Two Weeks Into the Obama Administration

I haven't posted anything in a while mostly because I haven't had the time but also because the truth had become self evident. It was clear leading up to the election that Barack Obama was meant to the next president. The pictures of election night and the inauguration said more than any blog posting could have said.

It's been interesting these past two weeks watching the administration try to maintain its campaign promises and mark itself as different than the Bush administration. I've been a bit concerned about the administration's and the first family's vulnerabilities during this period. It is my hope that the staff around them will do a good enough job.

Difficult days are ahead. The honeymoon is soon going to be over. The Republicans are going to discover that they are able to thrive as an opposition party and will find their voice. The president will need to be decisive and recognize the limits of bipartisanship. He's also going to have to reign in the Democratic congress when they revert to their bad habits. I continue to wish our president the best.

Andrew Young on Obama: Then and Now

NOW


THEN


Andrew Young was one of the people who truly disappointed me during the Democratic primaries not because he supported HRC, which he had every right to, but the belittling way in which he dismissed Obama's candidacy early on. He rambles in the more recent interview, but he made two very important points. It's not so much that Obama is black that's important but that he is a man of this time. "It's our time" as BHO says. The other point he makes is that Obama has a different worldview because he doesn't carry the same scars as the older generation. What Young didn't say is that the limits of the older generation's vision had been exceeded. They could see no further than having a friendly benefactor in the White House. It's no coincidence that HRC described herself with the paradigm of a Lyndon Johnson.

Here's Dick Gregory making every point that needed to be made on the matter.


To carry that point further, in conversation with an African-American friend last week, he expressed to me that Obama is free from the psychological hurt that an African-American who is the descendant of slaves and raised by an African-American woman is encumbered by. This, he explains, is not to diminish the voids, absences, and alienation Obama might have felt due to his skin color and absent father. Another African-American friend in that same discussion disagreed and said if the world sees (and treats) you like a black man, then you are. Valid perspectives both. What are we to make of the fact that Obama, as of the time of this blog posting, is doing better amongst whites than Al Gore or John Kerry did? What is clear to me is there is going to be a very interesting conversation about race post-election, nowhere more so than in the black community. As D.L. Hughley astutely observed on Larry King, the way African-Americans see themselves vis-à-vis this country is going to have to be revisited whether or not Obama wins.

The Republican Myth of Fiscal Conservatism

I'm no economist but one of the greatest falsehoods that the Republican Party gets away with is this idea that it is fiscally conservative and is for small government (By the way the DoD is part of the government). Jimmy Carter handed over a national debt of $1.8 trillion dollars to Ronald Reagan who more than doubled that figure to $3.8 trillion. Poppy Bush received the baton from Reagan and increased that debt to $5 trillion (all figures adjusted for inflation). Clinton grew that number to only $5.6 trillion (including a 0.2% decrease in his second term); not mention, he handed over a budget surplus. Over to our man George W. who took the debt to $7.4 trillion by 2007. It is now $10.5 trillion (unadjusted). For more detailed figures, click here. With all this, I don't understand how Republicans get away with this B.S. about being for small government and fiscal conservatism. The image above is from here, and the doesn't even reflect the increases from Bush's second term. Check out the link for more detailed analysis including National Debt as percentage of GDP. Perhaps someone who is more economically sophisticated can help me understand this but common sense tells me Republicans have no credibility on this issue.

Electionitis

Things I am Looking Forward to After the Elections ... if Obama Wins

1. Seeing Michelle and the Obama kids in the White House.
2. Getting my life back and ungluing myself from my TV and laptop.
3. Finding out who David Brooks, the NY Times intelligent conservative voted for.
4. Finding out who Bill Kristol, the NY Times unintelligent conservative will blame for the Republican loss (even though people like him and Ann Coulter are why people are scared of the party).
   
5. Hearing what Shelby Steele, the author of A Bound Man: Why We are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win, has to say.
6. Watching Sean Hannity explode from all the hate he has stored up inside (and admitting he has a man-crush on Obama).
7. Watching public celebrations around the world, especially in Africa and the African diaspora.
8. Most of all, knowing that George W. Bush is no longer at the helm.

And if Obama loses?

More to come as I think of them. Here's Bill Kristol on The Daily Show

The Tactician and the Strategist

I found it so interesting that Barack Obama and John McCain, in their first debate, had an argument over who understood tactics and who understood strategy. McCain said of Obama,

“I’m afraid Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy…. And this strategy [the surge], and this general, they are winning…. There is social, economic progress, and a strategy of going into an area, clearing and holding, and the people of the county become allied with you…. That’s what’s happening in Iraq and it wasn’t a tactic.”

