[digg-reddit-me]And Mr. Dow 36,000. And Wall Street bankers. And Rush Limbaugh.
The media freak show now presents another person-Americans-love-to-hate-who-wants-to-take-on-Obama…
Tonya Harding!
(H/t Andrew Sullivan.)
Buzzfeed comments:
[P]rops to the ice princess for not changing her hair since 1992. Once a legend, always a legend.
[digg-reddit-me]I thought this was the most interesting moment in yesterday’s speech – as the partisan feelings of the Republicans erupted, and then were responded to by the Democrats.
Throughout the speech, Obama seemed to want to talk through partisan lines, trying to minimize the applause. But here the Republicans took the first half of an Obama antimonic device and interrupted his speech – their only real excitement of the night. They seemed to relish in the fact that Obama was “admitting” that the deficit was a worthy issue, jeering. Of course, Obama has planned to pivot to the deficit and entitlement spending all along – speaking of a forthcoming Grand Bargain even before he took office. In the end, this demonstration made the Republicans look rather petty. But then, as Obama completed his antimonic device, stating that the enormous deficit was “inherited,” the Democrats took advantage of their opportunity to pettily respond to the Republican jeering.
This exchange captures the dynamic of Obama’s Washington so far – as Republicans and Democrats jeer each other and posture against one another while Obama tries to explain what he’s doing and to get a serious response.
[digg-reddit-me]Arnold Schwarzeneger brilliantly demonstrated the idiocy of postpartisanship in his appearance on This Week:
The policy position Schwarzeneger is defending here makes a lot of sense – as you can see if you check out a more in-depth clip. But his justification is typical of the conventional definition of postpartisanship (and it’s close cousin, bipartisanship). I tried to make a distinction during the election battle between a “bipartisan McCain” and a “postpartisan Obama.” I described the difference between the tactic of bipartisanship which ” is about compromise, getting things done, protecting the status quo, and consenus” and postpartisanship which is “a specific approach to governing that calls for bi-partisanship as a tactic to neutralize certain issues while advocating common sense, a focus on the long-term, and an emphasis on ‘tinkering’ to deal with more significant issues.” I think this distinction still makes sense but the terms are so often used by politicians seeking political cover that defining them almost seems pointless.
So, I’m making here an additional distinction – between anti-partisanship and post-partisanship. A significant amount of the rhetoric about partisanship, bipartisanship, and postpartisanship by politicians is really about anti-partisanship. McCain claimed he was being “bipartisan” because he vocally opposed some of his party’s positions. His whole maverick persona was based on his bucking of his party on certain issues. On these issues, McCain became a partisan for the Democratic positions. Joe Lieberman who also claims the mantle of “bipartisanship” has a similar political profile – as he likewise became a partisan for the Republicans on those issues on which he agreed with them. The more appropriate description of this attitude is not “bipartisan” but anti-partisan. It is not about reaching across ideological or party lines – but about rejecting one’s own party or team. Similarly, Schwarzeneger here states that if both parties oppose something, it must be good for the people. This is an insight into the anti-partisan mindset – that views parties themselves as perverting democracy.
There is an essential truth to this anti-partisan idea. Glenn Greenwald, a prominent liberal partisan, for example admits that “no party has a monopoly on good ideas and there’s nothing wrong with compromising with the other party when doing so yields superior policies.” Schwarzeneger makes a similar point in the longer clip, and Obama has made this point prominently as well:
I’m a Democrat. I’m considered a progressive Democrat. But if a Republican or a Conservative or a libertarian or a free-marketer has a better idea, I am happy to steal ideas from anybody and in that sense I’m agnostic.
While everyone seems to agree that partisanship can be limiting and blinding – and that we should be willing to take the best ideas of our opponents – there is less agreement on what the right approach should be. Greenwald, an unabashed partisan, included the caveat: “bipartisanship for its own sake elevates process over substance.” He frequently rails against bipartisanship which he often sees as a cover for Democrats to cave in to Republican instransigience. And he certainly has a point – as any look at the Democrats in Congress under George W. Bush will reveal. Governor Schwarzeneger sees partisanship as his enemy – and he often takes on Republicans with the support of Democrats and vice versa. From the clip above, you get a sense of his approach.
And then you have Barack Obama. He clearly sees the problem with partisanship; yet he has not adopted the anti-partisan approach of McCain and Schwarzeneger. He almost always favors liberal and progressive policies – and rarely rejects his party to work with Republican partisans. But he does work with Republican partisans – he seeks common ground, civil dialogue, and an engagement with the ideologies that motivate the Republican party. You can see this in his initial health care plan – which did not inclued a mandate due to a desire to limit government coercion. You can see this in the tax cuts that made up more than a third of his stimulus bill. You can see this in his pivoting towards entitlement reform and a plan to reduce the deficit. You can see this in his overall approach to the financial crisis – which is clearly Keynesian, but leavened a Hayekian acknowledgment of the limits of economics and central planning.
Obama’s post-partisanship is a flexible and pragmatic set of beliefs in honest engagement with those beliefs that oppose them. He does not define his politics by standing in between the parties or against one party of another. Rather, he is an unabashed liberal who takes conservative critiques of liberalism into account, and who continues to seek civil dialogue and engagement with his opponents. Greenwald criticized Obama’s approach to partisanship for being about process – and it is about process – but that is it’s value rather than it’s shortcoming.
[digg-reddit-me]Dan Akroyd joined Saturday Night Live to explain how Republicans were using this crisis to move past business-as-usual while staying in touch with the citizens they represent:
(h/t TPIP for the link. I had already seen the clip, but was fruitlessly looking for it on Hulu until I saw it on his blog.)
