Falstaff

Fighting a dumb war

2012-01-23T15:30:00.002-05:00

Paul Krugman correctly reams Larry Summers for having given Obama exactly the wrong advice on the economy -- and having done so from the get-go, as revealed in Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article about the newly released White House memos.

The broader point about Obama, though, is one that Lizza characteristically raises and misses. As usual, he doesn’t deeply understand the meaning of his own facts – or even his own observations about those facts.

The thing he misses here is that there’s no such thing as “public opinion” in a holistic or monolithic sense. There are (a) widespread feelings (things are getting better or getting worse); and (b) strong feelings about particular topics (abortion is a woman’s right, it is murder). So, yes, there is general “distrust of government.” But there’s also at least equal distrust of business – and therefore a widespread desire for help against its predations. There’s an even more widespread desire for someone to lead, already. There are many widely held and mutually contradictory wishes and biases and feelings and beliefs.

The reason Obama flunked was his lack of any personal information about which of those actually mattered. He picked the wrong version of “the public’s beliefs” to follow. In fact, framing this whole thing in terms of “attitudes toward government” is, yet again, an example of accepting the right’s frames, rather than fighting your battles on your home field. Think "entitlement plans." Lizza, like most of the MSN, is stuck inside frames Obama himself promulgated, which speak more to the Precious's psychic needs than to the needs of the country -- or even the prospects for political success.

Objectively (vs. psychologically) speaking, Obama didn’t have to wind up hog-tied and flunko. He could have framed this whole thing as getting the American social compact back to health and getting Americans back to work – something Hillary would have understood and done in a heartbeat. FDR surely did. Despite Lizza's ruminations on the limits of presidential influence -- and despite actual presidents' own humility on the subject -- is there any credible argument that the public was already pressing for the New Deal before Roosevelt got into office? Can there be any doubt that FDR shaped a new frame, a new model of government itself? Or that he did so in a political environment every bit as polarized as this one?

Lizza does report some salutary observations and ideas -- e.g., that the polarization we've seen is asymmetrical. But then he doesn't follow through on their implications. Given that asymmetry, shouldn't any actual attempt to wind up in a space of actual policy efficacy have pushed harder against the GOP than the Dems?

The truth is that Obama lost these battles before they began, because he chose to fight (or, rather, to wave the white flag within) the wrong battles. To paraphrase someone, he shouldn't have been against all wars -- just dumb ones.

A pivot?

2012-01-13T00:07:00.005-05:00

God may or may not play dice with the universe, but She is clearly watching out for Barack Obama. (Or, conversely, our president cut a really good deal with Beelzebub.) Whatever the agency for the way events are rolling out, he/she/it is making sure that O'll cross the finish line first a year hence. The whole thing feels like "The Truman Show" (before Jim Carrey's epiphany -- when everyone in town was scrambling to construct a nice world around him).

Consider his likely opposition, and the basket case GOP that is shooting itself in the forehead around him. If David Axelrod had gone to sleep and dreamed of a foil as perfect as Mitt Romney has turned out to be... and if he had then drifted into a reverie in which the entire phalanx of Romney's wingnut opponents would brand him indelibly as a hybrid of Freddy Kruger and Gordon Gekko... Axelrod wouldn't have dared to write it down when he woke up -- it's that outlandish.

I can't think of anything comparable in my lifetime of watching politics. When the Left turned on LBJ and by extension Hubert Humphrey, at least they were criticizing them for not being left enough. For Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry to use their dying campaigns to brand Romney as the Bain of the working class... it's as though Noam Chomsky had bought time on the Super Bowl to eviscerate Hillary Clinton as a raging socialist.

Of course, the hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. So much so that one is tempted to wonder whether "Newt Gingrich" and "Rick Perry" were planted as Manchurian candibots 60 years ago -- by, you know, the Trilateral Masons.

Anyway, whatever it says about them, I think the branding of Mitt will stick -- its sources are ideologically impeccable, and it lights up exactly Romney's Achilles heel. Romney, of course, is reinforcing this branding with his every excuse and clueless metaphor. He's George H.W. Bush at the checkout counter on steroids.

I watched "When Mitt Romney Came to Town" tonight, and I have to say, it feels to me as though this moment is a pivot, if not to the left, then at least away from the right. When Krugman and Brooks walk into that same room through different doors for the same edition of the paper, maybe something's up. And the irony of ironies is that its beneficiary will be the phantom Democrat now in the White House, the Luck Child of modern global politics.

One can only hope there's a Truman Show-style awakening on tap for this show's second season.

A national -- no, make that global -- resource

2012-01-01T23:49:00.002-05:00

I'm talking about Paul Krugman. He is truly a remarkable thinker, teacher, writer. Tomorrow's column is just one among hundreds that actually teach something. He is to economics what Pauline Kael was to film criticism.

Politics was the point

2011-12-09T21:41:00.003-05:00

I like Rebecca Traister a lot, mostly. And I like the fact that she takes our Patriarch in Chief to task for his decision and his language in reversing healthcare experts' judgment about sales of Plan B. But she's still stuck in Obama Apologia mode:

"It should no longer come as a surprise that the president of the United States is, on perhaps an unconscious level, an old-school patriarch. What’s startling is the degree to which Obama seems not to have learned from any of his past gaffes, how no one seems to have told him – or told him in a way that he’s absorbed – that the best way to address a question of women’s health and rights is probably not by making it about his role as a father.
"This might be an especially valuable chat to have with the president as he moves into 2012 and toward an election in which he is going to be relying on the support of people he has just managed to anger, offend and speak down to — women. The least he could do is learn to address them with respect."

Not learned from past gaffes? This assumes it was an unconscious habit of mind, expressed in an unfortunate turn of phrase. But however he framed it, it's quite apparent that this decision was deliberate, political and his from the get-go. It's a silly lie that Sibelius made this call independently and that he only found out about it when we all did. He and his political advisors, the Boys Club of the West Wing, made the calculation that most voters -- or enough of them, anyway -- aren't ready to think about their daughters' sexuality, and so he simply threw out the data and ignored the considered expertise of medical professionals.

There's real sexism here, but it's not unconscious. It's considered. He thinks that the political price to be paid for principled action would be greater than the political price to be paid for unprincipled action. He thinks most people aren't ready for this, and anyway, women voters still have nowhere else to go.

Make mine a double - updated

2011-11-21T22:53:00.005-05:00

Surprising outcome? Say what? Draconian deficit-reduction was the whole idea of this sword of Damocles.

Anyway, looks like we're gonna get double-dip. Conventional wisdom -- and Mitt's strategy, I'm sure -- will be that this shit lands on Obama's shoes. Is there anything he can do to reverse this? I don't mean anything substantive -- it's far too late for that. I mean something political. Can he sell the idea that the GOP drove us into recession with their ideological refusal to tax the rich? Can he sell anything at all?

Update: Lest "surprising outcome" look cryptic, that was how the story was headlined last night. Some editor clearly thought better of it.

It'll be our fault -- in fact, it already is

2011-11-21T18:03:00.002-05:00

One of the stranger logical pathologies of the Obama phenomenon is the way in which his acolytes reconfigure the known universe around his blankness, emptiness and passivity. There's no questioning of his own agency in what happens to him, or to us. He is the still point in a changing world, and it is the responsibility of that world to ensure that his actions (or, rather, non-actions) come out (or are seen to come out) right.

Case in point, this post by Earl Ofari Hutchinson. He ticks off a damning bill of attainder as if it were a litany of silly personal objections by self-unaware dilletantes. A more reasonable reading of that list would be that the needs of this moment in history were pretty clear, and Obama flunked in responding to them -- most centrally on the economy, not because he didn't kiss the right historical icons, but because he failed to step up to what this present situation demanded.

Ford didn't lose to Carter because of Reagan; he lost because of Watergate. Carter didn't lose to Reagan because of Kennedy; he lost because of recession and Iran. If Obama loses in 2012, it won't be because liberals fail to fake an orgasm -- it'll be because he flunked. It's a bizarro kind of tautology to insist that whole populations reorient their perceptions and attitudes to make cause not equal effect.

Twilight of the neocons

2011-10-20T17:15:00.003-04:00

Leslie Gelb has a silly piece up on Daily Beast, warning that the neocons are roaring back (and suggesting that Mitt Romney will carry their water). He must live inside as much of a bubble as the rest of the VSPs. Has he watched any of the Republican debates? Is he not aware that the Grand Old Basketcase has largely abandoned the expansionist neocon agenda in favor of old-style, Pat Buchananesque isolationism? Hasn't he heard these wingnuts fighting to see who can yell, "Bring the troops home!!" louder? Did he not see Herman Cain reveal he isn't even familiar with the term "neo-conservative"?

The fact is that, when it comes to electoral politics, Obama is now totally safe on foreign policy. Of course, it wouldn't have been very much of an issue anyway, given the Great Recession. But the guy who killed Osama bin Laden and Muammar al-Qaddafi is not vulnerable on this, er, front -- not to any of these folks, Romney included. If the Republicans win, it will be because of the economy. Period.

Post this on the locker room bulletin board

2011-10-15T12:38:00.004-04:00

This is a good piece, and it could be important. I hope it gets widely circulated. Obviously, the bankers' cluelessness stands in pointed contrast to this. Money quote (pun intended): “'I have no problem with capitalism. I have no problem with a market economy. But I find the way the financial system is functioning deeply unethical,' Herbert Haberl, 51, said in Berlin."

That's the key point, the one embodied in Occupy Wall Street's brilliant name, the one that opens the door to a successful global movement, the one to keep hammering home: This is not about the failure of capitalism; it's about the need for financial capital to cede the stage in favor of production capital. Banking needs to become boring again. Innovation needs to move from financial instruments to transformative technologies. The rules of the road need to favor those who actually create something of value -- a product or a service -- rather than those who get rich from surfing the economy itself, from arbitrage.

Bloomberg vs. Bloomberg

2011-09-29T11:07:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman today points to a strong piece by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, "Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem," which completely debunks the GOP's beloved confidence fairy dust. This chimera and the "invisible bond vigilantes," have been our Cassandra's Homeric epithets for the past two years -- truths that cannot, it seems, be uttered in public frequently enough to penetrate the miasma of lies in which we live, or to which our putatively Democratic administration dovens.

The piece closes thus:

"In conclusion, when looking at both what employers are doing in terms of hiring and investing and what they (and their economists) are saying in private surveys, it’s nearly impossible to make the argument that uncertainty about regulations is holding back the economy. A Bloomberg News editorial makes the point even more broadly:
'There is no doubt that certainty is generally preferable to uncertainty, in the economy as in most aspects of life….But there is no evidence that uncertainty has increased during the Obama presidency, or that, if it has, the president’s policies are responsible for it…The charge of “creating uncertainty” is a way to blame Obama for the U.S.’s economic trials without having to explain the connection.'”

Bloomberg News, eh? So, here's what the eponym himself said on Meet the Press this past Sunday, from MSNBC's transcript:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, nobody has any confidence. If you're a bank and you have money, would you make a loan when people are talking about putting you in jail for what happened in the mortgage crisis three, four years ago? You hunker down. If you're a business, would you go take a loan and expand and hire more people when every day there's talk about different regulation, different tax policy? Business has to know what it's going to be in the future to plan because hiring people is a long-term commitment. If you're an individual, would you go take that extra vacation, buy a new house and that sort of thing when you're not sure whether Washington is going to do what's right to keep job creation going in America? That's the--in the end, it is confidence, confidence, confidence.

So much for our great Third Party hope. What it does suggest, though, is that he may actually be thinking seriously about running. Nonsense of this crassness is usually a harbinger of that.

Bill of attainder - Updated II

2011-09-17T12:32:00.008-04:00

Ron Suskind is a terrific journalist, and I trust the things he reports here, even if some of those quoted are now walking away from what they said to him. The picture he paints is exactly what PUMAs predicted -- including lack of leadership, misogyny and failure to understand the meaning of this moment in history. And the public verdict is now pretty well established.

We don't have to say, "We told you so." He told you so.

Update: A deeper dive into the book here. The money quote: “'The administration’s domestic policy was fast becoming a debate society run by Larry Summers,' Ms. Suskind writes. 'Obama would sit on high, trying to judge if there was any shared ground between the competing debate teams that might coalesce into a policy.' Mr. Suskind asks whether this was 'a model for sound decision making, a crutch to delay, or avoid, the decisions only a president can make, or a recipe for producing half-measures — a pinch of this matched with a scoop of that — masquerading as solutions.'”

I would love every Obot who derided us for pointing out precisely these palpable leadership deficiencies... who claimed that even talking about "leadership qualities" was a strange, obsessive affectation... who claimed that the policies of Obama and Hillary Clinton were about the same... who told us he really did believe the same things she believed, because, look, it's there on his website... and who, btw, said it was simply deranged to claim that he was at least a garden-variety sexist and maybe worse, and insisted that it was neither representative nor important that his fratboy speechwriter could publicly deride Hillary Clinton in a borderline date-rape way (and that that didn't at least presage a hostile work environment for women)... I would love for every one of them to read Ron Suskind's book and then take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Update 2: More grist. Not ready at 3 am. Not ready in (or for) prime time.

The Age of Stasis

2011-09-14T14:09:00.001-04:00

We’re living a comedy of errors – but they are overwhelmingly and repeatedly errors of omission, rather than commission. That’s why there is a broad consensus about a crisis of leadership – across all sectors of civil society. Yes, the best lack all conviction. Yes, the worst are full of passionate intensity. But neither of them actually does anything, much.

Where and why did this start? One candidate would be 9/11. Whatever else the collapse of the Twin Towers did, it froze us in place. Obviously, we undertook a charade of active response in Afghanistan and Iraq – but we didn’t really commit to those (certainly not broadly). We avoided plans that would produce large-scale American casualities. Mostly, it’s been pouring money down the toilet – and money seemed funny, not tangible. Even now, in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, we can’t get our mind around economic choices.

America has been a deer in the headlights in the face of terrorism – it has essentially stopped most trajectories of building, investment, social progress. In Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum’s new book, That Used to Be Us, they identify five “pillars of prosperity,” long-term behaviors that were key to America’s past success – all of which have taken a nose-dive since 9/11: 1) support for broad education up to the potential of the latest technology; 2) building of critical infrastructure; 3) government support of research and development; 4) support for immigration; and 5) the rule of law to ensure well functioning markets. Whatever you think of Friedman, or his list, it serves as a not-bad index of long-term governmental/societal/commercial trajectories. Pick any list you like, the pattern is the same. America has just sort of stopped. (So, of course, has Europe.)

