The G.O.P., Anti-Urbanism and the Demonization of Obama

How the G.O.P. Became the Anti-Urban Party (Kevin Baker, NY Times)

"For Republicans, cities now became object lessons on the shortcomings of activist government and the welfare state — sinkholes of crime and social dysfunction, where Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” cavorted in their Cadillacs. The very idea of the city seemed to be a thing of the past, an archaic concept"

Mr. Baker had nice piece in the Sunday New York Times, but it only begins to scratch the surface the G.O.P.'s demonization of all things urban. America has a long history of anti-urbanism. For most of our history popular folklore has idealized rural life and frontier adventure while making urban life the repository of everything implicitly un-American, corrupt and evil.

Since the Civil Rights Movement the G.O.P. has persistantly projected the blame for social and economic problems away from "Middle America" to everyone that is not white, suburban, Christian and conservative. The "people that are ruining our country" are thus all implicitly urban; immigrants, minorities, homosexuals, intellectual elites and so on. Barack Obama, a former community organizer, an intellectual, a Chicago resident and a clear product of our country's mixed racial heritage personifies everything that confuses and scares the Right-Wing. It's no wonder that, despite Obama's objectively moderate polices, Republicans have literally done everything they can to demonize and de-legitimize his presidency for the last four years. As the 2012 presidential campaign has entered the final month, Mitt Romney has resorted to grossly distorting, if not out-right lying, about Obama's record while evading the truth about his own platform.

Chicago, the President's home town and the heart of the Democratic Party, has come to occupy the center of the G.O.P.'s anti-urban rhetoric. Republican politicians continuously characterize Obama as a member of the "Chicago Machine" - which is laughable to those who know anything about Chicago politics. Obama is no machine boss. He's an academic who's consistently caught in an abyss between opposing forces that very few of his supporters or enemies understand.

Fear of a Black President (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

"In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard."

Obama's Power Problem (Rick Perlstein, Chicago Mag)

"Both political traditions—that of the Democratic machine and that of the idealistic reformer—can successfully confer power. But what has become increasingly clear is that Obama has not harnessed the potential flowing from either. Indeed, the president’s biggest problem, come the election on November 6, isn’t that he’s too Chicago. It’s that he’s not Chicago enough."

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the G.O.P.'s imaginary Obama remains a foreign-born, communist, Chicago ward boss that shared stogies with Saul Alinksy and David Ayres. This mythology is geared toward making Obama far more radical and threatening than he really is. This strategy is very effective in stoking the hatered the G.O.P.'s base of old, reactionary white people but falls on def years to younger generations. The "silent majority" that left the city decades ago may still have strong anti-urban sentiments, but their children are increasingly positive about city life.

Urbanity doesn't imply the same things that it did 30 years ago. Today it represents everything that is current, dynamic, diverse and interesting about contemporary American life. Increasing numbers of young people are not only moving to cities, they're beginning to invest and raise families there. There are still inner city ghettos and bombed-out shells of once great cities - but even they have become cool in the next generation's search for authenticity. The script has flipped. The most desirable lifestyle isn't in the suburbs, its in the heart of cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago. The new frontier isn't the suburbs, its Detroit.

Many suburbs are now as racially and economically diverse as cities. They may not be "urban" in the traditional sense, but they tend to have much more in common with the central city than its rural hinterlands. By defining itself as so strongly anti-urban the G.O.P. has become increasingly marginalized to a core group of mostly old, white, rural/exurban evangelical voters.

A Tale of Two Conventions (Mother Jones)

"At the Tampa arena, many GOP delegates oozed entitlement and privilege. When Ann Romney proclaimed, "This is our country"—and the crowd cheered—it didn't come across as a moment celebrating inclusion."

A President for Cities (Brad Lander, Huffington Post)

"Democrats embrace and invest in cities. We recognize and value them as places of extraordinary vitality, where jobs are created, where diversity and tolerance are fostered, where immigrants are welcomed, and where those "obligations to one another" are addressed."

The present division of the parties - one urban and cosmopolitan, the other rural and reactionary - has created a tragic paralysis at time when our country needs foresight and long-term solutions more than ever.

Cities have always been the engine of civilization. They encompass our triumphs and our tragedies, they represent the best and worst of human nature. America's great experiment with suburbia was motivated as much by a desire to escape from our problems as it was an attempt to find a better life. In fact, in America "better life" has too often been a euphemism for an avoidance of responsibility. The G.O.P.'s repeated appeal to anti-urban mythologies and reactionary, right-wing policies is nothing less than an attempt to perpetuate a daydream of irresponsibility. The Party's answer to solving the problems of society is to leave it behind - to escape from civilization to a private utopia of consumption. This will do nothing but hasten our decline. The answer is not to leave, not to escape, not to lie to ourselves, but to return - to face reality, to dig in and to rebuild our nation. This must begin, as it always has, in the City.