I must commend the Republican Party for discovering the value of fiscal responsibility, of Congressional oversight, and of Congress’s proper role as a coequal branch of government and a balance to the executive branch now that they have no elective power except a slender foothold in Congress. A few more losses in Congress and we might see the Republican Party start making the much maligned case for judicial activism – as our federal court system is filled with conservatives, despite protests to the contrary.
It seems to be part of the nature of our oppositional party structure that such ideological shifts make fools of politicians from time to time. Sometimes I think it would be better for them if we just booted them all out so they wouldn’t need to face the embarrassment of changing their opinions on how things should work so obviously based on political calculations.
Of course, giving the lie to the Republican’s newfound financial responsibility (aside from their continued support for such expensive programs as continuing Bush’s tax cuts and funding the various imperial activities which together cost some trillions of dollars and got us in the financial pickle we are in now) is their response to the Obama stimulus plan – a tax cut plan that would expand the deficit even further:
At the end of the clip, that was Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. In response to her: yes, we all did notice that there are no Republicans in charge of anything in Washington anymore. I wonder how and why that happened?
At the same time, the Republicans are now trying to make a big deal of business-as-usual in Washington – after embracing the same practices while in power. This is, of course, standard fare in itself. As Republican opinion-makers suddenly begin to decry how Congressmen and women did not have time to read the stimulus bill, I think most of us remember that infamous exchange from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in which a Congressman explains why no one read the PATRIOT Act before it was signed into law:
My purpose is not to defend these practices – but to point out the hypocrisy in suddenly objecting to them. The Republicans, led by Eric Cantor, are acting with the transparent hypocrisy of an Inspector Renault:
In all honesty, I do welcome the Republicans embrace of fiscal responsibility, of Congressional oversight, and of Congress’s proper role as a coequal branch of government and a balance to the executive branch, hypocrisy and all. Their sanctimony on the subject though is hard to stomach.
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Such a perfect line. You have to admire the dryness of wit needed to pull this off.
Next time I’m arguing with someone invoking strawman arguments, I’m pulling this off the shelf.
[digg-reddit-me]Seed Magazine has a great feature it describes as “an experiment in scale” which condenses “4.6 billion years of history into a minute.” Though they call it the evolution of life – there is no life for a significant portion of the video – so I’m calling it the history of the earth.
It reminds me of the opening of The Story of Mankind, the first book to win the Newbery Award in 1922, describing “a single day of eternity”:
High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.
Of course, the concept of a measure of eternity is meaningless – but by attempting to measure it in such a way, we realize to some degree what the concept is.
Seed takes the opposite approach by condensing billions of years of history into 60 seconds.
[digg-reddit-me]Stephen Colbert lists Bill Gates as the number 4 threat on his Threatdown for the mosquito incident:
[digg-reddit-me]There were only two bits worth repeating in last night’s Saturday Night Live – at least for a political junkie like me – both of them on the Weekend Update.
The first was Seth Myer’s take on the Obama, “I screwed up” admission:
The second was a sort of defense of Michael Phelps and put-down of Kellogs. The last “Really…” is of course the best – and the one mainly unexplored part of the story.
[digg-reddit-me]From Obama’s Inaugural Address:
There are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
This brings to mind what George Stephanopoulos was so excited about last Sunday on This Week:
(Yes, I need to work on improving my DVR to computer quality.)
It seems that Obama is preparing to bet his presidency on a Grand Bargain – that will allow him (and us) to rewrite the social contract in a more extensive way than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even during Obama’s campaign, he spoke of tackling the challenges that were necessary – and not putting off hard discussions about our country’s long-term stability. But the financial crisis – which at first prompted the endlessly parroted conventional wisdom that whoever won would need to cut all of their projects and focus narrowly on the crisis itself – has instead proved to be an opportunity.
The amount of spending needed to stimulate the economy is enormous – with the numbers being thrown around today dwarfing that of any previous government intervention (save perhaps for our major wars). What Obama understands is that this type of spending, while necessary in the short-term, poses a serious long-term threat. Which is why he is now speaking of the second step – after the financial crisis has passed – of tackling entitlement reform and tax reform, and finally putting America on sound financial footing after years of prolifigacy.
None of these insights are exceptional. What is exceptional is how Obama is already shaping the arch of his first term, using this crisis to set up his next objective, and shaping the conventional wisdom.
The problem I see though is that the Obama administration has not done a good job of conveying to the public the place this stimulus bill has within Obama’s agenda. The word is that in the next week or so, Tim Geithner will present “a ‘comprehensive’ plan that [he] hope[s] will command market confidence.” My hope is that this comprehensive plan will lay out a broad legislative agenda based on Obama’s campaign. Based on the campaign plans and signals sent during the transition, here’s what I see:
Step 1 (The First 100 Days)
The goal of this first period would be to begin to make both short-term and long-term investments into those sectors that will lead to long-term growth – which will stimulate the economy in the short-term. This is the spending stage. After this burst of legislating, Obama would be able to focus on tinkering with education programs and seeing what works, as well as addressing the simmering foreign policy issues which are constantly threatening to take over the agenda.
Step 2 (Post-Crisis)
This is the “cutting back” stage and consolidation stage. The goal of this second stage would be to put America on a solid financial footing again – to eliminate the unsustainable domestic policies that undermine our stability and power.
This is obviously an enormous agenda. And it’s far from clear that Obama can accomplish this. But if he does not lay out the vision – which I have pieced together from numerous statements – then it’s hard to see how he can accomplish it. Of course, Geithner was just confirmed last week – and Obama’s only been in office for two weeks – so he does have a bit more time to lay this out. But he doesn’t have long.