Years ago, when I was living in Barcelona and trying very hard to immerse myself into being a fully authentic FC Barcelona fan, I couldn’t help but idolize Puyol. He had none of Ronaldinho’s sultry gloss, nor was he one of the blaugrana’s vaunted tiki-taka midfielders. He wasn’t great with the ball at his feet — as much a sin at Barça then as it is now—and he had terrible hair (which happens to resemble mine). When my girlfriend visited me in Catalunya, she was a wee bit disappointed that I’d bought the jersey of “the ugliest guy on the team, except for Ronaldinho.”

But the meaning of liberalism gradually changed. The quarter-century of growth and low unemployment that followed the Second World War understandably muted appeals for class justice on the left. Liberals focused on gaining rights for minority groups and women more than on addressing continuing inequalities of wealth. Meanwhile, conservatives began to build their own mass movement based on a loathing of “creeping socialism” and a growing perception that the federal government was oblivious or hostile to the interests and values of the white middle class.

Yep.

Why bring this up again? While researching other things, I stumbled upon a 1980 column of Will’s that acknowledges the very critique I’ve been making [emphasis added]:

The Republican platform stresses two themes that are not as harmonious as Republicans suppose. One is cultural conservatism. The other is capitalist dynamism. The latter dissolves the former. Karl Marx, who had a Reaganesque respect for capitalism’s transforming power, got one thing right: Capitalism undermines traditional social structures and values; it is a relentless engine of change, a revolutionary inflamer of appetites, enlarger of expectations, diminisher of patience.

So there.

The upshot: markets can threaten the ethical core of communities. That’s not a value claim—it’s an empirical fact. Progressives and conservatives each object at times to the ways that our economic life is undercutting parts of our cultural convictions. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is when folks like Will start claiming that one party (or ideological movement) is the unambiguously pro-dynamism or pro-markets crowd. In 1980, at least, he knew better.

And sure, something like that could be correct, though it’s hardly the only possible explanation. Here’s another one:

What if the Post is just covering the elections as a for-profit corporation? What if it’s simply trying to sell papers and drive traffic to its website? What if it realized that a story linking a major party’s presidential candidate to anti-effeminate (if not strictly “anti-gay”) bullying would draw more attention if released during a national debate about same-sex marriage? What if the Post‘s motivation is purely capitalistic? It’s not as though they have a huge profit margin that would allow them the luxury of determining their news coverage  any other way…

“Media corporations are different!” Goldberg might yell. “There are ethical considerations in play here! Media fairness should trump some economic considerations!”

But once you start down that line, it can be hard to stop. Soon you’ll find yourself having to argue that perhaps venture capitalists should take ethics into consideration when looting struggling steel factories into bankruptcy…

(h/t to Andrew Sullivan for alerting me to Goldberg’s column)

Isn’t it? Well, yes—like most worn truisms, it is true. However, as is also usually the case, it’s not a very profitable analytical starting point. American conservatism suffers less fromradicalism than from substantive exhaustion. The Right is more flummoxed than fringe. It’s more lazy than lunatic.

The other day I was listening to a Ron Paul supporter bash “federal regulators,” and then it hit me: “Regulate” would be perfect for a conservative Super PAC attack ad. Throw it in the background, add some coded racist language that will activate suburban nervousness when it comes to hiphop, and you’re pretty much set.

“Big-state, big-spend liberals like Mr. Obama think that America should regulate its way to SOCIALISM. Did you know that major Jay-Z fan Barack Hussein Obama believes that you should pay for health care for the poor? etc…Paid for by ‘Dark Regulatory Clouds Over Our Freedom Super Pac.’”

And yes, it would work, but now I’m wondering if I’ve got it backwards. After all, the regulators are the track’s heroes! Run that track back again, and imagine an ad with these adjustments to the lyrics at the end:

“If you know like I know,
You don’t wanna step to this,
It’s the EPA,
Cleanin’ up energy markets.
If your factory blows smoke,
Then you’re fined like every day,
And if your car’s a gas-guzzler,
The EPA will regulate…”

“Paid for by Environmentalists United for Rolling on Punk Fools.”

Sorry GOP. Don’t worry, though—I’ve already addressed your “hip hop makeover” in an earlier post.