Confronted with planet-scale, complex-system challenges, we are flummoxed, and we’re standing before them, blinking. Of course, China, India, Brazil et al. aren’t standing still – they’re charging ahead, fueled by historically unprecedented growth. So maybe this is just another example of one dying species having reached the end of its reign, and the new one sprinting to take over.

Or maybe it’s something deeper than that. Maybe those emerging-market sprinters don’t really have a long runway ahead of them. Maybe sooner rather than later they’re going to bump up against the same global complexity, and stand before it in something like the same perplexity.

Or, to be more hopeful, maybe there’s a genuine new frame working its way through the birth canal, underneath this surface combination of frenetic activity and static depression (in both senses). Maybe a new generation of global citizens is feeling its way toward different ways of making decisions, toward more collaborative ways of working, toward a more whole-systems mode of thought, toward a post-corporate form of capitalism and a post-nation-state form of polis. It’s not out of the question. Nobody in the 14^th century, when the Renaissance was moving from gleam-in-eye to toddler, would have been able to predict its revolutionary impact just a couple of hundred years down the road… nor could the Medicis have figured out how the Renaissance would help spawn the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

At the moment, though, Obama may be the perfect emblem of our culture and our politics. Maybe we can only elect a George Segal statue of Chauncey Gardner.

I am the President of the United States, hear me peep

2011-09-01T03:05:00.001-04:00

This is just pathetic.

I am Warren, hear me roar

2011-08-18T16:58:00.001-04:00

This is excellent news.

Knocking down a straw woman

2011-08-17T16:19:00.005-04:00

I like Rebecca Traister. But her piece in the upcoming NY Times Magazine -- "What Would Hillary Clinton Have Done?" -- is a mediocre piece of thinking.

Fine, let's grant that it's impossible to say what her presidency would have been like, in no small measure because of the reasons Traister cites -- because it would be seen as having denied America not only its first African-American president, but also because it would, in fact, have kept the fantasy of Obama's magic alive. The tabula rasa, the universal mirror, wouldn't have been smudged, and would continue to provide a clear reflection of everyone's wishes. As I noted in my first post to this blog three years ago, there were deep feelings, high hopes on both sides of this contest, so somebody's were bound to be quashed. And quashed hopes are hard to forget. So let's grant that a fantasy future would have been denied for many.

And fine, let's also grant that our political culture is a mess, and that its shit would have landed on any president's shoes. In fact, let's go much farther than that. Let's stipulate that we're in the midst of a global crisis of leadership, an inflection point in modern history -- that our institutions (the nation state, the corporation, the university, etc.) are failing to keep up with the profound shifts represented by globalization and a radically transformative digital commons (much less the looming threats of nuclear proliferation and global warming). Let's stipulate that no leader of any country, no matter how competent or well intentioned, has the kind of power or control that leaders of earlier eras did.

Nonetheless, what Traister is declaring illegitimate is, in fact, perfectly sound intellectually, and even more justifiable emotionally. It is so for a number of reasons.

First, Obama's failure is undeniable (not only from a leftist pov, but simply as an effective leader). Is she saying it's illegitimate to declare that, and/or to describe where and how he has failed? If so, then her piece is nothing but the rankest kind of excuse-mongering and/or fatalism. If not, if she's okay with criticizing his myriad mistakes, then all she's really saying is, "It's impossible to say for certain that Hillary wouldn't have made the same or equal mistakes." Well, duh. But that's a silly strawman. It's certainly not impossible to say Hillary probably wouldn't have made these mistakes -- and to point to actual evidence (her far greater expertise, clarity, systems thinking, lifetime record -- as a policy-maker, as a political leader, as a negotiator, and even personally, in her strength and growth through adversity). It's certainly not impossible to point to the fact that the right way to approach this economic crisis was clearly known, and clearly articulated, and ignored (viz. Paul Krugman) -- and it's certainly not unreasonable to speculate that Hillary, always a serious wonk and a seriously quick study, would have been very likely to see that.

Most fundamentally, Traister's petty critique ignores two simple things:

One candidate articulated clear policy objectives that were more progressive than the other, who consistently danced away from clear proposals or analyses, whose main accomplishment was and remains to have voted "present." It's far from unreasonable to suppose that the former candidate would have been a stronger leader for progressive values. Could many of the same roadblocks Obama has encountered have defeated her, too? Sure -- and so what? That's not the point of the comparison. The point isn't that one would obviously have triumphed where the other failed. The point is that there's every reason to believe that one would have tried, and there is ample evidence that other never did.

Second, the contest between these two was vicious, and the viciousness lay overwhelmingly on Obama's side. The very hatred that drove Traister -- admirably -- to switch to Hillary... the very stakes that were raised by the misogyny that Obama's fratboy team and their media helpers pushed day in and day out... meant that there was a breach to be repaired. And it never was. Obama has spent virtually every waking moment of his presidency caring for the sensibilities of Republicans, but not one moment caring about the disenfranchisement of 18 million Hillary voters or the woman-hatred that helped him to the nomination. He has made zero attempt to heal the Democratic Party, or even to tend to it, to build it as a vital institution. Rather, he has continued to sit inside the increasingly small cult of his own personality (ironic, since he has precious little actual personality). He has done a generation's worth of damage to the Democratic Party, to its base, to its future. When Hillary warned of the dangers of false hope, she couldn't have been more right on the money. And we're not supposed to remember all of that?

Sorry -- but the bill of attainder on this guy is too long and damning, and the road not taken is too clear. It's not only justifiable to contrast the two, it's inevitable -- in no small measure because Hillary may well re-emerge.

Drumbeat

2011-08-09T00:43:00.002-04:00

And so it begins. All that's needed is a door-opening stalking horse to tip the first domino.

Says it all

2011-08-07T10:10:00.001-04:00

A forceful and cogent obit for the obots, in today's Times. As Westen says, the damage will last at least a generation.

Natch

2011-08-04T17:27:00.004-04:00

The hits just keep on comin'. I think we're pretty safe now in saying, "Even worse than Bush."

Cui Bozo? - Updated

2011-07-24T11:25:00.003-04:00

Citing a soon-to-be-published NY Review of Books article by Elizabeth Drew, Krugman this morning calls out -- once again accurately (dedicated and articulate Cassandra that he is) -- the twofer political-and-policy idiocy of Obama and his enablers.

I look forward to reading the Drew piece -- she's a terrific and thoughtful reporter. But before that further fodder (thanks, Groucho), a thought:

Obama needs both parties to be seen as crazy. It is required for his self-conception and self-delusion as the only sane man in the room. He must be deeply terrified, really profoundly lacking in self-confidence, in a sense of self, to need this fantasy so strongly. But whatever the source, it is clear by now that it is in Barack Obama's self-perceived self-interest -- hence the pun in my title -- to posit a political landscape equally polarized between ideologies.

Problem is, the Dems aren't crazy; they're feckless, but they're not batshit. So he winds up ignoring them in practice, leaving them out of any negotiations. And the "negotiations" aren't any such thing. They're all about him, about how he will get to appear in their wake. The policies and principles involved are of no interest. The real-world outcomes are of no interest. He is entirely willing to abandon foundational things, to cut into supporting beams. He is walking around inside a fantasy world in which his success inheres in where he stands on the stage vis a vis the others there. And it must be alone.

As a result, the evisceration of the Democratic Party isn't just collateral damage, it's the point (albeit the still-unconscious point) of all this kabuki. This is what we PUMAs said during the 2008 primaries -- we grokked how dangerous this guy was to the Democratic Party, while the putative leadership of the Democratic Party ushered this fox into the henhouse.

What will come of this "disaster" (to quote the Krug)? The GOP won't be hurt, it'll be enormously helped -- but, in my view, even that isn't the goal. The goal is to establish the sui generis, above-it-all, new-paradigm cult of the Precious.

And that, of course, is mad as a hatter.

Update: The Connie Bruck piece is out. It lays out the full scope of the disaster that is this presidency, and this president.

Dump the Dems?

2011-07-21T12:06:00.003-04:00

When I saw this, I was encouraged. When the governor of my state led this, I was moved. I am a lifelong partisan Democrat.

However, I’ve become convinced that the Democratic Party, as currently constituted, is more part of the problem than of the solution. So it needs to be reconstituted. And I’m thinking the only way to do that is to abandon it in 2012. The current leadership and structure of the party are addicted to their post-Vietnam fecklessness and caution, and it may be that the only way to save it is to go cold turkey. My beloved Democratic Party needs some tough love.

I hope somebody primaries Obama – and I would love for it to be Hillary. I can even imagine a scenario like 1968, where an unknown from the left, somebody with basically no resume, a la Gene McCarthy, opens the door… and then an electable star (Hillary, playing the role of Bobby Kennedy) walks through it. Is there any doubt that Bobby would have won the election if he had lived? Is there any doubt that Hillary would defeat anybody the Republicans nominated?

But I don’t believe that will happen. And if it doesn’t, I have come to think that it’s vital for the real Democratic Party to surgically remove the cancer represented by Obama, before it irreversibly becomes that cancer. And if some surrounding Congressional and Senatorial tissue has to be removed at the same time, so be it.

We can disagree about who and what Barack Obama actually is. I don’t personally believe he’s a diabolical genius of the right, but rather a personal and political cipher. An invisible man – to go all dramatic-irony on ya. He’s a fiction writer, the creator of the character “Barack Obama,” described with an adjectival and metaphoric vividness – “audacity”… “fierce urgency”… “hope”… etc. – that couldn’t be farther from the reality of whatever person is buried deep inside him. There’s a good chance we will never know that reality – that he himself will go to his grave never knowing it. In fact, it’s kind of haunting that this modern-day Chauncey Gardner seems entirely and permanently cut off from reality. There’s something deeply spooky, almost psychotic about his convivial smoothness, casual style, preternatural self-control… in the context of such a profound disconnect.

But that’s a topic for less urgent psychological and historical reflection. The matter at hand is that he is doing deep damage to the Party, the country and the world. The President of the United States at this inflection point in the global economy and in our broader history needs to be a force for progress – not just to keep the U.S. competitive, but to use America’s standing and capabilities to help crystallize a new global era of greater openness, prosperity, interconnection, fairness and sustainability. We need to make real progress, ergo a real progressive.

Of course, this was knowable – by many of us, it was known – in 2008. We knew we needed FDR, and we knew this guy was at best Jimmy Carter. Probably the most accurate analogy is the one Anglachel has made, and that Krugman has lately been substantiating: from a policy perspective, Obama is Herbert Hoover. The enraging spectacle of the Democratic Party embracing that and rejecting a serious thinker, doer and leader – with the accompanying misogyny, frat-boy shallowness, smugness, trickery and disenfranchisement – was simply awful… never to be forgotten.

But that’s water over the dam. The question is: What do we do now? The cards are on the table. It is no longer possible to pretend that Obama is a real progressive who is doing whatever can actually be done in a bad world. When our putatively Democratic president is pushing hard for policies to the right of the majority of Republican voters… when he is repeatedly dealt strong political hands that he invariably tosses away or misplays… when he runs the U.S. economy into the ditch again and again and again… we need to get him out from behind the wheel.

It would surely be godawful if we had President Michele Bachmann… or President Sarah Palin… or President Newt Gingrich. It would be deeply depressing to have President Mitt Romney. But – and here’s the key point for me – I don’t think it would be materially worse vis a vis the economy. It’s a danger re the Supreme Court, and re civil liberties, and those are non-trivial. But they can also be repaired. And with regard to the social safety net, I believe it would actually be harder for a Republican president to eviscerate it than for this “Democratic” Herbert Hoover. Nixon, China and all that.

Anyway, the point, finally, isn’t this person. The point is the Party, and whether it will matter to the world. If the Democrats are to return to political and policy relevance – much less innovation and progress – they need a swift kick to the gut, a slap upside the head, a bucket of cold water. The election of America’s first African-American president was a wonderful, historic event – but now we’ve done it. We passed that symbolic milestone. Now, we have work to do.

The summer of our discontent - Update

2011-07-06T13:11:00.006-04:00

Looks like the economy speech was not a new awakening, but an aberration. We're fucked. Millions of people will suffer grievously for our phony Democratic president's appeasement of this. How long is it before we'll see Obamavilles popping up all over America?

Update: This is what selling a sell-out sounds like. When I've compared Obama to Hoover or Coolidge, it was primarily a statement about fecklessness. But now, it's looking less like an analogy and more like a conscious policy choice. We elected this guy, it seems, to undo the New Deal and return us to the state of affairs under Coolidge and Hoover.

In the mornin', in the evenin', ain't we got fun?

Update 2: This whole spectacle is excruciating to watch -- regardless of your view of Obama's motives. Whether he's a walking cypher being pushed around by batshit crazy bullies... or a Republican in his heart who is engaging in (increasingly ineffective) kabuki to carry out his financial masters' agenda... it's not just enraging, but also humiliating. One wants to turn one's eyes away from this playground scene.

A wonderful night to be a New Yorker

2011-06-24T23:14:00.001-04:00

Historic, and truly moving.

At long last

2011-04-13T17:53:00.004-04:00

Thank god. Obviously, there's ample reason to believe he won't fight hard for it -- but at least he's no longer negotiating with himself in public. At least he's finally attacking his/our opponents -- acknowledging that they are opponents. At least he didn't do the plague-on-both-your-houses crap.

And yes, the plan itself doesn't go far enough (e.g., no Medicare for all). But credit must be given where credit is due. At least he has finally done something politically smart. At least he has finally edged toward "I welcome their hatred," called the Ryan plan out for what it is:

"This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. Ronald Reagan's own budget director said, there's nothing 'serious' or 'courageous' about this plan. There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill. That's not a vision of the America I know."

And at least he has committed himself not only to the veto, but to a different kind of discourse:

"To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I'm President, we won't."

"... let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations."

"... we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again."

Seems to me Barack Obama has just won the 2012 election. And if we're really lucky, if he can grok the import of what he himself just said, maybe this is even a step toward redeeming his presidency.

Op-idiot

2011-03-21T15:57:00.002-04:00

What is one to make of Ross Douhat's column today? One could use it as evidence of an individual's stupidity and lack of knowledge. One could say that the Times is down to Krugman and the seven dwarfs. Or one could generalize it to the hermetically sealed foolishness of the Beltway. Or one could take it all the way out to the devolution of discourse in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Whatever your preferred flavor of head-scratching and/or outrage, I would note that among the silliest attempts of this silly man's silly piece is its attempt to apply the 'liberal vs. conservative' frame to this set of facts. One could point out that the approach critiqued here was that of Bush Pere (and, for that matter, of St. Reagan, who never actually deployed any force anywhere for anything of consequence). One could point out that Bosnia and Kosovo didn't work out badly, in the end -- while one is pointing out that Iraq and Afghanistan haven't worked out anywhere near as well, either from a humanitarian or US strategic interests standpoint. One could point out that the broader historical pattern, for good or ill, is for liberals to be more interventionist than conservatives (FDR, yo? Robert Taft, yo?).

