From Noam Sheiber’s look at Mr. Obama’s policy team in The New Republic:
The Clintonites were moderates, but they were also ideological. They explicitly rejected the liberalism of the 1970s and ’80s. The Obamanauts are decidedly non-ideological.
It’s well worth reading the entire piece.
Foreign Policy magazine has an interesting article behind it’s firewall by Nouriel Roubini about “The Coming Financial Pandemic“.
The subheadline reads like promotional material for a Michael Crichton novel:
The U.S. financial crisis cannot be contained. Indeed, it has already begun to infect other countries and it will travel further before it’s done. From sluggish trade to credit crunches, from housing busts to volatile stock markets, this [article will show] how the contagion will spread.
Given that – as this hype seems to suggest – this article may very well determine whether you will survive the next few years, it might be worth subscribing to Foreign Policy magazine. Of course, if you’re like me, despite paying for a two-year subscription last night, you might still be left without the promised “instant access”.
Still – I’ve read Foreign Policy magazine on and off for some time now, and it’s always worth the bi-monthly cost. The above-linked article proved to be rather insightful, despite it’s over-hyped opener.
Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard:
McCain’s method in domestic matters no less than in foreign affairs is military: He surveys a set of facts, identifies a villain, fixes him with his steely gaze, and then goes after him. McCain’s longstanding efforts to tighten regulations on the campaign finance system also contain an important personal component. At first it was a reaction against the accusations of impropriety that dogged him in the Keating Five scandal of 1989, and then, after 2000, against the attack ads, paid for by Bush allies, that damaged his presidential campaign. Here the villains were PACs, lobbyists, and freelance partisans who bought political advertising during an election–and had to be stopped. More recently, he has championed a “patients’ bill of rights” to tighten regulations on the HMOs, insurance companies, and employers he considers to be stingy with health benefits. Pharmaceutical companies should be reined in, he’s said, because they’re the “bad guys.”
I think this characterization of Mr. McCain is dead-on. It’s both part of his charm and part of what makes it scary to see him as president after Mr. Bush.
[digg-reddit-me]I’ve been talking with one of my friends about what this election means recently. He’s in favor of Senator Hillary Clinton – and I, obviously, favor Senator Barack Obama. His argument is essentially that Mr. Obama is too “green” (although my friend believes Mr. Obama would be exceptional in eight years or so) and that Ms. Clinton would provide competent if uninspired leadership making her the better choice for today. There are a lot of grounds to dispute this on – whether Ms. Clinton’s “experience” means much; whether she would be a competent manager – her campaign planning suggesting otherwise; whether she could accomplish anything, as divisive as she is; whether or not she will win; whether Mr. Obama lacks sufficient experience when compared with Ms. Clinton; whether Mr. Obama is “green”.
I think all of these raise legitimate points. But the argument I choose is the one that convinced me in the end to support Mr. Obama over Ms. Clinton, Senator John McCain, former Senator John Edwards, and the rest of the field. Simply, the American experiment is in bad shape.
We have an executive today who does not respect the rule of law, who has acted imperiously (only slightly more so than President Bill Clinton); we have a corrupt culture in Washington that refuses to take action to reign the executive branch in, or even to protect their own prerogatives; we have a media environment that rarely focuses on hard-hitting news and often reports on important topics as a matter of “he said, she said” without resolving factual conflicts between the diverging accounts; we have an increasingly partisan politics that divides Americans into two teams despite great consensus on major issues; our foreign policy is increasingly imperial, if well-meaning; the bubbling conflicts around the world have been exacerbated in the past decade – and a “return to normalcy” that Ms. Clinton promises will not be sufficient to quell them.
What we need is a president who will be willing to return some of the powers Mr. Clinton and President George W. Bush have taken unto their office; a president who will be able to start a serious discussion of the long-term issues facing America and then unite the citizenry to try to take steps to deal with these issues. It’s unlikely any individual could accomplish all of these things – but Ms. Clinton does not seem inclined to even try. Her campaign is not about where America is headed – but about micro-initiatives to make segments of the population a bit better off. There’s a time for that approach to politics, but that time is not now.
My friend agreed with virtually everything I said above. Yet somehow, he doesn’t see America as in a fundamental crisis – and because of this, he sees Ms. Clinton as the more “safe” choice.
Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Charlie Savage, and Lawrence Lessig (and former Governor Mario Cuomo) have all helped convince me of the urgency of this crisis with their constant clear-sighted analyses – and thus moved me to support Mr. Obama as the only candidate with the potential to begin to tackle these issues.
