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Political Bullfighting
This entry was posted on 4/27/2009 5:57 PM and is filed under Added Articles.
Political Bullfighting
1 Death in the Afternoon
Imagine Barack Obama not on a basketball court but in a corrida on a Sunday afternoon in matador tights taking his formalized bow to the crowd. More on this later but first, I admit -
I have attended only one legitimate bull fight in my life, in Madrid. A friend and I went out for the afternoon. There was one matador, obviously an old hand, well known to the crowd but probably not of the uppermost rank anymore. He gave a good performance, workmanlike and precise. The crowd was appreciative if not ecstatic. Actually it was rather dull how easily the magnificent bull was dispatched, a bit sad or bittersweet.
Then out came the young stud, the up and comer, the new bullfighter on the block, all flare and élan. Unfortunately the bull wouldn’t cooperate. After a few passes, the bull stopped charging and became pensive - not a good thing at a bullfight. The brave bullfighter, the toreador, magnificently arrayed in black sequined outfit tight to the form, couldn’t entice the bull forward. No matter what he did, and he waved the red cape every which way, the lonely bull only snorted and paced and eyed him with suspicion.
The toreador moved closer and closer to el toro, - no doubt calling the giant beast a lot of choice, dirty Spanish names under his breath. Nothing. The bull actually backed up a step or two as the matador drew closer. The crowd was getting very, very restless now. At last the exasperated matador, knowing his moment on the big stage was slipping into farce, threw up his hands in exaggerated theatricality to let the crowd know that, in his opinion, the bull was more to blame for this unfortunate inactivity than him. Then, to at least prove his courage, he actually turned his back to the bull and fell to his knees and bent over backwards until the back of his head was nearly touching the ground. There he looked up imploring at the curious, wary bull from just several feet in front of him. Apparently the bull bore no malice or ill will to the matador, however, and didn’t try to take advantage of his vulnerable position by charging.
Reckless and brave as this act was the crowd hated the bullfighter for it. They were booing now. Bullfighting isn’t about bravery, that is a given, anybody who’d climb into a ring unarmed with a massive angry animal that has big horns had to be brave – if not insane. No, bullfighting , the art of the matador, was about skill, bravery is just the price of admission.
The name of this matador was Gallo de Moron. I only remember it because it is so memorable. I don’t know what happened to his bullfighting career. It may have gone well, recovered, and become spectacular, or perhaps it didn’t and died right there that afternoon.
In a bar not far from the corrida afterward where my friend and I repaired for a few beers, Gallo de Moron’s name was already infamous from the live radio broadcast of the fight. You could hear it spoken with derision to the accompaniment of laughter.
As far as politics go, Obama is a pretty good matador so far. To be sure, his enemies make it easy by their twitching overreaction to every move he makes. They see red flags everywhere, even where none could conceivably exist and charge wildly and in out of control fashion at any provocation, even when they were not provoked. The republican right persists in this because they have built their careers and in some cases their lives around a number of discredited notions which they will not, or cannot, let go of.
Every time Obama or anyone connected even obliquely to Obama, makes a move, particularly when it is done expertly or with grace, especially when it is done either matter of factly or cheerfully as if to taunt them in their misery, these permanent malcontents go berserk with rage. They see red again, snort, kick their hooves back in the dust and then make yet another bull’s rush forward, all out, wild, with abandon and total disregard for what will happened next. They have not yet even quite reached the point of caution and circumspection.
Their supporters who egg them on can only watch in frustration as their political leaders race to the blur of red cape before their eyes pulling away again, as the swirl of dust clouds their senses and chokes their flaring nostrils; they thunder by into thin air as Obama, unharmed, gracefully pivots away to graciously acknowledge the roar of the crowd.
True it’s been rather fun to watch and also rather sad, too, but it is also dangerous as well, for that is the thrill of the bullfight. The republicans know, like that bull, that they need only gore the peerless matador once to score a telling, perhaps even a fatal blow. On the other hand with each pass of futility, the bull tires a little bit more and the likelihood of their landing such a blow diminishes.
And so far the Obama team has not even bothered much to fight back. Once they do, bringing out the political picadors with their lazar sharp swords to surgically pierce the bull in the back between the shoulder blades, the bull will slow further, hastening his demise.
The lone exception to this was when they took on Rush Limbaugh who infamous claimed hope that Obama would fail. Commentators thought this was a mistake and distraction by Obama’s team but it wasn’t. It was quite effective. Limbaugh’s influence is more myth than reality and to lance his boil diminished him in stature considerably. Side by side with Obama he seems quite a small man. Then to watch Limbaugh's critics in the republican party have to bow and show fealty to him, one by one, has diminished them as well.
