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Obama insecurity
Obama has many good qualities but this does not prevent the circulation of massive amounts of "Obama insecurity," as evidenced by some of the comments on a recent post. (It's not about disagreeing; note how the tone changes.) For some people no comment on Obama, other than the purely laudatory, is anything other than a hackish right-wing attempt to forge an alliance of lies with Karl Rove and his ilk. But an election need not be framed as a war where all remarks must be strategically proper and in line with the objective of electing a preferred candidate; a blog is a discourse first and foremost.
The mood on Obama reminds me of the response of some MR commentators to Eric Lyon on Radiohead.
I cannot imagine how devastated and hopeless the Democratic left would feel if Obama loses. That response would be a big mistake but in part it explains "Obama insecurity." The left is uneasy that so many of their hopes are pinned on this man and as Paul Krugman points out he is somewhat unknown. There is a secondary fear that Obama is in fact committed to the notion of America as a center-right country or at least is unwilling to challenge that idea.
"Obama insecurity" hurts his electoral chances and hurts the intellectual future of the left as a corrective force in American politics. There's not a convincing or credible path toward painting his enemies as immoral, even if that is what you believe. Some campaign lies are painting Obama as weak, inexperienced, and non-American or even anti-American. Responding with a dose of "Obama insecurity" only plays into the hands of those who would turn this into a race of emotions and innuendo.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 17, 2008 at 05:43 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Well put. Both Obama and his supporters would do well to respond to criticism in two ways:
1. For legitimate criticism: "That's interesting. I'll need to consider that more carefully."
2. For illegitimate criticism: Laugh it off, shrug, and say "politics produces some funny moments."
To your point, taking umbrage merely legitimizes the criticism and cedes control of the argument to the person making it. Better to defuse it.
Posted by: J.Lo at Aug 17, 2008 6:24:31 AM
Obama is a very vulnerable candidate and McCain is a good campaigner. McCain actually has much better press relations than Obama as far as I can tell, and will et a lot of leeway. McCain's personal narrative is compelling.
The Dems still think Swift-boating is what did in Kerry, so they feel the need to respond to everything. Will it work? It worked for Bill Clinton. His people responded quickly and strongly to everything. The McCain campaign certainly responds right away to any negatves about their candidate. Why won't it work for Obama? OTOH, I cannot think of a Dem equivalent to a Corsi, so I am not sure how McCain's campaign would respond to such an obvious liar that even Larry King nailed him.
Steve
Posted by: steve at Aug 17, 2008 7:43:19 AM
"McCain actually has much better press relations than Obama as far as I can tell, and will ]g]et a lot of leeway."
What world are you living in? Obama could rape a child right in front of the crying parents and still get good press.
Posted by: Peter at Aug 17, 2008 8:01:33 AM
As a solid moderate, who hasn't gotten into any Obama tussles here, or elsewhere, I say your criticism is too fancy.
It's simpler to say the left still carries the burn from Swift Boat, and reacts from that. It would probably happen much the same way with any other Democrat.
As a moderate I'm not sure immediate overreaction is bad, just because the opposite, laying down, worked so badly.
(My opinion, the two-party system has again given us a peculiar choice, with limited options.)
Posted by: odograph at Aug 17, 2008 8:14:32 AM
BTW, McCain in 2000 would have been awesome ... too bad he was Swift Boated.
Eight years later, when it's not time for a McCain, and it's really sad that he plays games of mild rebuke with the Swift Boaters in his own camp.
Posted by: odograph at Aug 17, 2008 8:20:27 AM
Tyler, sad to say, I think most of the harsh commenters have it right (granting the uncontroversial point that marginal rates are a vital issue):
That graph seems to be based on some serious cherry-picking, but there's no label that would help a casual reader understand that. I think at the very least a note that "graph applies to a specific scenario; it is not applicable to all cases" would have been required. Highlighting the visible but not immediately clear facts that (a) it was an analysis by a partisan group, and (b) that it ignored what I believe is a *drop* in marginal rates below $25,000/yr would have been a thoughtful service to your readers.
Posted by: Geoffrey at Aug 17, 2008 8:31:15 AM
For the detached, political-junkie-observer, this has the potential to be one of the most interesting and fun elections in a long time.
Posted by: chug at Aug 17, 2008 8:32:10 AM
"(My opinion, the two-party system has again given us a peculiar choice, with limited options.)
Um, but surely far better than the choice of W versus John Kerry?
Posted by: dearieme at Aug 17, 2008 8:55:29 AM
"Um, but surely far better than the choice of W versus John Kerry?"
That's interesting. When it closed to McCain, Obama, and Clinton, I felt that they all offered at least the possibility of moderate government. I guess the race for the shallow end in this campaign has put me off.
But to answer your question, far better.
