Salon's Glenn Greenwald on Barack Obama's "lack of substance"...

[carpe diem]

Greenwald expresses what I have been thinking but unable to coherently put into words about the "lack of substance" meme being tossed at Obama. Very few people are going to cast a vote based of the specifics of this candidate's vs. that candidate's plan for health care or anything else. They obviouslyy will prefer that you have one, but the vast majority won't know jack about it and that will not be what's going through their heads when they pull the lever in the voting booth.


http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/31/substance/index.html

(excerpt)
That is precisely why I found the media-concocted uproar over Barack Obama's "lack of substance" -- all based on the fact that he has not yet formulated a detailed health care plan -- to be so misguided (just incidentally, here is an interesting Las Vegas Sun article detailing the blogger pushback against the predictable emergence of that media narrative). It is perfectly fine and reasonable to demand -- as liberal bloggers such as Taylor Marsh and Ezra Klein have done -- that Obama provide more details, more "meat," on his health care plan. The first vote is still almost a full year away, and he will undoubtedly have a big, heavy policy proposal for health care policy experts to pore over to their heart's content.
But issuing detailed legislative proposals on specific, isolated issues is by no means the only way -- or even the most important way -- to run a "substantive" presidential campaign. Our political system and ruling Beltway culture are broken so far beyond any specific issue, and can be addressed only by ideas and critiques that far transcend any specific policy proposal. A truly "substantive" campaign will stand in stark opposition to the whole tone and mindset of Beltway orthodoxies.
All of the candidates, including Obama, are going to issue a detailed health care plan soon enough. But the political system in which those health care plans -- and every other specific legislative proposal -- are going to be assessed, debated and processed is profoundly corrupt and broken.
Thus, any candidate who does not address those systemic political diseases is not actually being "substantive" at all, no matter how many thick white papers they issue chock full of think-tank-developed "plans." Between (a) a candidate who understands our fundamental political problems but who has yet to issue a detailed health care plan and (b) a candidate who has all sorts of detailed, wonky legislative policies developed by aides but who has no real critique of our political culture and will do nothing but feed off of it and perpetuate it, candidate (a) is clearly the more "substantive" candidate in the way that matters.
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Greenwald's analysis is right on the money and the whole thing is worth the read, IMO.

[AJ9000]

1. Greenwald is one of the most spot on political commentators going.

I'd carefully consider anything he's got to say.