When an unredeemable opponent crawls too far out on alimb it is mandatory to occasionally cut one off and watch them fall. To be afraid or too nice or too squeamish or too bipartisan to fight back is to embolden your enemies further. There must be costs exacted for each random attack or they will not only increase but eventually become concerted.
This is the difficulty Clinton had. The weak kneed democratic support he had never exacted a toll for all the absurd vitriol and wild charges that filled those times and Clinton alone could never slow the continuous onslaught the republican right orchestrated against him. Until finally a weak charge hit home. Clinton survived, of course, and outlasted his enemies but the bloody messiness of the affair and the sheer measiliness of the whole impeachment process left the crowd queasy and unsettled and arguably worked against the democrats in the next election. Even though, it should be pointed out, more broadly it only hurried the republican party’s long slow slide from the pinnacles of power to the ignominy they now enjoy.
Because, like the matador and Gallo de Moron, politicians must also play to the crowd. Once you lose them you never get them back. The toreador must never let them see him sweat – that’s half the battle. Reagan, for instance, eviscerated the democratic opposition with his first reconciliation budget and was never touched, though his poll numbers rose and fell, by the democratic opposition afterwards.
Bush, with his very low margins for error, not being the best of matadors, was always a showboat, taunting his enemies with his limited skills until, after a – for him - promising start, he went the way of Gallo de Moron. Politics, not unlike the toreador, has its own version of death in the afternoon.
2 Bulls Rush in
(where wise men fear to tread)
This is all to be expected. There was a great deal of talk at the advent of the Obama era about bipartisanship and a “team of rivals” based on the title of the Doris Kerns Goodwin book about Lincoln, but this is a false comparison. Lincoln did not invite politicians into his cabinet from across the entirety of the political spectrum but only from across half the political spectrum. There is a big difference there. There were no internal philosophical rivals within his cabinet only rivalries of personal ambition.
The real rivalry in Lincoln’s time was the Civil War which washed out all other distinctions. Lincoln didn’t unite the country through the comity of his cabinet but he unified it though division by decisively defeating his opponents on the field of battle. He was a president who was not afraid of a fight when it came to the big issues which faced the country and was only mild and compliant over small matters. After the war he showed every sign of being generous in victory but while it was going on he was not. He only became broadminded after his real rivals, those who believed in slavery and secession, had been soundly beaten into submission.
For Obama supporters to suggest he can get a tent big enough to invite all the republicans has always been a fallacy. He has to understand that the right, like their symbolic elephant, never forgive or ever forget. They will hate him with a passion tell the end of time just like they have always hated the last great president who didn’t do what they wanted him to do – FDR.
Soft, consensus politics are great if you can get them, generosity and compromise and bipartisanship are wonderful when they occur. And it is wise that Obama always is careful to leave that door ajar to the opportunity of bipartisanship because this is always the easiest and best way forward. And very few politicians are even capable of seeing both sides of an issue much less possess the skill and capacity to gather consensus around centrist positions. That is actually the true compliment that people have bestowed on Obama when they say he reminds them of Lincoln, because objectivity and temperance were Lincoln’s greatest qualities. And it is rare indeed.
But the battles upcoming, and the republicans have recognized and accepted this sooner than the democrats, are going to be won or lost through old fashioned hard ball politics. They will be cutthroat and mean spirited just as they have always been and will entail character assassination, political arm twisting, bribery, quid pro quos and deceit galore and all nuance will be swept under the rug of generality and over simplification.
We have already seen the republican positions and heard the rhetorical excesses on the internet, cable and radio hardening and intensifying to a nearly absurd level of opposition and we are only several months into the Obama administration.
Contrary to expectation then, counterintuitively, the softer the politics Obama plays the louder the screams of the extremists on the other side will become. Soft policy and kind words are fighting words to an extremist. They are an affront and a sign of weakness, as to them compromise is the silent sound of losing. Therefore, it is wise for Obama to present a soft face to such harsh rhetorical and partisan excess. Much like a matador can coax a bull to charge with just a slight flick of his wrist and then lets the bull wear itself out with one bull rush after another into thin air, while he, the matador, red cape tucked gracefully aside, pirouettes out of the way time after time, Obama can work their extremism to his advantage. The bulls and bullies on the republican right, always seeing red, states and otherwise, become even more outraged and out of control with each futile lunge after the twirl of Obama’s cape.