All of the resulting fluidity often prompts complaints about the transfer market’s lack of fairness. These come from fans of big and small clubs alike, for we are all democrats now. We need parity and table mobility and we need financial fair play. It’s a familiar, egalitarian complaint—why should Chelsea or Manchester United or Real Madrid or AC Milan or Sporting [Your Club’s Rich Rival] be permitted to purchase a nearly impregnable hold on success? Why should their floor be everyone else’s ceiling? We are suspicious of entrenched privilege. If the on-pitch rules impose a measure of equality upon all participants, it seems odd that we allow the off-pitch rules to privilege the wealthy. What, after all, should bank accounts have to do with determining the result of an athletic contest? We want to measure athletic prowess, not business acumen. That’s why we lionize the players—rather than the administrators who orchestrated their arrival.

But what if these aren’t the only relevant questions? What if the pursuit of parity threatens to sunder the goods of nobility?

First of all, it doesn’t much matter for the fall election. This might sway a few independents, but it’s not going to singlehandedly overcome the importance of the economic recovery (or lack thereof…we’ll see).

Second of all, it probably shouldn’t matter. The allegations are awful. They’re horrible. No child or young adult should ever be treated the way that Romney allegedly treated some of his classmates. Ever. With that said, if we start the vetting process for presidential hopefuls at 14, we’ll eliminate nearly every candidate. Who amongst us is so without adolescent sin that we can confidently cast the first stone? I’m not confident that many of us could run for president on the strength of our teenage purity of behavior.

Finally, and most importantly—the outcry is still encouraging. The meaningless things with which we concern ourselves during presidential campaigns are better now than ever. In the 1990s, we worried whether or not Clinton inhaled when smoking pot. Nowadays, we’re concerned as to whether Romney was a wealthy, privileged jackass. We’ve gone from drug scolds to protectors of children—and that’s evidence of an uptick (however slight) in our public compassion and humanity.

And that’s assuredly worth celebrating.

1) The LONG version:

I think that it’s certainly a calculated political move—and it’s certainly “cynical.” It may, as many are predicting, hurt him with various blue-collar independent voters who were suspicious of his cultural dispositions in the first place. These folks are a critical demographic in many of the big swing states. Losing them has real electoral consequences…but very few of these voters ever mistook Obama for a cultural fellow-traveler in the first place. Most of his projected losses in this demographic are probably already gone.

That’s why I think that it’s more important to consider how Obama’s evolution fires up key constituencies within the progressive base—and correspondingly loosens key pursestrings. There’s no doubt that this helps Obama bring cultural issues back into an election cycle that could be economically uncomfortable for the Administration. Plenty of disillusioned, job-hunting recent graduates (and current college students, for that matter) who might have stayed away from the campaign are now more likely to get involved. If the Obama campaign is able to make 2012 about civil rights and contraception, Mitt Romney might as well start shopping his resume around to various future Olympic host cities.

I think this forces Romney to defend much tougher rhetorical ground. Sure, Obama might lose a few voters on cultural issues, but Romney’s going to have to tack towards Santorum territory. He’s at risk of activating the craziest of the radical right wing crazies…and that’s not baggage that a would-be managerial CEO-President wants to carry. Every moment that Romney spends trying to extricate himself from the excesses of the GOP base is a moment that he’s not hammering away at Obama’s handling of the economy.

Also: I think it’s nonsense to suggest that significant portions of the black vote will abandon Obama for Romney on these grounds. Crazy talk.

Finally, I think that those baying for more and stronger and purer and tougher from Obama on this are too impatient to live democratically. It’s true that his new position isn’t the same as a federal constitutional amendment protecting same-sex marriages, nor does it preclude states like North Carolina from passing state amendements to prohibit them. It’s ALSO true that public opinion moves slowly—and support for same-sex marriage is only a razor-thin majority right now. Remember that time that JFK issued an ultimatum to Congress and the country demanding a comprehensive civil rights law—OR ELSE? Yeah…me neither.

Those of us who dream of a day where gay couples have the equal rights they deserve should remember that there’s no secret, lurking, silent electoral majority off to Obama’s left. There’s no viable presidential candidate who’s more pro-equal rights. Of course we should keep pushing him to go further—but we should also recognize that he can’t singlehandedly move public opinion to our position.

2) And that brings me to the short version of what I think—which is actually better put as the version that I know:

No prior president has gone this far in support of equal rights for gay couples. As a result of Obama’s evolved position, the Democratic Party won’t be able to back down from that support ever again. What he said is not the end…but I KNOW that what he said is still substantial progress.

P.S.-God Bless Joe Biden.