Or one could just bang one's head on the desk.

No-duh observation of the week

2011-01-08T12:21:00.004-05:00

It's obvious, and plenty of people say it -- but Krugman's post today prompts me to say it, too. Yes, the Democratic Party has largely been useless for a generation -- and if you are of this frame of mind, corrupted by "corporatism." But the Republican Party is flat-out batshit crazy/evil.

Up in snow - updated

2010-12-28T14:02:00.004-05:00

There go Bloomberg's Presidential hopes. Is it something about socially liberal Republican mayors?

Update: Q... E... D.

This is encouraging - update

2010-12-24T12:32:00.005-05:00

I've long felt that the rise of new fundamentalist and misogynist strains in every culture -- from Christian fundies in America to jihadis in the Middle East to the gangs of rapists in African civil wars, and more -- were essentially the reaction of traditional society to the rapid emergence of an increasingly feminized, increasingly global, increasingly networked economy and society. And this well-researched article from a few months ago in The Atlantic provides the economic backdrop. Yes, as the piece argues, men are having trouble adjusting to this evolutionary-scale shift -- the discomfort of middle-class Americans being the least of those difficulties (see prior reference to jihadis). But all in all, hard not to feel very encouraged.

And, in a line I never thought I'd type, thanks to David Brooks for pointing to this.

Update: A point of clarification: I don't mean to say that fundamentalism and misogyny began because of modernity -- rather, that their reinvigoration is a reaction to the threat of modernity.

How much dumb can you pack into one column?

2010-12-18T09:47:00.002-05:00

Exhibit 1: Charles Blow.

More to come. Maybe we can start a new Web service, Wikidopes. The only criterion for inclusion is that the piece itself must be a hermetically sealed demonstration of idiocy. No commentary allowed, or required. Any gloss, no matter how perceptive, punny or pithy, would only dilute the perfect foolery. It must be ipso bozo. A definitive proof, a priori, of a posterior (vs. frontal) lobe.

Open for submissions.

Invisible Man

2010-12-06T13:59:00.003-05:00

h/t to Tennessee Guerrilla Women for the link. When Joe Scarborough can't process what a non-entity you are, you're a non-entity.

The multiple meanings of the title of this post are intentional.

Categorically speaking

2010-12-04T12:05:00.007-05:00

I have an observation on Corrente's ongoing argument re "Category Error" -- and its repeated use as a club with which to beat Paul Krugman.

Lambert and Vastleft are arguing that it's a major mistake for progressive commenters to attribute either good intentions or weak leadership to The Precious -- because, in Vastleft's words, "Obama operates like a conservative because he is a conservative." They argue that he's not a weak leader but a strong, effective one -- because he's accomplishing very thoroughly what (they say) he always intended to accomplish.

There is some merit and utility in this argument -- insofar as it underlines how deluded the Obots, the Netroots and the misogynist fanboy punditocracy on MSNBC and what Anglachel calls the Stevensonian wing of the Democratic Party were about him. They gave this tablua rasa a free pass to the nomination because he served as their mirror, without regard to most of what he was actually proposing. For that act of protracted irresponsibility and fecklessness, the judgment of history is already in on them, and it is not kind. To paraphrase Somerby's trope on Iraq, the working class and the middle class of America look up from their places in the soon-to-be-closed-down unemployment lines at the likes of Dowd, Marcos, Booman, Avarosis, Olbermann, Rich, Donna and their ilk in devastating accusation.

However, it's another thing entirely to propose that the whole thing was some vast and extraordinarily effective kabuki in which The Precious was actually Sauron and was skillfully orchestrating all of these conspirators -- from Wall St. to Ms. magazine to MoveOn to the insurance companies, etc., etc. One really has to believe in the power of theater to think that entire sectors of the economy are expressing batshit-crazy outrage at him in public while chortling together with him in private -- because he is, after all, so skillfully carrying their water.

And even if you believe that, how does this account for the patent lack of political success of this strategy? Are we really supposed to believe that Obama, Axelrod et al. wanted collapsing poll numbers? That they wanted to be seen universally as wearing 'kick me' signs? If this guy is supposed to be such a clever, successful, right-wing political leader, how come he's already a lame duck? Are we supposed to believe that this, too, is part of the clever, "successful" plan?

This, to me, reveals the vulnerability of strictly ideological arguments. They ignore the kinds of institutional, cultural and political dimensions that, say, Anglachel describes so well (and that I find in Krugman, for all his self-proclaimed wonkiness). Pure ideology isn't psychologically acute, and that lack of acuity creates errors that are, well, a bit categorical.

To me, the facts certainly demonstrate that Barack Obama was never a liberal. To the degree he has anything that could remotely be called an ideology or world view, it is, as Anglachel has been arguing of late, the ideology of a "Herbert Hoover progressive" (nice). But the overwhelming preponderance of the facts also show that he is a total non-leader, a cipher, a man whose entire life has been a journey not of self-knowledge but of self-obliteration, an odyssey of opacity. He is Chauncey Gardner, Jimmy Carter II, Zelig. He has always wanted to be President, but he's never actually wanted to do anything specific -- which is tantamount to saying that he never wanted to do anything. All be, no do.

And one more observation: As disappointed as all of us white, feminist, Hillary-admiring types are in this turn of events, I expect it's not a patch on the kind of disappointment that's infecting black America right now. It's not just that the United States needed an FDR and wound up with Calvin Coolidge (or, fine, Herbert Hoover)... but after our country's tragic racial history, for all that agony to have achieved its putative culmination in this, dare I say, black hole... well, that's beyond cruel.

Obit for the Obama Presidency

2010-12-03T12:48:00.003-05:00

Krugman has written it. A definitive indictment it is, and will remain. For all the rigid carping against His Nobel Shrillness among some Lefties, including some I admire -- grounded in a kind of context-deafness to where he is publishing and what is required to get maximum impact and longevity from that megaphone -- the awareness of the meaning and importance of today's column is pretty widespread and instantaneous.

How much does Nature abhor a vacuum? How fast does it fill? And who fills it -- i.e., does the Democratic Party still possess any Force of Nature-ness? Will he be primaried? Or do only the wingnuts have the energy to rush in where better angels now fear to tread?

Risible CDS

2010-11-30T18:55:00.003-05:00

Oh, that David Corn! Funny, funny man.

So, this is what the scattered, abandoned zombies formerly known as Obamanation are down to now? Couldn't they at least dial up the oldies station? You know, play back some of those great tunes from the past -- like "I Shot the Precious" or "Under My Thumb"?

We don't need no educators

2010-11-13T10:44:00.003-05:00

I can't wait to taste the couscous Somerby will make of today's NYT column by Joe Nocera on departing NYC Schools chancellor Joel Klein. Bob has, of course, been chronicling the ongoing novel of "school reform" and the War on Teachers for years now -- with plenty of attention (e.g., this past Wednesday) to the Times' role in writing it. While the catastrophe in Iraq served to discredit the Paper of Record's resident novelist of Islamofascism, Judith Miller, it seems that no infusion of facts can shake the Grey Lady's dedication to our educational picaresque, America's own Dumb Quixote.

While we await Somerby's rant, a few choice bits from Nocera:

"Mr. Klein transformed both himself and New York’s $23 billion school system. He will leave his post with a reputation as the country’s pre-eminent education reformer."

This despite the well-publicized fact that the city's rise in test scores has proved to be bogus. An ordinary, headline-browsing resident of said city would have been permitted to conclude that Klein was skedaddling out of town with his C.V. between his legs -- received by the welcoming arms of Rupert Murdoch, no less -- as everything he claimed to have accomplished over the past eight years goes up in smoke. But the Times' love for the dominant educational novel of our times is so strong that it scurries to chant the magic phrases of "reform" and "accountability" on its front pages over and over again, drowning out the inconvenient truths.

On choosing Klein in the first place: "'Joel had all the qualifications,' the mayor told me a few days ago, adding: 'He knows how to attract good people, motivate them and make them accountable. You can always find someone to do the technical stuff.' The fact that Mr. Klein did not have preset ideas about how to fix public education was, in the mayor’s view, a plus."

Just let Mayor Mike's quote roll around in your mind. "You can always find someone to do the technical stuff." Don't mistake this for the view of a typical CEO. It isn't. No CEO of any company based on expertise thinks like that. "The technical stuff" is the core stuff, the bread and butter, the meal ticket. Whether you're running a media company or a movie studio or an IT innovator or a pharma -- or a university -- the experts, the talent, are what puts bread on your table, what differentiates you in the market. You recruit them, coddle them, nurture them. You pay obsessive attention to what they know, how they learn it, how they use it and how to leverage and spread it. You may not be able to open a picture or decode a genome or write a Pulitzer Prize article yourself, but you damn well build everything in your company around those who can. "You can always find someone to do the technical stuff." Right.

This is not the view of a typical CEO. It's the view, first of all, of somebody whose business succeeded not because of its journalists, but because of its desktop terminal, its platform. The Bloomberg terminal got in early in the game of digitizing and speeding up financial data, and he built an empire on that. Second, he's not just a CEO, he's a founder. Founders get to do whatever the fuck they want. Ordinary CEOs have fiduciary responsibilities. Boards of directors, even lax boards, can't let them run wild -- at least, not indefinitely. What Bloomberg brought to Gracie Mansion wasn't unique business savvy, it was the mindset and skills of a suave, socially liberal dictator. Sometimes, those impulses have been salutary -- e.g., his campaigns against smoking and trans-fats. But in his signature effort to transform an actual, complex, fraught system -- education -- that leadership model has been flunko.

Quoting the ever-quotable Steve Brill, a loud voice in the anti-teacher chorus: "'At Bloomberg, nobody has a contract,' said Mr. Brill, who is writing a book about school reform. 'He built a multibillion media empire in part on the idea that you can quit and he can fire you.'"

Huh? Bloomberg's empire was built on employment-at-will? It's astonishing that the once-rigorous founder (N.B.) of American Lawyer and CourtTV -- legendary for his excoriating marginal notes to writers on their copy -- could say this. To claim that Bloomberg Inc. is founded on such a generic fact of business is like saying that the Roman Empire was based on the fact that humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

But what this quote does reveal, again, is the founder mentality. In this narcissistic mindset, an enterprise or institution isn't just Emerson's "lengthened shadow of a single man," it's nothing more than he.

Anyway, enough Howler-channeling. Let me just close by raising the question of why the Times is so dedicatedly pimping this novel, over many years and in the face of massive contrary evidence. It suggests that they're laying the pipe for a third-party run by Mike for President, no? The Precious has proven to be a flop, and the GOP crazies are abroad in the land, and what are we Manhattanites to do?

NYC's educational reform revealed as horseshit? Quick, sweetie, get me rewrite.

Aw, too bad - updated

2010-11-05T15:08:00.004-04:00

Keith, we knew ye all too well. Richly deserved -- but for rather different reasons. This is like getting Capone on tax evasion.

Update: He's baaaaaack. Just to remind ourselves of the record of this noble defender of left-wing reason, cast your mind back to this ditty from his rap sheet. It started me blogging.

Say What?

2010-11-01T02:41:00.001-04:00

From Ross Douhat's column today: "The central premise of the White House’s policy-making, the assumption that an economic crisis is a terrible thing to waste (as Rahm Emanuel famously put it), turned out to be a grave tactical mistake. It drew exactly the wrong lesson from earlier liberal eras, when the most enduring expansions of government — Social Security in the 1930s, Medicare in the 1960s — were achieved amid strong economic growth, rather than at the bottom of a recession."

Yep, you read that right. Social Security was passed amid strong economic growth, rather than at the bottom of a recession. This is appearing on the op-ed page of the Paper of Record.

Marketing & Sales... and Outsourcing

2010-10-29T12:16:00.002-04:00

The latter being that I outsource my thinking today to Anglachel, the truly Incomparable One.

What she said. Every. Single. Word.

(Small-bore) Credit where (small-bore) credit's due

2010-09-20T19:14:00.002-04:00

It's smart for Pres. Obama to have bearded these lions in their den, in public. It doesn't fix the policy, but it does (slightly) help the politics. The consequences of weak leadership and bad policy decisions are still with us... but he is made to seem slightly less of a cypher.

It's the Leader (Stupid)

2010-09-15T18:58:00.005-04:00

With regard to the decision voters have to make in November, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll says it all. Yes, the public is dismayed with both parties. Yes, the Great Recession makes everybody justifiably unhappy. Yes, Congress and government in general are seen as deeply broken.

But in a couple of months, people will make choices. One of those choices, for many, will be to stay away from the polls. But those who vote will choose between the two major parties (with a smattering of third-party outliers showing up in the winner's circle). And what this poll (and many others like it) reveals is that (a) people want what the old Democratic Party (not the pale imitation we now have) used to do and advocate, and (b) the biggest electoral problem the Dems face is having a weak leader at the top.

To wit (emphasis added):

"A case for Republicans: Voters are remarkably open to change, even if they are not sure where Republicans will lead them. Most Americans, including one-third of those who were part of the coalition that elected Mr. Obama, now say he does not have a clear plan to solve the nation’s problems or create jobs. Democrats remain highly vulnerable on the economy.

"A case for Democrats: The party is seen as having better ideas for solving the country’s problems. The public steadfastly supports the president’s proposal to let tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans. And far more people still blame Wall Street and the Bush administration than blame Mr. Obama for the country’s economic problems.
"The public has a darker view of Congressional Republicans than of Democrats, with 58 percent disapproving of Democrats and 68 percent disapproving of Republicans. But with less than two months remaining until Election Day, there are few signs Democrats have made gains persuading Americans that they should keep control of Congress."

In other words, strictly in terms of political and electoral outcomes, Democratic chances are poor most importantly because of Obama. People wanted FDR, and they got Calvin Coolidge.

Yep

2010-08-30T13:18:00.002-04:00

The only cavil I have with this is the claim that healthcare reform was the problem. A real FDR -- and surely Hillary -- would have seized the moment to get us both.

"A slow-motion social catastrophe"

2010-08-08T14:05:00.003-04:00

That's the verdict in this devastating examination of the impending impact of joblessness in America in this March's issue of Atlantic, which I just read.