This irrational behavior actually makes Obama’s politicies easier to enact. He needs these extreme components the way the toreador needs the bull to enhance and improve his own stature by comparison. Each failed bull rush often, ironically, consisting of a lot of bull, creates its own vacuum which allows apce for more progressive ideas to quickly fill up. Arguably, if the republicans weren’t always on the attack and always predictably obstructionistic, they would have to be created. That is in fact what the republicans have often done to democrats, manufacturing enemies of religion and of the state to oppose.
To coax, beguile and entice the bulls in the republican party to attack has been rather easy so far. They have shown no reticence to attack whatsoever, even when they have had no plan of attack and even when they have had to manufacture their own provocations and slights to justify their outrage. To now Obama has shown all the signs of being a superior political bullfighter (in every sense of the term). By first, being soft enough to let your opponents make all the mistakes and then using the weight of their own exaggerated force against them; second, being strong enough to make them pay for particularly egregious remarks and third, to know the difference.
3 The Twenty Egg Omelet
But why is the right being so bullheaded? There is arrogance, corruption and total lack of perspective to be sure. But the simplest answer is: it's because it’s who they are.
There is a story from the French Revolution which might help to illustrate. It concerns a member of the nobility at the outset of the worst days of the violence against his kind in Paris who actually played it pretty smart. He laid low for several days and then, dressed in a simple laborers’s clothing, on foot and alone and carrying nothing with him, walked from Paris unobtrusively, no doubt occasionally yelling forth shouts of solidarity with the sans-culottes he passed in the streets. And it worked. He couldn’t believe his good fortune and congratulated himself on his shrewdness to have outwitted the human rabble in the streets whom he no doubt thoroughly despised.
After having safely removed himself miles from the worst of what was going on in Paris, he became tired and hungry. Feeling secure at being out of harm’s way, he stopped in at an inn to eat. He ordered an omelet. And just as would happen today the proprietor asked him how many eggs he wanted in it? The nobleman was aghast, he had no idea. He’d never cooked anything in his life. As beads of sweat began to appear on his brow he finally had to venture a reply or look even more suspicious than he already did, “oh, uh, er, uh, twenty?” he guessed. For that tiny little slip and greed for a twenty egg omelet he undoubtedly lost his head. The moral of this story is: the true nature of a man extends beyond the clothes on his back.
Similarly, it’s hard not to sympathize with all the wizards of industry and titans of the financial community we’ve seen of late trying to pass for normal and pretend to empathize with the little people of the world as they say how much they feel our society’s pain at the wreckage their own arrogance and corruption has caused us. This includes the heads of automobile companies flying high priced company jets to DC to beg handouts, to the executive pay packages to the worst operaters at AIG, to all the shills and cheats who have been paraded before all the congressional inquiries trying to appear as human as you or me. to a causual observer they are just smug, confused little nonentities desperate not to have to cede their divine right to twenty egg omelets while those around them starve.
And the worst of the republicans are the same. They obliviously spent the last election and since, even as their poll numbers continue to drop, refusing to grasp the fact that their old dogs won’t hunt in this world of newer, faster rabbits. People have long since tired of their cheap tirades of family values, and fiscal responsibility and sound, small effective government – after they have been in charge for years and have very nearly delivered us the opposite. And still they continue with the same bland litanies primarily designed to protect the same pockets of bloated excess their policies created in the first place.
They have even lately tried to convince America that there is a great populist revolt afoot determined to fight against tax increases for billionaires.
Is it any wonder that now, like the pacing bull in the ring, after his first few hard charges against this deceptively sly moving red cape target have only left him looking foolish, the republican right is confused. But can they learn? Watch them now, how they grunt and snort, throw their heads back, push their feet back violently against the sand and look even more determined this time to rush even harder, even more wildly, even fiercer and with even less of a clue than before. Because the old red flag is waving away at them so temptingly, so enticing, to their minds it is almost begging to get gored, and look ther it is again, right there in front of them, for god's sake, taunting them to charge.
So who doubts it? Who doubts the next bull’s rush is coming? The republicans will oppose everything always forever, It’s who they are. And that’s why the Obama administration is going to be successful – even sometimes in spite of his own instincts for moderation - because extremists on the right keep forcing it leftward by refusing to make even obvious commonsense compromises on issues which Obama might have otherwise have been inclined to make.
The radical right consider this purity and regard their wild bullrushes as noble, but they aren’t. They are just dumb and subjective and always seeking to subvert the essence of mutual respect that democracy is built on in favor of an illusory absolutism they can never enjoy. More power to them.
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