First things first: please keep all those soldiers and their families stationed at Ft. Hood in your thoughts, especially those wounded and killed. It's early yet, but it looks like the army dropped the ball pretty big on this one. According to the shooter's aunt, he had repeatedly asked for discharge prior to an impending first deployment to the Middle East and had been a longtime vocal critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like the Virginia Tech shooter (ironically this shooter's alma mater), there were a lot of signs of psychological instability that were missed before he unleashed unprecedented violence on his fellow soldiers. Thankfully, the people of Ft. Hood showed the kind of sympathy that anyone would hope for in these circumstances, turning out in such droves to donate blood for the wounded that literally hundreds had to be turned away from the donation clinic.
*****
With that, I'll get down to business covering the main topic of the day, namely the election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York; what I think (I think) they mean; and the growing schism between the GOP and the tea-baggers. As we all know, the "referendum" elections yielded gubernatorial wins for the Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey, while a Democrat (with his erstwhile Republican challenger's support) won the special election in New York, giving that congressional seat to the dems for the first time in over a century and a quarter. This set the moderates to trembling, Michael Steele to trumpeting ("Strike the Heisman pose!"), the center-rightists to governing, the tea-baggers to blathering, and the White House to--well, nothing. No Drama himself couldn't be bothered to watch election returns on Tuesday night (referendum? What referendum?). On top of all this, the spin doctors of both sides continue to busily weave the webs they've been spinning since well before the polls opened. Everyone's convinced these all mean something, but no two people or groups seem to have identical convictions. Just to add to the cacophony, here are my takes.
As far as the gubernatorial races, both involved "embattled" democratic candidates with on-again/off-again support from the White House losing to fairly middle-of-the-road Republicans. Given that both lost, the administration is now blaming the ineptitude of the candidates, particularly R. Creigh Deeds of Virginia. Deeds made such a poor showing that administration officials were dialing rhetoric back and preparing the way for a renunciation of the candidate for several weeks before the election. Corzine attempted to party like it was 2008 all over again, telling his supporters that "President Obama needs us." Regardless of what the President actually needed, the people of New Jersey clearly didn't need any more of Gov. Corzine. New Jersey has been pretty reliably blue recently; Virginia has been historically red, though with a definite purple haze around liberal suburbs. Last year, the Washington suburbs helped push Virginia over the top into going blue for the first time in over four decades, which seemed to make the giddy Democrats assume that the tide had turned for good and the GOP was on the run or "in the wildnerness" for the foreseeable future. As has been pointed out over and over again of late, though, America is at heart a center-right country with a historically fairly apathetic electorate, especially the young. Apparently assuming that Obamamania was a permanent thing, the Democrats were quick to take for granted the mobilization and turnout of the liberal base, the young, the blacks, and the independents who--yes they did--turned out in droves to get Obama elected a year ago.
This year, it was back to business as usual. The young stayed home, the liberal base turned out in average numbers, African-Americans weren't nearly as involved, and the independents (terrified of the Obamaconomy) did what independents usually do and waved a big old finger in the face of the party in power. As Charles Krauthammer noted in today's Post, all this amounted to a 19-point swing in the Republicans' favor in New Jersey and a 23-point swing in Virginia; alarmingly for the Democrats, the independents swung 30 and 33 points for the Republicans in those states respectively. Additionally, the African-American vote was 20% smaller than a year ago and the under-30 vote (some of the most fervent Obama supporters of yesteryear) was down by 50%. According to Michael Gerson, about 10% of those who voted for Obama last year in Virginia voted for the Republican McDonnell on Tuesday. Given that Obama only carried the Old Dominion by six points, that 10% is a significant chunk by itself, especially, as Gerson points out, since gubernatorial races are even more of a fight for the middle than presidential elections.
To that end the GOP challengers Chris Christie (NJ) and McDonnell (VA) both took care to respectfully disagree with Obama and their opponents on the issues and present themselves as viable alternatives who were more in line with public opinion. On the flip side, both Corzine and Deeds ran what are generally acknowledged to have been highly negative campaigns, devoting more energy to muckraking than scrabbling for the median voter that parties covet. If Obama needed him so badly, Corzine probably shouldn't have, among other missteps, put out an ad showing the corpulent Christie climbing out of a car while a narrator pointedly observed that Christie "throws his weight around" on issues. If the time has indeed come to put away childish things, David Axelrod probably should have told Corzine where to put that ad. Surprise, Democrats--party politics didn't end a year ago. The GOP is still very much around to challenge you.
*****
The Republican party might be around, but who exactly is a Republican these days? Is it RNC Chairman Michael "I don't want to crow" Steele (he of the Heisman pose on national television)? Is it the tea bag-toting Palinites? This schism played itself out in upstate New York, where a Democrat won a seat in congress from the 23rd district for the first time in over 125 years. A quick recap: after Obama tapped the congressman of the 23rd for his cabinet last year, a special election was called this year to fill the seat. Popular local Republican Dede Scozzafava was pitted against conservative Democrat Bill Owens, with Scozzafava looking likely to win until the "real" conservatives arrived on-scene. Those would be the national personalities of the reactionary Palinite movement--Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin herself. That is not a misprint: the resigned former governor of the state of Alaska, in the public eye for about 15 months now, turned all her--ahem--firepower on a congressional race in a district that borders Canada. Poor Ms. Scozzafava just wasn't conservative enough for Palin & Co., who actually managed to chase her out of the race and put the arch-conservative Doug Hoffman on the ballot instead. This led to the unique situation described in the top of the column--the former Republican nominee threw all of her remaining support behind the Democrat who had until recently been her challenger, who (luckily) ended up beating out the tea-bagger.
As one of the millions of Americans who self-identifies as a conservative (full disclosure: I'm a registered Democrat, but I'm hardly leading the charge to the left) and as an under-30 voter, I find the two scariest aspects of Tuesday's outcomes the battle for the meaning of "conservative" in New York and the 50% drop-off in under-30 voting in Virginia and New Jersey. From the days of Locke, true conservative have always recognized and named reactionaries as the true enemies of conservatism, and reactionary is what today's "conservatives" are all about. When "conservatism" is defined by a woman who is likely to run for President yet couldn't name a single news magazine (a low hurdle indeed for a prospective Vice President!) just over a year ago and the many angry white men of cable TV and hate radio, that says to me that I can't in good conscience call myself either conservative or Republican. Where have you gone, William F. Buckley? The GOP turns its lonely eyes to you, as it is apparently no longer capable of policing its extremes. The trouble is, neither are the Democrats: tripling the national debt over the next decade is simply not feasible. If there is one lesson of the current financial crisis, it should be that life ain't free. If Obama continues to tell the nation with a straight face that Obamacare won't add a cent to the budget, Joe Wilson is absolutely right: he lies. Same goes for Reid, Pelosi, and the whole gang on Capitol Hill. Last time I checked, doctor's visits were not free. Now we're going to provide them to everyone in America without raising taxes or adding a cent to the budget? Read my lips: that's horse apples, and everyone with half a brain (or who's ever been to the doctor) should know it. The danger is that, with true conservatism rapidly being overrun by the loonies of the right (and we're talking right of Atilla the Hun here), there's no viable alternative. Which party does someone who wants to see this country finally join the rest of the free world in offering health coverage to all its citizens yet in a responsible, economical way sign up for? These days, I just don't see the answer.
Which brings up the second point: apathetic young voters. Obamacare, current federal spending levels, added stimulus, and whatever other Great Society/New Deal 2.0 initiatives crop up in the next several years will absolutely cripple today's under-30 crowd and our children (and likely their children, and theirs....). Still, under-30's just can't be bothered to vote. We all rocked the vote last year for a magnetizing young candidate, but now that the very same person is mortgaging all of our futures up the wazoo nobody's moved to say anything. It may be that few under-30's like "the system," but we can't change the system by not voting. Unfortunately, the system can sure as hell still reach out and touch us--by the time we're over 30 and start to pay attention to such things as the national debt, our personal debt, and the fact that we're likely to become the first generation of Americans to achieve backward mobility, it'll be over a decade too late. It's beyond me why this is such a hard concept for people my age to grasp. Even ignoring for a moment the glaring problem of what's being decided about the futures of everyone who's under 18 and (rightly) can't vote yet, even those of us who have been recently enfranchised just can't seem to bestir ourselves to fight tooth and nail against the mortgaging of our own futures. That, to my mind, is incomprehensible and inexcusable.
*****
So what's the moral of the story? In terms of referendums, I'd say that the elections in VA and NJ tell us not much about the mid-terms, 2012, or even all that much about Obama today. Mostly, I would say they provide another example of a the growing schisms between the "reds" and the "blues" and further between the "Republicans" and the "conservatives," and it's those fault lines that are the really worries. As I've said before, neither conservatism nor liberalism is about extremism, nor should they be. The cable news/hate radio syndrome of simply trying to out-shock the other side is out of control and highly counter-productive. What the election of moderate Republicans in VA and NJ and the Democrat's win in the NY 23rd is, hopefully, that people in general--on Palin's oft-cited "Main Street," perhaps--are largely sick and tired of hate-driven, extremist party politics. To the extent to which the election of Republicans in VA and NJ was a reaction to Obama's policies, that they were both moderate "mainstream" Republicans who ran relatively respectful, issue-driven campaigns is a healthy sign. If voters are legitimately scared of Obamacare, etc., it is much better that that sentiment find expression through the election of articulate, respectful people who will work within the system to try to challenge the liberal agenda than through the election of pundits or tea-baggers, who have nothing to offer but hate and obstinacy. If that was indeed why McDonnell and Christie were elected, let's hope they follow through on their campaign promises.
And finally, to address party politics, I'd say it's long past time that both the Republicans and Democrats got some young blood and some ideological airing out. Both parties, as traditionally construed, are respectable, viable, and valuable positions. Opposition is a good thing in politics. As they're both currently trending, however, neither looks terribly attractive. The Dems are drunk with power, far too liberal in many ways for the country as a whole, and out of touch with the base and with reality. As long as the Democrats continue to try to enable the unfolding Obama agenda without realizing that the "mandate" they obtained last November has expired and is unlikely to be repeated, they will only keep alienating the center and the independents, the key constituencies that helped give Obama that "mandate" a year ago. The GOP, meanwhile, is arguably in position to capture the center while the Democrats are busily assuming they still have a mandate and that conservatism was dealt a mortal blow last year. While the sycophantic Democratic mandarins are resting too comfortably on last year's laurels, the GOP could very easily steal the middle from under their noses by presenting the only viable alternative for the disillusioned independents. Potential trouble for the GOP still lies in soul-searching and civil war with the tea-baggers, though. If the battle for the soul of the party comes to a head between the reactionaries and the so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only, aka rational conservatives), a conservative win could spell disaster for the party and/or the country. With any luck, the electorate will see that such people have nothing positive to offer the country and will show them the door, but the conservative movement does not show signs of abating or being turned out to the margins of the political wilderness where it belongs any time soon.
Basically, the Dems need to realize that the GOP is not in the wilderness nor is it headed that way, and the Republicans need to exorcise the tea-baggers and banish them to the hinterlands. At the moment, neither party's old guard seems capable of seeing what needs fixing nor of making the switches.
Who best to tell them? The under-30's, of course! It's time to get "fired up, ready to go" again to bring some real change to America. If voting doesn't seem productive enough, it's time to put ourselves on the ballots and start bringing some new ideas to the table.
Yes, we can...
Friday, November 6, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ten Things I Think I Think
A few quick-hit observations of the past couple of days...
1. Really, Nobel Prize committee? Really? I hear the IOC is already putting this winter's gold medals in the mail to athletes with great potential. Based on similar metrics (i.e. popular opinion before anything meaningful happened), the Patriots would already have this year's Lombardi Trophy in hand, but yesterday's result seems somewhat anomalous.
2. Speaking of which, what a crappy day for New England sports fans yesterday--Pap gives up his first postseason runs, allowing the Sox to be swept by the Angels of all teams (don't we always beat them in October?), and Tom Brady loses in OT for the first time.
3. Incidentally, what part of "Hoodie" don't you understand, Coach Bill? He lost a certain Super Bowl when he traded in his usual monkish garb for some bright red, pimp-my-sideline-apparel job and dropped a highly-anticipated contest to onetime offensive coordinator/mentee and current hoodie-wearer Josh McDaniels in Denver yesterday while wearing a puffy blue jacket and some very intriguing headgear. I'll turn it over to Peter King, who noted in today's real "Ten Things" that "Bill Belichick has to be verrrrrry secure in his masculinity to wear that cheerleadery pompom ball on the top of his hat." While we're on NFL style, however, McDaniels may have had the right idea with the hoodie, but the same can't be said of his men between the sidelines. Antitrust exemptions be damned, the Merger was worth it if only to get AFL teams like the Broncos to wear normal things like blue and orange instead of mustard yellow and "No. 2" brown. Note to Reebok uniform makers: the vertical-striped socks weren't that great to begin with, but once they got all swirly in the high-contact environment of an NFL tilt, the mustard/brown barber pole look really didn't do it for me.
4. I think Obama needs to hurry up and decide on his strategy for Afghanistan. Remember that press conference when he touted his administration's re-imagined strategy, fully thought through and ready for implementation? Once Gen. McChrystal deployed the "F" word, all strategies were once again murky and under discussion. McChrystal was ordered to be blunt in his report and he was, but putting America and failure at war in the same sentence has never gone over well, and sure enough it sent this administration into orbit as well. The LBJ watch beginneth--Obama might have a new America or he might have a new Afghanistan, but can he really have both?
5. I think, about the previous point, that both sides are being far too public in their deliberations. Since when was foreign policy conducted through dueling press releases from the White House and its chosen commander? The administration has unwisely put itself in the position of being uncomfortable with its strategy when pushed and thus having to publicly and interminably agonize over it; Gen. McChrystal pulled a MacArthur and threw in his two cents (and then some) from London. That's not how chain-of-command works, General. If Obama was going to ask for a blunt report, he should have anticipated what he got and been prepared to act in one way or another. Dithering for weeks is no good. If protecting Americans is the goal, let's man up and decide whether the guys on the frontiers in Afghanistan need to hold ground for reinforcements or pull back for Joe Biden. They need a decision the worst; reading stories of all the SNAFU's on the front in tiny outposts where guys are getting overrun by Taliban is just heartbreaking. If we're going to pull back and shack up, let's get on the hoof, because we don't need to be losing dozens of men for little valleys that are suddenly no longer of strategic importance. How do you defend something your commander in chief can't decide is important? More importantly, who wants to be the last to die for it? I get it that McChrystal is trying to force a decision that he really needs, but he's still out of line to offer his own opinions in public.