Obama retorts

“…I absolutely understand the difference between tactics and strategy. And the strategic question that the president has to ask is not whether or not we are employing a particular approach in the country once we have made the decision to be there. The question is, was this wise?”

McCain is actually wrong on this, as Joe Klein also noted,

As for McCain's remark about Obama not knowing the difference between a tactic and a strategy—McCain was wrong. The counterinsurgency methods introduced by David Petraeus in Iraq were a tactical change, a new means to achieve Bush's same strategic end of a stable, unified Iraq. If Bush had decided to partition the country, or to withdraw, that would have been a change in strategy.

The implementation of the surge is a change in tactics. Yes, General Patreus does have to think strategically about Iraq but the surge is a shift in tactics within a larger strategy for Iraq. On the next level, CENTCOM, which by the way Patreus is now taking over, has to think on the regional level and the President has to think even larger–on the global scale. As Obama said in the debate,

… Over the last eight years, this administration, along with Senator McCain, have been solely focused on Iraq. That has been their priority. That has been where all our resources have gone.

In the meantime, bin Laden is still out there. He is not captured. He is not killed. Al Qaida is resurgent.

In the meantime, we've got challenges, for example, with China, where we are borrowing billions of dollars. They now hold a trillion dollars' worth of our debt. And they are active in countries like -- in regions like Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. They are -- the conspicuousness of their presence is only matched by our absence, because we've been focused on Iraq…. What we are talking about is recognizing that the next president has to have a broader strategic vision about all the challenges that we face.

Now, that is the type of strategic thinking I would like in a president.

McCain has demonstrated throughout this campaign, that he is a tactical thinker not a strategic one, a Navy fighter pilot not an admiral (see my previous post). His campaign wages its battles day to day—win a news cycle here and there no matter what it takes (see selection of Sarah Palin, suspension of convention, suspension of campaign, threat to skip debates etc.) Obama, on the other hand, has shown himself to be a strategic campaigner. He was able to beat Hillary Clinton only because he had 50 state strategy to win both caucuses and primaries.

This distinction of tactician vs. strategist also becomes clear when you examine the different approaches they took in the debate. For McCain, it was important to win every argument, to get that last condescending jab in. In fact, I was infuriated with Obama for much of the debate for repeating “I agree with John McCain,” “John is absolutely right” and not responding aggressively to McCain’s personal attacks “Obama is naïve, doesn’t understand etc.” On a tactical level, McCain shone, until you realize that, strategically, the Obama campaign had realized that the current issue of the campaign is McCain’s temperament. Can he be portrayed as the vicious, cranky old guy rather than bipartisan leader he claims he is? Secondly, the Obama campaign realized that this election is going to be decided by Independent voters and women. Independent voters tend not to like the personal negative attacks and women (I hope this isn’t sexist) tend to like consensus builders. For Obama, then, it was more important to fulfill the strategic goal of bringing in those voting bloc rather than making his committed supporters feel good about the verbal blows he landed. Political Rope-a-dope, you might say.

America’s choice is clear, McCain the master tactician or Obama the ultimate strategist.

Maverick in the Cockpit? Hold on for Dear Life

John McCain is regularly and justifiably presented as a national hero for the years he spent in a POW camp after having being shot down as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. Much of that appeal, of course, taps into the mythical American image of the maverick cowboy who rides into town, accepts the sheriff's badge, chases the bad guys out of town, and rides into the sunset, preferably with the beautiful woman.

This archetypal American hero re-emerges in the movie classic Top Gun as the fighter pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell a.k.a. Tom Cruise. What young boy hasn't, at some point, pretend to be a cowboy or a fighter pilot. It's hard not to think here of our man George W. who, early on in his presidency, tried to convince us that he was a bonafide cowboy while clearing brush on his Crawford ranch or that he was a manly fighter pilot landing on an aircraft carrier to declare "Mission accomplished" in Iraq.



Well, if W. was playing fighter pilot, McCain was really a fighter pilot and in the past few weeks, America has gotten a foretaste of what it would be like to have a "maverick" in charge. Let me tell you, it involves lots of lurches and tonnes of bombs. Who can forget what a bombshell the selection of Sarah Palin was? Or the surprise suspension of the Republican Convention as Hurricane Gustav approached and its resumption in the most virulently partisan tone days later. Or how McCain one day was convinced the fundamentals of the economy were sound and the next was calling for the firing of the SEC chairman.