Posted by: odograph at Aug 17, 2008 9:11:33 AM
I am normally a big fan of marginal revolution, but I don't think this was a good post. There is a legitimate criticism of Tyler's last post - that he presented as representative a specific case chosen to make Obama's plan look bad.
Rather than respond to that, Tyler chose to dwell on the psychological failings of his critics. In general, I think posts that talk about "some" people who hold ridiculous positions ("no comment on Obama, other than the purely laudatory, is anything other than a hackish right-wing attempt to forge an alliance of lies with Karl Rove and his ilk") are unhelpful. If you think a particular person holds that position, call them out and make your case.
Tom
Posted by: Tom G. at Aug 17, 2008 9:14:04 AM
Tom G., I very much did link to those people I am discussing and you will find the same in many places around the blogosphere. If I didn't cite them it is because of the obviousness; try Mark Thoma's comments section, for instance, noting that the intellectual level of Mark's blog is high so it cannot be claimed that I am choosing from the bottom of the barrel; quite the contrary. Note also that a) the emotional responses of the commentators did not in general cite the point of "representativeness," and b) if a blog post on a different topic had not sufficiently explained the representativeness issue it certainly would have not received a comparable emotional reaction. The general point is that we react more emotionally when we see people being discussed than we we see issues being discussed and that is what I am calling out.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Aug 17, 2008 9:32:52 AM
Here's the Economist's View (Mark Thoma) discussion on that same graph.
Skimming, it doesn't look that bad. More than a few are frustrated with the combination they perceive, of partial truths and locked comments.
(I lock comments too, on my lazy blog.)
Posted by: odograph at Aug 17, 2008 9:47:07 AM
It would probably happen much the same way with any other Democrat.
But it's not true about Hillary. Clinton's supporters didn't reflexively accuse opponents of sexism and bad faith any time anyone (even other Democrats) said anything bad about her. Maybe it's because the Clintons have been criticized so much over the last decade and a half that their supporters are used to it. Perhaps Hillary is the exception and this would have happened with any other Democrat.
But it is generally true that Obama supporters have a fit any time their candidate gets criticized, even the very legitimate criticisms like his flip-flop on FISA and that he's going to raise taxes on the rich.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Aug 17, 2008 10:23:20 AM
That graph seems to be based on some serious cherry-picking, but there's no label that would help a casual reader understand that.
It's my impression that in those comments every single commenter understood what the graph represents. Now MR has good intelligent commenters but that doesn't mean we're so much smarter than everyone else that we alone would have understood the graph while the people who see it from other web sites are thinkng that Obama's going to raise taxes on single people who make $40K by 40%.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Aug 17, 2008 10:29:03 AM
[..] plays into the hands of those who would turn this into a race of emotions and innuendo.
What else has an election ever been? By what possible mechanism could an election be anything else?
You're confusing "election" with "pseudo-intellectual discourse among people who are politically aware and who believe that their words and actions will determine the outcome, but who don't actually matter in the least, because they aren't several million undecided voters living in swing states." The latter is something that could transcend emotions and innuendo. But it probably won't, either. Which is fine, because it still doesn't matter.
Posted by: eddie at Aug 17, 2008 10:31:43 AM
Tyler,
Thank you replying. My best guess from your first sentence is that you did not understand what I meant. I followed your link and read most of the comments, but my point was to call out _specific_ people not a comment thread.
You know which commenters (the "some") you believe are blind partisans, but I don't. In an argument that has gotten emotional, being specific can prevent your opponents from believing that you are criticizing all of them.
In a negotiations class I took, we covered a study that found that it was the least successful negotiators that spent time diagnosing their counter-party's mental state ("You know what your problem is ..."). I think you could have advanced the discourse more by addressing the substantial criticisms you received. Of course, I recognize that is much more difficult when you feel under personal attack.
Personally, I am curious about how broadly applicable the marginal tax increase is but have not see any good discussion of that.
best,
Tom
Posted by: Tom G. at Aug 17, 2008 10:35:25 AM
I agree with Tyler. The tendency among some of Obama's supporters to switch to CAPITAL LETTERS (or Bold Face) smacks of ... something.