6. I think I'm getting a little antsy about Iran. That is a nasty situation that's not about to improve, and Russia and China are not seeming too eager to help out. We're weaving all kinds of rhetorical traps for ourselves in promising to get tough on Iran, but it's less and less clear that he of the peace prize will actually be able to enforce anything significant. The last thing you want to do with rogue regimes is create even bigger problems of credible commitments than you already face, and that's what we're all about these days.
7. I think Hillary Clinton deserves kudos for her role in getting the Turks and Armenians to sign on to something that seeks to resolve almost a century's worth of tension over the massacre (genocide?) of Armenians by the Ottomans. The agreement almost fell through on the content of the after-signing speeches; Clinton saved it by talking both sides back from the brink and getting them to both shut up and sign--literally. Since no mutually-acceptable concluding remarks could be found, none were made. Hopefully this agreement leads to some real reconciliation between the two countries.
8. I think, if you're an American of about my age or younger, you should be really pissed right now. You should also do your homework on the health care debate and start applying all the pressure you can muster on the government to fix it once and for all before condemning us to downward mobility. The people who are being most adversely affected by the health-care conundrum are not really getting a seat at the table because they are either too young to care, too young to vote, or unborn. The AARP/Medicare/Medicaid crowd (they of the 50% consumption of our national health costs) already has way too many voices fighting way too hard for it; the futures of today's young people are being mortgaged out the wazoo. As Robert J. Samuelson points out today, even if we get out of the recession and resume fairly healthy economic growth, health-care spending as it's currently trending would quite possibly lead to downward mobility by about 2030. In other words, by the time I'm likely to be having and raising my children, there's a good chance that their economic prospects will be worse than mine. I don't particularly want to raise my kids in a home that represents the highest standard of living they'll ever see (or find myself in the same position). Anybody with me?
9. I think (but I hope I'm wrong), that Bob Ryan may have been right all along: for Boston sports, the good old days were the beginning of this decade. I'm certainly not writing off the Patriots for this year, and I'm not denying that being annual post-season contenders in at least one and usually several major professional sports is a huge step up from where we were, but we was spoiled pretty bad for a couple of years there with back-to-back Super Bowl wins, two World Series trophies, etc, etc, etc. Thankfully, the Redskins and Nats are hardly a threat to my loyalties!
10. I think, for the record, that the best outcome for Afghanistan will be reached through McChrystal's recommendations, but I think the best outcome for America may be found in Obama's (at least candidate Obama's) domestic recommendations. As you may have noticed, there's Great Recession on and this nation is somewhat in debt (!); it's unlikely that we can finance and logistically empower both an intensive counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Great Society 2.o at home. It's strategic crunch time: we need to decide ASAP whether America is better off trying to secure itself abroad or improve itself at home. The first choice potentially does what no one else ever has and secures/democratizes the AfPak region while bankrupting the country from the inside; the second (hopefully) gets our domestic house in order at the potential cost of instability/hostility and/or terrorist strikes from abroad. As noted, LBJ couldn't have his war and his Society, too; it's almost certain that Obama can't, either.
1. Really, Nobel Prize committee? Really? I hear the IOC is already putting this winter's gold medals in the mail to athletes with great potential. Based on similar metrics (i.e. popular opinion before anything meaningful happened), the Patriots would already have this year's Lombardi Trophy in hand, but yesterday's result seems somewhat anomalous.
2. Speaking of which, what a crappy day for New England sports fans yesterday--Pap gives up his first postseason runs, allowing the Sox to be swept by the Angels of all teams (don't we always beat them in October?), and Tom Brady loses in OT for the first time.
3. Incidentally, what part of "Hoodie" don't you understand, Coach Bill? He lost a certain Super Bowl when he traded in his usual monkish garb for some bright red, pimp-my-sideline-apparel job and dropped a highly-anticipated contest to onetime offensive coordinator/mentee and current hoodie-wearer Josh McDaniels in Denver yesterday while wearing a puffy blue jacket and some very intriguing headgear. I'll turn it over to Peter King, who noted in today's real "Ten Things" that "Bill Belichick has to be verrrrrry secure in his masculinity to wear that cheerleadery pompom ball on the top of his hat." While we're on NFL style, however, McDaniels may have had the right idea with the hoodie, but the same can't be said of his men between the sidelines. Antitrust exemptions be damned, the Merger was worth it if only to get AFL teams like the Broncos to wear normal things like blue and orange instead of mustard yellow and "No. 2" brown. Note to Reebok uniform makers: the vertical-striped socks weren't that great to begin with, but once they got all swirly in the high-contact environment of an NFL tilt, the mustard/brown barber pole look really didn't do it for me.
4. I think Obama needs to hurry up and decide on his strategy for Afghanistan. Remember that press conference when he touted his administration's re-imagined strategy, fully thought through and ready for implementation? Once Gen. McChrystal deployed the "F" word, all strategies were once again murky and under discussion. McChrystal was ordered to be blunt in his report and he was, but putting America and failure at war in the same sentence has never gone over well, and sure enough it sent this administration into orbit as well. The LBJ watch beginneth--Obama might have a new America or he might have a new Afghanistan, but can he really have both?
5. I think, about the previous point, that both sides are being far too public in their deliberations. Since when was foreign policy conducted through dueling press releases from the White House and its chosen commander? The administration has unwisely put itself in the position of being uncomfortable with its strategy when pushed and thus having to publicly and interminably agonize over it; Gen. McChrystal pulled a MacArthur and threw in his two cents (and then some) from London. That's not how chain-of-command works, General. If Obama was going to ask for a blunt report, he should have anticipated what he got and been prepared to act in one way or another. Dithering for weeks is no good. If protecting Americans is the goal, let's man up and decide whether the guys on the frontiers in Afghanistan need to hold ground for reinforcements or pull back for Joe Biden. They need a decision the worst; reading stories of all the SNAFU's on the front in tiny outposts where guys are getting overrun by Taliban is just heartbreaking. If we're going to pull back and shack up, let's get on the hoof, because we don't need to be losing dozens of men for little valleys that are suddenly no longer of strategic importance. How do you defend something your commander in chief can't decide is important? More importantly, who wants to be the last to die for it? I get it that McChrystal is trying to force a decision that he really needs, but he's still out of line to offer his own opinions in public.
6. I think I'm getting a little antsy about Iran. That is a nasty situation that's not about to improve, and Russia and China are not seeming too eager to help out. We're weaving all kinds of rhetorical traps for ourselves in promising to get tough on Iran, but it's less and less clear that he of the peace prize will actually be able to enforce anything significant. The last thing you want to do with rogue regimes is create even bigger problems of credible commitments than you already face, and that's what we're all about these days.
7. I think Hillary Clinton deserves kudos for her role in getting the Turks and Armenians to sign on to something that seeks to resolve almost a century's worth of tension over the massacre (genocide?) of Armenians by the Ottomans. The agreement almost fell through on the content of the after-signing speeches; Clinton saved it by talking both sides back from the brink and getting them to both shut up and sign--literally. Since no mutually-acceptable concluding remarks could be found, none were made. Hopefully this agreement leads to some real reconciliation between the two countries.
8. I think, if you're an American of about my age or younger, you should be really pissed right now. You should also do your homework on the health care debate and start applying all the pressure you can muster on the government to fix it once and for all before condemning us to downward mobility. The people who are being most adversely affected by the health-care conundrum are not really getting a seat at the table because they are either too young to care, too young to vote, or unborn. The AARP/Medicare/Medicaid crowd (they of the 50% consumption of our national health costs) already has way too many voices fighting way too hard for it; the futures of today's young people are being mortgaged out the wazoo. As Robert J. Samuelson points out today, even if we get out of the recession and resume fairly healthy economic growth, health-care spending as it's currently trending would quite possibly lead to downward mobility by about 2030. In other words, by the time I'm likely to be having and raising my children, there's a good chance that their economic prospects will be worse than mine. I don't particularly want to raise my kids in a home that represents the highest standard of living they'll ever see (or find myself in the same position). Anybody with me?
9. I think (but I hope I'm wrong), that Bob Ryan may have been right all along: for Boston sports, the good old days were the beginning of this decade. I'm certainly not writing off the Patriots for this year, and I'm not denying that being annual post-season contenders in at least one and usually several major professional sports is a huge step up from where we were, but we was spoiled pretty bad for a couple of years there with back-to-back Super Bowl wins, two World Series trophies, etc, etc, etc. Thankfully, the Redskins and Nats are hardly a threat to my loyalties!
10. I think, for the record, that the best outcome for Afghanistan will be reached through McChrystal's recommendations, but I think the best outcome for America may be found in Obama's (at least candidate Obama's) domestic recommendations. As you may have noticed, there's Great Recession on and this nation is somewhat in debt (!); it's unlikely that we can finance and logistically empower both an intensive counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Great Society 2.o at home. It's strategic crunch time: we need to decide ASAP whether America is better off trying to secure itself abroad or improve itself at home. The first choice potentially does what no one else ever has and secures/democratizes the AfPak region while bankrupting the country from the inside; the second (hopefully) gets our domestic house in order at the potential cost of instability/hostility and/or terrorist strikes from abroad. As noted, LBJ couldn't have his war and his Society, too; it's almost certain that Obama can't, either.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Say It Ain't So, Joe
And, we're back! After a nice summer off, it's time to get back into the blogosphere with a new heading and renewed energy. As they say on the cereal boxes, New packaging, same great product! Here we go...
*****
I'm still playing catch-up from a month of total disconnect from the world in a very big way--I was surprised to find out that Justice Sotomayor was being confirmed the other day. My backpacking buddies and I debated her plenty on the trail, but I completely missed the confirmation hearings. By the same token, I don't know the ins and outs of the latest incarnation of Obamacare, so I can't offer a very detailed look at that. For the record, my gut feeling is that something's gotta give because we simply can't keep on the way we've been doing. I'm reasonably confident that reform would be beneficial--it's a health-care bill for crying out loud, not a proposal to thin the herds of the AARP or turn the U.S. into some sort of giant Doctors Without Borders camp dishing out free health care to all and sundry who run, jump, or swim over our borders. No, the idea here, at its most basic, is that it's high time the U.S. quit being the only rich country that still rations health care solely on the basis of income. That's not such an unreasonable proposition, especially because, as Obama pointed out, he's not the first President to bring it up. That honor would go to a Republican, namely Teddy Roosevelt, proponent of other such radical ideas as national parks, a new Navy, and the Panama Canal.
Traditionally, Republican administrations hang Teddy Roosevelt's portrait in the place of honor over the fireplace in the Roosevelt Room in the White House (Dems, of course bestow that distinction on FDR's portrait), but I have no idea if they can keep that up, given that TR is now viewed as a socialist by the far-right wingnuts currently holding the GOP ideologically hostage. And it's those very same wingnuts who are the real subject of today's writing, especially the honorable Joe Wilson, Republican Representative from the great state of South Carolina--the same South Carolina that brought you John C. Calhoun and the Fire Eaters, Strom Thurmond, and Preston Brooks, among other political luminaries. (For those of you unfamiliar with Preston Brooks, he was the representative who beat Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner almost to death in the Senate chamber in 1856. To see him in action, click here.) The now-infamous Mr. Wilson, of course, is the man who shouted "You lie!" and "Not true!" at various times during President Obama's address to Congress the other night. Wilson's outburst was hardly the only breach from decorum, as a Texas representative waved handmade signs at Obama ("What plan?" "What bill?"), minority whip Eric Cantor (VA) Blackberry'd the night away, and a general chorus of boos, hisses, and jeers greeted Obama at every lofty turn of phrase.
Micheal Gerson wrote a smart column in today's Post imploring at least one of the country's two major parties to take up the mantle of "the party of ideas." Currently, we've got the bumbling socialists versus the heckling reactionaries, and they have yielded the predictable results. Making one's disapproval/disinterest (the frostily glaring Hilary Clinton or the snoozing John McCain of the Bush years come to mind) is hardly a new phenomenon during a presidential address to Congress. What sets the events of Wednesday night apart, though, is their brazenness and the outright lack of respect they show for the office of the President. Catnapping through a Bushism-laced State of the Union cum Jeremiad against the evildoers is one thing. Hollering mid-speech on national television is quite another. I've been known to editorialize via whisper or scribbled note in the bulletin during church, but I sure as hell don't wave my comments at the pastor mid-sermon or yell at the priest during his homily. You just don't do that--especially when you're as factually off-base as Wilson was.
What prompted the "You lie!" outburst was Obama's clarification (again) that "his" bill wouldn't cover illegal aliens. The fact that there is even a question about that is a little discomforting, but it's been trumped up by the loonies of the right in their town hall hate-ins and television advertisements. Coverage of illegal immigrants, like federally-subsidized abortions and "death panels"--is an outright falsehood and has been impugned as such by every professional fact-checker worth his or her salt that has read the draft of the bill. Thus, Wilson was in fact the one lying, and he had the cojones to do so in the ultimate wrong place/wrong time manner and then to equivocate on issuing an apology afterward. If you're going to accuse someone of lying, at least have your own facts straight, but even more to the point, what the hell's happened to our democracy when all such buffoonery as was on display Wednesday night is the level to which discourse has sunk? Not even Nancy Pelosi threw such verbal spitballs at Bush while he was expounding on the clear and present dangers posed by all those Iraqi WMD. (Bueller? Bueller?) Congratulations, Mr. Wilson--you've gone from anonymity to overnight Twitter celebrity. Maybe you and Chad Ochocinco can hang out and bask in the adulation of 150,000 of your very closest mutual digital friends sometime. Wilson may have gotten his 15 minutes of fame, but the way he went about it is a pretty sickening commentary on the current state of American politics and culture.
