Chicago School: My Two Cents on Political Behavioralism

Spare Change | September 19, 2008 | David J Aland

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

A century ago, Arthur Bentley wrote in The Process of Government that ideals are far less important to the political process than the collective actions and interactions of interest groups.  Oversimplifying, that means that it doesn’t matter so much what politicians profess as what their supporters and adversaries do.  According to Wikipedia, Bentley’s pluralist-behavioralist thinking was a major influence to the “Chicago School”, so named for the University of Chicago.

     Well, when it comes to Chicago, there are Schools, and there are schools – as this Presidential campaign amply demonstrates.  Bentley’s thinking merely gives one a good way of organizing observations, and therefore analyzing Obama not by his professed ideals and values, but by the activities and interactions of the candidate and his interest groups.

  Congressional supporters:  Democrats have provided little assurance of competence or integrity lately.  The Speaker pushed an energy bill through that she says supports natural gas and “other alternatives to drilling and fossil fuels.”  (Does she not know that natural gas is a fossil fuel extracted via drilling?)  The head of the Ways and Means Committee is under scrutiny for failing to pay taxes and cheating on subsidized housing.  While their Party scrambles to blame President Bush for the mortgage meltdown, the top four recipients of donations from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are Democrats Dodd, Kerry, Obama, and Clinton.

Campaign Staff:  The Obama campaign has shown all the instincts of a schoolyard bully.  They have demanded the Department of Justice investigate Republican donors, and mobilized legions of supporters to call in and shout down talk-radio shows (such as WGN in Chicago) critical of Obama.  Giving lie to the idea that Obama is “a new kind of politician”, the Obama campaign has released a flurry of nasty and deceptive commercials (including one in Spanish), several of which have been debunked by mainstream outlets such as ABC and CNN (“ABC:  El ad es erroneo”).  A small army of dirt-digging lawyers have descended on Wasilla since Sarah Palin was named the Republican VP candidate, looking for dirt.

     Grassroots Support:  In a reprise of tactics made famous by the legendary Chicago political machine, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), recipient of nearly $800,000 from the Obama campaign, is now under investigation for fraudulent voter registration in New Mexico, Washington, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, New York, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri, with new reports piling up daily.

Artists and Celebrities:  Matt Damon, Lindsay Lohan, and Pamela Anderson are working hard to outdo each other criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate.  In the meantime, photographer Jill Greenberg, under the guise of taking cover photos for Atlantic Monthly, took a series of pictures of John McCain that she subsequently published, retouched in grisly and scatological ways.  CNN’s resident curmudgeon Jack Cafferty has repeatedly thrown the surrogate race card, saying the only explanation for opposing Obama is racism, joining the chorus of Obama supporters preemptively claiming the same.

The Candidate:  The New York Post reports that while visiting Iraq, Sen. Obama urged the Iraqis not to negotiate with the Bush administration, an act that is in the least somewhat arrogant, and at worst, treasonous.  Obama has recently exhorted supporters to “get in their faces” when talking to neighbors and friends who support McCain, and regularly drops insouciant zingers that he then claims he “didn’t mean” to be offensive or personal.

Sean Connery once told Kevin Costner in The Untouchables:  “They pull a knife, you pull a gun.”  Clearly, that was one of the tenets taught to Barrack Obama in his Chicago-machine political education.  With the post-convention “bump” smaller than expected, and the voter polls more or less even since then, Obama has dropped the façade of urbanity and nuance for a little old-fashioned waterfront brawling.

  Per Bentley, the behavior of the candidate and his interest groups paints a coercive, manipulative and often thuggish portrait of one who otherwise proclaims himself to be a new kind of politician, post-partisan, post-racial, or the prophet of change.  In other words, there’s really nothing new out of this particular Chicago School.

[griswold3]

We as the ‘adversaries’ of the ‘progressives’ should be prepared if Obama does win this close election.
Do you have a ‘plan’?
As a small business owner, I started one when I heard Charlie Rangel propose a 4% surcharge (a tax on gross revenue BEFORE deductions) in 2007. I am completely able to close my doors and go back to driving a semi-truck as a independent contractor again.

[PGalt]

OUTSTANDING article by David J. Aland! There is much insight to be gained by knowing which collectives an individual aligns.