But somehow, despite the relatively widespread knowledge of the state of our government and our politics, something is missing; some urgency. People tend to think: it can’t happen here. Glenn Greenwald, reflecting perhaps a similar frustration to mine, tried to explain part of the issue by way of comparison:
Imagine if, say, Vladimir Putin was accused by his own top officials of systematically spying on Russian citizens for years in ways that were patently illegal, but he then manipulated the courts to ensure he was never accountable, and had his political allies in parliament block any investigations, so that the activities remained concealed forever and he was never made to answer for what he did. Think about the grave denunciations that Fred Hiatt, Charles Krauthammer and the State Department would be issuing over such authoritarian and lawless maneuvering.
That’s exactly how our country operates now. When high political officials here are accused of breaking the law, they need not defend themselves. Congress acts to protect and immunize them. The courts refuse even to hear the lawsuits. And executive branch officials are completely shielded from the most basic mechanics of the rule of law.
No hyperbole is necessary to sustain the Putin comparison. It’s demonstrated by the facts themselves, by how our system of government works now. None of the “great controversies” of the Bush years, involving multiple accusations of lawbreaking, war crimes and other forms of serious corruption, has resulted in any legal process or investigations or ajudications because our government officials have been vested with omnipotent instruments to shield themselves from accountability, or even investigation, of any kind.
In a minimally functioning Republic, when our political leaders are accused of concealing wrongdoing, Congress investigates, uncovers what happens, and informs the American people. When political leaders are accused of breaking the law, courts decide whether that occurred. None of the branches of government do that any longer. They do the opposite: they not only fail to perform those functions, but they affirmatively act to block investigations, help the conduct remain concealed, and ensure that there is no adjudication. When it comes to ensuring that the NSA spying scandal specifically remains forever uninvestigated, secret, and unexamined, telecom amnesty will be the final nail in this coffin, but it is merely illustrative of how our political culture now functions.
The failure of many Americans to realize how close we are to losing the essence of the American experiment has many causes. But at root, it is a failure of imagination.
Reihan, guest-blogging on Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the possibility of Lawrence Lessig running for Congress:
I think of Lessig as an almost paradigmatic Obamacrat, a smart and accomplished professional interested in reforming and revitalizing government for the betterment of all Americans through the embrace of disruptive technologies and, um, cherished American principles. If this is the animating impulse behind the new liberalism, the new conservatism that will rise to challenge it will be sharper and more forward-looking still.
A depressing sign I saw on my way back from work a few days ago:
[digg-reddit-me]To Tara from the train tonight:
You said something that I often hear – that Ms. Clinton knows how she is going to change things, while Mr. Obama is light on the details. Yet each candidate has laid out detailed and similar plans. They each have taken advantage of the growing liberal think tanks and combined the best of the various approaches. Neither candidate can take credit for these ideas – as they are the product of a liberal consensus, and specifically, the consensus of many in think tanks and similar institutions in Washington, D.C.
There are minor differences in the goals each candidate is proposing – but I’ll leave those for another day – because what you said, and what I have heard many other people say, is not that Mr. Obama has different goals than Ms. Clinton, but that he has not thought out how to accomplish his goals.
This simply isn’t the case. You can compare the level of detail in the plans on and Mr. Obama’s and Ms. Clinton’s website.
But Mr. Obama clearly talks less about policy specifics than Ms. Clinton. The Senator from New York often will list a few dozen policies and rattle off some specific ways her plans will function. It’s an impressive show. But the show is also deceptive and ineffective.
Although Ms. Clinton explains how her plans will work, she does not explain how she will put them in place. She cannot – because if she begins to, it ruins the illusion that is a great part of her appeal. Ms. Clinton may have all the details planned out now, but her carefully wrought and nuanced proposals will not survive the legislative process. When the time comes to make these policy plans into laws and programs, legislators, business interests, bureaucrats, and anyone else remotely affected by the policy will get their say – and the details will quickly change. A major reason why her health care initiative during her husband’s administration failed was that she failed to change the details – and threatened to “demonize” anyone who got in her way, including the friendly liberal Senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley.
Given Ms. Clinton’s history, she realizes that detailed policy plans don’t survive attempts to enact them. Yet she still insists on presenting them as if they were what she would do, rather than what she would attempt to do. There’s nothing wrong with this – but it is deceptive. I don’t blame Ms. Clinton for this. This is standard politics – and it is also a major reason why so many Americans are fed up with politics, and those candidates who “say they will do one thing” but don’t. Part of the problem is that candidates promise things that they do not control – and enacting Ms. Clinton’s policy proposals will not be entirely up to the President.