*****
One more point about heckling and healthcare. Despite his rather juvenile delivery, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)--he of the handmade signs--actually had a point, unlike the gentleman from South Carolina. Gohmert took Obamacare to task on a much more fundamental level than who exactly it aims to cover and who it aims to kill off by scrawling "What plan?" and "What bill?" on the back of a couple of pieces of office paper and waving them at the podium during the speech. Not a brilliant or especially helpful contribution to the evolution of political thought and discourse in the Western world, to be sure, but unfortunately valid questions nonetheless. If the sign-waving didn't speak too highly of the representative, the questions didn't speak too highly of the President. What on Earth could convince a man with Obama's political acumen to leave the drafting of the defining piece of his domestic agenda to a body such as the 111th Congress of these here United States, I can't pretend to know. I'm sure he wanted to ride the Flying Horses and help Sasha and Malia catch the brass ring or go swimming with Splash at South Beach, but to leave Obamacare in the hands of Pelosi and the Minions has left the bill adrift and the man way down in the polls. Simply by examining the long and winding road this thing has taken on the Hill with no end in sight, change has in no way come to America. Childish things (signs and hecklers, anyone?) have not been put away. Post-partisanship is a pipe dream. If he's really got all the political mojo that 80% of the known world voted for last November, whether they cast a ballot or not, why in the hell wouldn't he have one of his vaunted brain trust/team of rivals formulate the ideas, draft the bill, spice it up with a little Corinthians, deliver it sealed with a kiss to the desks of Pelosi and Reid, and then kick ass and take names amongst his filibuster-proof liberal majorities until they passed it? Not terribly post-partisan, but neither is the show being put on by 534 (miss you, Ted) eight-year-olds in suits as they engage in some of the most partisan bickering ever seen, not to mention the outright lying, cantankerousness, and competing for the bully pulpit by out-hating and out-shocking their colleagues. It's working, too--all that ever makes the news is the most hateful and/or shocking comment made to date by a member of that distinguished body. It's like a houseful of JV shock-jocks all competing to make the jump from the floor of the House to replace Don "nappy-headed ho" Imus on hate radio. Obama himself has put away such childish things as the Epistles and post-partisanship to take a page from the Reagan playbook and imploring congress to get one, just one for the Gipper (here's looking at you, Ted). The implication, of course, is that if he doesn't get that one, just one bill passed posthaste, it's going to be a long slog for the next three years, minimum. For crying out loud, if he's so determined to be "the last" president to raise the healthcare issue, then why not make damn sure it's done right from co-pays to Corinthians? I'd actually be more inclined to trust the Oval Office to keep the apocryphal "death panels" out of it than I would the Speaker's office. So, Mr. President, what bill, exactly, would you like to present this country with, and what plan, precisely, do you have to get that sucker on the books? A little oomph to go with your Ephesians would be greatly appreciated.
*****
I'm still playing catch-up from a month of total disconnect from the world in a very big way--I was surprised to find out that Justice Sotomayor was being confirmed the other day. My backpacking buddies and I debated her plenty on the trail, but I completely missed the confirmation hearings. By the same token, I don't know the ins and outs of the latest incarnation of Obamacare, so I can't offer a very detailed look at that. For the record, my gut feeling is that something's gotta give because we simply can't keep on the way we've been doing. I'm reasonably confident that reform would be beneficial--it's a health-care bill for crying out loud, not a proposal to thin the herds of the AARP or turn the U.S. into some sort of giant Doctors Without Borders camp dishing out free health care to all and sundry who run, jump, or swim over our borders. No, the idea here, at its most basic, is that it's high time the U.S. quit being the only rich country that still rations health care solely on the basis of income. That's not such an unreasonable proposition, especially because, as Obama pointed out, he's not the first President to bring it up. That honor would go to a Republican, namely Teddy Roosevelt, proponent of other such radical ideas as national parks, a new Navy, and the Panama Canal.
Traditionally, Republican administrations hang Teddy Roosevelt's portrait in the place of honor over the fireplace in the Roosevelt Room in the White House (Dems, of course bestow that distinction on FDR's portrait), but I have no idea if they can keep that up, given that TR is now viewed as a socialist by the far-right wingnuts currently holding the GOP ideologically hostage. And it's those very same wingnuts who are the real subject of today's writing, especially the honorable Joe Wilson, Republican Representative from the great state of South Carolina--the same South Carolina that brought you John C. Calhoun and the Fire Eaters, Strom Thurmond, and Preston Brooks, among other political luminaries. (For those of you unfamiliar with Preston Brooks, he was the representative who beat Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner almost to death in the Senate chamber in 1856. To see him in action, click here.) The now-infamous Mr. Wilson, of course, is the man who shouted "You lie!" and "Not true!" at various times during President Obama's address to Congress the other night. Wilson's outburst was hardly the only breach from decorum, as a Texas representative waved handmade signs at Obama ("What plan?" "What bill?"), minority whip Eric Cantor (VA) Blackberry'd the night away, and a general chorus of boos, hisses, and jeers greeted Obama at every lofty turn of phrase.
Micheal Gerson wrote a smart column in today's Post imploring at least one of the country's two major parties to take up the mantle of "the party of ideas." Currently, we've got the bumbling socialists versus the heckling reactionaries, and they have yielded the predictable results. Making one's disapproval/disinterest (the frostily glaring Hilary Clinton or the snoozing John McCain of the Bush years come to mind) is hardly a new phenomenon during a presidential address to Congress. What sets the events of Wednesday night apart, though, is their brazenness and the outright lack of respect they show for the office of the President. Catnapping through a Bushism-laced State of the Union cum Jeremiad against the evildoers is one thing. Hollering mid-speech on national television is quite another. I've been known to editorialize via whisper or scribbled note in the bulletin during church, but I sure as hell don't wave my comments at the pastor mid-sermon or yell at the priest during his homily. You just don't do that--especially when you're as factually off-base as Wilson was.
What prompted the "You lie!" outburst was Obama's clarification (again) that "his" bill wouldn't cover illegal aliens. The fact that there is even a question about that is a little discomforting, but it's been trumped up by the loonies of the right in their town hall hate-ins and television advertisements. Coverage of illegal immigrants, like federally-subsidized abortions and "death panels"--is an outright falsehood and has been impugned as such by every professional fact-checker worth his or her salt that has read the draft of the bill. Thus, Wilson was in fact the one lying, and he had the cojones to do so in the ultimate wrong place/wrong time manner and then to equivocate on issuing an apology afterward. If you're going to accuse someone of lying, at least have your own facts straight, but even more to the point, what the hell's happened to our democracy when all such buffoonery as was on display Wednesday night is the level to which discourse has sunk? Not even Nancy Pelosi threw such verbal spitballs at Bush while he was expounding on the clear and present dangers posed by all those Iraqi WMD. (Bueller? Bueller?) Congratulations, Mr. Wilson--you've gone from anonymity to overnight Twitter celebrity. Maybe you and Chad Ochocinco can hang out and bask in the adulation of 150,000 of your very closest mutual digital friends sometime. Wilson may have gotten his 15 minutes of fame, but the way he went about it is a pretty sickening commentary on the current state of American politics and culture.
*****
One more point about heckling and healthcare. Despite his rather juvenile delivery, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)--he of the handmade signs--actually had a point, unlike the gentleman from South Carolina. Gohmert took Obamacare to task on a much more fundamental level than who exactly it aims to cover and who it aims to kill off by scrawling "What plan?" and "What bill?" on the back of a couple of pieces of office paper and waving them at the podium during the speech. Not a brilliant or especially helpful contribution to the evolution of political thought and discourse in the Western world, to be sure, but unfortunately valid questions nonetheless. If the sign-waving didn't speak too highly of the representative, the questions didn't speak too highly of the President. What on Earth could convince a man with Obama's political acumen to leave the drafting of the defining piece of his domestic agenda to a body such as the 111th Congress of these here United States, I can't pretend to know. I'm sure he wanted to ride the Flying Horses and help Sasha and Malia catch the brass ring or go swimming with Splash at South Beach, but to leave Obamacare in the hands of Pelosi and the Minions has left the bill adrift and the man way down in the polls. Simply by examining the long and winding road this thing has taken on the Hill with no end in sight, change has in no way come to America. Childish things (signs and hecklers, anyone?) have not been put away. Post-partisanship is a pipe dream. If he's really got all the political mojo that 80% of the known world voted for last November, whether they cast a ballot or not, why in the hell wouldn't he have one of his vaunted brain trust/team of rivals formulate the ideas, draft the bill, spice it up with a little Corinthians, deliver it sealed with a kiss to the desks of Pelosi and Reid, and then kick ass and take names amongst his filibuster-proof liberal majorities until they passed it? Not terribly post-partisan, but neither is the show being put on by 534 (miss you, Ted) eight-year-olds in suits as they engage in some of the most partisan bickering ever seen, not to mention the outright lying, cantankerousness, and competing for the bully pulpit by out-hating and out-shocking their colleagues. It's working, too--all that ever makes the news is the most hateful and/or shocking comment made to date by a member of that distinguished body. It's like a houseful of JV shock-jocks all competing to make the jump from the floor of the House to replace Don "nappy-headed ho" Imus on hate radio. Obama himself has put away such childish things as the Epistles and post-partisanship to take a page from the Reagan playbook and imploring congress to get one, just one for the Gipper (here's looking at you, Ted). The implication, of course, is that if he doesn't get that one, just one bill passed posthaste, it's going to be a long slog for the next three years, minimum. For crying out loud, if he's so determined to be "the last" president to raise the healthcare issue, then why not make damn sure it's done right from co-pays to Corinthians? I'd actually be more inclined to trust the Oval Office to keep the apocryphal "death panels" out of it than I would the Speaker's office. So, Mr. President, what bill, exactly, would you like to present this country with, and what plan, precisely, do you have to get that sucker on the books? A little oomph to go with your Ephesians would be greatly appreciated.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
OBAMA ON THE ECONOMY...AT GEORGETOWN!
In Chicago over Easter, I had an interesting conversation with one of our hosts over breakfast concerning the importance of "unique opportunities" in decision-making. Thus, with President Obama giving a speech on campus just this once and with plenty of theology classes under my belt and several more to go, I decided to cut my first class ever (I know, I'm such a square) and watch the speech televised in the student center. Not quite as cool as being able to say I was in the room (didn't hit the ticket lottery, unfortunately), but seeing him on TV from only a few hundred yards away isn't too shabby. Especially when you can look out the window and see his Secret Service snipers on the Georgetown rooftops...
Today's talk, which appeared to be largely if not wholly delivered without a Teleprompter, concerned the state of the economic crisis and what the administration has done and is doing to combat it. "Recessions are not uncommon," noted the President, "but this recession is different...caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making" from Washington to Wall St. to Main St. Repeatedly blaming a lack of "accountability or oversight from anyone in Washington" as a prime enabling factor in sowing the seeds of crisis, Obama went on to explain in layman's terms what has happened, what he's doing about it, and why his hands are so badly bound by events. Overall, it was a pretty good speech, though it is strange to see him off-text. He does struggle a bit without a Teleprompter, which is notable only because he normally appears so fluent. The other somewhat annoying tendency in his speech is repeated use of the royal "we" in places where "I" would do just fine.
As far as the actual content of the speech, Obama did not exactly break new ground. Essentially, the government needs to keep spending like it's going out of style in the short term because that is actually the case with the rest of the economy; health care and entitlement are intricately connected, wildly expensive, and desperately in need of (hopefully) coordinated reform; education and clean technology need to become priorities; the discretionary budget has to be reined in and the non-discretionary budget has to be tightened and made more efficient; there is a "glimmer of hope" but 2009 will still be "a difficult year for America's economy;" and government as a whole (this means you, Congress) needs to answer the bell and take this opportunity to rebuild the economy for the 21st century as the "house upon the rock."
Ironically, in skipping Islamic Religious Thought and Practice, I got a lecture on another five-pillared foundation from our decidedly non-Muslim President. These five pillars--Wall Street reform, new investments in education, a focus on renewable energy technology, a commitment to health care, and new savings in the Federal budget--are the foundation of our "house upon the rock." Specifically, Obama argued that new regulations on investment and banking need to be put in place in order to tie pay to job performance ("a novel concept") and--more worrying--so that the government can recoup salary and/or bonus monies from executives who have been unfairly compensated. Acknowledging that the next adventure down that road needs legal grounding and precedent to avoid the firestorm that sprang up this time is a good start; laying aside the threat of a special tax to remedy life's unfairnesses at whim would have been better. Educationally, Obama committed the U.S. to leading the world in its rate of college graduation by 2020, an effort that is being founded right now with initiatives in early-childhood education and reforming teacher compensation to reward excellence rather than tenure. The President also acknowledged that everyone knows that whichever country gets renewable energy figured out first will automatically put itself on the fast track to 21st-century dominance, lamenting that the U.S. has allowed others to get ahead thus far yet declaring that he was "unwilling to accept failure" in that area, wanting to see the U.S. take a commanding lead in renewable energy development ASAP. Health care is health care: "skyrocketing health-care costs can't be allowed to keep strangling the economy." Burgeoning public- and private-sector health-care premiums are putting the brakes on the economy, a situation which is only deteriorating as Federal health insurance costs go up and the Boomers age their way onto entitlement rolls. While acknowledging that the Federal budget is out of whack and only getting more so in the short run, Obama declared the fifth pillar of the new economic foundation to be long-term Federal budget reform--cutting the stuff that doesn't work and making more efficient the stuff that does.
All of these are excellent and practical points that have already received ample coverage by better-known scribes. Obama's overarching point today was that the 20th century was dominated by America because America led the world in the education of its populace, access to and use of energy, manageable health care benefits to as many citizens as possible, and a trend of pragmatism and discretion in personal and national budgeting. All more or less true, and all worthy of current aspiration. Getting ourselves educated will make us better innovators and workers, better innovators will help produce energy technologies that better workers will build, and so forth. As Obama also noted, we do need some money-manipulators, but we can't rest the hopes of our entire economy on prospecting number-crunchers. The President declared that the best and the brightest American minds should get back to focusing on producing "stuff" (you know, stuff that has actual value), and clean energy technologies would be a great batch of stuff to focus on producing. Government spending, meanwhile, is certainly necessary in the short term but a real effort to, as Obama put it, not just cut a few earmarks (they're a fact of life anyway) and the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts but to lay the foundations for a return to a pragmatic, responsible, and more efficient Federal budget is vital. Don't hold your breath, but we can always hope...
