Martin Kettle is one of my favourite political pundits. Unlike most columnists he actually knows stuff - about history, about European politics, about America - and roots his opinions in real analysis rather than just giving vent to whatever second-hand opinion has riled him up that morning. But one of the perils of the job is that no matter how good you are you're always going to have off-days (it's like goalkeeping in that respect). Today is Kettle's. His piece is about Obama and bipartisanship, and it reads like he wrote it half-asleep. This paragraph, in particular, is a stinker:
Democrats, meanwhile, were divided among themselves, as they were on healthcare. This speaks volumes, and not just about US politics. Political parties, not just in America, pay lip service to the consensus of putting the national interest above party. Parties of the left, however, find it much more difficult to define that consensus than parties of the right do. Perhaps parties of the left are more easily intimidated. Perhaps they are intellectually more reasonable. Perhaps in the end they care less. Perhaps many of the 55% of white Americans who did not vote for Obama are simply unwilling to defer to a consensus proposed by a black man.
First of all, it's just badly written and incoherent. I kind of sort of know what he's getting at when he talks about "putting the national interest above party" but it's far from clear. Then there's that "perhaps they care less". About what? If you're expecting the next sentence to help you out, you're in for a disappointment, because not only is it a complete non sequitur, it's egregious nonsense. There's just no evidence that "many" of the people who voted against Obama (and by many I mean any significant percentage) are now dissatisfied with him because he's black, and qualifying such a suggestion with a weasly "perhaps" doesn't make it worth including. The mention of "55% of white Americans" carries a suggestion of racism, but the fact is Obama won a higher percentage of that vote than John Kerry did. Kettle knows all this so why he's writing such stuff is a mystery. I'd like to see him given a break - let's give David James a chance next week.
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