And our "leaders"? Too little, too lame. The judgment of history will not be kind -- on them, on the Democratic Party, and on the crocodile tears of the punditocracy.

Anthony Weiner for President - Updated

2010-08-01T11:36:00.002-04:00

Emotionally intelligent, politically intelligent, policy intelligent. This is what leadership looks like.

Update: Clearly, this was a considered political decision - and a very smart one. This guy has an understanding of the moment and an understanding of what people feel to match his razor-sharp understanding of public policy.

The Conscientiousness of a Liberal - Updated

2010-07-21T09:48:00.003-04:00

This blog seems to have wound down to sporadic comments about the Times op-ed page. So be it, I suppose -- for now, anyway. Like Pauline Kael when she retired from The New Yorker, saying that it was too enervating and depressing to keep reviewing bad movies every week, I've found that I don't have the discipline, energy or desire to keep flogging the same dead horses, absent something to root for.

But... one thing I do root for and deeply admire is Paul Krugman. He has laurels aplenty on which to rest -- not just the Nobel Prize (in his case, richly earned), but the fact of having put himself out there voluminously for years, with an astonishing batting average. In terms of economic and political analysis and judgment -- and in the Show, not the minors -- he has a batting average that dwarfs any superstar in any field you can think of. A-Rod? Gretzky? Michael Jordan? Lombardi? Fuggedaboutit. Shakespeare dropped the ball more often.

And yet, he never seems to rest. He never stops reading, looking, thinking. Those on the right who dismiss him as a shrill, one-note ranter miss entirely his seemingly bottomless curiosity -- his true reporter's instinct. There is no public intellectual one can name who is so entirely engaged. And those on the left who dismiss him for this or that point of doctrinal difference miss entirely how seriously he takes the idea of using his unique bully pulpit to make things right -- or at least better. He is staying in the game, because he's genuinely committed to having the game come out as well as possible.

Every day, on his blog -- take a look at any of the posts on today's, for example -- he engages in serious discourse on serious issues with serious intent. Yes, he's our 21st century Cassandra -- and its hope-filled Energizer Bunny. If he hadn't gotten the Nobel for Economics, he would deserve one for Sincere Conscientiousness.

Update: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Decorum

2010-07-06T14:26:00.002-04:00

A mild dust-up at The Paper of Record this morning, underlining the difference between expertise and its absence. David Brooks breaks decorum by snidely trashing his fellow op-edifier Paul Krugman in today's column -- without naming him, but there's zero ambiguity as to his target. And our Nobel Prize-winning Cassandra decorously but decisively slaps him down.

Chutzpah?

2010-06-21T07:09:00.002-04:00

Or maybe just dementia? Ross Douhat's column today is one of the clearest indices yet of the collapse into drooling incoherence of modern "conservatism" -- all the starker for its immediate proximity to Paul Krugman's latest compelling plea for rationality.

Obama is a liberal? The liberals are the ones who are theory-mad?? The "conservatives" are the ones who are grounded in reality -- and about to re-ascend??? It's the welfare state that's in crisis, about to be smacked down by the Invisible Hand????

From which galaxy are these people receiving their radio signals?

"Conservatism" must be put in quotes, of course, not only because it isn't remotely conservative -- in fact, it's been swinging from the chandeliers since Reagan -- but because it's no longer even a perspective, much less a theory. Put aside entirely Tea Party goofitude ("Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!") or nativist xenophobia. The entire Milton Friedman neo-classical architecture has been blown away. In reality, it was always logical positivist nonsense, the Economist's New Clothes, ruling out of existence (into the ether of "externalities") anything that doesn't fit your equations... the drunk who looks under the streetlight for his keys because he can see there. But after its utter collapse and exposure as The New Alchemy, in the face of the worst unemployment since the 1930s -- indeed, with that specific object lesson in front of our eyes (hello? 1937, people?) -- it should be impossible for any sentient being to argue for it in public.

So what do you do? Well, you don't argue for it -- you project your own mishagas onto your "opponent." Onto the "liberals." Another idea we have to put under erasure, of course. If only. (We live in a boom era for quote marks. Too bad Derrida died before he could cash in.)

Almost makes one nostalgic for the time when the best lacked all conviction and the worst were full of passionate intensity. We're way past Yeats. More like Beckett.

Heck of a job, Barry

2010-05-26T11:45:00.003-04:00

If only events had slowed and stabilized so our somnolent president could run the new play he had finally figured out. He took a year to work up the mindset and the courage to throw a punch at insurers, and the results were delightful. Encouraged, he began to apply the same medicine to the bankers and Wall St. I was contemplating being at least a less disgruntled camper.

And then the Gulf of Mexico has a massive coronary -- an environmental 9/11, as Tom Friedman accurately described it. And as if to prove himself Bush III definitively, Barack Obama stands like a deer in the headlights, helplessly watching the epic catastrophe unfold. Issuing stern, empty warnings. Sending Cabinet secretaries out to issue stern, empty warnings.

You cannot make this stuff up. The signature event that tanked Object-Lesson-in-Chief... in the exact same place on the planet... and At-Least-I'm-Not-W grabs for... W's playbook.

Well, my pet goat is lying on the beach, choked with oil.

Yes!

2010-04-18T22:39:00.002-04:00

In the immortal words of Marv Albert... Yes I said yes they will Yes.

Encouraging - Updated

2010-03-24T15:38:00.005-04:00

Are we headed toward sanity? This is exactly the right battle to pick next -- and this would be a hell of a second punch to throw. Of course, the proof, the pudding, and all that... But, might our president actually have grokked the right political lesson? Is he gonna start throwing combinations? Be still, my hopey heart.

Update: Even if Krugman is right that there is little chance of financial reform before November -- which seems entirely plausible -- that doesn't alter the political calculus. The main point, politically, is for Obama and the Dems to get out there and throw punch after punch. Frankly, I will be astonished if they don't. This isn't rocket science, it's sweet science.

Update 2: More grist. As His Shrillness's latest column suggests, it's now down to the politics. Shelby and others will attempt Orwellian FUD, so our president must get out on the stump and make it clear, forcefully, daily, unambiguously, that he and his administration regard banks as bad guys. As with the last month's push for the ersatz healthcare bill, the imperative is no longer to argue the fine points -- it's to clarify the sides in the battle.

Finally

2010-03-22T01:12:00.004-04:00

In the service of truth, it must be said: Over the past month, and culminating tonight, Barack Obama probably saved his presidency. Not because the healthcare bill is good – it isn’t. Not because he has grown a coherent ideology or raison d’etre for his Administration – he hasn’t. We needed an FDR, and we still don’t have anything remotely like that. But at least our Vacuum-in-Chief has thrown his first punch.

David Sanger in tomorrow’s Times – with unintended irony – describes the moment thus: “After the bitterest of debates, Mr. Obama proved that he was willing to fight for something that moved him to his core.” Of course, that “something” wasn’t a serious healthcare bill. Rather, it was his own political future. Not very inspiring for the rest of us, to be sure – but it’s a start. His lizard brain, at least, has awakened. He has grokked that he had to do more than float like a butterfly if he wanted to avoid becoming a lame duck by this November – or by tomorrow morning.

So, for the past month, he actually fought, actually (yes) demonized somebody, actually defined the terms of a debate. In other words, he actually engaged as a political actor. And the very salutary results of that engagement were evident on the floor of the House tonight. His enemy – our enemies – were forced to react, and their reactions committed them in public to a stance that will further marginalize them, will accelerate their collapse into white dwarf stardom. Republican after Republican rose to utter patently incoherent, untruthful and amoral nonsense. They voted as a bloc against their own type of plan (Romneycare writ larger). And the coup de grace came when Bart Stupak, of all people, rose to denounce their last-ditch obstructionist bid.

(It’s enough to make one speculate that the whole Stupak Amendment dance was pure kabuki from the get-go – a way to establish this no-name as the face of anti-choice, so he could, in the end, provide his blessing to Obama’s plan. Or not.)

Contra the Times editorialists, Barack Obama did not "put his presidency on the line for an accomplishment of historic proportions." His presidency was already on the line. He merely woke up to that fact. And the proportions here aren't anything like historic. It remains the thinnest of gruel, at best. At worst, it’s a betrayal of women, and a massively missed opportunity. Nonetheless, I’m pleased our president has taken this initial step. Maybe it’ll lead to another. In politics, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first punch.

Race to the bottom

2010-03-17T10:45:00.004-04:00

Lou Dobbs wasn't an anomaly for CNN. And today's announcement of Erick Erickson's new gig is a twofer -- not only Fox envy, but MSNBC envy... a contest to see who can be the most misogynist. Ted Turner ought to be spinning in his... bed.

Mothers, don't let your children start out as Texans

2010-03-12T15:30:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's spitting in the Internet wind, but still, they're not going gently into that good benight...

It can't get clearer than this

2010-02-10T12:27:00.006-05:00

"Never before in all our history have these forces ["... business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering..."] been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speech to the Democratic National Convention, Madison Square Garden, 1936

“I know both those guys [Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase; and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs]; they are very savvy businessmen. I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
- Barack Obama, interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday.

Yes, as Paul Krugman and Simon Johnson say, this is some combination of clueless and perfidious. Yes, it's a profound betrayal of the Democratic Party. Yes, it's as politically insane as it is substantively deranged -- as Johnson points out, there is nothing about JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs today that resembles the "free-market system." They are wastrel-son wards of the state.

But again -- my idee fixe of late -- it's also a fundamental failure of leadership, a total incapacity to do the job. In the interview, he goes on to talk about "say on pay" -- in his characteristic "no earth-shattering things going on here" way. He's emotionally out of touch with the majority of Americans... indeed, he's emotionally out of touch with himself. Such a person is unfit to lead.

Words fail - Updated

2010-02-05T22:36:00.003-05:00

Which doesn't, of course, mean we'll stop talking. :) Anyway, what a deepening disaster the RBC travesty turns out to me. Farce reprised as tragedy. We elected a deer in the headlights.

Update: Meanwhile, dispatches still come in from the bizarro universe.

A Tale of Two Models

2010-01-27T09:57:00.004-05:00

There have been two Democratic administrations in the past 40 years (prior to the current, putatively Democratic one).

One of them was weak, indecisive, self-involved, malaise-mongering. It lasted one term, and did great things... for the Republican Party.

The other, while flawed, was energized, smart and combative. It swam against the prevailing tide, and yet managed to last two terms and deliver unprecedented peace and prosperity.

Guess which of those models our current occupant has run away from as fast as he can? Guess which predecessor he has mirrored -- up to and including a reflexive desire to self-flagellate and appease enemies?

Just sayin'...

If this is the case...

2010-01-26T09:52:00.002-05:00

If it has become evident that Jimmy Carter II is harmfully unserious as a leader, then how is it possible for any, er, serious observer to continue maintaining that he was ever the right choice as our candidate? Does it not follow that everyone who pushed him, who put their thumb on the scale, who demonized the Clintons, who indulged in their deeper misogyny, who nominated this person... owes America a big "mea culpa"?

Sweeheart, Get Me Rewrite

2010-01-26T00:44:00.004-05:00

Too little, too late.

Too little, too late.

Oh, I don't have the energy for this. You fill in the rest.

On Leadership

2010-01-23T12:01:00.004-05:00

This duck is getting lamer by the hour. The House is balking on healthcare, in response to the Tuesday Night Mass-acre. Dems in the Senate are yelling, “Bring me the head of Ben Bernanke” – and if they’re going after even him, the best of our financial brain trust, it tells you that Geithnerdaemmerung (duly acknowledged, Professor Pun) and Summers’s End can’t be far behind.

So the Administration’s two signature initiatives – healthcare reform and financial recovery – are now generally regarded as failures across the political spectrum. Even if Congress manages to semi-rise to the occasion, the moment has passed for the party's and nation's leader to get political credit for it. Overall, “Change you can believe in” has devolved into “Better than nothing.” And that’s among his supporters.

And the White House's political response is... to bring back David Plouffe?!

Why did this collapse occur? The standard trope in the Pumasphere is that it’s about ideology: He wasn’t Left enough or principled enough. As BTD always reminds them, “pols are pols… and they do what they do.”

In many respects, I share that view – and I greatly admire BTD. But I don’t think it’s a sufficient explanation of the current devolution of the Administration to say that Barack Obama is, after all, just a pol… or even to say that he’s a Republican in Dem’s clothing. Because the collapse of his Administration isn’t only about motives or ideology. It’s also about the skills of leadership.

FDR was a pol. Lyndon Johnson was a pol. Jimmy Carter was a pol. Bill Clinton was a pol. All of them were left of center. But their impacts varied greatly. Of course, much of that had to do with the moment in history each inherited – the pond inside of which each was fated to swim. But it also had to do, in part at least, with their individual capacity to lead – to understand present societal and economic realities, to project trajectories into the future, and to turn that understanding into actual outcomes through political action. Their ability to form coalitions, to frame debate, to set agendas (rather than play inside somebody else’s), to make decisions. Their degree of clarity about who they themselves are.

On that front – the capacity to lead – Barack Obama doesn’t get a B+, or a C+. If we’re being generous, he’d get a D+. He just isn’t right for the job. And that is, imo – yes, along with the other factors of policy squishiness and faux purity (or, if you prefer, the delusions of his Kool-Aid drinking followers) – the reason for his political collapse, his loss of the capacity to govern.

As we sit here today, does Barack Obama have any base left? Is there any chunk of the population, even of the Village, that would rally to his defense in the event of a challenger for the nomination? BTD thinks so. I'm not convinced. And so it is seeming to me more and more possible that Hillary Clinton will become President in 2012... that the next election will be a do-over.

Obviously, she wouldn’t do anything to break away from the Administration before the mid-terms. But assuming that this implosion of Obama’s political power continues, that his descent into Jimmy Carterdom isn’t reversed in some as-of-now inconceivable way, the Democratic Party will be presiding over a dyspeptic stasis come early 2011, even if they hold onto majorities in both houses. They’ll be looking around for some way to save their individual and collective asses in the next Presidential cycle, looking for someone, anyone, to fill the empty space currently occupied by our Vacuum-in-Chief. And who else is out there who could challenge Hillary for that job – assuming she wants it?

The tipping (over the cliff) point?

2010-01-20T19:23:00.003-05:00

Was this the beginning of the end? It certainly feels more like that than the end of the beginning.

With the debacle in Massachusetts, we may be hearing the bell tolling for the Obama edition of American Idol. It’s a bit early to know, of course… but on my Magic 8 Ball, it says, “Signs point to yes.”