Regardless of just how bright the glimmer of hope in the economy may seem, there was a glimmer of hope in Obama's rhetorical focus. As you've read multiple times in this space and will doubtless read again, a return of moral courage and responsibility to the halls of power is desperately needed, and the latter portion of Obama's speech was full of calls for just that. The post-partisan promised land is still a long ways off, but the President is absolutely right that now is not the time to bicker, blow in the winds of the 24-hour news cycle, or simply ignore problems in the hope that they will go away. The risks of rebuilding on the same patch of sand in the face of all the warning signs surrounding it are almost too immense to contemplate. Obama made no bones about the pain of picking up and moving to the rock and then taking the time to carefully establish the five-pillared foundation of 21st-century economic health and dominance, but he was equally right to note that this crash has presented the country with an opportunity too good to be wasted--if those in power can seize the moment and take the long view. Clearly, we've been playing with fire for some time now, and look where it's got us. The Depression provided the tabula rasa needed to turn from the recklessness of the Roaring Twenties to the values and practices that brought us the American Century; hopefully we can use this near-Depression to similarly reboot the system for the better before it descends into another Depression, which would be a virtual certainty with the next bust cycle if we simply pull out of this crisis and get right back on the track that got us here. Obama gets it (I hope), calling to Congress that, like it or not, he and they are the ones in office today and therefore cannot duck the responsibilties thrust upon them: "we have been called to govern in extraordinary times." Let's hope they listen and learn.
*****
In other news, that was some pretty nifty shooting by those three SEALs who rescued the MAERSK Alabama's hostage captain from the Somali pirates, no? Simultaneously dropping three jittery, homicidal no-goodniks at over 80 feet is tricky enough as is; to do it at night after a night jump into the ocean, a Zodiak ride to the destroyer, and from one bobbing vessel to another is just freakin' amazing. In today's speech, Obama noted that Defense Secretary Gates's recently-proposed budget was "right on the mark" for efficient and practical use of resources. That represents an annointing by the Commander in Chief of the Young Turks taking the Pentagon by storm preaching counterinsurgency and low-intensity warfare, with GEN Petraeus at their head. This op proves they're right. As the Post noted this morning, the Navy had a destroyer on-site rapidly but didn't do anything for several days, leading many to assume that the "muscle-bound American military" was once again dressed for battle but unable to act, only to have these SEAL shooters prove everybody wrong. Those shots would have been hard if not impossible to attempt without the presence of the conventional destroyer, but it was the unique capabilities of the Special Operators that were called for (and employed) to resolve the situation. We don't need real fancy stuff to get the operators in place (C-135s have been dropping Americans into battle for about a half-century and destroyers are hardly new technology), but investing in the guys who can put bullets in pirate brains under those conditions is certainly worth your tax dollars. Besides, .30-caliber bullets are way cheaper than stealthed destroyers.
In Chicago over Easter, I had an interesting conversation with one of our hosts over breakfast concerning the importance of "unique opportunities" in decision-making. Thus, with President Obama giving a speech on campus just this once and with plenty of theology classes under my belt and several more to go, I decided to cut my first class ever (I know, I'm such a square) and watch the speech televised in the student center. Not quite as cool as being able to say I was in the room (didn't hit the ticket lottery, unfortunately), but seeing him on TV from only a few hundred yards away isn't too shabby. Especially when you can look out the window and see his Secret Service snipers on the Georgetown rooftops...
Today's talk, which appeared to be largely if not wholly delivered without a Teleprompter, concerned the state of the economic crisis and what the administration has done and is doing to combat it. "Recessions are not uncommon," noted the President, "but this recession is different...caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making" from Washington to Wall St. to Main St. Repeatedly blaming a lack of "accountability or oversight from anyone in Washington" as a prime enabling factor in sowing the seeds of crisis, Obama went on to explain in layman's terms what has happened, what he's doing about it, and why his hands are so badly bound by events. Overall, it was a pretty good speech, though it is strange to see him off-text. He does struggle a bit without a Teleprompter, which is notable only because he normally appears so fluent. The other somewhat annoying tendency in his speech is repeated use of the royal "we" in places where "I" would do just fine.
As far as the actual content of the speech, Obama did not exactly break new ground. Essentially, the government needs to keep spending like it's going out of style in the short term because that is actually the case with the rest of the economy; health care and entitlement are intricately connected, wildly expensive, and desperately in need of (hopefully) coordinated reform; education and clean technology need to become priorities; the discretionary budget has to be reined in and the non-discretionary budget has to be tightened and made more efficient; there is a "glimmer of hope" but 2009 will still be "a difficult year for America's economy;" and government as a whole (this means you, Congress) needs to answer the bell and take this opportunity to rebuild the economy for the 21st century as the "house upon the rock."
Ironically, in skipping Islamic Religious Thought and Practice, I got a lecture on another five-pillared foundation from our decidedly non-Muslim President. These five pillars--Wall Street reform, new investments in education, a focus on renewable energy technology, a commitment to health care, and new savings in the Federal budget--are the foundation of our "house upon the rock." Specifically, Obama argued that new regulations on investment and banking need to be put in place in order to tie pay to job performance ("a novel concept") and--more worrying--so that the government can recoup salary and/or bonus monies from executives who have been unfairly compensated. Acknowledging that the next adventure down that road needs legal grounding and precedent to avoid the firestorm that sprang up this time is a good start; laying aside the threat of a special tax to remedy life's unfairnesses at whim would have been better. Educationally, Obama committed the U.S. to leading the world in its rate of college graduation by 2020, an effort that is being founded right now with initiatives in early-childhood education and reforming teacher compensation to reward excellence rather than tenure. The President also acknowledged that everyone knows that whichever country gets renewable energy figured out first will automatically put itself on the fast track to 21st-century dominance, lamenting that the U.S. has allowed others to get ahead thus far yet declaring that he was "unwilling to accept failure" in that area, wanting to see the U.S. take a commanding lead in renewable energy development ASAP. Health care is health care: "skyrocketing health-care costs can't be allowed to keep strangling the economy." Burgeoning public- and private-sector health-care premiums are putting the brakes on the economy, a situation which is only deteriorating as Federal health insurance costs go up and the Boomers age their way onto entitlement rolls. While acknowledging that the Federal budget is out of whack and only getting more so in the short run, Obama declared the fifth pillar of the new economic foundation to be long-term Federal budget reform--cutting the stuff that doesn't work and making more efficient the stuff that does.
All of these are excellent and practical points that have already received ample coverage by better-known scribes. Obama's overarching point today was that the 20th century was dominated by America because America led the world in the education of its populace, access to and use of energy, manageable health care benefits to as many citizens as possible, and a trend of pragmatism and discretion in personal and national budgeting. All more or less true, and all worthy of current aspiration. Getting ourselves educated will make us better innovators and workers, better innovators will help produce energy technologies that better workers will build, and so forth. As Obama also noted, we do need some money-manipulators, but we can't rest the hopes of our entire economy on prospecting number-crunchers. The President declared that the best and the brightest American minds should get back to focusing on producing "stuff" (you know, stuff that has actual value), and clean energy technologies would be a great batch of stuff to focus on producing. Government spending, meanwhile, is certainly necessary in the short term but a real effort to, as Obama put it, not just cut a few earmarks (they're a fact of life anyway) and the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts but to lay the foundations for a return to a pragmatic, responsible, and more efficient Federal budget is vital. Don't hold your breath, but we can always hope...
Regardless of just how bright the glimmer of hope in the economy may seem, there was a glimmer of hope in Obama's rhetorical focus. As you've read multiple times in this space and will doubtless read again, a return of moral courage and responsibility to the halls of power is desperately needed, and the latter portion of Obama's speech was full of calls for just that. The post-partisan promised land is still a long ways off, but the President is absolutely right that now is not the time to bicker, blow in the winds of the 24-hour news cycle, or simply ignore problems in the hope that they will go away. The risks of rebuilding on the same patch of sand in the face of all the warning signs surrounding it are almost too immense to contemplate. Obama made no bones about the pain of picking up and moving to the rock and then taking the time to carefully establish the five-pillared foundation of 21st-century economic health and dominance, but he was equally right to note that this crash has presented the country with an opportunity too good to be wasted--if those in power can seize the moment and take the long view. Clearly, we've been playing with fire for some time now, and look where it's got us. The Depression provided the tabula rasa needed to turn from the recklessness of the Roaring Twenties to the values and practices that brought us the American Century; hopefully we can use this near-Depression to similarly reboot the system for the better before it descends into another Depression, which would be a virtual certainty with the next bust cycle if we simply pull out of this crisis and get right back on the track that got us here. Obama gets it (I hope), calling to Congress that, like it or not, he and they are the ones in office today and therefore cannot duck the responsibilties thrust upon them: "we have been called to govern in extraordinary times." Let's hope they listen and learn.
*****
In other news, that was some pretty nifty shooting by those three SEALs who rescued the MAERSK Alabama's hostage captain from the Somali pirates, no? Simultaneously dropping three jittery, homicidal no-goodniks at over 80 feet is tricky enough as is; to do it at night after a night jump into the ocean, a Zodiak ride to the destroyer, and from one bobbing vessel to another is just freakin' amazing. In today's speech, Obama noted that Defense Secretary Gates's recently-proposed budget was "right on the mark" for efficient and practical use of resources. That represents an annointing by the Commander in Chief of the Young Turks taking the Pentagon by storm preaching counterinsurgency and low-intensity warfare, with GEN Petraeus at their head. This op proves they're right. As the Post noted this morning, the Navy had a destroyer on-site rapidly but didn't do anything for several days, leading many to assume that the "muscle-bound American military" was once again dressed for battle but unable to act, only to have these SEAL shooters prove everybody wrong. Those shots would have been hard if not impossible to attempt without the presence of the conventional destroyer, but it was the unique capabilities of the Special Operators that were called for (and employed) to resolve the situation. We don't need real fancy stuff to get the operators in place (C-135s have been dropping Americans into battle for about a half-century and destroyers are hardly new technology), but investing in the guys who can put bullets in pirate brains under those conditions is certainly worth your tax dollars. Besides, .30-caliber bullets are way cheaper than stealthed destroyers.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Madame Speaker, Meet CC Sabathia
For the price of new Yankee CC Sabathia's left arm, Nancy Pelosi and her cronies at COMINTERN--aka the U.S. House of Representatives--have taken a stand that really could threaten the end of capitalism as we've known it. The U.S. and world financial foundations hang on the fate of the Earth-shattering sum of $165 million--a hell of a lot to pay for a rather flabby limb or well under one tenth of one percent of the total proposed federal expenditures aimed at rescuing AIG, depending on how you look at it. A handful of former and current AIG executives looked at it as contractually-guaranteed money and took it without the appearance of giving it a second thought. Meanwhile, Treasury officials looked on, either viewing the payouts as inevitable and a rounding error in the big picture or being utterly unaware of them, depending on whose version of events you believe. Either way, it seems clear that all communications between the right hand and left hand of government were cut and the spin doctors were AWOL in a fuzzy little cloud of misperception regarding potential reactions of a hurting and angry citizenry at such payouts.
Was it right for these people to take the money and run? Certainly not, according to popular morals, but the executives' track record in the morality and public trust departments is looking a tad skimpy, so it probably wasn't wise to expect them to Do the Right Thing and return the money with endless mea culpas. Given the unsurprising fact that they didn't refuse or immediately refund their ill-gotten gains, the gut reaction of the public was understandable. What was unforgivable was Congress's (similarly predictable) cover-my-ass fest in the wake of yet again failing the "Washington Post giggle test"--a Beltway-insider's term for public reaction to the headlines. The public is supposed to get its hair on fire about the daily headlines, so that's nothing too surprising, either. Theoretically, we pay our government representatives to keep cooler heads and more complete views of the big picture. Unfortunately, Congress was keeping its head firmly in the sand, as usual. As the scandal was beginning to break, Rep. Charles Rangel, eminent democrat of New York (Sabathia's new home, incidentally), firmly opposed levying retroactive taxes or taking other such hair-on-fire measures. Days later, whose name appeared in sponsorship of a grossly reactionary and unconstitutional 90% retroactive tax proposal? If you guessed the gentleman from New York, move to the head of the class. Talk about Head-in-Cement-Syndrome: we also pay our representatives to have a working knowledge of the Constitution, which, had anyone bothered to read it (paging House Counsel...) expressly forbids ex post facto enforcement of legislation. Long story short, Rangel flipped in about 48 hours from rightly pointing out that acceeding to public outrage with just such a measure would trample the Constitution and capitalism to tripping over himself and his colleagues to lob more mud on the already besmirched bonus takers.
Public outcry was, of course, justified--and then some--by the whole sorry affair. So far, numbers and taxes have proved the bane of the 44th administration (see: Daschle, Tom; Richardson, Bill; et al). True to form, nobody figured out in time or suggested loudly enought that some Americans might have a little bitty problem with those bonus payouts when the news broke. Sure enough, the rest of America had something to say, and loudly. The problem is that, no matter how unjustified the payments may appear, their legality is unquestionable. Remember, we're still going through the aftershocks of the system as it was set up prior to the crisis, i.e. when bonus structures had not the slightest bearing on reality. None of the executives outright stole the money from a contractual standpoint (there's that tricky constitutional bit again), so it can't really be taken away. Those that remain in the employ of AIG are all on a salary of $1 per year, so they will doubtless require the bonus monies to feed their families just as CC Sabathia needs his $165 million to feed his--and he gets the whole sum. Thus, in trying to steal it back (after reducing the AIG bailout by the same amount and hearing CEO Ed Liddy publicly call for the payments' return), Congress turned itself into the bad guy and proved that this congress (and administration, to a certain extent) is at least as willing to trample on the Constitution for its own ends as the last one. Is there even any point in giving the money back to such a body? Bear in mind that government spending and private consumption are both factors of GDP (Republican members tend to gloss over this in decrying the budget), and conspicuous consumption by former AIG executives who are really feeling their oats with bonus money in their pockets may in fact be more efficient in boosting the economy than government spending (we're not in the age of post-pork, post-partisan politics yet).
