When the right broke, according to the right

"That's what radicalized you all?"

2009 White House “Beer Summit” with Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Joe Biden, Sgt. James Crowley and Barack Obama

I’ve written here and in my forthcoming book about a transformation within the Republican Party over the past few decades, with a once-fringe conservative populist faction now overwhelmingly in charge. There are a number of key moments to focus on in there — from Pat Buchanan’s 1992 run to Rush Limbaugh’s innovations in talk radio to Newt Gingrich’s speakership to the Tea Party, etc. But I’ve been struck recently about how conservatives describe this same era and the way Democrats transformed during it.

In a recent podcast, Ezra Klein interviewed conservative commentator Ben Shapiro about Shapiro’s new book Lions and Scavengers. I will say that, generally, Klein is working extremely hard to take Shapiro’s arguments seriously on an intellectual level, and at some points I was thinking, à la Harrison Ford, “It ain’t that kind of movie.” (NB: I haven’t read the book.)

But Shapiro makes an argument that the overall party dialogue has changed in recent years: we used to have fights but largely agreed on the basic structure of political and civil society, but now fundamental assumptions about civilization are being questioned. As Klein summarizes, “It used to be a fight about policy, but now it’s a fight about whether all this is good or not. And that’s a much more fundamental kind of conflict.” He then asks Shapiro, “When do you think the topic changed?”

Shapiro’s answer is that it largely hinged on Barack Obama’s first term, and the understanding that conservatives had about his candidacy. As Shapiro says,

So in 2008, Barack Obama ran as a unifying candidate, like him or hate him. I didn’t vote for him. I was not a fan. But Barack Obama ran as somebody who was, in his very personage, unifying America. There was no red America, there was no blue America, there was just the United States. There was no Black or white America.

There were just Americans. And the idea was that he was sort of the apotheosis of the coming together. He was going to be the culmination of a lot of these strands of American history coming together to put to bed so many of the problems that had plagued America over the course of our tumultuous history….

So he runs, he wins. Obamacare happens. There’s a big blowback in the form of the Tea Party. And he reacts to that by essentially polarizing the electorate. He decides that instead of broadcasting to the general electorate an optimistic message about America, he is going to narrowcast his election in 2012. He’s going to base it on a much more identity-groups-rooted politics. He’s going to appeal to Black Americans as Black Americans and gay Americans as gay Americans and Latino Americans as Latino Americans.

Shapiro offers a few examples, such as:

• The 2009 arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for breaking into his own home in Cambridge; Obama said that the police “acted stupidly,” and then convened a White House “beer summit” with Gates and the arresting officer.

• The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, after which Obama empathized, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

• The 2014 Ferguson riots, during which Obama said that “a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country.”

Basically, it was moments of abuse or violence inflicted upon Black people and Obama pointing out that race was a factor. The exchange after that is interesting:

Klein: It’s hard for me when I look back on that, on the “beer summit” in particular, to hear: That’s what radicalized you all?

Shapiro: Yes. And the reason is: The implicit promise of Barack Obama was the worst conflict in the history of America — which is the racial history of the United States, which is truly horrifying. That in his person, he was basically going to be the capstone of the great movement toward Martin Luther King’s dream.

And when, instead, things seemed to move in the opposite direction, which was: Well, you know, it turns out that Black people in America, they’re inherently victimized by a white supremacist system that puts Black people underfoot….

Klein: It kind of sounds like the interpretation of Obama, at least to you, was that if he’s elected, we’ll agree we’ve gotten past all this — that it’s supposed to make us feel better, and then when it didn’t, that was understood as the betrayal of a promise.

Shapiro: That is how I think most Americans saw it.

This is an important narrative, and it’s not a position just held by Shapiro. Quite a few conservative authors make a similar argument, and I’ve heard similar sentiments from some local political figures I’ve interviewed. The basic idea was that there was some sort of deal: If conservatives permit the election of the first Black president, that will essentially signal the end of institutional racism in the United States, and then we won’t have to talk about race anymore. And any time Obama brought up race he was reneging on that deal.

Now, that narratives breaks down somewhat in a few key areas, such as the fact that this “deal” only existed in conservatives’ minds, and they didn’t vote for Obama anyway. Also, MLK’s dream was about equality and justice, not about putting a Black man in the White House. But Obama, in his style of campaigning in 2007 and 2008, surely did a fair amount to suggest a “post-racial” United States, and sought to allay conservative whites’ fears that he would mainly prioritize Black voters.

My own perspective and Shapiro’s perspective on the past several decades of US politics clearly differ, but there’s a common thread in that racial politics is the main driver. Klein’s question about the Gates beer summit — “That’s what radicalized you all?” — is the right one, and the answer is yes. But it was always about more than a beer summit.