As I speculated in my previous post, the time will (in all likelihood) arrive when a consensus crystallizes that this Administration is Jimmy Carter II. That moment might be right now. Certainly, the hamina-hamina-kumbayamina response from the White House does nothing to staunch that perception.

Whether it’s now or in November, once this consensus forms, it’s game over, politically speaking. When it becomes generally understood that a person in charge can be rolled, everybody starts acting on the basis of that understanding, and the natural forces of vacuum-abhorrence take over. Departmental satraps strut a bit more confidently. External competitors and allies alike make plans with a weak actor in mind. Everywhere, small-ball power games get ramped up. The center does not hold. Mere anarchy may not yet be loosed… but at best, stasis reigns supreme.

As to the personal narratives here, the whole thing has a kind of Mobius-strip-like quality, folding back on itself.

Ted Kennedy's long-ago fatal sexual flaws mean he doesn't defeat Jimmy Carter for the nomination…

So that Jimmy Carter's leadership flaws mean that we get Ronald Reagan…

So that Ronald Reagan's political luck can land him in office at the moment the Soviet Union is collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions…

So that the end of the Cold War (and related rise of globalization) can unleash a new political alignment…

So that Bill Clinton can emerge to grab one part of that new alignment – and do the best that can be done, still inside the rightward pendulum swing…

So that his sexual flaws can then derail the end of his presidency... and cloud Al Gore's vision...

So that Gore's political limitations (and a criminal Supreme Court) can allow W to "win"…

So that W and Cheney can unleash the Right’s fondest fantasies...

So that those fantasies can crash and burn -- not only much of our government and society, but the GOP as a national party...

Meanwhile, back to Ted Kennedy…

Whose jealousy and unresolved regrets about his own truncated ambitions lead him to turn on the Clintons...

So that Obama gets crucial help in gaming the nomination…

So that, when Teddy dies, Obama's limits as a leader result in the loss of Teddy's empty seat to a W clone...

So that the chances for Teddy's lifelong political goal may once again fail to materialize.

“Where have all the flowers gone? Picked by young girls every one..."

"As a demonstration of governing ability"

2009-12-11T09:53:00.003-05:00

Here's the full line, from BTD: "As a demonstration of governing ability, Democrats have pretty much failed when it comes to the health insurance issue, no matter the end result."

Yep. But there's no need for the dependent clause. It's not just with regard to health insurance. It turns out that 11-dimensional chess is antithetical to governing... that it's only about electoral tactics (pun on "electoral" intended). There's no important respect in which the Precious has demonstrated the capacity to govern. And absent that capacity at the top, the collective governing capability of the Party is modest, to be generous.

Having said that, I am not pessimistic about the Democratic Party's prospects for the next decade. They'll move past their current cult-like coup de craze, and become an actual political party again. Yes, they'll probably get a bit of a cold bucket in 2010, but that won't make a Republican electable as President in 2012. And I think the Democrats will gradually, in fits and starts, continue their generation-long crawl back toward a capacity to govern.

The most interesting thing to me, political-leader-wise, is Hillary's position. I think she's holding a remarkable hand. If/when it becomes obvious to a majority of Americans that Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter II -- i.e., a flop as president -- she's got two options: She can either resign from the Administration over some matter of principle -- and ipso facto become the presumptive nominee (doing to this one-term Carter what Teddy couldn't do to the first one) -- or she can choose to ensure his re-election by accepting his desperate plea to run with him as Veep in 2012... and then get elected President on her own in 2016.

The decision, I think, is hers. Her Q rating has done nothing but continue its upward trajectory since her transformational primary campaign, and I see no reason why that should stop. It's quite remarkable how little shit has landed on her shoes from the leadership failure of this Administration. During the 2008 campaign, she grew beyond her already impressive persona and meaning. She entered uncharted territory for a woman in American politics. And I think she has the option of mapping and settling that territory in a wide variety of ways.

Of course, she may not want to. She may actually have moved past all this... may have found an existential center of peace and strength in her life that frees her from the need to grab for the brass ring. She may have evolved past all of us, to a place where actual expertise, smarts and self-knowledge rule, and where the person who possesses them in superior quantities can have a significant (perhaps sufficient) impact on the world, independent of power relationships and institutions.

In other words, she may no longer need to run, to win, to get others' validation. But it's up to her. Hillary's choice.

Want healthcare coverage? - Updated 4X

2009-11-08T11:59:00.009-05:00

Meet your doctor… name of Faustus.

What a remarkable bit of political jujitsu this has been. “Okay, you can have your godless socialism, but there’s a price. It can’t include the wemmins. To bring American healthcare into the 21^th century, you’ll have to dial the murdering bitches’ rights back to the 19^th.”

And our fearless liberal leaders? Our “fierce advocate” first-minority President? Our “far left” first-female Speaker?

“Oh, well, what can we do? We don’t have the votes... But isn’t it wonderful? No (penis-endowed) American will be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions!! Yes, you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren you were there on this new St. Crispins Day!!”

And, of course, that’s not even taking into the account the economic boost from the revived wire-hanger industry.

Update: Several pieces today -- e.g., here and here -- explain the jujitsu -- with women's rights being sold out in order to get the healthcare bill passed. Clever, eh? "You want universal? I'll give you something else universal -- universal unaffordable reproductive care." Who needs to attack Roe v. Wade through the front door? The back door is swinging in the breeze.

And who's protecting the women of the house? Well, here's our fearless leader, the hope of a generation, the embodiment of change. (In his defense, I guess "change" could include "moving backward...")

Update 2: Yup.

Update 3: The rewriting of personal history marches on. Just as Villagers have been airbrushing their performance during the Clinton and Bush presidencies -- as Somerby regularly reminds us -- so the putatively "progressive" columnists, commentators and A-listers are now publishing all manner of critiques of their Precious, to make sure the record shows that they weren't besotted or deluded. "We're shocked, shocked," they stomp, "that there is no emperor inside all those nice clothes!" So self-congratulates-and-whitewashes MSNBC. So Obotitude-ignores Jeffrey Toobin in this week's New Yorker.

"Yes, it's quite an outrage, isn't it, that we don't have a staunch defender of women's equality in the White House? Who could have known in 2008 that the candidate to become Democratic president had written in The Audacity of Hope about 'the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion'? How was I to foresee that he would soft-pedal the importance of abortion rights as 'vexing'? And how sharp, terse and clear I am being now about this, yes, fundamental moral issue! Look at me -- I'm a reg'lar PUMA!!"

I'll ask it again: How long before we apply Somerby's signature trope to the 2008 primaries?

Update 4: And another thing... I remind you of the moment when the misogynistic Beast of the Left let loose one of its most ferocious, ecstatic roars. The party of President Stupak may talk all nerdy and quiet-like, but they're right spry in their slouch toward Bethlehem.

But on the other hand...

2009-11-06T10:54:00.005-05:00

... on the economy, the learning curve remains in neutral. Read it and gnash.

At long last, some Barackbone

2009-10-17T13:07:00.002-04:00

This is very encouraging. Shades of FDR's "I welcome their hatred." Let's hope it extends to pushing for a strong public option.

The Prize to End all Peace

2009-10-11T12:26:00.006-04:00

Go read Anglachel.

Absolutely, we want him to succeed -- even those of us who deeply resent what he did to gain power, and the foolishness of those who abandoned mature judgment for a teenage crush. But claiming victory before the game has even begun doesn't help. It doesn't help him grow up, nor does it improve the prospects for his success in any of the actual threats to peace that the world faces.

This award was an embarrassment for all concerned. The best that can be said of it is that Obama exited the room with pitch-perfect grace. My initial wish was that he would decline the prize... but perhaps that would also have been a trap. Perhaps it, too, would have seemed steeped in narcissistic self-importance.

Putting aside the impact of this tin-ear faux pas on our President and our politics, what does this do to the brand of the Nobel Peace Prize? This shouldn't be a Best Picture or Best Actor Oscar -- any more than it should be a Best Non-W or Best Non-Amedinejad award. If it is analogous to anything movie-related, it's the Irving Thalberg Award. It should reflect a lifetime of doing "the hard work of peace." And one doesn't give the Irving Thalberg to Justin Timberlake, no matter how cute he is or how much you like his moves.

I mean, when it comes to it, why stop at Peace? Barack Obama hasn't done anything in Physics, Mathematics or Medicine, as far as I know. (He actually has written a couple of books, so that probably disqualifies him for the Literature prize.) For that matter, why stop at Obama? I know plenty of people who have done nothing for world peace -- and most of them don't get to live in such a nice house.

Maybe they were looking ahead, thinking about Afganistan. Maybe they decided, "We'd better do this now. No way we'll be able to give it to him after a year of that mess."

So... another entry in The Guinness Book of What Were They Thinking? Now, there's a room in which one would like to have been a fly on the wall. Sort of like the story planning session for Ishtar.

Tongue Tripping

2009-10-07T00:43:00.003-04:00

From Ben Brantley's review of the Jude Law Hamlet, in tomorrow's Times:

"The much-quoted instructions that Hamlet delivers to a troupe of visiting players apparently do not apply to princes in mourning. This one mouths his words like a town crier and saws the air with his hands.

"He does follow his own advice in suiting “the action to the word, the word to the action.” If Hamlet talks about his mind, you can bet that Mr. Law will point to his forehead; when he mentions the heavens, his arm shoots straight up; and when the guy says his gorge rises, rest assured that he clutches at his stomach. If every actor were like Mr. Law, signed performances for the hard of hearing would be unnecessary."

Ouch.

Are there any lines...?

2009-10-01T00:26:00.002-04:00

... or is it all just sand? Sure glad we elected the Democrat.

Just sayin...

2009-09-19T19:05:00.001-04:00

Crowds of well-organized zealots, actively recruited and trained in the quasi-messianic virtue of their cause and the evil of their hate-object, descend on scheduled meetings being held in towns, counties and states around the country, distorting the outcomes of the discussion, intimidating the far-less-organized regular citizens who have attended, and creating an impression of a grass-roots “movement” that seems to be turning into a majority phenomenon.

Handy-dandy, and who are the 2009 tea-baggers, who the 2008 caucusers?

I am woman...

2009-09-18T11:36:00.002-04:00

... watch me fend for myself. (h/t Tennessee Guerilla Women) So nice to know that our Democratic president is protecting the delicate consciences of misogynists everywhere.

What it says about us

2009-09-15T09:46:00.002-04:00

Put the president’s lack of leadership aside. What does the inability to change our healthcare system – indeed, the mass insanity on the subject – say about

America

? How can the dispositive facts about this issue not prevail? How can we know that our healthcare costs twice as much as the rest of the modern world's, but delivers among its worst results – the fact that we’re mortgaging our and our children’s and grandchildren’s future in order to ensure that we and they will suffer agonies and die prematurely – and still refuse to change? How can we do so when (a) the way to fix this has already been figured out (indeed, there are multiple models to choose from) and (b) we ourselves have already crossed this Rubicon (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid)?

I think it can only be properly accounted for as the death rattle of our run at the top. This is how empires die – per Jared Diamond, and our own common experience. Only it’s not just calcified elites that aren’t changing here. It’s the whole place.

The astonishing and dramatic fact that Bob Somerby has made into his “Cartago delinda est” – that we are getting fleeced and killed, compared to our next-door neighbors (indeed, everybody else in town... that we're the prize chumps) – ought to end the debate, decide the trial, clear the deck. But it isn’t even being heard.

Contra Bob, it’s not, imho, because we Dems/liberals can’t “message.” He's holding onto an archaic view of media control and impact. Perhaps one might have argued this pov persuasively in an era of limited communications channels, when memes were controlled by a media oligarchy. But that’s simply not the case today. This idea is out there, is often reported, and is being ignored (rejected) by the people. Despite the fact that it’s literally a matter of life and death.

No, the fact is that, on balance, America is a guy who won’t stop to ask for directions, because he doesn’t want to self-experience as needing them. We would literally rather die than admit we’re not No.1.

Have we been had? - Updated

2009-09-11T00:42:00.002-04:00

David Brooks thinks so. (And, of course, he's glad.)

Update: One that Brooks left out, courtesy of TGW.

How will the political landscape look tomorrow morning?

2009-09-09T10:05:00.002-04:00

To paraphrase Barney Frank channelling his talmudic ancestors, let me answer my own question with a question:

How long is it going to be before someone uses Bob Somerby’s signature trope – “The supposedly liberal media trashed and lied about Clinton and Gore, indulged themselves in their own high-school stylistic preferences, told us that there wasn’t any important policy or leadership difference between Gore and Bush, and are thus complicit in the catastrophe that followed. The dead of

Iraq

look up at them from their graves” – and applies it to the 2008 elections, and to today?

It may come tomorrow morning -- but I'll provide a preview:

The supposedly liberal media trashed and lied about Hillary Clinton, and told us that there wasn’t any important policy or leadership difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, indulged themselves in their own high-school stylistic preferences, and thus are complicit in the (take your pick: (a) Third Bush Term, (b) massively missed opportunity, (c) vacuum) that has followed. The millions of foreclosed and jobless and sick-without-healthcare look up at them from the bottom of the American pyramid.

In fact, I wonder how long it is before Bob himself acknowledges this unavoidable parallel.

In the meantime, consider this a missive to Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Josh Marshall, Jon Avarosis, Markos, David Sirota, Chris Matthews, Chris Bowers and many others it's too dispiriting to list.

And as to the crocodile huff that Dowd and her ilk (Joe Klein and Ceci Connolly, for chrissakes) are clowning now -- that their poster child turns out not to be a tough guy, or even any guy in particular -- I can't say it better than BDBlue at Correntewire: "Dude, You Totally Voted for Neville Chamberlain."

As a friend of mine used to say...

2009-09-08T09:40:00.004-04:00

"If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs... if we had eggs."

The speech that Paul Krugman fantasizes as coming tomorrow from the Emperor's Clothesrack is correct, and out of the question. He doesn't have it in him -- and everyone knows that now. The ideological bait-and-switch since Inauguration isn't even the worst of it for Kool-Aid Nation. It's the realization that their passion was misplaced, and will be unrequited. Their hope was projected onto a passionless tabula rasa, someone who simply doesn't have it in him to love the things they love -- or, indeed, anything, very much. In saying that it is now time for President Obama to show real passion on this issue, Krugman is, er, hoping for a different person inside those clothes.

Paul, you might as well write a pre-performance review of my Lear. It doesn't matter how much I rehearse, or whether I've memorized my lines, or even how much I love the play. I am not Laurence Olivier, and was not meant to be. Unfortunately, the producers decided to cast me in the role anyway.