What, then, is the missing ingredient? Why is everyone so angry with and distrustful of everyone else (the fundamental source of the credit crunch)? Partisanship and pork are built into the system and aren't even necessarily bad--China and Russia have pretty well solved the problem of partisan bickering without creating enviable political representation. Rather, I would agree with Michael Scheuer's hypothesis from his treatise on the War on Terror, Imperial Hubris. While Scheuer is a former CIA analyst and his text concerns counterterrorist rather than economic policy, one of his central theses is that moral courage in government has been in a steepening decline since the end of WWII or thereabouts. Cynicism and mistrust of government are understandable since no one believes that those in government mean what they say or that they have a coherent long-term plan. That doesn't necessarily mean we need to usher in an era of "Fireside Twitters" from the First Blackberry, but a way must be found for reestablishing the trust between the represented and those representing them. Unfortunately, the onus really lies on those in government in this case, and there are few if any glimmers of moral courage in government today. For example, let's talk taxes: Obama is making an effort to create responsible and desperately-needed tax hikes in order to pay down the bugeoning deficit. Bailout and stimulus may be odious, but they are also non-optional, so the deficit is only going to grow in the short term. Long-term, there still isn't that much room to cut. There was already a growing deficit before the crisis hit and all of those costs will still be there afterwards, likely massively inflated and joined by health care mandates, the ongoing costs of growing commitments in Afghanistan and the massive costs of withdrawal from Iraq (recently estimated to far exceed the cost of day-to-day operations in-country), environmental/ecological costs, and so forth. The tax base is not about to increase commensurate to the growth of the deficit, which will still have to be paid for somehow (right??). There's only one way to pay it down, and that is taxation. They might be politically poisonous, but living in a never-never land in which we can always read our politicians' lips as saying "no new taxes" is now outright fantastical folly.
Moral courage on the part of government would entail coming clean with the American people about where we are (so far as we are able to know) and where we are going. This need not involve any national security risk--simple honesty does not entail revealing closely-held state secrets. Acknowledging that we are in dire straits economically is also not aiding and abetting the enemy, since it's been rather obvious to every semi-sentient human on the face of the globe for almost a year that all is not as it was with the American or world economy. In fact, honesty may boost national security by enabling trust (and thus lending) to begin to thaw out and begin flowing again. Taxes suck and no one wants to pay any more than they have to, but living beyond our means and abandoning the "have-nots" have proven to be at least as sucky. If there is any lesson we must draw as a country from this crisis, it is that we must exercise personal responsibility over our own and our fellow citizens' lives. This was a lesson learned the hard way by the children of the Great Depression, for many of whom living on credit or receiving bonuses just for sticking around (especially when you're taking huge risks with the long-term health of the country) remain anathema to this day. Re-learning that lesson is going to be at least as painful and will require demonstrations of moral courage in spades. Moral courage was on vacation in government as oversight and controls over the economy were loosened ever more, as well as in the private sector as no one proved able to resist the lure of the shiny new toys of packaged derivatives or massive fiscal irresponsibility even in relatively good times. Racing to the bottom--epitomized by the creation, packaging, and selling of NINJA (No Income, No Job, no Assets) loans--out of sheer greed is one of the hallmarks of the moral cowardice that has held sway until now. Who in his right mind and possessed of a shred of moral courage would loan their own money to someone without income, job, or assets, never mind none of the above? Playing with other people's money proved too tempting, however, and now that we've been shown that it's not all just monopoly money after all, it is time for moral courage to stage a comeback. That, more than any headline-reactionary posturing and ass-covering by Pelosi and her ilk, will put this country back on track to solvency and sound practice. Look Madame Speaker, sometimes the GM overpays for a star pitcher who goes bust. Yeah, you get burned, but you learn. With way more resources than any GM in baseball (yes, even the Yankees'), it's time to acknowledge the screwup, let it go, and move on. We've all seen how many championships the Yankees have won lately by chasing the most popular names with unbeatable resources while the GM's forced to do more with less have been going deeper and deeper into October. Take a page out of the latter playbook and start spending wisely on the future rather than chasing the too-good-to-be-true flavor of the month. Chances are, that will only bite you in the ass. Right, A-Rod?
For the price of new Yankee CC Sabathia's left arm, Nancy Pelosi and her cronies at COMINTERN--aka the U.S. House of Representatives--have taken a stand that really could threaten the end of capitalism as we've known it. The U.S. and world financial foundations hang on the fate of the Earth-shattering sum of $165 million--a hell of a lot to pay for a rather flabby limb or well under one tenth of one percent of the total proposed federal expenditures aimed at rescuing AIG, depending on how you look at it. A handful of former and current AIG executives looked at it as contractually-guaranteed money and took it without the appearance of giving it a second thought. Meanwhile, Treasury officials looked on, either viewing the payouts as inevitable and a rounding error in the big picture or being utterly unaware of them, depending on whose version of events you believe. Either way, it seems clear that all communications between the right hand and left hand of government were cut and the spin doctors were AWOL in a fuzzy little cloud of misperception regarding potential reactions of a hurting and angry citizenry at such payouts.
Was it right for these people to take the money and run? Certainly not, according to popular morals, but the executives' track record in the morality and public trust departments is looking a tad skimpy, so it probably wasn't wise to expect them to Do the Right Thing and return the money with endless mea culpas. Given the unsurprising fact that they didn't refuse or immediately refund their ill-gotten gains, the gut reaction of the public was understandable. What was unforgivable was Congress's (similarly predictable) cover-my-ass fest in the wake of yet again failing the "Washington Post giggle test"--a Beltway-insider's term for public reaction to the headlines. The public is supposed to get its hair on fire about the daily headlines, so that's nothing too surprising, either. Theoretically, we pay our government representatives to keep cooler heads and more complete views of the big picture. Unfortunately, Congress was keeping its head firmly in the sand, as usual. As the scandal was beginning to break, Rep. Charles Rangel, eminent democrat of New York (Sabathia's new home, incidentally), firmly opposed levying retroactive taxes or taking other such hair-on-fire measures. Days later, whose name appeared in sponsorship of a grossly reactionary and unconstitutional 90% retroactive tax proposal? If you guessed the gentleman from New York, move to the head of the class. Talk about Head-in-Cement-Syndrome: we also pay our representatives to have a working knowledge of the Constitution, which, had anyone bothered to read it (paging House Counsel...) expressly forbids ex post facto enforcement of legislation. Long story short, Rangel flipped in about 48 hours from rightly pointing out that acceeding to public outrage with just such a measure would trample the Constitution and capitalism to tripping over himself and his colleagues to lob more mud on the already besmirched bonus takers.
Public outcry was, of course, justified--and then some--by the whole sorry affair. So far, numbers and taxes have proved the bane of the 44th administration (see: Daschle, Tom; Richardson, Bill; et al). True to form, nobody figured out in time or suggested loudly enought that some Americans might have a little bitty problem with those bonus payouts when the news broke. Sure enough, the rest of America had something to say, and loudly. The problem is that, no matter how unjustified the payments may appear, their legality is unquestionable. Remember, we're still going through the aftershocks of the system as it was set up prior to the crisis, i.e. when bonus structures had not the slightest bearing on reality. None of the executives outright stole the money from a contractual standpoint (there's that tricky constitutional bit again), so it can't really be taken away. Those that remain in the employ of AIG are all on a salary of $1 per year, so they will doubtless require the bonus monies to feed their families just as CC Sabathia needs his $165 million to feed his--and he gets the whole sum. Thus, in trying to steal it back (after reducing the AIG bailout by the same amount and hearing CEO Ed Liddy publicly call for the payments' return), Congress turned itself into the bad guy and proved that this congress (and administration, to a certain extent) is at least as willing to trample on the Constitution for its own ends as the last one. Is there even any point in giving the money back to such a body? Bear in mind that government spending and private consumption are both factors of GDP (Republican members tend to gloss over this in decrying the budget), and conspicuous consumption by former AIG executives who are really feeling their oats with bonus money in their pockets may in fact be more efficient in boosting the economy than government spending (we're not in the age of post-pork, post-partisan politics yet).
What, then, is the missing ingredient? Why is everyone so angry with and distrustful of everyone else (the fundamental source of the credit crunch)? Partisanship and pork are built into the system and aren't even necessarily bad--China and Russia have pretty well solved the problem of partisan bickering without creating enviable political representation. Rather, I would agree with Michael Scheuer's hypothesis from his treatise on the War on Terror, Imperial Hubris. While Scheuer is a former CIA analyst and his text concerns counterterrorist rather than economic policy, one of his central theses is that moral courage in government has been in a steepening decline since the end of WWII or thereabouts. Cynicism and mistrust of government are understandable since no one believes that those in government mean what they say or that they have a coherent long-term plan. That doesn't necessarily mean we need to usher in an era of "Fireside Twitters" from the First Blackberry, but a way must be found for reestablishing the trust between the represented and those representing them. Unfortunately, the onus really lies on those in government in this case, and there are few if any glimmers of moral courage in government today. For example, let's talk taxes: Obama is making an effort to create responsible and desperately-needed tax hikes in order to pay down the bugeoning deficit. Bailout and stimulus may be odious, but they are also non-optional, so the deficit is only going to grow in the short term. Long-term, there still isn't that much room to cut. There was already a growing deficit before the crisis hit and all of those costs will still be there afterwards, likely massively inflated and joined by health care mandates, the ongoing costs of growing commitments in Afghanistan and the massive costs of withdrawal from Iraq (recently estimated to far exceed the cost of day-to-day operations in-country), environmental/ecological costs, and so forth. The tax base is not about to increase commensurate to the growth of the deficit, which will still have to be paid for somehow (right??). There's only one way to pay it down, and that is taxation. They might be politically poisonous, but living in a never-never land in which we can always read our politicians' lips as saying "no new taxes" is now outright fantastical folly.
Moral courage on the part of government would entail coming clean with the American people about where we are (so far as we are able to know) and where we are going. This need not involve any national security risk--simple honesty does not entail revealing closely-held state secrets. Acknowledging that we are in dire straits economically is also not aiding and abetting the enemy, since it's been rather obvious to every semi-sentient human on the face of the globe for almost a year that all is not as it was with the American or world economy. In fact, honesty may boost national security by enabling trust (and thus lending) to begin to thaw out and begin flowing again. Taxes suck and no one wants to pay any more than they have to, but living beyond our means and abandoning the "have-nots" have proven to be at least as sucky. If there is any lesson we must draw as a country from this crisis, it is that we must exercise personal responsibility over our own and our fellow citizens' lives. This was a lesson learned the hard way by the children of the Great Depression, for many of whom living on credit or receiving bonuses just for sticking around (especially when you're taking huge risks with the long-term health of the country) remain anathema to this day. Re-learning that lesson is going to be at least as painful and will require demonstrations of moral courage in spades. Moral courage was on vacation in government as oversight and controls over the economy were loosened ever more, as well as in the private sector as no one proved able to resist the lure of the shiny new toys of packaged derivatives or massive fiscal irresponsibility even in relatively good times. Racing to the bottom--epitomized by the creation, packaging, and selling of NINJA (No Income, No Job, no Assets) loans--out of sheer greed is one of the hallmarks of the moral cowardice that has held sway until now. Who in his right mind and possessed of a shred of moral courage would loan their own money to someone without income, job, or assets, never mind none of the above? Playing with other people's money proved too tempting, however, and now that we've been shown that it's not all just monopoly money after all, it is time for moral courage to stage a comeback. That, more than any headline-reactionary posturing and ass-covering by Pelosi and her ilk, will put this country back on track to solvency and sound practice. Look Madame Speaker, sometimes the GM overpays for a star pitcher who goes bust. Yeah, you get burned, but you learn. With way more resources than any GM in baseball (yes, even the Yankees'), it's time to acknowledge the screwup, let it go, and move on. We've all seen how many championships the Yankees have won lately by chasing the most popular names with unbeatable resources while the GM's forced to do more with less have been going deeper and deeper into October. Take a page out of the latter playbook and start spending wisely on the future rather than chasing the too-good-to-be-true flavor of the month. Chances are, that will only bite you in the ass. Right, A-Rod?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Hail to the Chief
Welcome to the first day of the new America. Like it or not, like Obama or not, we are indubitably on a different track now than we were until 12:02pm. Somewhere, a few miles away from the lounge in which I'm writing this column, Barack Hussein Obama is dancing the night away accompanied by his wife, his children, the Presidential Protective Detail, and the Army captain who carries the nuclear "football." The apocryphal 3 am phone call, the launch codes, the bifurcated land war, the nebulous and misnomered "Global War on Terror," the climate crisis, the financial crisis, and the leadership of the free world are his and his alone now. As Truman would have it, the buck stops there. The fictional "Office of the President-Elect" has mercifully ceased its awkward and overshadowing coexistence with the constitutionally-approved office of the singularly disengaged 43rd President of the United States. In his own words, "that we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood." That, in many ways, was the underlying message woven througout Obama's inaugural address (more on that below), and it must not be forgotten. That will be especially true in the coming weeks as Obama and the presidency try each other on for size and some of the hysteria of the campaign settles down as these crises are addressed. They will not all be solved, and they certainly will not be solved quickly, but Obama can now begin his long-anticipated efforts at finding solutions. But enough sobriety--there will be plenty of time for that later and I know what you are all looking for is the view from the Mall. Here it is:
The Experience
For a fairly short ceremony--only about an hour--there was a lot to digest and to a certain extent I'm still working on that. My overwhelming impression is best expressed in Obama's own words from Grant Park: "change has come to America." I can't reinforce that enough. The overall level of euphoria--at least in the form of citywide displays of raw human emotion--was probably higher on election night than it was today, but the sense of hope and relief were and are palpable. People on the Mall sang "Na na, hey hey, goodbye" and booed as President Bush was introduced, which doesn't happen to every President on his way out. Obama enters office with a 78% approval rating--the highest ever for an incoming President. His approval rating with the crowd was more like 150%. The most meaningful part of the day, and the part that is hardest to express, is what it was like to gather with 5,000,000 like-minded people from across the country and the globe to celebrate this historic event. The city has been packed to the gills this week, yet there has been a pervading sense of hope and goodwill; a feeling that has manifested itself in extremely personable and well-behaved crowds. Despite intense cold, claustrophobia, and the many logistical snafus of the weekend, people have overall been very controlled and polite to one another. The other fascinating side of this is that you can be pretty well assured that anyone you meet on the street shares this excitement, which has meant lots of spontaneous and joyous conversations with people from all over. Not only do people look each other in the eye and compulsively grin on the streets (not exactly routine here), but everyone asks everyone else "Hey, where are you from? Aren't you excited? It's a great day for America," etc.
