Recently, on the advice of a dear friend, I’ve started to read the Daily Howler—a web page ostensibly devoted to playing gadfly to the US press corps. I’ve got to say that I was initially impressed; Someby’s posts are often more thoughtful than much of what passes for liberal thought in the blogosphere. He’s also dependably entertaining, and I noticed that he’s even earlier run a weekly segment devoted to philosophy—surely a worthy cause, especially so in the realm of political discourse.
That said, he’s been a bit hit-or-miss lately. Of course, that’s understandable—he does fairly elaborate posts each day, and I admire his discipline. All that said, I really don’t understand precisely why he’s been so bent-out-of-shape by the coverage of HRC’s recent gaffe about RFK. He devotes two longish posts to taking a number of journalists to task for, well, misrepresenting HRC’s quote, intentionally printing mischaracterizations of her words, and generally being unfair.
Some of this is undoubtedly right, and I’d be the first to admit that the press coverage of HRC has been less than flattering. But I’d like to focus here on one particular charge that Somerby makes. After quoting one of the reader response letters printed in the Washington Post, Somerby writes:
Truly, that’s insane. The Post published one letter defending Clinton—and the letter grossly misstates “the point” she was making. If you read the Washington Post, you will read no letters—none at all—which accurately describe what Clinton said. The one letter published in her “defense” grossly misstates what she said.
Rather than engaging in the less-than-rewarding job of critiquing letters to the editor, I’d like to address the questions that Somerby here implies, but never directly addresses: There are, I think, at least two questions here: First, what did she say? Second, and arguably more importantly, what did she mean?
The first question is a matter of public record. Here’s a longer transcript of the remark:
Clinton: This is the most important job in the world. It’s the toughest job in the world. You should be willing to campaign for every vote. You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere. I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition where we find ourselves and you know, I have been willing to do all of that during the entire process and people have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa and I find it…
EB: Why? Why?
Clinton: I don’t know I don’t know I find it curious because it is unprecedented in history. I don’t understand it and between my opponent and his camp and some in the media, there has been this urgency to end this and you know historically that makes no sense, so I find it a bit of a mystery.
EB: You don’t buy the party unity argument?
Clinton: I don’t, because again, I’ve been around long enough. You know my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere around the middle of June
EB: June
Clinton: We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. Um you know I just I don’t understand it. There’s lots of speculation about why it is.
Now, as it turns out, this wasn’t the first public reference by Clinton to the assassination of RFK. Here’s the earlier remark, from the March 6 edition of Time:
Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn`t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months.
Now for a bit of reconstruction. In the more recent discussion, Clinton has asserted that “people have been trying to push [her] out of this [nomination race] ever since Iowa.” I’ll leave it up to others to decide whether this particular charge is true. It rings a bit exaggerated to my ear, but there is a basic structure to what follows. Clinton is asked to explain why “her opponent and some in the media” have been pressuring her to drop out of the race, and her answer is informative. First, she claims that pressuring a candidate to drop out of a nominating race is historically unprecedented. Further, the “urgency” to end the race is “a bit of a mystery.” Then the editorial board mentions the “party unity” argument, which Clinton rejects without any specific discussion. Now her most revealing remarks are about history. But there is some unavoidable ambiguity of her specific examples.
On the more charitable reading, her contention—let’s call it “A”—is the simple one that the nomination process has often lasted until June. This is the clear import of the Time statement. However, Clinton’s elucidation of the examples to the editorial board follows directly on the heels of the mention of the “party unity” argument, so she could reasonably be understood to be arguing that [B] historically, when the nominating process has lasted until June, the party has remained unified. Now, of course, A is true, but by itself uninformative. To see whether or not it helps her case would require looking at similar historical circumstances in which the nominating process has lasted until June. Of course, B, if true, would be more supportive of her continued candidacy. As I hope is obvious, whether in fact she is asserting A or B, her case would be best bolstered by examples of historical nominating processes that both lasted until June, and generated positive general election results for Democrats. And as it turns out, Clinton does provide two pieces of putative evidence for her claim—the examples of both the 1992 and the 1968 Democratic presidential nominations. Both cases (at least) technically satisfy A—both processes lasted well into June. Further, the 1992 primary season might provide good evidence for B, since it also (directly or indirectly) resulted in the election of a democratic president. But instead of resting there, let’s look a bit deeper into these putative supporting cases. In what follows, I will simply ignore the assassination remark.