Begging the Question

2009-09-03T08:08:00.002-04:00

This op-ed in today's Times is obviously correct about FDR and what actual leadership and action involve. But to argue that "it is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices" is like insisting that it's long past due for Harry the Hippopotamus to flap his wings and fly to the moon. Barack Obama is profoundly incapable of welcoming the hatred of others -- any others. Indeed, he is terrified of even knowing what might be looking back at him in the mirror, much less turning that face toward a battle.

It's the substance, stupid

2009-09-02T14:06:00.001-04:00

Props to BTD.

Welcome back...

2009-08-27T09:39:00.002-04:00

I'll join the chorus of John Sebastian greetings to the return of Anglachel.

We have met the enemy... Updated

2009-08-16T14:34:00.004-04:00

... and they are O. Walks lame, like a dead duck.

Update: It's all a game to him, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Poll numbers are all, policy zero.

Update 2: What Krugman said. Only, he's being decorous, dancing around the deeper truth. I don't think he's being foolish or naive -- he's too smart for that. He's adopting a moderate form of public discourse in order to preserve his cred long-term, and that's fine. But we know what he really means to say -- what is patently obvious to everyone but Kool-Aid addicts, and what PUMA types have been saying all along: We elected Calvin Coolidge when we needed FDR. And we can only hope that the bizarre kabuki masque into which our politics has descended winds up pushing this mound of jello into the right mold before dessert is served.

Looking forward to...

2009-08-08T22:56:00.000-04:00

... Somerby's howl on this bit of richness.

Green shoots

2009-08-08T11:51:00.002-04:00

It’s fortunate that reality has a liberal bias, because liberals certainly don’t have real leadership.

It’s been apparent to many of us for more than a year – from the primaries up to the present day – that Our Cypher-in-Chief is constitutionally (certainly not Constitutionally) incapable of taking a stand. My hope – which began to take shape with the Fall of Lehman and the onset of the economic meltdown – has been that the right thing(s) could happen nonetheless… that the severity of the crisis and the general (or, at least, politically dispositive) consensus about its causes and nature would conspire to steer the car in the right direction, even without a driver. Or, to try another metaphor, that the force of political climate change would cut a deep canyon that pretty much determined where the river would flow. And if we know one thing about our infinitely fluid, protean President, it’s that he has a kind of genius for following the path of least resistance.

This is why, unlike most liberal commentators or lefty bloggers, I find the current state of play on the healthcare effort encouraging. Far from bumming me out, the paranoid outpourings of the GOP and their tea-bagging troops define the playing field in a very helpful way. The “debate,” such as it is, has come down to: “In this corner, Healthcare Reform. In this corner, The Loonies.”

Obama, that is, gets to be the embodiment of non-insanity. He isn’t anything in particular, and has no visible (much less visceral) convictions… but he isn’t jumping up and down screaming about the Trilateral Commission in the lobby of the Port Authority. And this devolution of the Republican Party – its incapacity to mount a politically coherent frame of reference, much less an organized plan of action – means that simply being not-crazy may be sufficient to prevail.

Indeed, it may even begin to infuse some backbone. (Well, let’s not call it that. Let’s just say that if the force of events is becoming irresistible, if the Colorado River of public policy is pouring into this newly cut Grand Canyon with increasing speed and power, President Obama is the very last person to fight that.)

Versailles in all its silliness

2009-08-03T00:16:00.003-04:00

David Carr's item in tomorrow's Times is a tight little emblem of MSM at its most myopic. He describes the gala on Liberty Island in 1999 that launched Tina Brown's Talk magazine -- but the real silliness wasn't that event. It's his article.

Of course, A-list parties and such-like PR stunts are ripe fodder for hand-me-down Gatsby reflections on phony glamor and dying ages. And there's a rich archive of grandiose projections of media glory for ventures that later flopped.

The problem is, anybody who was paying attention -- that is, LOTS of people -- knew by 1999 that dead trees weren't the future. Indeed, plenty of people knew that ownership of intellectual property wasn't the future, either. The idea of claiming in 2009, as the title and the piece itself do, that "no one saw" the Internet coming ten years ago, is just d-doornail dumb. THESE narcissists may not have grokked it, but most of the rest of the world certainly did.

These people never learn. They just wax nostalgic about their own grand follies.

Add another log...

2009-07-30T18:42:00.004-04:00

... to 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' CDS poster child "Rick" Hertzberg -- the misogynist bosom buddy of Chris Matthews, who spent the primaries energetically competing with Modo and Frank Rich in the parlor game of anti-Clinton snark and slander -- is now, like them, falling all over himself to pretend otherwise, to act like long-time Bill and Hillary admirers and to claim it was all those mean Republicans who said such nasty stuff. (And oh, the Dowdy Richness of the irony -- stop it, it Hertz -- to argue that when the Precious actually needs to accomplish anything, his only recourse is to call on the only people around who seem capable of actually acting and showing some spine -- the same people he trashed and slandered and from whom he and his minions at the RBC stole the nomination.)

Just give it up. You made your bed, and now we all have to lie in it.

Push is coming to a shove near you

2009-07-28T08:44:00.004-04:00

Some (including Our Paul) have been adopting a glass-is-perhaps-half-full perspective about our President's performance on healthcare -- while warning that that "perhaps" better stick. Now, it seems that the moment of truth is approaching. If he doesn't finally apply some muscle and show some conviction, I wonder how many self-deluding 'bots will remain. Some, of course. But that cup may start to look a bit less than overflowing, too.

What BTD said

2009-07-12T22:51:00.002-04:00

I'm resurfacing, sorta, to give props to Big Tent Democrat's takedown of Frank Rich. If anybody's reading this post, you ought to read his.

Today's Financial "Overhaul"

2009-06-17T23:09:00.002-04:00

Is anyone surprised that we're getting more smoke and mirrors? I mean, this isn't Paul Krugman or Nouriel Roubini. It's Joe Nocera calling Obama a wimp.

Oh, wait. I forgot. He's standing strong and giving full-throated support where it really counts -- on the legal similarity between gay marriage, incest and pedofilia.

Another wackading county heard from

2009-04-27T22:23:00.004-04:00

The NYC subway doesn't take tokens anymore, but the Times does, and its latest, Russ Douthat (fill in the puns yourselves... it's too easy), launches his argosy to nowhere in memorable fashion in tomorrow's edition. He whimsically fantasizes a Dick Cheney campaign for the presidency in '08, claiming that it would have teased out the issue of torture in a serious way in the public forum.

Let me get this straight. Put aside the likelihood that even the lukewarm puddle that is the present-day Republican Party would reward the most hated political figure in modern times with their nomination. Grant that they had that much of a death wish. But just imagine the campaign that ensues. Post-Sept. 15, the global economy is imploding. Barack Obama is addressing this, the only issue that matters (and however fecklessly, he is holding the only card that matters -- the "(D)" after his name). Meanwhile, Dick Cheney is out there... bringing up torture!? Plunking for it?? The American public would have listened for more than 30 seconds to that? Somebody would not have taken him away in a straightjacket?

I didn't think the GOP could get any deader. This "permanent governing majority" is beyond Monty Python. It's an ex-zombie.

Bipartisanship will work out just fine...

2009-04-27T17:52:00.001-04:00

... if we can find any to shake hands with. (Maybe they've got some life-size paper cut-outs that can do the trick.)

Not Getting It

2009-04-18T21:50:00.004-04:00

To me, the signal disappointment of the Obama presidency is its imperfect understanding of this moment. A proper understanding is widely available, but these guys don’t get it.

We’re at an identifiable moment in the pattern of technology revolutions, as laid out by Cambridge scholar Carlotta Perez. First, the world figures out that a new technology is going to be the real deal, that it will “change everything,” and there is a period of wild speculation in it. In our era, that has been information technology and telecommunications. This period lasts for a couple or three decades. During it, financial capital – that is, the capital controlled by banks and investment firms – funds it, in hopes for rapid, exponential gains.

Instant gazillionaires abound. We hear about the end of history. This force is very seductive on so many levels – including democratization of access to the means of production. In that environment, belief is, to all intents and purposes, irresistible. When half a billion people in India and China alone are entering the middle class in a wave that makes the Industrial Revolution look like a warm-up, who is going to try to stop it? Oligarchies and oligopolies that have heretofore been, in Simon Johnson’s word, “genteel,” now strap on a six-gun and look around for mines to claim. (Johnson’s Atlantic piece is a must-read.)

However, the laws of physics eventually prevail, the bubble bursts and a crash ensues. It’s happened after every major technology revolution since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Lots of people who took unwise risks lose their shirts – as well as millions more who barely had a shirt to their name.

But the thing is, the technology really was revolutionary, and now it’s been built out, just waiting to be exploited in genuinely profitable and socially beneficial ways. The canals don’t get unbuilt, nor do the railroads, nor does the electric grid – and now, the same applies to global broadband and Moore’s Law. These genies are out of the bottle – indeed, we now live on a profoundly different global commons.

What will now ensue is a period of two or three decades in which businesses, communities, governments, nations and individuals leverage that new planetary infrastructure to transform work and life. This is the period when the excesses of the Wild West reign of financial capital are replaced by the more sustainable investments of production capital – coming not from financial services firms, but from companies that actually make something, actually deliver services, actually create value.

Finally, this is also when a new sheriff rides into town. This is when society reasserts its authority, when rules are put in place to ameliorate the gross discrepancies in wealth and power and the carelessness that exploded during the first phase. This is when trusts are busted, when the New Deal is dealt.

The main problem, in other words, isn’t business generally. It’s finance. Not that all other businesses were kosher – but they weren’t the center of the systemic problem.

Now, it must be admitted that even during the Wild West era, financial capital could be said to have performed a salutary function. It dissolved the castle walls of many oligopolies, many ancien regimes. This is the heyday of Gordon Gecko, when “greed is good.” But it’s only good provisionally, not permanently, and not in consistent doses. After the crash, it’s the job of government to come in and rein in those cowboys. This is when investment shifts from regime-dissolution to institution-building. This is when "innovation" stops being used to describe financial instruments, and starts being used to describe useful goods and services – including social goods and community services. This is when we imagine and establish new rules of the road, new ways to ensure sustainability and fairness. This is when the middle class gets expanded. Until the next revolutionary technology comes along, and the cycle begins again.

President Obama and his economic team, for all their impressive brain cells, clearly don’t understand this moment. They’re stuck inside the wrong paradigm, on the wrong side of history (or, at least, of its current cycle). This is paradigmatically clear in the president’s answer to critics of his financial policies (emphasis mine):

[T]here have been some who don’t dispute that we need to shore up the banking system, but suggest that we have been too timid in how we go about it. They say that the federal government should have already preemptively stepped in and taken over major financial institutions the way that the FDIC currently intervenes in smaller banks, and that our failure to do so is yet another example of Washington coddling Wall Street. So let me be clear – the reason we have not taken this step has nothing to do with any ideological or political judgment we’ve made about government involvement in banks, and it’s certainly not because of any concern we have for the management and shareholders whose actions have helped cause this mess.

Rather, it is because we believe that preemptive government takeovers are likely to end up costing taxpayers even more in the end, and because it is more likely to undermine than to create confidence. Governments should practice the same principle as doctors: first do no harm. So rest assured – we will do whatever is necessary to get credit flowing again, but we will do so in ways that minimize risks to taxpayers and to the broader economy. To that end, in addition to the program to provide capital to the banks, we have launched a plan that will pair government resources with private investment in order to clear away the old loans and securities – the so-called toxic assets – that are also preventing our banks from lending money.

As Big Tent Democrat put it, “that is one of the worst answers I have ever heard. It makes me question if Obama even understands what the problem is.”

Indeed, I'd say it's beyond question. I'd say it's dispositive. It would be hard to be more wrong than this. Taking a Hippocratic approach when a paradigm shift is underway is 180 degrees off. As everybody with an ounce of sense understands, if you are going to err in a moment like this, you should err on the side of doing too much, not too little. We’re at a moment of tectonic shift, not of rearranging deck chairs -- much less surveying those chairs and deciding that they're in a rather nice arrangement already. The economy needs massive stimulus, the infrastructure needs to be used for profit and for progress, and the rules of the road need to be rewritten to favor those who build things, and rein in those who ride waves.

To put it very simply: The financial services industry needs to and will become a regulated utility. It’ll be like Con-Ed, a ward of the state. Salaries will be regulated, stability will be the primary value, transparency will be mandated and “innovation” will be frowned upon. Innovation, in the next couple of decades, will shift to other sectors – primarily IT, biotech, nanotech and services – where actual value is being created. It will also be found in the so-called “public sector,” though that will be far more diverse than simply government agencies. (The world of what have been called NGOs is about to get a whole lot larger and more interesting.)

Now, a proper understanding of these basic realities would not make the job at hand a cinch – but it would make it a hell of a lot clearer and easier. In trying to hold onto the fantasy that the financial services industry of the 1980s and ‘90s can continue in approximately its present form, Geithner, Summers and Obama himself are like adherents of Ptolemaic cosmologies after Copernicus. They’re furiously adding epicycles to their heavenly map, making things more complicated, not less… and adding huge, unnecessary costs and pain for millions. As Matt Taibi put it in his J’accuse, “The Big Takeover,” which appeared in Rolling Stone, Geithner seems bent on creating a “so-called ‘bad bank’ that would systemically relieve private lenders of bad assets — the kind of massive, opaque, quasi-private bureaucratic nightmare that Paulson specialized in.”

Massive… opaque… bureaucratic. Sounds like those medieval epicycles Thomas Kuhn described in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, doesn’t it? This is what all dying paradigms look like. They degenerate through Baroque to Rococo until they die under the weight of their own complication and inelegance.

We needed a president who understands this paradigm shift, and who could lead it. That’s not what we’ve got. We were told that his own lack of decisiveness or expertise wouldn’t matter, because he would surround himself with great advisors. Well, we’ve seen how that’s worked out. Joseph Stiglitz gets it. Nouriel Roubini gets it. Jeffrey Sachs gets it. Simon Johnson gets it. Bill Black gets it. William Greider gets it. Martin Wolf gets it. Robert Reich (belatedly) gets it. Kevin Phillips gets it. And of course Paul Krugman gets it (too many columns and blog posts to pick one). The list goes on and on. But it does not, quel dommage, include our actual leaders.

On being a liberal

2009-04-05T19:41:00.006-04:00

I am a liberal. I don’t mean that I am a leftist. That’s a separate question. The “left-right” frame was an artifact of industrial capitalism, which is dying. Neither am I using the “classic” sense of an economic liberal – i.e., libertarian. This isn't a matter of whether or to what degree one favors state involvement in the economy.