America's great day, in my experience, went something like this:
6:20 am--roll out of bed an hour later than I'd planned, throw on a half-dozen layers and work boots and stuff an energy bar, an apple, and my camera into my pockets while cussing myself out for not hearing my alarm.
6:30 am--finally get everything on the right way (close enough, anyway) and beat feet out of the dorm. Begin competing for cell bandwidth with a few million other early risers as I try to keep tabs on friends about a mile ahead of me. Start running.
7:15 am--arrive at the Mall, stop running. Keep sweating, though, which gets cold in a big hurry. Blisters from running 3 miles in work boots start making themselves known. Try the phone a dozen times before getting through and beginning a half-hour odyssey through the crowd, trying to find the one dark-colored glove held aloft on a stick belonging to my friends out of a few hundred of the damn things. All the while, it turns out I'm facing east and they're facing west, with both of us claiming to be on the left side of the mall. They mean south, I mean north. Yikes.
7:45 am--Find friends, crush a few more people to get there. This particular scribe does not move through the crowds like a fish through water; crushees, as noted above, keep up the good mood of the crowd and are relatively understanding and cooperative.
8:00-11:30 am--watch Sunday's concert for the 3rd time on the big screens. Freeze, wish for food or, better, coffee. Nothing doing. Sweat and blisters do their thing. Nose runs like faucet. Remember that the second-best thing about watching Giants football games in the late season, behind seeing them lose, is watching coach Tom Coughlin's face cycle through his team's colors on the sideline--white to red to blue. My face does a passable impression. [It's still a little cooked.]
11:30 am-12:45 pm--watch inaugural ceremony. Forget cold and hunger (mostly) long enough to cheer, chant, flag-wave, and celebrate with 5,000,000 other Barackolytes.
12:45-1:30 pm--get borne towards exits with huge crowd. Turns out there are only 2 of them, each wide enough for about 1.5 people at a time, and the National Guard can't quite decide which exit they want each stream of people to make for, and they sure as hell can't coordinate with the agents of the other 3 dozen uniformed security forces on duty. Push through crowd to north, get turned around and push back through the same 2 blocks' worth of people we just came through, trample the front lawn of some federal agency, and finally squeeze out between 2 jersey barriers, friends nowhere in sight.
1:45 pm--start walking 3 miles back. Cold, hungry, tired, frustrated; simultaneously going over the historic event I just witnessed and basking in the glow.
2:00 pm--afterglow not warm enough. Must find coffee. Hustle back to M street, backtrack a block and duck into Le Pain Quotidien for a pot of coffee, a cup of soup, and a curry chicken tartine. Best $25 spent in a long time.
3:15 pm--back on campus to shower, change, and wait for brain and fingers to start functioning enough to reflect properly and write about the day. [It takes 4 hours.]
The Analysis
Once it got underway (not a moment too soon!), the ceremony was quite powerful. Aretha Franklin sang; Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, and 2 others played a special John Williams composition; the Marine Corps band got the blood flowing with some Souza marches; the oaths were administered; and the speech was given. It was interesting to see the last moments of the Bush Presidency--the President looked relaxed and happy, Cheney was rolled out onto the stage in a wheelchair (that drew a reaction, believe me), and neither of them could get out of the way fast enough for the crowd's taste.
The invocation was delivered by the Rev. Rick Warren, a controversial and much-discussed choice that I felt worked out pretty well in the end. Now, I don't agree with Warren on a lot of issues, not least his right-wing brand of evangelism, but I did feel he was a powerful speaker and his invocation was well-delivered, pertinent, and moving. Rev. Warren, remember, hosted the controversial, consecutive non-debate event with Obama and McCain at his Saddleback church late in the campaign that actually delivered some of the better views of both candidates even though they were interviewed successively and did not debate face-to-face.
Senator Biden took the oath from Justice Breyer, and it went without a hitch. As he sat down, I remarked to a group standing next to me that that oath was arguably the more important of the two--exorcising Dick Cheney, in my humble opinion, in itself makes for a great day for America.
Senator Obama took his oath from Chief Justice Roberts, who flubbed it and made Obama look awkward in so doing. More on this later, too, but it was an awkward enough moment that it was one of the first things people talked about afterwards.
Finally, we heard the magical words "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States" and the 44th chief executive stepped to the podium to deliver his much-anticipated speech. (If you missed it or want to consult it, here it is.) Frankly, I thought it was a very good speech and that it addressed the aforementioned challenges forthrightly and constructively, but it was not as transcendent as I had thought it would be. The Denver speech was very good and the Grant Park speech was excellent, but I felt this one lacked some of the rhetorical oomph the country has come to expect from him. Then again, I'll take a page out of the mainstream liberal media's playbook and issue him a pass--actually assuming the mantle of power has to be a much more trying circumstance under which to speak than accepting a nomination or an election. We all know he can orate and my guess is that he will be back in the saddle full swing by the State of the Union. There were some notable lines, though I'm not sure any will be kept on the tips of American tongues for generations as some of Lincoln's and Kennedy's gems are. A few people started walking out during the speech (trying to beat the crowd, I can only assume, but I was still surprised) and almost everyone was moving before Obama even reached his seat after speaking. There was plenty of enthusiastic and heartfelt cheering at all the right moments, but I didn't see anyone who looked truly enraptured and the speech was not a universal conversation-starter after the ceremony.
Factoid of the Day That May Interest Only Me
Sure enough, Obama chose to be sworn in on the Lincoln Bible. Presidents can choose any text they like on which to swear, and most choose a Bible used by a famous predecessor whom they wish to emulate. Lincoln has been the most obvious and most referenced Presidential precedent for Obama, but it's still interesting to note that he assumed the popular perception through that gesture.
Quote of the Day I
"The challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America--they will be met."
--Barack Obama, in his inaugural address. A perfect example of the good but reality-constrained oratory of the speech. The country is ready for change and happy to party for a day, but the financial crisis is likely to appear on most front pages tomorrow and be back above the fold by week's end. America is frightened and looking for pragmatism at least as much as hope, and that's exactly what we got in this address.
Quote of the Day II
"Give to our new President, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders. ...We now commit our new President and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into Your loving care."
--Pastor Rick Warren, in his invocation. Amen to all of that.
Stat of the Day I
3 of 3
Number of the historical figures with whom Obama is most often compared (Lincoln, King, and Kennedy) who were assassinated. As Pastor Warren alluded to above, Obama's personal safety is a huge concern. Frankly, it's a not-so-small miracle that the biggest threat to anyone's physical well-being at this inauguration was the cold. If ever the country needed to pray for its President, now would be a good time. I fervently hope that Obama can combine all of the best attributes of these iconic figures and, along with his family, retire to a long and healthy life of doing whatever makes him happy whenever his time as President is up.
Stat of the Day II
78%
As mentioned, the highest approval rating of an incoming President--Obama--in history (if Gallup had existed in 1789, this might even rival Washington's). Needless to say, this is roughly 2.5 times Bush's approval rating on leaving.
Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Day I
Like I said, I woke up an hour late. Don't ask me why or how--I was just zonked, apparently. Embarassing enough on its own, extra embarassing because I have such a reputation among my friends for being a highly disciplined early riser, and a healthy dose of crow-eating for me after talking a huge game about jumping out of bed to roust everybody else last night. Pride wenteth before the fall, but luckily it didn't lead to anything more serious than the Quest for the Dark Blue Glove narrated above.
Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Day II
I touched on this earlier as well, but egress from the Mall was really poorly handled. Not only was it frustrating and apparently inexplicable, but it was very dangerous. I fully understand the security concerns involved, but I knew beforehand that I wouldn't be able to go out of the Mall to the north since Pennsylvania Ave. was blocked off for the parade. Everyone else knew it too, so we were all moving south and/or west, only to run into an alphabet soup of federal and local law enforcers all trying to enforce their own visions of pedestrian traffic flow and batting the crowd from north to south several times before anyone could cross one street west to the Washington monument and the open space that the 3,000,000 of us trying to go that way so desperately wanted. In addition to the usual risks to person and property this posed by needlessly risking stampede, I (of course) immediately thought of the emergency implications: had there been an incident of any size during the ceremony, the ensuing pandemonium and desperated crush for the exits would have killed two-thirds of the people on the Mall. The city really did a shoddy job in preparing for the crowds even after initially overestimating how many would be there. Everyone knew (or should have) that the 5,000,000 on the Mall would want to scram as soon as Obama finished speaking (we did) and found a better way to plan for that.
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think this is what I liked about Obama's address:
a) it might not have been flashy, but pragmatism was called for and delivered. Hope won him the election, reassurance is going to keep the country on his side.
b) it covered a wide range of historical ground, with liberal allusion to Washington, the Revolution, and the Founders. An important message from the man we all expect to get back to working within the parameters of the Constitution he just solemnly swore to "uphold, protect, and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic," rather than fighting them as neeless stricture as his predecessor did.
c) partway through, Obama mentioned that "We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." I couldn't agree more. If his Presidency comes to serve as a definite turn towards a new era of American maturity--and I really believe that it could--that would be an amazing legacy. We've been through our infancy, youth, and belligerent/hormonal teenage years, and it's about time we become a stronger, wiser adult.
2. I think this is what I didn't like about the speech:
a) I still think it could have been a bettter and more enduring rhetorical feat. My expectations, as with most peoples' about most things Obama, were unrealistically high. Still, I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed.
b) I was really hoping for a defining line (a la "Ask not what your country can do for you...").
3. I think whatever oath John Roberts administered to Barack Obama was legally binding...I think. Not only was it markedly different from the (correct) one sworn by Joe Biden, but the Roberts's stumbling was a glaring stumble that marred the inauguration of a man known for his speaking abilities. Many people I talked to afterwards thought that Obama was the one who stumbled, but it was actually Roberts who dropped the ball: he inverted the phrasing of the oath and then awkwardly paused, at which point Obama began dubiously to recite Roberts's delivery, only to have Roberts break back in with the right words in the right order, forcing Obama to back up and try again himself. The oath is stipulated in the Constitution and most Americans can recite it reasonably well from memory. Coming from the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, this looked downright unprofessional.
4. I think, for those of you that might have missed it, Michiko Kakutani's profile on Obama as a reader and a thinker from yesterday's New York Times, is worth your while. The article details how Obama's relationship with words has evolved over time and shaped him as a person and a politician. It also covers how his reading material and style differ from Bush's (yes, Leftie-Loosies, your 43rd President was actually quite a reader, and not of picture books, either) as well as how what Obama reads shapes his thinking. Finally, it provides a sample listing of the books Obama holds most dear.
5. I think, speaking of Obama and wordsmithing, that his choice for the inaugural poet was a flop. Even as I was leaving the Mall during her reading, I did listen to it and I didn't think it made any sense. The reading was not very well performed, either. No one else I've talked to thought it was much good, either.
6. I think, on the other hand, that the benediction was quite good. It has already stirred up some racism controversy (what doesn't?), but it was well-delivered and had what I thought were a healthy number of Civil Rights references. Catch it on YouTube if you're so inclined.
7. I think the first hundred days of this Presidency are going to really set the tone. I know I'll be eagerly watching (and likely reporting/opining), and I sincerely hope that Obama gets off to a good start and is able to maintain or, preferably, gain momentum from there.
8. I think Obama is going to have to deal with the handling of the aftermath of Bush's administration firmly and in a hurry. Many people are making good arguments for a wholehearted attempt to thoroughly lance all the boils (Guantanamo, the CIA, Blackwater, who knows what else); some are making very good arguments to move on. Personally, my dream scenario would be that of a post-Watergate-style non-action on Obama's part with a subsequent and public airing of the mountains of dirty laundry we all think we know is out there by Bush himself. Pardoning Nixon seemed inexplicable and cost Ford any chance of winning in an election, but Ford never the less knew that what the country really needed above all was to pick itself up and move forward rather than wallowing in the mire of Nixon any longer. The same goes for Bush, though I can only hope that Bush would eventually provide some kind of airing out/apology at some point. We have plenty of very real problems right now and the Bush administration is already a sunk cost; energy spent in muckraking and/or self-flagellation about yesterday is energy not directed towards solving today's and tomorrow's problems.
9. I think--and this is deeply tied to the above point--that I really liked the broad focus on and mention of "moral courage" and roughly synonomous terms in the inauguration today. Pastor Warren used such language on several instances in his invocation, Obama touched on it many times in a variety of ways in his address, and it came up a bit in the poem and benediction as well. Moral courage is sorely lacking in the halls of power in all branches of government these days, civil and military, with a pervasion instead of groupthink, head-in-cement syndrome, cover-my-ass, reactionary and institutionalized silence in and among various departments and between the government and the people. The press and the public need not and should not know everything, but neither is the enemy. The more moral courage shown by an administration, the easier it is for the public to trust it to consistently make the right calls even in the small and invisible things, and the more the public trusts the administration the less antagonistic the press will feel it has to be in its efforts to inform. Moral courage starts at the top, and if Obama could create and institutionalize a value on intelligence and moral courage in government service, that, too, would be a worthy legacy, whilst likely having the corollary benefit of "maturing" the country as I alluded to earlier.
10. I think these are my non-inaugural thoughts of the day:
a) Go see "Frost/Nixon." I mean it. Great film, well-acted, and highly pertinent.
b) After you watch it, re-read no. 8 (and then post on the blog!!).
c) Steelers-Cardinals?! Ummmm...go Steelers?
d) Don't fast-track Kurt Warner's sainthood just yet. Yes, the man's having a career year...one of three years in which he's started every game over the ten years he's played. Let's see what happens with the Super Bowl first, then see what happens next year.
e) Anybody else really want another try at Super Bowl XLII? Pioli to KC, McDaniels to Denver, Brady in rehab, everybody else hurting/retiring, Rex Ryan the new HC of the NYJ, Cassell in limbo... Good luck Patriots! You'll need it! (You could start by drafting another defensive rookie of the year...)
f) Really, truly, I'm serious about this: I want feedback about and/or on this blog. Love it? Hate it? Convenient? Inconvenient? Topics you want to hear about? New name?! Educators: any writing tips? I don't expect this to chew up huge chunks of your time or anything, but the more you can take 2 minutes to write a question or comment, the better this thing can be and the more fun it can be for everybody...which has always been the whole point anyway!
g) Last but not least, many thanks to everybody for your readership and the very positive responses I've gotten over the course of the last 4 or 5 months to what I've been putting out. I like writing this and it's a real treat to know how much you all like reading it. Thanks again and enjoy!
