Obama's Speech: The Partisan Divide

I had been saying for weeks that Obama needed to pivot towards a more traditional democratic platform during the convention and away from the post-partisan stance that he often struck throughout the primaries because he was running against Hillary Clinton and--by definition--Bill Clinton's administration. Obama's speech did that. Here's how you know. After his speech, commentators did something that they don't usually do when commenting on an Obama speech: the split down partisan lines in their reviews. Progressive commentators loved the speech (as did I). Most of the 'nuetral' pundits such as John Dickerson, Mark Halperin, Marc Ambinder etc. also found it very effective. No surprises so far. Obama gives a good speech, we all know that. But the conservative reaction was mostly negative. This was particularly striking among more sophisticated conservatives like Ross Douthat, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks, who have been demonstrated quite a bit of attraction to Obama throughout this election. Ross captures conservative frustration pretty well.

But from where I sit, to the right of the political center, Obama the generic Democrat is a big disappointment. He started this campaign with two promises: That he'd tell us what we needed to hear, rather than what we wanted to heart, and that he wouldn't be captive to the old left-right divide in American politics. But there were no tough choices presented in last night's speech, no hard truths told. There was just the promise that we can have it all: Energy independence (within ten years, no less!), universal health care, an army of new teachers, tax cuts for the middle class, the working class, and the upper-middle class, zero capital gains taxes on small business owners, a perpetually solvent safety net, plus a dose of protectionism - and all of it paid for by (unspecified) spending cuts, and tax hikes on just five percent of America. Meanwhile, the speech's concessions to conservatism were largely pro forma - an acknowledgment that fathers matter, that programs can't solve every problem, and that government "can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework" - and its proposals for common ground (reduce unwanted pregnancies, keep AK-47s out of the hands of gang members, etc.) were equally thin.

Again, if you're a liberal, none of this is going to sour you on Obama's speech, or on the candidate: Why should he concede anything to the Right, you might say, given the disasters of Bushism, and given that the political wind is finally blowing liberalism's way? Which is fair enough. But for those who aren't liberals, but who have been drawn, in varying ways, to Obama's transformational promise anyway, his claim to stand for "new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time" looks a lot more hollow today than it did a year ago.

It will be interesting to see how McCain responds at the Republican convention. Assuming that it happens in anything other than a procedural sense because of Gustav.