presidential debate 2008

HELLO TO ALL THIS: A Feminist Response to Robin Morgan

Robert McElvaine — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:05:20 -0500

I have long been proud to call myself a feminist. Robin Morgan is among my heroes. Her justly famous 1970 essay “Goodbye to All That” is a wonderful, powerful statement that I have quoted in my writings and use in classes. At the beginning of February, Ms. Morgan wrote a new piece titled “Goodbye to All That (#2)." This article, which has been widely circulated via email, is an attempt to convince feminists that they must support Hillary Clinton.

Not content to offer positive reasons for supporting Hillary Clinton, Ms. Morgan attacks Barack Obama. Beginning a piece by referring to Obama by the initials “BO” is, it seems to me, not the best way to win friends and influence people.

Let me stipulate that it is clearly the case that sexism is much deeper and much more entrenched than racism. Indeed, sexism is the model upon which racism and all other forms of domination/subordination are based. That is the essence of the argument I make in my book Eve’s Seed and one that I continue in my forthcoming book, Grand Theft Jesus. It is also certainly true, as Ms. Morgan says, that more women than men are enslaved today and that women in general have, over the course of history, suffered even more than racial minorities. In principle, then, I would prefer the more radical step of electing a woman as United States president to that of electing an African American.

But I would hope that this principle doesn’t mean, as Morgan comes very close to saying, that we, as feminists, should vote for ANY woman and that any woman is preferable to any man. She does note that it was not proper to support Elizabeth Dole’s presidential aspirations and by implication she also indicates that she would not favor electing someone like Margaret Thatcher. But what, after all, does her clever closing line—“I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman—but because I am”—mean?

It is also true that in many quarters sexist comments continue to be more acceptable than racist comments. Morgan, however, manipulates that fact by hiding in the passive voice to say, “When a sexist idiot screamed ‘Iron my shirt!’ at HRC, it was considered amusing.” By whom? Certainly not by me. And I heard a good deal of outrage expressed by television commentators about the idiot’s outburst.

Other examples of disgusting misogyny that Morgan cites are just that. But does the fact that idiots say horrible things about Hillary and that those horrible things are usually in fact anti-woman, not just anti-Clinton, mean that we must vote for her regardless of the situation or who the other candidate is?

For anyone to call Hillary-supporting black feminists “race traitors” is despicable. But isn’t Morgan coming close to calling feminists who support Obama “sex traitors”?

And then, in the midst of some comments that are largely justified, Morgan essentially equates Barack Obama with George W. Bush! Linking him with W is a far greater insult than referring to him as BO. “Goodbye,” she writes, “to the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.” Need we remind her that the destruction was brought on not simply by the cocky, arrogant president who bellowed, “Bring it on!” but by precisely the most experienced and supposedly knowledgeable people—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et. al.—and that, between the two finalists for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, it was the inexperienced one who opposed that path into destruction while the experienced one was giving that same George W. Bush the authority to proceed on the path to destruction?

The question we ought to be debating is who is the better person for the job. In order to do so, we need to say goodbye to several of the tactics Morgan employs in her new essay:

Goodbye to using “Duh” as sufficient means of concluding one’s case [“She’s better qualified. (D'uh.)”].

Goodbye to arguing, in so many words, that your candidate is astute and then degrading the candidate you oppose because he is astute.

Goodbye to guilt by association (some of the Kennedys and Ted Sorensen).

Goodbye to guilt without association (Roger Stone, Carl Bernstein, John McCain, South Park writers, misogynist pigs with OJ tee shirts, etc.) None of that is connected with Barack Obama or those who support him.

Goodbye to such ageist arguments (while condemning ageism of the opposite sort) as saying that the “vision and spirit” of someone in his mid-40s need to be “seasoned by practical know-how” before he should try to change the world. Does Ms. Morgan forget how effectively she and others were working at changing the world when they were in their 20s? Is it not usually the case that one’s vision and spirit are clouded and beaten down by years of “seasoning” in Washington? When did “Don’t trust anyone over 30” become “Don’t trust anyone under 50”? What has become of the wonderful young radical Robin Morgan used to be?

Goodbye to feminists stooping to the divide and deride tactics that have been used against us and against women in general for millennia.

Hello to all this: Feminists being free to support whichever candidate they believe is best for the nation and the world at a given time. We can debate who that candidate is without belittling each other or either candidate, both of whom have significant strengths for progressives and feminists.

{Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters and Professor of History at Millsaps College. His latest book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America, will be published by Crown in March.}

It's the Recession, Stupid

Robert Borosage — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:12:45 -0500

It ain’t sexy, I know, but a word about the economy and the presidential debate.