The Experience
For a fairly short ceremony--only about an hour--there was a lot to digest and to a certain extent I'm still working on that. My overwhelming impression is best expressed in Obama's own words from Grant Park: "change has come to America." I can't reinforce that enough. The overall level of euphoria--at least in the form of citywide displays of raw human emotion--was probably higher on election night than it was today, but the sense of hope and relief were and are palpable. People on the Mall sang "Na na, hey hey, goodbye" and booed as President Bush was introduced, which doesn't happen to every President on his way out. Obama enters office with a 78% approval rating--the highest ever for an incoming President. His approval rating with the crowd was more like 150%. The most meaningful part of the day, and the part that is hardest to express, is what it was like to gather with 5,000,000 like-minded people from across the country and the globe to celebrate this historic event. The city has been packed to the gills this week, yet there has been a pervading sense of hope and goodwill; a feeling that has manifested itself in extremely personable and well-behaved crowds. Despite intense cold, claustrophobia, and the many logistical snafus of the weekend, people have overall been very controlled and polite to one another. The other fascinating side of this is that you can be pretty well assured that anyone you meet on the street shares this excitement, which has meant lots of spontaneous and joyous conversations with people from all over. Not only do people look each other in the eye and compulsively grin on the streets (not exactly routine here), but everyone asks everyone else "Hey, where are you from? Aren't you excited? It's a great day for America," etc.
America's great day, in my experience, went something like this:
6:20 am--roll out of bed an hour later than I'd planned, throw on a half-dozen layers and work boots and stuff an energy bar, an apple, and my camera into my pockets while cussing myself out for not hearing my alarm.
6:30 am--finally get everything on the right way (close enough, anyway) and beat feet out of the dorm. Begin competing for cell bandwidth with a few million other early risers as I try to keep tabs on friends about a mile ahead of me. Start running.
7:15 am--arrive at the Mall, stop running. Keep sweating, though, which gets cold in a big hurry. Blisters from running 3 miles in work boots start making themselves known. Try the phone a dozen times before getting through and beginning a half-hour odyssey through the crowd, trying to find the one dark-colored glove held aloft on a stick belonging to my friends out of a few hundred of the damn things. All the while, it turns out I'm facing east and they're facing west, with both of us claiming to be on the left side of the mall. They mean south, I mean north. Yikes.
7:45 am--Find friends, crush a few more people to get there. This particular scribe does not move through the crowds like a fish through water; crushees, as noted above, keep up the good mood of the crowd and are relatively understanding and cooperative.
8:00-11:30 am--watch Sunday's concert for the 3rd time on the big screens. Freeze, wish for food or, better, coffee. Nothing doing. Sweat and blisters do their thing. Nose runs like faucet. Remember that the second-best thing about watching Giants football games in the late season, behind seeing them lose, is watching coach Tom Coughlin's face cycle through his team's colors on the sideline--white to red to blue. My face does a passable impression. [It's still a little cooked.]
11:30 am-12:45 pm--watch inaugural ceremony. Forget cold and hunger (mostly) long enough to cheer, chant, flag-wave, and celebrate with 5,000,000 other Barackolytes.
12:45-1:30 pm--get borne towards exits with huge crowd. Turns out there are only 2 of them, each wide enough for about 1.5 people at a time, and the National Guard can't quite decide which exit they want each stream of people to make for, and they sure as hell can't coordinate with the agents of the other 3 dozen uniformed security forces on duty. Push through crowd to north, get turned around and push back through the same 2 blocks' worth of people we just came through, trample the front lawn of some federal agency, and finally squeeze out between 2 jersey barriers, friends nowhere in sight.
1:45 pm--start walking 3 miles back. Cold, hungry, tired, frustrated; simultaneously going over the historic event I just witnessed and basking in the glow.
2:00 pm--afterglow not warm enough. Must find coffee. Hustle back to M street, backtrack a block and duck into Le Pain Quotidien for a pot of coffee, a cup of soup, and a curry chicken tartine. Best $25 spent in a long time.
3:15 pm--back on campus to shower, change, and wait for brain and fingers to start functioning enough to reflect properly and write about the day. [It takes 4 hours.]
The Analysis
Once it got underway (not a moment too soon!), the ceremony was quite powerful. Aretha Franklin sang; Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, and 2 others played a special John Williams composition; the Marine Corps band got the blood flowing with some Souza marches; the oaths were administered; and the speech was given. It was interesting to see the last moments of the Bush Presidency--the President looked relaxed and happy, Cheney was rolled out onto the stage in a wheelchair (that drew a reaction, believe me), and neither of them could get out of the way fast enough for the crowd's taste.
The invocation was delivered by the Rev. Rick Warren, a controversial and much-discussed choice that I felt worked out pretty well in the end. Now, I don't agree with Warren on a lot of issues, not least his right-wing brand of evangelism, but I did feel he was a powerful speaker and his invocation was well-delivered, pertinent, and moving. Rev. Warren, remember, hosted the controversial, consecutive non-debate event with Obama and McCain at his Saddleback church late in the campaign that actually delivered some of the better views of both candidates even though they were interviewed successively and did not debate face-to-face.
Senator Biden took the oath from Justice Breyer, and it went without a hitch. As he sat down, I remarked to a group standing next to me that that oath was arguably the more important of the two--exorcising Dick Cheney, in my humble opinion, in itself makes for a great day for America.
Senator Obama took his oath from Chief Justice Roberts, who flubbed it and made Obama look awkward in so doing. More on this later, too, but it was an awkward enough moment that it was one of the first things people talked about afterwards.
Finally, we heard the magical words "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States" and the 44th chief executive stepped to the podium to deliver his much-anticipated speech. (If you missed it or want to consult it, here it is.) Frankly, I thought it was a very good speech and that it addressed the aforementioned challenges forthrightly and constructively, but it was not as transcendent as I had thought it would be. The Denver speech was very good and the Grant Park speech was excellent, but I felt this one lacked some of the rhetorical oomph the country has come to expect from him. Then again, I'll take a page out of the mainstream liberal media's playbook and issue him a pass--actually assuming the mantle of power has to be a much more trying circumstance under which to speak than accepting a nomination or an election. We all know he can orate and my guess is that he will be back in the saddle full swing by the State of the Union. There were some notable lines, though I'm not sure any will be kept on the tips of American tongues for generations as some of Lincoln's and Kennedy's gems are. A few people started walking out during the speech (trying to beat the crowd, I can only assume, but I was still surprised) and almost everyone was moving before Obama even reached his seat after speaking. There was plenty of enthusiastic and heartfelt cheering at all the right moments, but I didn't see anyone who looked truly enraptured and the speech was not a universal conversation-starter after the ceremony.
Factoid of the Day That May Interest Only Me
Sure enough, Obama chose to be sworn in on the Lincoln Bible. Presidents can choose any text they like on which to swear, and most choose a Bible used by a famous predecessor whom they wish to emulate. Lincoln has been the most obvious and most referenced Presidential precedent for Obama, but it's still interesting to note that he assumed the popular perception through that gesture.
Quote of the Day I
"The challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America--they will be met."
--Barack Obama, in his inaugural address. A perfect example of the good but reality-constrained oratory of the speech. The country is ready for change and happy to party for a day, but the financial crisis is likely to appear on most front pages tomorrow and be back above the fold by week's end. America is frightened and looking for pragmatism at least as much as hope, and that's exactly what we got in this address.
Quote of the Day II
"Give to our new President, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders. ...We now commit our new President and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into Your loving care."
--Pastor Rick Warren, in his invocation. Amen to all of that.
Stat of the Day I
3 of 3
Number of the historical figures with whom Obama is most often compared (Lincoln, King, and Kennedy) who were assassinated. As Pastor Warren alluded to above, Obama's personal safety is a huge concern. Frankly, it's a not-so-small miracle that the biggest threat to anyone's physical well-being at this inauguration was the cold. If ever the country needed to pray for its President, now would be a good time. I fervently hope that Obama can combine all of the best attributes of these iconic figures and, along with his family, retire to a long and healthy life of doing whatever makes him happy whenever his time as President is up.
Stat of the Day II
78%
As mentioned, the highest approval rating of an incoming President--Obama--in history (if Gallup had existed in 1789, this might even rival Washington's). Needless to say, this is roughly 2.5 times Bush's approval rating on leaving.
Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Day I
Like I said, I woke up an hour late. Don't ask me why or how--I was just zonked, apparently. Embarassing enough on its own, extra embarassing because I have such a reputation among my friends for being a highly disciplined early riser, and a healthy dose of crow-eating for me after talking a huge game about jumping out of bed to roust everybody else last night. Pride wenteth before the fall, but luckily it didn't lead to anything more serious than the Quest for the Dark Blue Glove narrated above.
Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Day II
I touched on this earlier as well, but egress from the Mall was really poorly handled. Not only was it frustrating and apparently inexplicable, but it was very dangerous. I fully understand the security concerns involved, but I knew beforehand that I wouldn't be able to go out of the Mall to the north since Pennsylvania Ave. was blocked off for the parade. Everyone else knew it too, so we were all moving south and/or west, only to run into an alphabet soup of federal and local law enforcers all trying to enforce their own visions of pedestrian traffic flow and batting the crowd from north to south several times before anyone could cross one street west to the Washington monument and the open space that the 3,000,000 of us trying to go that way so desperately wanted. In addition to the usual risks to person and property this posed by needlessly risking stampede, I (of course) immediately thought of the emergency implications: had there been an incident of any size during the ceremony, the ensuing pandemonium and desperated crush for the exits would have killed two-thirds of the people on the Mall. The city really did a shoddy job in preparing for the crowds even after initially overestimating how many would be there. Everyone knew (or should have) that the 5,000,000 on the Mall would want to scram as soon as Obama finished speaking (we did) and found a better way to plan for that.
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think this is what I liked about Obama's address:
a) it might not have been flashy, but pragmatism was called for and delivered. Hope won him the election, reassurance is going to keep the country on his side.
b) it covered a wide range of historical ground, with liberal allusion to Washington, the Revolution, and the Founders. An important message from the man we all expect to get back to working within the parameters of the Constitution he just solemnly swore to "uphold, protect, and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic," rather than fighting them as neeless stricture as his predecessor did.
c) partway through, Obama mentioned that "We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." I couldn't agree more. If his Presidency comes to serve as a definite turn towards a new era of American maturity--and I really believe that it could--that would be an amazing legacy. We've been through our infancy, youth, and belligerent/hormonal teenage years, and it's about time we become a stronger, wiser adult.
2. I think this is what I didn't like about the speech:
a) I still think it could have been a bettter and more enduring rhetorical feat. My expectations, as with most peoples' about most things Obama, were unrealistically high. Still, I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed.
b) I was really hoping for a defining line (a la "Ask not what your country can do for you...").
3. I think whatever oath John Roberts administered to Barack Obama was legally binding...I think. Not only was it markedly different from the (correct) one sworn by Joe Biden, but the Roberts's stumbling was a glaring stumble that marred the inauguration of a man known for his speaking abilities. Many people I talked to afterwards thought that Obama was the one who stumbled, but it was actually Roberts who dropped the ball: he inverted the phrasing of the oath and then awkwardly paused, at which point Obama began dubiously to recite Roberts's delivery, only to have Roberts break back in with the right words in the right order, forcing Obama to back up and try again himself. The oath is stipulated in the Constitution and most Americans can recite it reasonably well from memory. Coming from the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, this looked downright unprofessional.
4. I think, for those of you that might have missed it, Michiko Kakutani's profile on Obama as a reader and a thinker from yesterday's New York Times, is worth your while. The article details how Obama's relationship with words has evolved over time and shaped him as a person and a politician. It also covers how his reading material and style differ from Bush's (yes, Leftie-Loosies, your 43rd President was actually quite a reader, and not of picture books, either) as well as how what Obama reads shapes his thinking. Finally, it provides a sample listing of the books Obama holds most dear.
5. I think, speaking of Obama and wordsmithing, that his choice for the inaugural poet was a flop. Even as I was leaving the Mall during her reading, I did listen to it and I didn't think it made any sense. The reading was not very well performed, either. No one else I've talked to thought it was much good, either.
6. I think, on the other hand, that the benediction was quite good. It has already stirred up some racism controversy (what doesn't?), but it was well-delivered and had what I thought were a healthy number of Civil Rights references. Catch it on YouTube if you're so inclined.
7. I think the first hundred days of this Presidency are going to really set the tone. I know I'll be eagerly watching (and likely reporting/opining), and I sincerely hope that Obama gets off to a good start and is able to maintain or, preferably, gain momentum from there.
8. I think Obama is going to have to deal with the handling of the aftermath of Bush's administration firmly and in a hurry. Many people are making good arguments for a wholehearted attempt to thoroughly lance all the boils (Guantanamo, the CIA, Blackwater, who knows what else); some are making very good arguments to move on. Personally, my dream scenario would be that of a post-Watergate-style non-action on Obama's part with a subsequent and public airing of the mountains of dirty laundry we all think we know is out there by Bush himself. Pardoning Nixon seemed inexplicable and cost Ford any chance of winning in an election, but Ford never the less knew that what the country really needed above all was to pick itself up and move forward rather than wallowing in the mire of Nixon any longer. The same goes for Bush, though I can only hope that Bush would eventually provide some kind of airing out/apology at some point. We have plenty of very real problems right now and the Bush administration is already a sunk cost; energy spent in muckraking and/or self-flagellation about yesterday is energy not directed towards solving today's and tomorrow's problems.