I’m talking about basic disposition. Saying that one is a liberal or a conservative is, most fundamentally, I think, a statement about which end of the glass-half-full or glass-half-empty spectrum one finds oneself.

If you’re a liberal, you tend toward glass-half-full. You’re inclined to take risks, because you have an underlying, unconscious expectation that things will work out, will get better. You’re more excited about than fearful of the future. You think our species is evolving toward something better, and you’re willing to take the chance that that’ll work out even in your own and your children’s lifetimes.

If you’re a conservative, you tend toward glass-half-empty. Being a conservative is an entirely respectable thing to be. It, too, is not at all identical with being a right-winger. Being a conservative means that you are deeply grateful for the discoveries, sacrifices and progress of our predecessors – so grateful that you’re hyper-aware of their vulnerability. You believe that we have always hung on by the skin of our teeth. You know that “human nature” is a mix of the beautiful and the horrific. You look around you, and at history, and all over the face of it you see the evidence of humans’ reptilian brains at work. You see the Holocaust, you see Stalin, and Pol Pot, and Mao. You know that power corrupts, that absolute power corrupts absolutely – and you want to architect things to reduce the possibility of anything “absolute” taking shape. Sacrificing rapid progress seems an acceptable price to pay for avoiding catastrophe. (By the way, one of the ways you attempt to architect things is to disperse power as widely as possible – precisely to avert the concentration of political power that Lord Acton feared. And your supreme achievement in that respect – so far, pre-Internet – is the Constitution of the United States.)

It’s impossible to prove which of these dispositions is “right.” I, of course, would be inclined to argue that evolution – even “thinking” itself – is fundamentally grounded in what I’m calling the liberal, glass-half-full, forward-leaning disposition. After all, where is natural selection among genes (and memes, and all replicators) projecting its efforts, if not into the future? But I suppose a conservative, glass-half-empty, momentum-slowing type would argue that nature is providing all the trajectory of that sort that we need, thank you very much. He or she might say that the Big Bang is doing just fine propelling the universe into the “future,” and that humanity’s part in that future is, after all, tiny – i.e., that we shouldn’t get big-headed about our own role. No, this wise conservative would say, we appeared, we will disappear, we will not turn out to have mattered much in the scheme of things… but while we’re here, we can seek to make the best of it – and that requires being grown-ups, not teenagers.

Both liberal and conservative dispositions are very different from radical dispositions. Radicals are far less modest, far more certain, far more willing to go “all the way,” far more self-indulgent. Sometimes they perceive crucial truths – things that liberal and conservative dispositions are ill-equipped to understand. But it’s usually dangerous for radicals to come to power.

So making good political judgments is not about simply "We're right and you're wrong" -- though surely that is often the case, in both directions. And it's not a matter, obviously, of "choosing" the right disposition. We do not choose them, they choose us. What we can do is to do our best to understand the times we live in, within the limits of our impulses and intelligence (of all kinds, emotional as well as intellectual) -- and then take actions that are based on those present realities.

In some respects, the Obama Administration is oozing toward actions that I think are grounded in the present and the era that's now taking shape. But in one very important respect -- tackling the financial mess -- they're not. And it's not because they're too far left or too far right. It's because, I believe, our president is not liberal enough, in the dispositional sense I am using here. More on this in a later post.

The First Judgment Day of Spring

2009-03-21T11:33:00.009-04:00

Spring has sprung a leak, and now the verdict is in. The defense, it turns out, had no case. Its soon-to-be-published closing statement turns out to be a repeat of its failed opening statement. And now that judgment has been rendered, we're left to wonder just how bad the broader Judgment Day -- a.k.a. Great Depression 2.0 -- will turn out to be. Can we hope for just half as bad?

As the man said, "Everybody knows the boat is leaking. Everybody knows that the captain lied. Everybody got this broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died. Everybody talking to their pockets. Everybody wants the box of chocolates, and the long-stem rose. Everybody knows. "

Day 56

2009-03-18T19:14:00.004-04:00

It didn’t take 100 days to reveal that we didn’t get Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or William Jefferson Clinton, or Harry S. Truman, or even Dwight David Eisenhower. Yesterday, Day 56, when the outrage at the A.I.G. mess boiled over, may well go down as the turning point for the Obama Administration – and not in a good way.

This probably won’t show up in his individual poll numbers for awhile. But below that surface, my gut is that the public has crossed a mental line: Many still like him as a person, but collectively the public no longer trusts him to do this job or to protect our interests. In the asphalt jungle of the political playground, we’ve seen that he has neither the skills nor the courage to stand up to the big bad guys. We’ve seen that he blinks.

Starting last September 15, there have always, and obviously, been two dominant political realities to which the next administration would have to be adequate: the public’s fear, and the public’s anger. Fear was dominant at first. And the intended answer to that was the stimulus package. But anger – serious anger, legitimate anger… and also scary anger – was just waiting to coalesce. And the response to that needed to be to address the perception of a widespread failure of leadership.

On the question of fear – that is, with regard to the stimulus package – the right political move was to take the most extravagant proposal and double it. President Obama needed to reassure Americans – and, given how encumbered the rest of the world is in our economy, to reassure people and governments everywhere – that this ship was not going to sink on his watch, no matter what… that while we all might have to tighten our belts, we as individuals and as families would not be ruined while he was president.

He certainly didn’t get an A on that test. At best he got a B-, arguably lower. But he hasn’t used up all his options there. He can still come back for a second package. He’s been dancing around this, but that dance isn’t done yet.

On the question of anger, though, he has simply flunked. He flunked when he named Tim Geithner and Larry Summers – not because of their intellect, knowledge and skills, which are considerable, but because of their biographies.

When it comes to dealing with Wall St., the new administration needed to convey, in no uncertain terms, that it was going to throw the bums out, that a new sheriff was in town and he was one hard-ass sombitch. Obama needed to appoint a Rudy Giuliani type – somebody who everyone perceived as possessing (a) the expertise to understand the deals and the macroeconomics and the whole global system and (b) a long-held itch to ride herd on these types of people. (In Rudy’s case, of course, it was street criminals. In this case, it was Street criminals.)

This isn’t an issue of the immediate economic crisis. In that, as Tom Friedman (correctly, I believe) argues today (h/t Big Tent Democrat), we will need to accept some unfairness in the pursuit of survival. But politically, those two emotions are both important, and both had to be addressed. At the level of sowing basic trust, there needed to be zero ambiguity about whose side the administration’s economic team was on. That doesn’t mean being anti-business… but it does mean being anti-high-finance. It means supporting the needs of production capital and reining in the Wild West of financial capital. It means installing leaders who would go to bed at night and wake up the next morning thinking about how to make the system fair and sustainable, and who wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep in the intervening hours worrying about whether investment bankers lose their shirts.

It means putting in power people who would do for real what Jon Stewart did symbolically in his takedown of Jim Cramer. Did Cramer deserve to be a symbol of the failure of financial journalism – and journalism in general? No. In fact, there is, to me, an appealing self-mocking irony and honesty about Cramer – and more than a soupcon of hypocrisy and smugness about Stewart. But Stewart’s larger point was correct and important, and if Cramer served as a vehicle to etch that point into the general consciousness, then so be it. (By the way, MSNBC and NBC News – a sink of misogyny, journalistic amateurishness, primetime predator prurience and hypocrisy – most certainly did deserve it.)

Anyway, back to my point, about the public's anger at the broad failure of leadership. I feel that our new president has already failed that test, perhaps irrevocably. And the irony of all this is that we're all now going to have to bail him out. People everywhere – in their neighborhoods, in their businesses, in their volunteer work, in their social networking, in how they run their homes and live their lives – are going to have to become active in making sure the ship doesn’t sink. This next couple of years is going to call on the public to rise to the occasion, since our leaders – all of them – seem incapable of doing so. We’ve got to have Barack Obama’s back, because he doesn’t effectively have ours.

Mr. Congeniality - Updated

2009-03-11T00:39:00.010-04:00

We need leadership. We're getting a popularity contest. Now, I'm officially scared.

Update: Another log on the fire.

Update 2: It's now a bonfire.

How seriously can we take an Administration that didn't even know about the AIG bonuses -- and that then makes lame excuses about how its hands are tied, until being shamed into action by public outrage? How seriously can we take an Administration that trails behind ordinary citizens in its understanding of the basic political realities of the moment?

Leadership means being out in front of major problems, not scrambling to assume the right stance after the fact. Leadership means taking those problems seriously enough to be fielding a complete team, with a really strong game plan. (Many major positions at Treasury are unfilled? Say what? Would it be tolerated to send our troops into battle without a fully-staffed command operation??) Leadership means having the political skill to understand and address the public's fear and its outrage -- including a recognition of the kind of political dynamite that all these bailouts represent.

Not ready on Day One, not ready at 3 a.m., not ready, period.

D-Doornail-Dead

2009-03-02T21:41:00.002-05:00

As I've been saying, the Republican Party doesn't exist as a functioning institution. And as a friend of mine puts it, with enemies like this, who needs friends?

Okay, now it's official

2009-02-12T16:58:00.002-05:00

The Obama Administration is not ready for primetime. Individual members (cough cough State Dept. cough cough) are fully up to their jobs. And the whole Administration, along with its captain, may find its sea legs -- who knows? maybe even by Day 100. But the first leg of its maiden voyage has by now matched the rockiness of Bill Clinton's start, at least.

What Krugman Said - Updated

2009-02-06T00:42:00.005-05:00

Our Nobel Prize-winning Cassandra keeps up the drumbeat of truth. Please please please, Mr. President, listen to him.

Update: The "center" holds, and still the blood-dimmed tide is loosed.

As an aside, I am increasingly impressed with the historically extraordinary role Paul Krugman is playing. In a media and blogospheric landscape covered by pygmies, he towers. He has a lifetime's expertise and the authority of his Nobel Prize -- and, in making such powerful use of his bully pulpit, he is bringing both to bear in the most thoughtful, deeply serious way imaginable.

What FDR Means

2009-02-03T12:48:00.003-05:00

I want to add one more meta-item to my prior post's list of what’s substantive – and, by extension, the failure of our new president, so far, to rise to his moment in history.

I’m talking about the meta-historical meaning of FDR, what he most fundamentally signified – not just for economics or American politics, but for the human spirit. Yes, he coalesced the idea and the form of the modern welfare state. Yes, he created the model for leadership in the age of mass communications. Yes, he defined the normative political consensus for a generation. And yes, he was correct, in the judgment of history, on the two vast challenges with which the country was confronted in his time.

But deeper than that, FDR represented the capacity of human beings to tackle problems on a societal scale, in an age when “societal” meant huge, diverse, complex (in the complex-adaptive-systems sense), global. He was the modern world’s chief historical embodiment of hope – not just rhetorical hope, but functional hope. Whether you agreed with his place on the left-right spectrum or not, whether you saw him defending your interests or goring your ox, there was no gainsaying that he showed America and the world how to act. Not for action’s sake, but for posterity’s. He was an institution-builder. He acted at a scale that was adequate to the realities of life on Planet Earth in the 20^th Century – not in the superficial, stage-set, literally fascistic way of Mussolini in “making the trains run on time,” but in a way that had legs in a democratizing, emergent reality.

A basic understanding of and reaction to that is what made people elect him four times. That’s what made my grandfather and my parents adore him. That’s what cemented his place in history. That’s what makes his accomplishment continue to resonate today – why it is still the model to emulate for any President of the United States.

FDR made it clear that the world had not become too vast and complex for human beings to handle. He understood that this engine the Founding Fathers had built had extra gears in it, that it could run safely at highway speeds. He saw an America and a world that others didn’t yet see – one that was just coming into its prime. And he actually built it – not only through his clear, tight and inspiring words and conceptual frames, but in actual forms and institutions that operationalized it for everyone. He saved capitalism and world-power-level democracy by imagining into existence a fuller, more grown-up America.

That’s what conservatives distrust, at a deep level – this remarkable confidence in the capacity of oneself and one’s fellow humans to get their arms around great big problems and make things better. It’s also what many on the Left distrust – and why they therefore hang onto archaic Marxist frames, with their teleological absolutism. FDR was the real exemplar of the audacity of hope. And that’s what Barack Obama is failing to live up to, so far.

The roadblocks have been cleared away. He’s got a mandate – a consensus (not just in the U.S., but truly global) on the need for massive change. His political opposition is a shadow of its former self, the disembodied spirit of the dying Saruman, hovering above the ground and about to be borne away by a passing breeze. The sheer size and direness of the present emergency clarifies the direction we must go, the nature of the actions we must take.

All that remains is the self-knowledge and the boldness to act. And yet, our new president quails before the prospect of such action. Instead, he dithers around with this silly post-partisan kabuki, instead of stepping up to the plate.

It's the substance, stupid.

Substance

2009-02-02T12:16:00.002-05:00

Although I sporadically find myself humming “Who’s Sorry Now?” when thinking of Obamabots going through Kool-Aid withdrawal, I have, by and large, lost interest in recriminations, richly deserved though they may be. Schadenfreud has been replaced by worry. I worry that our new president is going to fuck it up. And my worry resides in his persistent preoccupation with style -- and style of a particular type -- over substance.

As Big Tent Democrat says today – and as Paul Krugman has been arguing all along – that really needs to stop now. To cite President Obama’s own Biblical citation (which, I guess, makes this a recitation), it’s time to put away childish things.

Let me offer a few principles for what is substantive, circa February 2009:

The Republican Party isn’t just irrelevant; it’s dead – for a generation, anyway. The Southern Strategy worked. It’s now a Southern party, period. Look at all the vital signs – the ability to raise money, to field candidates (rather than host retirement parties for ex-officeholders), to frame an agenda and publicize same, to marshal an army of workers, etc. Zippo. The GOP can’t do any of those. And yet, our Post-Partisan President insists on propping up this corpse in hopes of shaking hands with it in a photo op. It’s like Weekend at Bernie's or The Trouble With Harry. Forget it. Zombies don’t exist, and there’s no need to pretend they’re real by continuing to push living humans out the door (i.e., under the bus) as unburnt offerings to them. This is not a trade-off of politics, the art of the possible, for principle. It’s dumb – really, incomprehensible – politically, too.

