giving in, giving up, giving in

The protest kids always used to mock my inability to fully disengage from partisan politics. It thought they were wrong then and wrong now, for various reasons. But it gets harder.

Now look where we are. Two campaigns, two rival parties and their attendant supporters in the punditocracy, and thus two competing critical narratives. One side says that the other candidate is too inexperienced, too driven by identity politics, too lacking in foreign policy depth, too much a product of politics and not enough about policy. The other side calls their opponent too old, too entrenched in Washington, too much a part of politics as usual. And as they do, the pundits and bloggers and commentators and trend-setters and opinion-makers set about rolling out these narratives. They make a virtue or a vice of change, they pronounce experience good or bad, they intricately craft a narrative based on the strengths of their own guy and the weaknesses of the other. We stand with change, or we stand against it; we believe experience means wisdom, or we believe experience means the same old Washington. Our stance on policy is important and largely unchanging. But our stance on character, on process, on values-- those positions are as permanent as the next political moment.

And then the campaigns choose running mates who perfectly represents what their side derides in the other.

Obama, whose campaign's central message has been change, an end to Washington as we know it, and a new day, chooses Joe Biden. Joe Biden, a Senator for decades. Joe Biden, tool of the credit card companies. Joe Biden, as much a part of the old guard as you can get short of Robert Byrd. Joe Biden, who sits on committees and panels and boards in the Senate. Joe Biden who plays the game as enthusiastically as I can imagine. Joe Biden, the very picture of Washington insiderism and calcification. Where are the liberal bloggers to point this out? Where is the outrage? Where is the intellectual consistency? If experience is the devil and change the goal, how can anyone support Joe Biden? On matters of policy, I agree with Joe Biden, largely. But how can the people who have worked so hard to denigrate Washington and its culture support a man who radiates both?

I'm reading today the crowing of conservatives and Republicans, who are whooping with glee at the Palin pick. They are breathless with excitement and pleasure. The only problem is that they have been viciously and ceaselessly attacking a candidate much like Sarah Palin for over a year. Every aspect of Palin's political identity conforms to a narrative that conservative bloggers have been deriding over and over again. Palin is the conservative analog of Barack Obama, in every meaningful way. Obama lacks foreign policy experience? Sarah Palin has none whatsoever. Obama is an empty suit? Compared to Palin he's Dean Acheson, he's Henry Kissinger. Obama's campaign is a naked appeal to identity politics? I cannot imagine a more cynical nomination than Sarah Palin's. If anyone believes that the biggest factor in Sarah Palin's nomination isn't that she will steal women away from Obama because of the Hilary factor, do me a favor and punch yourself in the face.

How can the people at the Corner laud this selection and not catch on fire? How can the people at Daily Kos approve the Biden selection and look themselves in the mirror? Is partisanship so powerful? Are the politics of resentment really so totalizing, so all-encompassing?

I know that this is the sort of thing that gets me labeled preachy, and guilty as charged. Hell, I think I'm preachy. But I just don't believe post-partisanship is possible. Not anytime soon. What possible hope is there for intellectual consistency and for basic philosophical integrity, in this climate? There is none. There is no hope. If the principled Republican bloggers can't stand up and say "This Palin nomination is a matter of the greatest hypocrisy"... what can they have to say on principle at all?

Why aren't people exploding, about this? Where is the anger? This whole thing boggles my mind. Where is the anger? Why aren't so many smart people throwing their hands in the air and screaming?

I'm no better than anyone else. I sat and said "Nice pick" when I heard it was Biden. Nice pick, nice pick.

I'm checking out, I'm done, whatever and ever amen.