Idiot of the Day: Richard Cohen

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Why do I make the mistake of clicking to, and then reading, a Richard Cohen WaPo column? Surely it can do me no good whatsoever.

Have I not learned my lesson? Despite all the evidence that has piled up over the years, do I not realize that there is usually nothing there but a barren wasteland of self-important navel gazing mixed with embarrassingly shallow and utterly ill-formed political observations?

Alas.

But okay. This once. Just this once.

Behold the genius at work:

Barack Obama has lost the Hamptons.

That sentence is a fat target for ridicule, I know, since the Hamptons are often reviled as the playground of the ridiculously rich and the promiscuously silly — hardly the working-class Democratic base. As is usually the case, there's some truth to the stereotype, but enough exceptions to that rule to make the White House pay attention. The Hamptons is where the Democratic energy, money and intellectual firepower of Manhattan goes for R&R. It’s just not another beach.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them — that's none — was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.

Boo-hoo. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Yes, Cohen is right -- how could he not be, making such an obvious point? -- that "the Hamptons are not America" and that "some of these people will scurry back to the Democratic fold when they have to choose between Obama and, say, Rick Perry," but, no, the early returns are not in.

Obama hasn't lost the Hamptons. What he's lost, if anything, is the vote of a handful of wealthy, ignorant fools who have far less influence on the general electorate than Cohen suggests.

You may not like Obama, you may be "disillusioned" (which is really just another way of saying "gratuitously self-absorbed"), but if you can't defend him at all for anything he has done (health-care reform? the stimulus? his SCOTUS appointments? the troubling but necessary bailouts of Wall Street and the auto industry?) you're just an ignoramus without any sense of perspective or political understanding or appreciation for reality.

Look, it's a difficult time. And Obama has had an extraordinarily difficult time ever since he took office. Not to excuse everything he has done -- I've been harshly critical at times and remain deeply disappointed with his Republican-friendly centrism and occasional anti-progressivism -- but what else was he to do?

Okay, let's see...

-- He hasn't used the bully pulpit effectively enough, hasn't tried to sway public opinion towards a Democratic agenda that for the most part enjoys broad popular support.

-- He should have pushed for more progressive health-care reform, including a public option -- assuming he actually wanted such progressive reform.

-- He shouldn't have embraced so much of the Bush-Cheney national security state.

-- He should have put an end to the failed Afghan War. And perhaps shouldn't have supported NATO intervention in Libya, though the world is certainly better off with out Qaddafi in power.

-- He should have been more aggressively partisan in response to a Republican Party that is out to destroy him. He should call the GOP out for its extremism and obstructionism.

-- He should have built on his magnificent '08 campaign and been more of a transformational leader -- assuming he isn't just an establishment centrist Democrat. The opportunity was there for meaningful change, change we supposedly could believe in, but such change hasn't come.

Yes, fine. That's a lot.

But for a bunch of rich New Yorkers to abandon him entirely? Seriously, are they that fucked up, are they such Cohen-esque navel gazers, that they've lost even a shred of a clue? Sure, I get that some of them are "disappointed." But in their pitiful self-pitying, which is what so much of this is, they show themselves not to be "politically sophisticated" but, well, quite the opposite. Can they name nothing Obama has done that they like? Do they understand at all how he couldn't just show up in Washington and get his way? It would seem not, on both counts.

As if drive home his idiocy, Cohen cites as an example of Obama's weakness the whole flap over when he would give his jobs speech to Congress. To any reasonable person, it made sense for Obama to postpone the speech, given that it would have interfered with a Republican debate. But no -- to Cohen it was "an epochal moment in weakness, confusion and brain-dead politics." Really? Epochal? That's just fucking stupid.

Alright, enough. I now need to get back to not reading anything Cohen writes. Why impose such idiocy on yourself? You might as well go wallow in the 24/7 batshittery over at Fox News. At least those right-wing clowns are stupendous in their shameless partisan shenanigans.

The economic aspects of the Egyptian protests

Guest post by Dan Fejes 

Dan Fejes is a blogger at Pruning Shears. He lives in northeast Ohio.

(Ed. note: This is Dan's second guest post at The Reaction. You can find his first, on the Arizona shooting, a response to the stupidity of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, here. -- MJWS)

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Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to have pretty quickly settled on an ideological basis for the unrest in Egypt. By doing so, it has ignored a more compelling -- and prosaic -- explanation.

There appears to be a yawning chasm between what ishappening in Egypt and elite opinions in D.C. Consider thisexchange between Chris Matthews and NBC News chief foreign affairscorrespondent Richard Engel:

ENGEL: The Muslim Brotherhoodis telling the army that it can be a reasonable, rational organization.I did an interview tonight with one of the senior leaders of the MuslimBrotherhood. He was telling me to tell the American people that theMuslim Brotherhood can be reasoned with, wants to be a player, isn't aradical group. So you're trying -- you are seeing the Muslim Brotherhoodlegitimize itself, much in the same way you saw Hamas try and legitimizeitself during the elections in Gaza.

