. But boy does he talk the talk.
And, thus, the American people think that we´ve been victimized by too much ideology.
It seems as though the American voters now prefer sweet nothings, rhymes and ballast.
But anti-ideological ideologues are living, breathing oxymorons. To be truly anti-ideological is a contradiction in terms. Everyone holds some view of the world, however muddled it may be.
What will be the result of this year´s anti-ideological crusade? That is the subject of my next article.
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