Tax cuts are bad now. They have flunked. Laffer Curves were always laughable curveballs. Supply side economics was always voodoo. That isn’t to say, of course, that tax hikes per se are the answer, either. It’s to say that a religious reliance on tax policy, one way or the other, is just one of the blind men feeling around the elephant. The Grover Norquist cult that took over the Republican Party (before the other cults moved in – the faith-based cult, the neocon cult, the anti-Constitutional cult – to form the Perfect Storm of Cults that was the W Administration) was always science fiction. (That is, it wasn’t even serious fiction.) And if it never made sense when we were in a boom, it makes even less sense when we’re in a bust.

Government has a vital role to play. Again, this isn’t an assertion of government as the only or dominant player in the game. We know how that works out (see, “The 20^th Century: 100 Years of Mishagas” in the Encyclopedia Wackadingia). A serious understanding of the complex adaptive system that is life on Planet Earth requires that one acknowledge the many different forces and perspectives that make up that natural-cum-societal ecosystem, this product of the co-evolution of genes and memes. Its complexity and innovation are integral with its diversity. But obviously, to anyone who isn’t lost in one of the archaic cults described above (i.e., to anyone who isn’t one of the 276 remaining Republicans), it’s evident that serious government action is required now. We may not have an FDR, but we need someone who at least recognizes that basic reality.

Infrastructure investment is good now. And it should be forward-looking rather than backward-looking: fewer potholes and more broadband; more healthcare IT than re-pointing walls. In other words, it should be based on where technology and a globally integrating economy (not to mention a globally warming planet) are headed, rather than simply propping up the dying hulk of industrial capitalism (seeing as how we no longer live in industrial capitalism – sorry, Karl). And all of that argues that both providing lots and lots and lots and lots of jobs immediately and building an infrastructure capable of sustaining the planet and the global economy of the 21^st century dictate doubling down on intelligent infrastructure in stimulus packages – in America and around the world.

History matters. Heading toward the future with a decent compass from the past means we sensibly understand (a) the nature and severity of the current crisis, and (b) the right lessons from the past 100 years of American and world economics, science and history. Those include: John Maynard Keynes, good; Milton Friedman, bad… FDR, good; Ronald Reagan, bad… saving capitalism from itself, good; letting power imbalances take us all down, bad. And obscure as it may seem: complexity physics and emergence, good; Newtonian physics, bad. Because a complex-systems understanding of reality is ultimately crucial to making sensible judgments in the here-and-now.

In light of all that substance – and there’s obviously plenty more… libraries full of it… but just to stick with these few principles for the nonce – and of the present emergency… it’s scary that our mandate-stuffed president is post-partisaning around while Rome burns. People keep saying, “Just wait, it’s early.” They say, “Look at those executive orders – see, he signed Lily Ledbetter. He’s gonna be great. He just has to do this political dance now. His political instincts are unmatched. Give him credit for playing chess brilliantly.” Stuff like that.

Well, we’ll see. To me, it looks – so far, yes, just so far – bad on politics and unformed on substance. And to me, the reality doesn’t seem to allow for delay, either for self-education or chess moves.

But that’s just, to paraphrase BTD, me.

It Can Be Done

2009-01-26T20:44:00.002-05:00

If they can get rid of this, they can get rid of this. It is actually permissable for this institution not to be the Paper of Broken Record. I'm sure it says so somewhere in the Geneva Conventions.

Good for You, Gov. Paterson - Updated

2009-01-21T20:55:00.007-05:00

I think it's apparent that this was not Caroline's decision, but the governor's. She was allowed to withdraw with the standard pretext -- to spend more time with her family. Only, in her case, it was probably what she really wanted all along.

This show of decorous strength and independence helps Paterson's electoral chances in 2010, not weakens them, imo.

Update: Uh... okay. Thing is, one way or the other, it seems her "candidacy" is toast. If the report of her withdrawal came from Paterson, then she (or somebody near her) is playing a game of chicken with him -- not smart. And if the withdrawal report did come from her, and she's now changed her mind, she's just added an exclamation point to a "campaign" of remarkable ineptness. I mean, uh, you can't, you know, do this kind of thing in, like, public.

Update 2: “The fiasco of the last 24 hours reinforced why the governor never intended to choose her." We dodged a bullet here. Talk about unreadiness for primetime.

Update 3: A good outcome to this Rashomon tale.

The Big Pictures

2009-01-18T11:41:00.002-05:00

The Matt Bai passage from today’s Times Magazine, which I parsed in yesterday’s post, was far less visible than the magazine’s cover story – announced in what looks like 500-point type on the cover: “OBAMA’S PEOPLE.” Must’ve been an exciting moment in the editorial planning session when that epiphany hit!

“I’ve got it! Remember that Avedon issue of Rolling Stone in 1976? How about we do it now? We devote all of the main editorial well of the pre-Inauguration issue to full-page portraits of ‘Obama’s People.' Say, 52 of them, for each week of the year. Don't let Vanity Fair beat us to this!

"After all, like many of our readers — like most Americans, it seems fair to say — we sense something eventful and potentially far-reaching about this election, and the challenges the new president and his team will immediately face. Why not take account of this with portraits of those whose character and temperament and bearing may well prove consequential in the coming months and years? (Note to self: Reference Roland Barthes in the intro.)

"Who are these new Powers-that-Be? Well, I think we do a mixed bag of his cabinet picks, his staff, a few Senators and members of Congress… a few miscellaneous hangers-on in Washington – just to, you know, loosen it up. Hip, surprising, but Important. It’s our own unique NY Times Magazine perspective on the new power elite. Not Diane Arbus or Annie Liebowitz. More, say, Madame Tussaud.”

“Bingo.”

One note: This gargantuan attempt at collector’s edition-creation conveys no discernible idea or point… but it does achieve one interesting result: full-page portraits of both Hillary Clinton and Jon Favreau, on a level playing field. Which is nice for him. After all, we know how much he enjoys being next to a full-size photograph of Hillary Clinton.

P.S. Six weeks, and counting.

Boom Boom Boom

2009-01-17T16:43:00.005-05:00

It’s useless to protest, because the meme isn’t disappearing anytime soon. But it would be so salutary if we could figure out some way to put a stake in the heart of a particular piece of pervasive foolishness that infects commentary and gets schlepped around in political discourse generally.

I’m speaking about the idea of Boomer partisanship, fractiousness and culture wars.

It’s not just the strawman du jour for those seeking to defend Barack Obama against legitimate criticism – indeed, any criticism – on everything from FISA to tax cuts to Rick Warren to universal healthcare to Social Security. It goes deeper than that. It’s helping to dumb down our thinking more generally.

The idea is so silly and lazy that one would think it would be dismissed on its face. The notion that the Baby Boom generation was uniquely fractious or partisan reveals a narcissistic ignorance of history. Even high school Social Studies ought to have instilled awareness of the humans’ long narrative of conflict, tribalism, misogyny, racism, partisan struggle and general lack of evolution as a species. But if that was too much to pay attention to, what is one to make of people who have watched the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism – all of them carried out not by Boomers but primarily by Xers and Yers – and who nonetheless attribute to my generation a puzzling clinging to our bitterness and battles? (In case it needs saying: Obviously, I’m not saying Gen X or Y is uniquely violent or crazy. In fact, the silliness of such characterizations in general is my point.)

This lamebrained idea isn’t just a crutch, a way to opine without actually learning or thinking. It’s also a vehicle for an age-old neural path that’s strongly etched into humans’ brains: generational conflict. The claim about Boomers isn’t empirical, but it’s not a “lie.” It expresses a genuine feeling – one of the mix of complex feelings children have had about their parents since time immemorial: You're not giving me room to breathe. Go away and let me live my life.

The examples of this nonsense are too numerous to mention here. Hardly a piece of punditry gets published these days without some trace of it. In tomorrow’s NY Times Magazine, for instance, there’s a representative ditty from Matt Bai. The article in which it occurs isn’t my focus here – it’s a typical mishmash of half-thoughts and Obama-cult musings. Some of the points are valid – such as the possibly dispositive nature of the current crisis for policy formation, and Obama’s “elusiveness” – and some are not. My point here is simply to use the following passage – annotated for your convenience – to demonstrate the self-contradiction, muddled thinking and prejudices of this generational meme:

“Already, in the weeks since the election, Obama has endured the moans of disgruntled constituencies in his own party whose idea of the outsider is difficult for any breathing politician to fulfill. Progressive activists online and inside the party have complained bitterly about Obama’s turning to so many pragmatic insiders – that is, public servants who ran Washington in the Clinton years – to populate his cabinet, rather than reaching out to more academics or state-level politicians whose political instincts have not yet been corroded by Washington’s penchant for incrementalism. [So… he didn’t reject the moaning, disgruntled Boomers, then? He hired them? And these old-timers are examples of… pragmatism, not identity politics or bitter partisanship? And yet, aren’t we told that partisanship was the defining characteristic of Washington and politics in general… until now? I’m confused…] Then, too, have come the inevitable protests from identity-based interest groups: Latinos and African-Americans in Congress who weren’t satisfied with the number of senior appointments, as well as gay activists lamenting the omission of a gay cabinet nominee. [I don’t know about you, but the chief complaint I’ve heard from gay activists wasn’t about a cabinet nominee, but about Rick Warren. And isn’t it interesting that the “interest group” he leaves out is the one most damaged by the Obama movement – women?] That sound you hear is the last wheezing gasp [It’s true. Old people are short of breath.] of boomer-age politics, the cataloging of individuals according to their areas of oppression [OMG, when will they get over it?], the endless process of tallying cultural differences rather than aggregating common objectives. [Okay, so ‘boomer-age politics’ was about cataloging oppressions and endlessly tallying cultural differences? As in the civil rights movement? As in the women’s movement? As in the anti-war movement? As in the environmental movement? As in the music and the culture that produced Woodstock? Those phenomena were not about, er, aggregating common objectives? And their legacy was an endless laundry list of complaints, and not a body of legislation, programs, laws -- and at least partially changed consciousness?] It is a political philosophy that probably made sense 30 years ago [“probably”? “made sense”? He can’t be bothered to learn about it? Or maybe he just doesn’t think it’s worth seriously characterizing.] but that seems sort of baffling [How puzzling we are to these new, rational beings, as we do our tribal Dance to Identity and Bitterness around the bonfire.] at the dawn of the Obama era, when such interest groups are among the most powerful in the Washington establishment [Right. Gays are running the place. Latinos are running the place. Women are running the place. And African-Americans have progressed so far that they really have nothing to complain about any more. Life’s good. Oh, and the presence of some representation in D.C. is sufficient demonstration of progress all around.] – and when the Man himself is black.”

See what I mean?

And on the Other Hand...

2009-01-14T00:43:00.002-05:00

... we have the continuing embarrassment of the Beltway's own pet schizophrenic. How long will the Times require us to endure this humiliating obsessive?

We Listened to Her, and We Found Our Voice

2009-01-13T19:56:00.002-05:00

Yes I said yes she will yes.

Dramatic Criticism

2009-01-08T02:07:00.003-05:00

The “No Drama Obama” meme is unintentionally revealing. It’s meant to suggest steadiness, but what it more truly reflects is disengagement, impersonality, lack of decision, lack of action – the lack, in other words, of all those qualities of which drama is the chief imaginative form. The literary genre this guy embodies isn’t drama, but lyric poetry – and of a prosaic, intransitive and convention-based, rather than personal, sort. There are a lot more adjectives and abstract nouns than verbs here. Not much speech-action goin’ down.

I am thinking of this because I just finished reading Dreams from My Father, and I’m not one whit closer to an understanding of who this person actually is than I was before I opened the book. As advertised, it is elegantly written, but detached, opaque, impersonal – despite being an autobiography. Its literary elegance disguises rather than reveals.

At first, we think we’re going to get some insight into his head and heart – and I went into it genuinely open to that. I want to love the one I’m (perforce) with. But what we get, instead of self-expression, is a series of reflections on race, mostly in the form of emblematic scenes from his life, each of which illustrates some political point, each of which has the same hedged, muted, multi-perspective aura. In what is by far the most engaging part of the book – its final section, describing his first trip to Kenya – Barack himself is largely absent. He steps aside to let the stage (or, rather, page) be filled by his relatives. The highlight of the section is an extended quote – a narrative putatively delivered by his aunt, covering the last couple of generations of the family’s history.

This is, I think, every bit as much of a campaign document as The Audacity of Hope – even if it was written ten years earlier. Barack Obama, it seems clear, set his mind on becoming President of the United States at an early age, and has been single-mindedly pursuing that goal for his entire adult life. It’s an impressive pursuit, and a successful one. Nothing wrong with that. Ambition comes with the territory. But there’s nothing very persuasive or reassuring about it, either, for anybody who wanted to elect an actual factual Democrat, a new FDR.

This is a man whose true genius is hiding in plain sight. (For anybody who is familiar with Sigurd Burckhardt’s famous essay on King Lear, “The Quality of Nothing,” Obama is the perfect anti-Lear, the antithesis of a figure constitutionally incapable of mediacy. He may vote “present,” but he can’t be present. He’s almost too post-modern, too Derridean, too palpably the presence of an absence.)

It doesn’t matter what he does. He can talk for hours, joke around, expose himself to the world’s media, be the focus object for millions of hungry souls… he can even write entire books on himself… and yet he recedes ever farther from actual view. Is this a skill, or a psychiatric condition? I don’t think it can be a sham. Nobody could pull that off. He really must be so terrified of what lies inside, must have sealed it up so tight, that he himself hasn’t the first idea who’s in there.

Thing is, he’s now in a place where there’s a better-than-even chance that it’ll be smoked out. He has walked out onto the stage, one of the biggest and barest of them all. It’s not easy to hide there, maybe impossible. And there's a fellow whispering in the cellarage -- only this ghost isn't saying, "Remember me." This one is saying, “Nothing will come of nothing.”

One can only wonder what play is going to be spawned by whoever this protagonist turns out to be.

O.M.G.

2009-01-07T23:54:00.002-05:00

Maybe this is bad reporting. Maybe it's accurate reporting, but his comments were just kabuki. Maybe it's accurate reporting, and the comments do prefigure his speech tomorrow, but the speech will be the kabuki. Maybe the reporting is good, the comments are intended, the speech will be serious, but the "plans" will be so long-term they'll wither on the vine.

Or maybe he actually intends to grab the Third Rail -- the one that killed W's second term before it began. Along with the "new New Deal," maybe our Vote-Present-Elect, the post-partisan Chauncey Gardner of the 21st century, feels compelled to balance it with an anti-New Deal. Maybe, instead of Medicare For All (i.e., single-payer healthcare), he's going to give us Medicare For Fewer. Maybe he really is Herbert Hoover in Wendell Wilkie clothing. Maybe this really will be the third Bush term.