For the Defense

Sean Wilentz wrote in NEWSWEEK that he would like to see Barack Obama "succeed in fulfilling his promise" by winning in November. But nothing that follows in Wilentz's lengthy article suggests that he is sincere about that. Instead, Wilentz reveals himself as a bitter Hillary Clinton supporter, who has yet to come to terms with his candidate's defeat; and who is now completely out of step with Clinton, who told the Democratic convention, "No way. No how. No McCain! Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president."

As a respected Princeton historian and a committed Democrat, Wilentz should know better than anyone that now is the time when all Democrats must come together to defeat our real enemy: a Republican candidate who is pro-war, anti-choice, and so out of touch with the common man, he doesn't even know how many houses he owns. Otherwise, we will repeat one of the greatest tragedies our party has suffered in the last forty years: the razor-thin victory of Richard Nixon in 1968, which occurred after thousands of anti-war supporters of Eugene McCarthy refused to rally around Hubert Humphrey, after another exceptionally bitter primary season.

Instead of offering useful advice that might increase Obama's chances of winning, Wilentz has written a thinly disguised hatchet-job that could easily have been produced by the McCain attack machine. Consider these examples:

• Wilentz reinforces the canard that Obama's campaign is short on specifics, charging that his rhetoric amounts "chiefly to promising a dramatic break with the status quo"—and arguing that "millions of other Democrats still find his appeals wispy and unconvincing." The truth is, Obama has detailed positions on everything from Iraq and Afghanistan to universal health care and tax reduction—as was made clear by the cover story in the The New York Times magazine last Sunday dissecting his economic program. The Times concluded that of the two major candidates, Obama would be the real "tax cutter" for most Americans—except for the ones making an average of $9.1 million. That group would get a tax cut of $190,000 a year, from John McCain, versus a tax increase of $800,000 a year from Obama. So much for a lack of specifics.
• Wilentz denigrates Obama's speech in 2002 opposing the American invasion of Iraq, because it was given at a "left-wing rally" and didn't even rate a mention in the Chicago Tribune story about the event. This, the professor writes, was "enough to convince many of his supporters that he is blessed with superior acumen" in foreign affairs. In fact, the speech did show superior acumen—and Clinton's repeated refusal to apologize for her vote authorizing the war gave Obama a crucial advantage in the first contests of the year. Obama's determination to end our military presence in Iraq as soon as possible is also one of the most vital differences between him and his Republican opponent.
• Wilentz claims that Obama's promise to meet with "supporters of terrorism" without preconditions left "experienced diplomats in wonder at such half-baked formulations." In fact, the Bush administration's sole foreign policy success—the decision by Libya to abandon its nuclear program—was the result of the administration's willingness to meet with the representatives of a terrorist state, with no preconditions. And despite President Bush's continuing bluster about Iran, the United States sent its own representative to the latest meeting with Iranian representatives about its nuclear ambitions.
• Wilentz faults liberal intellectuals for failing to press Obama for his "patently evasive accounts" of his connections to convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko—months after the Chicago Tribune declared in an editorial that Obama had provided "a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives. The most remarkable facet of Obama's 92-minute discussion [about his ties to Rezko] was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did."
• Wilentz feeds another false rumor by writing "Some even imagine that Obama is a secret radical, and they see his emergence as an unparalleled opportunity for advancing their frustrated agendas about issues ranging from the redistribution of wealth to curtailing U.S. power abroad." The fact is—as anyone who has spent any time at all studying the specifics of Obama's positions—there is nothing remotely radical about the junior Senator from Illinois. As Ryan Lizza put it in his lengthy profile of the candidate in The New Yorker, "Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them."

It's time for Wilentz to start focusing on the real Barack Obama—instead of repeating the caricature that he painted of him in the New Republic during the primary campaign. When Wilentz was a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton for president, his distortions of Obama's positions were at least understandable. Now they can only be explained by his continuing bitterness over Clinton's defeat. Today he must follow Hillary's example, by making a genuine effort to put Barack Obama in the White House.

Charles Kaiser writes a blog called Full Court Press for radaronline.com. He is a former press critic for NEWSWEEK and a former reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He is currently working on a book about a French family in the Resistance in Paris during World War II.

© 2008