9. I think--and this is deeply tied to the above point--that I really liked the broad focus on and mention of "moral courage" and roughly synonomous terms in the inauguration today. Pastor Warren used such language on several instances in his invocation, Obama touched on it many times in a variety of ways in his address, and it came up a bit in the poem and benediction as well. Moral courage is sorely lacking in the halls of power in all branches of government these days, civil and military, with a pervasion instead of groupthink, head-in-cement syndrome, cover-my-ass, reactionary and institutionalized silence in and among various departments and between the government and the people. The press and the public need not and should not know everything, but neither is the enemy. The more moral courage shown by an administration, the easier it is for the public to trust it to consistently make the right calls even in the small and invisible things, and the more the public trusts the administration the less antagonistic the press will feel it has to be in its efforts to inform. Moral courage starts at the top, and if Obama could create and institutionalize a value on intelligence and moral courage in government service, that, too, would be a worthy legacy, whilst likely having the corollary benefit of "maturing" the country as I alluded to earlier.
10. I think these are my non-inaugural thoughts of the day:
a) Go see "Frost/Nixon." I mean it. Great film, well-acted, and highly pertinent.
b) After you watch it, re-read no. 8 (and then post on the blog!!).
c) Steelers-Cardinals?! Ummmm...go Steelers?
d) Don't fast-track Kurt Warner's sainthood just yet. Yes, the man's having a career year...one of three years in which he's started every game over the ten years he's played. Let's see what happens with the Super Bowl first, then see what happens next year.
e) Anybody else really want another try at Super Bowl XLII? Pioli to KC, McDaniels to Denver, Brady in rehab, everybody else hurting/retiring, Rex Ryan the new HC of the NYJ, Cassell in limbo... Good luck Patriots! You'll need it! (You could start by drafting another defensive rookie of the year...)
f) Really, truly, I'm serious about this: I want feedback about and/or on this blog. Love it? Hate it? Convenient? Inconvenient? Topics you want to hear about? New name?! Educators: any writing tips? I don't expect this to chew up huge chunks of your time or anything, but the more you can take 2 minutes to write a question or comment, the better this thing can be and the more fun it can be for everybody...which has always been the whole point anyway!
g) Last but not least, many thanks to everybody for your readership and the very positive responses I've gotten over the course of the last 4 or 5 months to what I've been putting out. I like writing this and it's a real treat to know how much you all like reading it. Thanks again and enjoy!
Monday, January 19, 2009
We Are One Concert 1/18/09
The first official post of the new blog! It's going to be pretty quick, but here we go. I'll be back in force tomorrow...
As long as I'm counting this entire four-day weekend as basically one big national birthday party for me, which I am--though I'll cede the limelight to one Barack H. Obama for part of tomorrow--yesterday was one of the best birthday presents I've ever received. The inaugural committee put on a two-hour concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that featured most of the big names in entertainment from the past thirty years or so, and culminated with addresses from Biden and Obama themselves. In other words, I just saw a whole planetarium's worth of stars, the vice-president-elect and president-elect of the United States, and was seen on HBO and the front page of this morning's New York Times, all in the space of the last twenty-four hours. For those of you that try to find me on HBO or the Times, I'm a bit hard to spot--approximately 200,395th from left in the Times, seen fleetingly on TV--but I'm there none the less.
As far as the aforementioned planetarium goes, here is a sample listing as I recall it:
Entertainment: Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Jack Black, Tiger Woods, George Lopez, Steve Carell, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Forrest Whittaker, and two bald eagles from the National Zoo.
Music: Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Herbie Hancock, Usher, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Josh Groban, Renee Fleming and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, will.i.am, Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp, Garth Brooks, Jon Bon Jovi, U2, Beyonce, and Pete Seeger.
And that's just a partial list of all the acts we got to see in two hours. We were close enough that I could actually see all of the performers (including Obama and Biden), albeit as tiny little specks. Springsteen was good, Mellencamp was great, U2 was fantastic, and Garth brought the house down with an abbreviated "American Pie," "Shout," and his own "We Shall Be Free." All the performers either covered famous songs having to do with solidarity/love/peace/Americana/etc. or played their own songs on the same topics. Many appeared together with one another (Sheryl Crow, will.i.am and Herbie Hancock on "One Love," and so forth) and most only got one song. Garth got about 2.5 (only the highlights from the 8-minute "American Pie") and U2 got two ("Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "City of Blinding Lights"). All in all, a ticket that would have been about a zillion dollars had they actually charged to see all those people. As I mentioned to my friends at the concert, this weekend alone is worth at least my second semester tuition if not the whole year's. At the end of the concert, Springsteen came back onstage and then introduced Pete Seeger to lead the crowd in "This Land is Your Land." That performance was priceless, and thanks to the new blog format you all can watch it here. The other highlight you have to see is Jamie Foxx doing a spot-on impression of Obama's speech in Grant Park on election night (sorry the video's not that great--that's one thing I can't control).
All in all, a wonderful way to spend the second day of my nineteenth year (along with 400,000 other people). From a musical standpoint (longer set, real fans who know the words and sing along, etc.), I've seen better concerts, but I've never seen anything that had quite the atmosphere of yesterday's extravaganza. Part of it was the gathering of people from all over the country to celebrate the inauguration, part of it was the huge collection of celebrities, and part of it was the pure novelty and joy of singing and head-bobbing (no joke) along with the man who will become the 44th President of the United States tomorrow at noon. Whatever you might have thought or continue to think about Obama vs. McCain, I would say that this weekend would have been meaningful but not nearly as fun had McCain won. Not that the concert necessarily wouldn't have happened, but the city has really bent over backwards to make this weekend an experience and I can't help but think it's partially due to Obama's election. So, to all of you who were kind enough to vote for Obama, thanks for a hell of a birthday present!
That's it for now, but I thought you would all enjoy a little vicarious taste of what it's like to be here right now. As mentioned above, I'll be back at full strength tomorrow with all kinds of euphoric things I think and quotes of the day and predictions and reactions and....
In honor of SI's Peter King, whose "10 Things I Think I Think" column feature inspired me to get started on firing off all the things I've thought I've thought over the past year, I'll once again shamelessly loot his column from this morning and give you one of his quotes of the week:
"Barack Obama is selling hope, and I'm buying."
--Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin [I'd add that, as a 36-year-old black man, Tomlin is already the youngest head coach to get his team to the Super Bowl and stands a good chance of becoming the youngest to win it, as well as the second black head coach to win it. Finally, it was Tomlin's Steelers who came to town and beat the Redskins on election weekend, a traditional sign that the incumbent party will lose the White House. Coincidence? Happenstance? You tell me...)
Once again, please do react to this via comment and/or email. To a certain extent, it's your column--take some ownership and help me make it better. The feedback you send, the better it will get and the faster that will happen. As my other influence Rick Reilly says, "Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea?" Pass it along s'il vous plait...
As long as I'm counting this entire four-day weekend as basically one big national birthday party for me, which I am--though I'll cede the limelight to one Barack H. Obama for part of tomorrow--yesterday was one of the best birthday presents I've ever received. The inaugural committee put on a two-hour concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that featured most of the big names in entertainment from the past thirty years or so, and culminated with addresses from Biden and Obama themselves. In other words, I just saw a whole planetarium's worth of stars, the vice-president-elect and president-elect of the United States, and was seen on HBO and the front page of this morning's New York Times, all in the space of the last twenty-four hours. For those of you that try to find me on HBO or the Times, I'm a bit hard to spot--approximately 200,395th from left in the Times, seen fleetingly on TV--but I'm there none the less.
As far as the aforementioned planetarium goes, here is a sample listing as I recall it:
Entertainment: Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Jack Black, Tiger Woods, George Lopez, Steve Carell, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Forrest Whittaker, and two bald eagles from the National Zoo.
Music: Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Herbie Hancock, Usher, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Josh Groban, Renee Fleming and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, will.i.am, Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp, Garth Brooks, Jon Bon Jovi, U2, Beyonce, and Pete Seeger.
And that's just a partial list of all the acts we got to see in two hours. We were close enough that I could actually see all of the performers (including Obama and Biden), albeit as tiny little specks. Springsteen was good, Mellencamp was great, U2 was fantastic, and Garth brought the house down with an abbreviated "American Pie," "Shout," and his own "We Shall Be Free." All the performers either covered famous songs having to do with solidarity/love/peace/Americana/etc. or played their own songs on the same topics. Many appeared together with one another (Sheryl Crow, will.i.am and Herbie Hancock on "One Love," and so forth) and most only got one song. Garth got about 2.5 (only the highlights from the 8-minute "American Pie") and U2 got two ("Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "City of Blinding Lights"). All in all, a ticket that would have been about a zillion dollars had they actually charged to see all those people. As I mentioned to my friends at the concert, this weekend alone is worth at least my second semester tuition if not the whole year's. At the end of the concert, Springsteen came back onstage and then introduced Pete Seeger to lead the crowd in "This Land is Your Land." That performance was priceless, and thanks to the new blog format you all can watch it here. The other highlight you have to see is Jamie Foxx doing a spot-on impression of Obama's speech in Grant Park on election night (sorry the video's not that great--that's one thing I can't control).
All in all, a wonderful way to spend the second day of my nineteenth year (along with 400,000 other people). From a musical standpoint (longer set, real fans who know the words and sing along, etc.), I've seen better concerts, but I've never seen anything that had quite the atmosphere of yesterday's extravaganza. Part of it was the gathering of people from all over the country to celebrate the inauguration, part of it was the huge collection of celebrities, and part of it was the pure novelty and joy of singing and head-bobbing (no joke) along with the man who will become the 44th President of the United States tomorrow at noon. Whatever you might have thought or continue to think about Obama vs. McCain, I would say that this weekend would have been meaningful but not nearly as fun had McCain won. Not that the concert necessarily wouldn't have happened, but the city has really bent over backwards to make this weekend an experience and I can't help but think it's partially due to Obama's election. So, to all of you who were kind enough to vote for Obama, thanks for a hell of a birthday present!
That's it for now, but I thought you would all enjoy a little vicarious taste of what it's like to be here right now. As mentioned above, I'll be back at full strength tomorrow with all kinds of euphoric things I think and quotes of the day and predictions and reactions and....
In honor of SI's Peter King, whose "10 Things I Think I Think" column feature inspired me to get started on firing off all the things I've thought I've thought over the past year, I'll once again shamelessly loot his column from this morning and give you one of his quotes of the week:
"Barack Obama is selling hope, and I'm buying."
--Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin [I'd add that, as a 36-year-old black man, Tomlin is already the youngest head coach to get his team to the Super Bowl and stands a good chance of becoming the youngest to win it, as well as the second black head coach to win it. Finally, it was Tomlin's Steelers who came to town and beat the Redskins on election weekend, a traditional sign that the incumbent party will lose the White House. Coincidence? Happenstance? You tell me...)
Once again, please do react to this via comment and/or email. To a certain extent, it's your column--take some ownership and help me make it better. The feedback you send, the better it will get and the faster that will happen. As my other influence Rick Reilly says, "Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea?" Pass it along s'il vous plait...
Welcome Aboard!
New year, new administration--time for a new look for the rather obnoxiously (and hopefully temporarily) titled "Thoughts of Steele." This thing needs a new name in the worst way but I had to put something on it and that was the best I could do off the cuff. Any and all name submissions greatly appreciated; you'll know you won if your idea shows up on the homepage!
For the record, I didn't think I was going to make the switch to blogging, either. It was indeed easy to set up, however, and I really think it will allow both me and all of you more flexibility in writing and disseminating all the things I think I think. I can work piecemeal, you can read everything at your leisure and comment on it directly on the blog (and thus converse with each other) if you so choose, and it is enabled (I think!) so that you can share specific posts with your friends via email.
As far as my goals in making the switch--beyond making this more user-friendly for everybody--I am most interested in broadening the conversation and trying to enable more and easier response to my thoughts. I'm not planning on advertising talking this thing up too much, but you are free to share it with whomever you feel might be interested in what's here. I really enjoy writing this and it sounds like most of you enjoy reading it and some of you forward my emails to friends or print them out. Keep it up. Email specific posts to people, send them the link to the entire thing at let them peruse at will, it's up to you. I will try to send email reminders when I post at least to start with, but I'm really trying to move in the direction of making this my primary means of publishing opinion (daily life will still be sent by email), so get in the habit of checking occasionally. I'll post when I have time and material (read: unpredictably), and I'll try to upload the text of emails from earlier in the year at some point so you can have access to all of my writings.
End of sermon. I sincerely hope you enjoy this new format and that it fulfills my goals of making it easier for everybody to get involved. I always like hearing from you all with responses, suggestions, and whatever else is on your minds. Post to the blog if you want to get into the conversation with everybody (I hope you do!), email me if that's easier or you have something specific. Especially early on, the more comments you're willing to send me, the better this will be and the more we can all enjoy it. Don't forget new title submissions!
For the record, I didn't think I was going to make the switch to blogging, either. It was indeed easy to set up, however, and I really think it will allow both me and all of you more flexibility in writing and disseminating all the things I think I think. I can work piecemeal, you can read everything at your leisure and comment on it directly on the blog (and thus converse with each other) if you so choose, and it is enabled (I think!) so that you can share specific posts with your friends via email.
As far as my goals in making the switch--beyond making this more user-friendly for everybody--I am most interested in broadening the conversation and trying to enable more and easier response to my thoughts. I'm not planning on advertising talking this thing up too much, but you are free to share it with whomever you feel might be interested in what's here. I really enjoy writing this and it sounds like most of you enjoy reading it and some of you forward my emails to friends or print them out. Keep it up. Email specific posts to people, send them the link to the entire thing at let them peruse at will, it's up to you. I will try to send email reminders when I post at least to start with, but I'm really trying to move in the direction of making this my primary means of publishing opinion (daily life will still be sent by email), so get in the habit of checking occasionally. I'll post when I have time and material (read: unpredictably), and I'll try to upload the text of emails from earlier in the year at some point so you can have access to all of my writings.
End of sermon. I sincerely hope you enjoy this new format and that it fulfills my goals of making it easier for everybody to get involved. I always like hearing from you all with responses, suggestions, and whatever else is on your minds. Post to the blog if you want to get into the conversation with everybody (I hope you do!), email me if that's easier or you have something specific. Especially early on, the more comments you're willing to send me, the better this will be and the more we can all enjoy it. Don't forget new title submissions!
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