Ilya Somin, over at Volokh challenges the notion that unity – as proposed by Obama – is a good idea.
One of Barack Obama’s major campaign themes is the promise that he will “unite” America. Obama is an incredibly skillfull campaigner, so I must assume that he wouldn’t be pushing this trope unless there were good reason to believe that it works. Of course, Obama is far from the only politician to promise unity. Remember when George W. Bush promised that he would be a “uniter, not a divider”? That was a fairly successful campaign theme too.
This emphasis on unity for its own sake seems misplaced. After all, unity is really valuable only if we are united in doing the right thing. Being united in doing the wrong thing is surely worse than being divided, if only because division reduces the likelihood of the harmful policies being enacted. And even if the policies proposed by the would-be “uniter” really are beneficial, it’s not clear why broad unity in support of them is preferable to just having enough votes to get them passed.
I’ll suggest that this is a flat misreading of what Obama is saying, and what I think people respond to when Obama speaks of unity.Simply put, the notion I believe Obama is expressing is that we live in a polity – that we share a common political space, rather than a loosely-affiliated set of allied interest groups. I think that the unity that he’s discussing isn’t a unity that suggests common action – marching in step – but the notion that we’re all a part of the same parade.
One trend in modern politics is the relative decline of the nation-state, as smaller communities of interest and transnational bureaucracies, corporations, and religious and ethnic movements become more powerful in their claims to our loyalty.
That’s a dangerous and frightening trend, and one that I believe presents greater risks for the kind of republic that we represent; because we are not a ‘people’ like the French, our attachment to each other is through our shared belief in that common political space and common political project – of liberty, of rights, of equality before the law.
I’d suggest that what people are responding to when Obama speaks of ‘unity’ – what I’m responding to – is his explicit recognition of, and promotion of the simple claim that we’re all in the same boat.
I always thought he was channeling Dave Chappell, channeling Rick James.
…now, that’s not an image I needed…
A.L.
I think you’re misreading it as well AL. Or at least reading too much into it.
The unity rhetoric is aimed at something much lower, namely the good old basic Maslow’s hierarcy of needs, namely both tiers 2 and 3 (safety/security, and love/belongingness) which unity handily provides both.
Somewhere, thousands of years ago, one of Obama’s ancestors was probably making the same speech, warning the tribe to stay in the firelight less they get caught alone in the dark and eaten by a grue. The unity rhetoric is just the modern version of the same thing.
Like all appeals to Maslow, it can be both genuine attempt to provide, or an attempt to take advantage. The only way to tell is to quit watching the lips and start watching the hands.
What’s Obama doing about uniting us? I admit, I like his refusal to be dragged into the identity politics mud that Hillary keeps attempting to foist on him.
I’m with Treefrog. Yes it’s nice to hear someone at least talking about unity amidst all the extremist rancor, but surely you can understand the hesitance of many of us to just link arms and sing “Kumbaya” without a clearer idea of just where the united mob is going to be marching. Historically a “message of unity” has often meant nothing more than claiming the moral high ground while marginalizing the opposition. I’m less interested in what Obama’s “doing to unite us”, though, than what he really intends us to do once we’re united.
To me the underlying message of Obama’ s unity campaign (& ironically, what H. Clinton–not to mention her husband–has long been excoriated for trying to promote) is that compromise between conflicting views is necessary in a democracy, unless one of those views has a superabundance of adherents. Otherwise, there is stalemate, or rule by a minority clique. Sticking to your guns is fine, if you’ve got the votes. Right now, neither side does. So the choice is either a fight between the sides over who gets to impose its view on the other half (what we’ve been doing for the last 8 years) or find a middle ground that most people can live with. The middle grounders are in the ascendancy right now.
Folks,
Unity is not just about compromise. It’s about working together with people you disagree with, finding which parts of my beliefs are right and which are wrong, and which parts of yours are right and wrong, and then trying to put together something better than either of us had.
Unity requires a certain amount of humility, recognizing that my own beliefs might not be the last word, and that you might be right about some of the areas where we disagree. But we have to hash it out together.
What Obama is arguing against, I believe, is the politics of the gotcha. Of gaming the system to make sure you find the latest trick the other guy hasn’t anticipated, that means you get to win the battles whether your ideas are any good or not. Gotcha means defeating good people by sliming them, rather than understanding and evaluating their ideas.
This is not about sitting around the campfire and singing Kumbaya. It’s perfectly compatible with strong, serious disagreements. But it’s about taking seriously our responsibilities as adults to try to find the right answers to the problems we face. And not just asserting, louder and louder, that our current slogan is it.
Obama is an extraordinary person. A combination of rare and superior intelligence. (More intelligent than anyone I have ever seen running for the Presidency and I 8 when Stevenson ran against Ike in 1954.) He is blessed with an uncanny presence of mind, an even temper and a humbling dignity.
The Empire has been long divided and, in the words of the incantation that opens the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it must unite. Obama has come along at this specific point as a uniter. It does not seem to me to be at all surprising that he has risen in these times along with McCain, a centrist. It seems as if, in the natural course of events, the tide of division and ideology has ebbed across the body politic. At times like these, we tend to listen to our hearts rather than our heads, which, to my mind, are equally fallible.
I don’t think we really need much more than uniting at this point. God knows after the lunatic ideologies that have been spouted from both sides of the aisle for the past 16 years, we do not need more ideology.
It seems to me that the primaries have said that the people do not want a debate, they sense there is enormous trouble ahead and we will, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, hang separately if we don’t hang together.
I have to admit, I have been taken with this guy, as I am sure a lot of old cynics have been taken. Oddly enough, he reminds me of my father. He seems to have the character of his generation which Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation. I guess I am swayed by what I shouldn’t be swayed by, his oratory, his call for hard work, a generosity of spirit and his grace and his comportment, attributes that have fallen out of favor over the past half century. They are speaking more directly to me than anything I have heard from the Republican or Democratic side.
I have heard people refer to him as reminiscent of Jack Kennedy. I tell them he reminds me of Willie Mays. I saw Willie Mays and, believe me, Jack Kennedy was no Willie Mays.