Which brings us to Mr. Obama. He also has detailed policy proposals – but he does not present them as one of the basic pillars of his campaign. Rather he focuses on creating a movement, an active citizenry, that will demand change; on changing the processes by introducing elements such as transparency and direct accountability. Mr. Obama explains his approach and his thought process – two elements Ms. Clinton guards as a tactical secrets – because he acknowledges that he cannot promise specific items.
Not only is Mr. Obama’s approach more honest – it is also more effective. Think of the last presidential candidates who spouted policies versus those who campaigned on broad themes. Senator Kerry campaigned on policy; President Bush on themes. Vice President Gore campaigned on policy; Governor Bush campaigned on themes. President Clinton campaigned on some amalgamation of policy and theme – in a way I have only seen Mr. Clinton fuse them – and Senator Dole campaigned … you know, I don’t know what Mr. Dole’s campaign was about. But going back further over the past half-century – most winning presidential candidates have focused less on policy, and more on character, themes, and narratives.
Drew Westen wrote a book about the matter last year – explaining why Democrats were losing. His diagnosis of the problem was simple: Democrats focused on policies; Republicans focused on character and narrative. Republicans did this because it was effective. Now, we have Mr. Obama who can compete – indeed, dominate – the Republicans in rhetoric, in character, in creating election narratives, in weaving political themes into his moving speeches.
President Ronald Reagan was able to create a major realignment of the electorate in a conservative direction because, infused with a proud conservatism, he was able to explain to the American people why they needed Republican values. He told the story of America and his punch line was: that is why you need someone who believes what I do in the White House. So, in 1981, it was Morning in America.
Mr. Obama is the only candidate today who could create a similar shift – who could reinterpret the American story and reshape the electorate to create a lasting liberal majority.
[digg-reddit-me]Barack Obama has told the story of how a Chicago doctor wrote him a letter respectfully criticizing his website for speaking of abortion in charged language after he won the Illinois Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat. Barack concludes this story:
Re-reading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.
So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own – a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.
In a similar manner, the day before the New Hampshire primary, a group of pro-life protesters interrupted an Obama rally. They refused to stop chanting to allow Mr. Obama to speak, and after a few minutes, they were removed by security. The largely Democratic crowd was clearly on Barack’s side in this – booing the protesters, drowning their chants out. But after they left, Mr. Obama gently scolded the crowd:
Let me just say this though. Some people got organized to do that. That’s part of the American tradition we are proud of. And thats hard too, standing in the midst of people who disagree with you and letting your voice be heard.
Compare this with Ms. Clinton’s mocking of the protesters at her debates or President Bush’s removal of anyone wearing a pin for the opposing party.
At least two actors who openly oppose torture have accepted parts on the [the television show 24].
From Rebecca Dana of the Wall Street Journal‘s story entitled “Reinventing 24” in yesterday’s paper.
The sentence jumped out at me as I read the piece. The sentence suggested a kind of furtiveness to opposition to torture – suggesting those who “openly promote the homosexual agenda“, who “openly embrace socialist medicine”, who “openly promote apostate Catholicism“, “openly promote keyword spamming“, “openly promote intolerance“, “openly promote cigarettes to minors” “openly embrace prejudice“, who “openly oppose a living wage“, “openly oppose any talks with Iran that might resolve the nuclear issue“, who “openly oppose what built this Nation“, and those who “openly embrace the hysterical homophobia mouthed by Christian fundamentalist groups from all over the country“. ((I acknowledge these are not exact quotes – I have changed the tenses and in some sentences deleted phrases in order to conform all of them to the structure I set up; but I have attempted to maintain the original meaning of each.))
In almost every usage I was able to find, adding the adverb “openly” to describe a political act indicates a kind of shame associated with that act. The openness is supposed to shock – “Not only does this candidate seem to accept x view, they openly promote it!”
I don’t blame Ms. Dana for using the phrase – but it was shocking to find it associated with opposing torture. Have we really come that far as a nation that opposing torture is now somewhat embarrassing? I don’t think so. But enough mainstream conservatives have defended torture as to make it an acceptable point of view in the press.
There is shame in that.
Glenn Greenwald with some hard truths:
I long ago stopped blaming the Bush administration – at least exclusively – for what has happened to our political system. They were responsible in the first instance, but the rest of the country’s institutions – its media, its Congress, the “opposition” party, even the courts – all allowed it to happen, choosing to do nothing – or to endorse it – once it all began to be disclosed. It wouldn’t have surprised the Founders that we would have corrupt and lawbreaking political leaders, including in the White House. The idea was that there would be numerous checks on that corruption. But when those other institutions fail, or are complicit, the fault is collective.