MATTHEWS: Does thatsurprise you, as someone who really grew up over there as a journalist,living among the Muslim Brotherhood? Does it surprise you that theycould be copacetic with the military?

ENGEL: Not at all. A lotof them are truly patriotic Egyptians. They don't necessarily want tooverthrow the military regime. In the belief structure and thepolitical structure that the Muslim Brotherhood has, which is common inIslamic moments, they believe in a strict hierarchy. There can be aruler. There can be a military ruler. But as long as that militaryruler doesn't impede on the ability of the Muslim people to worship,then they have no problem with that. So they could live verycopacetically with the military. It's not that it is a Taliban kind ofmovement that wants to take over...

MATTHEWS: I getyou.

ENGEL: ...and tell everyone what to do and how to do it.They're very patriotic. They have lot of supporters. You mentioned Ilived with a lot of them. They were nice people. I mean, If you felldown in the street, they would come and help you out. If you didn'thave enough money for the bus, they would give you money. There was acommunity feeling that a lot of people are nostalgic about in thiscountry that is still present in the poorer, more Muslim -- more Islamiccommunities here.

What people are so upset about is prices havegotten so high, there's become this elite class of Egyptiansthat...

MATTHEWS: Right.

ENGEL: ...no longer reflects alot of the traditional cultural values here. And the Muslim Brotherhoodstill does embrace those values very close to itschest.

Matthews comes across as somewhat surprisedthat the Muslim Brotherhood could play a legitimate role in a newEgyptian government. The assumption, apparently widespread in Washington, is that a populist Islamic movement is necessarily violent.(In fairness, they might just be extrapolating from America's ownexperience with religious extremists.)

In fact, he mighteven be something of an outlier in his mildness. Tom Friedman, whousually -- but notalways! -- hides his anti-Islamic fervor well, hadthis to say: "For the last 20 years, President Mubarak has had allthe leverage he could ever want to truly reform Egypt's economy andbuild a moderate, legitimate political center to fill the void betweenhis authoritarian state and the Muslim Brotherhood."

He simplypostulates that the Muslim Brotherhood is the opposite pole of anauthoritarian state. He does not appear to have done any analysis toarrive at that conclusion. He has not spoken with anyone in theorganization (my God man, are there notaxis in Cairo?) (Also seethis, just because.) He just assumes that everyone intuitivelygrasps exactly what he does.

That seems to be roughly thecenter of conventional wisdom. To find the far edge of fear andloathing, seethis from Richard Cohen: "The next Egyptian government -- or the oneafter -- might well be composed of Islamists. In that case, the peacewith Israel will be abrogated and the mob currently in the streets willroar its approval." His entire misanthropic screed throbs with themessage: these savages cannot govern themselves. It isn't even subtextat this point. It's right there on the surface.

There doesnot appear to be any appreciation that very ordinary concerns might bedriving the protesters. What was toutedas an economic miracle wasdisastrous for those on the lower end of the economic scale; NomiPrins calledthis "the appearance of enhancement." Robust economic growth wasoutpaced byinflation, which lead to widespread hunger (I refuse to use theeuphemism "food insecurity"). Food riots have killedpeople. The marvels of globalization have been decidedly lesswonderful for many.

Do the anti-Islamic commentators in Washingtonhave any sense that such workaday issues might just be front-and-centerin the protester's minds? And that any party that begins to addressthem will thereby enjoy the consent of the governed?

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As acoda, those of us in the West might want to consider the followingthoughts William Gambleshared about Tunisia:

All authoritarian governmentseverywhere, by definition, are not limited by any legal restraints. Thisallows elites to become rent seekers often through state-owned companiesand monopolies. Without legal limits, the percentage of the GDP thatthey take for themselves will constantlyincrease.

[snip]

The main impact of an economy ofcorruption is on investment, the investments necessary to create jobs.For Tunisia and many other emerging and frontier markets, this is amajor if not the issue. The unemployment rate in Tunisia is officially13%, but it is probably twice this for younger people. Even universitygraduates face an unemployment rate of over 15%. This is not unusual forthese markets where unemployment rates among younger workers can rise ashigh as 40%. According to the IMF, the Middle East needs to grow 2%faster every year to avoid its present chronic and high unemployment.

Worsening inequality, impunity for those at the top,reduced investment leading to high unemployment: a multi-party democracyin which a governing majority is persistently unresponsive to publicopinion is functionally similar to a one-party state. And prone tosimilar expressions of dissatisfaction.