Posted by: John S. at Aug 17, 2008 10:54:43 AM
I think this post is generally true but I really didn't like the post that precipitated it. You offered a chart that people widely misunderstood with insufficient context and explanation. If it was on a niche topic you could get away with doing so but it was on a broad political topic and people took it the wrong way. This was a predictable response. Your blog at this point has a broad readership with various degrees of economic literacy. That is a good thing, but it does mean that you can't take for granted that even fairly simple economic concepts won't be misunderstood. You had an opportunity to really effectively teach something that is for the vast majority of people not really intuitive and you chose instead to be defensive. I know this is your blog and you are free to do as you like. I also know that you didn't do anything wrong with the first post and that it was other people misunderstanding your perfectly lucid point. But, given my impression of your priorities that I have gotten from reading this blog for a long time and your book I am surprised that you looked down your nose on ignorance rather than writing 500 words that would go a long way to correct it.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Aug 17, 2008 11:06:35 AM
Huh -- I hadn't seen that Lyon piece, and to be honest I don't listen to a lot of pop nowadays and am pretty sure I wouldn't know Radiohead if I heard them. But what I can say to the comment that Radiohead tunes are "uninteresting" as tat the one thing I do know about Radiohead, is that as far as I can tell, Brad Mehldau really likes working with their tunes.
And that is game, set, match, Mr. Lyon!
Posted by: Sanjay at Aug 17, 2008 11:20:49 AM
Three weeks ago you complained that your proposal phase out of medicare benefits for wealthy people was improperly labeled an "income tax surcharge" by Greg Mankiw. You unambiguously stated that it was incorrect to equate benefit phase outs with higher taxes.
Then, you published a graph where Obama lowered overall taxes by increasing phase-outs but, oddly enough, it was shown as higher "effective" marginal tax rates. You said it represented the "marginal tax rates" that Obama was proposing. In some ways, your label was even more misleading than Greg's - your Medicare proposal actual does leave people with LESS money while Obama's higher phase outs actually leaves them with MORE money.
You were called out on this apparent inconsistency.
And your response now is to question the psychology of those who disagree with you.
Instead, perhaps it would be useful to clarify your position and make it internally consistent. For instance, you might note that many (most?) people, including Greg and you can be a bit cavalier in whether you distinguish among "phase outs", "tax rates" "marginal tax rates", "effective marginal tax rates", total taxes, etc. They are technically not the same thing. However, in fairness, they are often conflated and most people read the word "tax" in any context as higher statutory tax rates and higher tax payments. Thus, you cried foul at Greg's use of the word tax for your phase out plan.
If you and Greg mean to make a distinction, you need to be much more explicit, IMHO. You (and Greg) should probably also make it clear that the taxpayer is unambiguously better off with larger phase-outs, even if the effective tax rate on the margin may be higher.
A fair reading of the graph you published would leave many, perhaps most, casual readers with the false impression that Obama's proposal leaves middle income people with less money. Edward Tufte would not approve of a graph that seemed to say one thing when it actually said the opposite, nor do I think it's intellectually honest. Being literally correct while misleading readers is no defense, IMHO.
I may be cynical, but I think a major goal of the graph's creators was to give the false impression that Obama's plan hurt the middle class, even if it purported to focus on some subtler point.
Posted by: a student of economics at Aug 17, 2008 11:21:53 AM
Time to conflate two recent memes: how about a post in which Tyler invites people to guess which candidtate he believes is "evil".
Posted by: Affe at Aug 17, 2008 11:44:31 AM
Obama is only there because of Penny Pritzker and her rich friends. Take away the billionaires and you have nothing but a stick man.
Posted by: jorod at Aug 17, 2008 11:53:01 AM
yes, reading Andrew Sullivan's blog, I get the same sense.
Every slightly negative add Sullivan connects to the Rove machine.
Posted by: thehova at Aug 17, 2008 12:13:33 PM
Obama supporters in blog comment threads are immature and insecure. This comes pouring out every single time Obama is criticized, and, even worse for the candidate, it comes pouring out of people like Bob Herbert and other writer-/media supporters in their laughable overreactions to things like the recent advertisements put out by the McCain campaign. A candidate's standing with the voting public rests not only on the candidate's character and observable behavior, but also on that of his/her's most visible supporters. Obama's supporters are damaging him very badly at the moment.
This election will be decided by about 15% of the voters that are truly undecided, and one of the questions they will ask themselves is this- do they want to vote for a candidate with such volatile, overly emotional supporters?
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 17, 2008 12:17:04 PM
A fair reading of the graph you published would leave many, perhaps most, casual readers with the false impression that Obama's proposal leaves middle income people with less money. Edward Tufte would not approve of a graph that seemed to say one thing when it actually said the opposite, nor do I think it's intellectually honest. Being literally correct while misleading readers is no defense, IMHO
I think this is an excellent example of what Tyler is talking about when he says that for "some people no comment on Obama, other than the purely laudatory, is anything other than a hackish right-wing attempt to forge an alliance of lies with Karl Rove and his ilk." Even a "literally correct" statement about marginal tax rates--on a blog titled "Marginal Revolution" no less--can be attacked because it might mislead some readers. Remarkably enough, most casual readers of an economics blog probably understand the concept of margins, and why they are important, even if Obama's proposals would ultimately raise the incomes of lower-income households.
Posted by: Steven at Aug 17, 2008 12:22:51 PM