First, the 1992 nomination. The claim, recall, is that Bill Clinton did not “wrap up the nomination” until sometime in June, when he won the California primary. As it turns out, this claim is highly suspect. In fact, the Clinton camp began running their national campaign strategy on March 20, shortly after the chief rival, Paul Tsongas, suspended his campaign. By that point, Clinton had a 7-1 delegate lead over the only rival left on the field, Jerry Brown, and was close to winning a majority of the delegates needed for the nomination. In halting his campaign, Tsongas, in addition to citing monetary troubles, claimed in his announcement that staying the race would amount to playing the “spoiler” candidate. As reported in the March 20 New York Times by Robin Toner:
Without adequate money to win, Mr. Tsongas said, "the alternative was to play the role of spoiler." 'That Is Not Worthy'
"That is not what I'm about," he continued. "That is not worthy. I did not survive my ordeals in order to be the agent of the re-election of George Bush."
Still worse for Clinton’s example, Jerry Brown, the only remaining candidate on the field after Tsongas stepped down, had already privately agreed not to run any television ads in the California primary, and had previously, on April 7, come in third at the New York primary, behind both Clinton and Tsongas, who had stopped campaigning more than two weeks prior.
Before drawing any lessons, let’s look at the other example, the 1968 race. Why Clinton would choose to bring up the 1968 race really is something of a mystery. It’s widely thought that this was the most bitterly contested nominating processes in the party’s history, and notably resulted in a nasty, brokered convention, and an anti-war candidate who was simply trounced, and by the unforgettable Richard Nixon (and his supporting cast), no less. Of course, it’s true that the nominating process lasted until June, but this was (duh!) before the rules changes enacted in 1972 to make the democratic nominating process, well, less democratic. As many people seem to have forgotten, the nomination process didn’t even begin until March in 1968, and only thirteen states even held democratic primaries. An added difficulty is that the party had a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from the race on March 31, making that date, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of the actual nominating process. Here, too, history matters. In the Time interview, Clinton claimed that “Primary contests used to last a lot longer,” but of course, “last” extends in both temporal directions. This year’s primary season began in January, meaning that by the time June rolls around, it will have “lasted” for a good five months, and that’s excluding the months-long run-up to Iowa. In June of 1968, the much shorter primary season had only been realistically open to challengers for two months.
Now recall that HRC’s argument was ambiguous between the A and B readings. The difference between them, to be a tad more precise, is that while A made a simple fact claim (“primaries have historically lasted through June”), B made a normative claim (“primaries lasting through June isn’t bad for party unity.”) Now, having quickly reviewed Clinton’s examples, it should be clear that they actually work at cross purposes. The 1992 example might technically satisfy B, since it resulted in a slim democratic victory, but it succeeds as a fact claim only on a technicality, since the nomination process was basically conceded in late March. The 1968 example succeeds as a fact claim—the nominating process was strongly contended well into June, but of course the results of that process were disastrous for the party—irrespective of which particular events of that process caused this bad result.
Finally, we should note that all of this is more than a little ironic. HRC’s purported explanation of the push to end her candidacy amounts to little more than a charge of historical ignorance. In contrast to her opponents, HRC has “been around long enough” to know better. In a rather sad way, that’s probably right—she’s been around long enough to know that nobody will challenge the case on the merits—that probably nobody will attempt to construe the claim as an accurate historical description, instead taking every pronouncement as sheer rhetoric. And because HRC is not an ignoramus, she also probably knows the history a lot better than her examples would indicate, so the attempt to treat them as well-intended, accurate historical portraits does, on reflection, turn out to be sadly misguided.
No comments:
Post a Comment