Wall Street banks are holding a fire sale; employment is down, holiday sales tanked. Burdened with record debt and stagnant incomes, homeowners are about to reckon with declining home values, their largest investments, with a projected $2 trillion in assets evaporating in the course of the year. Even clueless George — “the fundamentals are strong” — Bush admitted a little stimulus might be needed.

So finally, the r word — recession — hit the presidential campaign trail. In the January Myrtle Beach Republican debate, the candidates were asked what they would do to get the economy going in the event of recession. The answers expose just how preposterous conservatism has become.

John McCain, who at least admits he doesn’t know much about economics, said the first thing we need to do is” stop the out-of-control spending.… As president, I know how to do it. I'll wield that veto pen, and I won't let another pork-barrel earmark spending bill cross my desk without vetoing it. I'm called the sheriff by my friends in the Senate who are the appropriators, and I didn't win Miss Congeniality.”

Charming, but completely wrong-headed. A recession is caused by lack of demand. The squeeze on working families has them tightening their belts. Companies lay off workers. State and local governments, mandated to balance their budgets, choose between deep cuts in spending on education and health care or increased taxes. Only the federal government is able to act – by spending money or cutting taxes, adding to a short term deficit to get the economy moving.

(The Federal Reserve can also try to lower interest rates, but with the dollar sinking and credit markets shattered flooding the market with money may just feed inflation without much effect. And, in fact, the Fed’s previous interventions under Alan Greenspan helped blow up the bubble that triggered this mess)

Rudy Giuliani just released a big tax cut plan, so you’d expect him to take McCain apart. Nope, the Mayor was as clueless as McCain: “You also have to cut spending as significantly as you cut taxes. You have to be willing to impose cutbacks on each one of the federal agencies, the civilian agencies. The main things you have to guard against are overtaxing, overspending, over-regulating and over-suing.”

“Over-regulating?” We’re suffering a credit and housing collapse that derives directly from the LACK of sensible regulation to hold lenders to basic standards like reviewing borrowers’ ability to pay.

Mike Huckabee showed that he could feel people’s pain, and then suggested he’d increase it, calling once more for his “fair tax” that would cut taxes on the wealthy and increase them on working and poor people. Not exactly a remedy for the economy, no matter what condition it is in.

Libertarian Ron Paul at least was true to his principles, which he stated as unintelligibly as possible. After ruling out monetary or fiscal relief, he called for attacking this with the “Austrian theory of the business cycle. For the few of you not familiar with Austrian economists, the Austrian theory of the business cycle is simply to let her rip. ...The longer you delay the recession, the worse the recession is,” said Paul.

In this crowd, only former Governor Mitt Romney offered a passing glance at common sense. Before lurching into his requisite pander about fighting for every job in Michigan, he urged that we “stop the housing crisis (without telling us how), and “immediately cut taxes” on middle-income Americans. He then argued that we get “gas prices under control” by becoming energy independent and invest in research and development, good ideas that would take far too long to have any effect on turning around a recession.

The contrast with the Democratic field is stark. Once more John Edwards drove the debate, releasing a serious short-term stimulus plan, mixing tax rebates for low income people with direct spending and aid to the states. Hillary followed with the largest plan, with a good mix mirroring that of Edwards. Obama’s plan relied almost entirely on tax cuts, quicker but less effective than direct spending.

Democrats on the Hill seem more muddled. The conservative Blue Dog Democrats are reported as demanding that the tax cuts and spending of any stimulus “be paid for,” which would, of course, eliminate their stimulus effect. This preposterous proposition has led Pelosi and Reid to seek pre-emptive agreement with Bush on a plan. That virtually ensures that what emerges will be too small to make a difference, and weighted towards tax cuts. (The President suggested that repealing the estate tax permanently would be a stimulus. Other than exciting the Paris Hiltons of the world, it isn’t clear what he had in mind.)

This debate has just begun, but it’s got to get a lot bolder. This is a $13 trillion economy wounded by successive body blows. It will take a lot to get it turned around. Consider the last recession after the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the shock of 9/11. The Fed lowered interest rates to the lowest levels in memory; Bush racked up record deficits with massive top-end tax cuts and increased spending on the military and homeland security; Chinese and Japanese central bankers lent the money needed to prop up the dollar and limit inflation – and still we witnessed a slow recovery in which employment as a percentage of the population and income never returned to pre-recession levels.

Now the economy is weaker, the damage more serious, and the Chinese and Japanese more sober. It is going to take heavy lifting to get this economy moving again.