And now this, with 40 days to the election, McCain claims he is suspending his campaign (as though such a thing were even possible) and calls for the cancellation of the Presidential Debate 18 months in the making. Today at the Clinton Global Initiative, McCain quipped, “I'm an old Navy pilot, and I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck." Again, both his allies and adversaries were caught entirely off-guard. General Wesley Clark, a few months back, got a lot of flack for suggesting that being a fighter pilot involves a different set of decision-making attributes than say an admiral. Trust me, the Navy does not hand over its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to its fighter pilots for safe-keeping. You make a different set of decisions with 5,000 men under your care than when you're flying solo.

What we have seen in McCain's process is an extremely unpredictable leadership style that leaves the rest of the team trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Guess what? Great attributes in a dogfight, unsettling as a world leader (just ask the North Koreans). In fact, the moral of Top Gun is that the maverick endangers his team. I sure as hell don't want to wake up one morning to find out we went to war with Russia while I was sleeping.

America couldn't have a clearer set of options in selecting its next president. NPR has a piece on Obama's temperament and another on McCain's. I, for one, need to rent Top Gun again to get away from all the excitement.


Update I: To summarize, a fighter pilot is a tactician, an admiral is a strategist. Obama is a strategic thinker, McCain is all tactics all the time.

Swinging Pendelums and Cuckoo Clocks

In a recent discussion with a good friend, he wondered aloud if McCain and Obama were not simply flip sides of the same coin. In other words, could either of them really offer deep structural change? Who really believes that lobbyists are going to disappear from Washington and corporate interests will no longer hold sway over congress? What is this if not a nation of special interests? That, I'm afraid, is the nature of the beast in Washington. My friend further suggested that only Ron Paul was proposing real systemic change (note to self, pay more attention to Ron Paul). I find that, in many ways, my amigo is right. More than a few commentators have, in fact, observed that for all the talk of post-partisanship, both candidates have descended into conventionally Democratic and Republic stances. So the question is are we really going to get change with either Obama or McCain?

If my friend is right, and I am afraid he is, the new world order is going to look surprisingly like the old one and there are going to be many disappointed idealists. There is, however, a reason for this systemic resistance to change: the system is rigged to prevent rapid change in order to maintain institutional stability (or sluggishness as you may see it). The founding fathers realized that not all bright ideas turn out to be great ideas after all. Privatized social security anyone?

The advantage of the American system has been that the institution is stronger than the individual. Furthermore, the binary party system, which has resisted intrusion from third parties, is set up to accept change insofar as it is the swing of a pendulum back and forth. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, the American people can, if they are so inclined, push it back in the other direction. See the regulation or deregulation of markets for instance.

The question for the American people is whether they want to swing the direction of the pendulum or they are asking for a new watchmaker. Ron Paul and some of his less successful counterparts certainly propose rebuilding the clock but what if they break it? The polls so far suggest that the American people want change as long as it isn't accompanied by instability: evolution not revolution. Sorry Ron Paul.

By the way, do not be confused by John McCain's presence in this election; the pendulum swing that an Obama candidacy exists to counter is the Bush administration's not John McCain's (hence Obama's attempts to declare McCain as the 3rd Bush term). McCain is sort of the cuckoo that pops out and distracts you from noticing the swinging pendulum. While fair-minded observers will credit McCain as a politician who is willing to strike it out on his own (hence the maverick label), he still has to drag the right-wing base of the Republican party along with him--witness the Republic convention and the selection of Sarah Palin.

So while Obama appears to be competing against McCain, you can only truly understand his emergence and the passion of his supporters if you see him as the anti-Bush, the pendulum swing in the other direction. For every undesirable Bush trait, he seems to offer a corrective. Where Bush appeared to make decisions impulsively and speak in simple anemic sentences, Obama appears to weigh every utterance considerably and speak in thoughtful paragraphs (an asset that is likely to be a liability in the debates). While Bush operates on the global scene like a cowboy on his ranch, Obama seems to see the global community as faculty lounge where all can be reasoned with. For Bush, the constitution is an inconvenience to be maneuvered around, while for Obama it has been object of study as a constitutional lawyer.



Obama could only happen in American politics because Bush happened in American governance. Just as Bush's mindset and worldview brought its consequences, so will Obama's modus operandi, some good, some bad. The only real question is has the pendulum swung far enough to the right for change.

The Coming Surprise

It's become quite clear, based on emerging news reports, that the Bush Administration is determined to find Osama bin Laden before the November elections (footnote: isn't it ironic that Osama bin Laden sounds phonetically like Obama n' Biden, give or take a few consonants?). It's been revealed that ground troops, specifically Navy SEALs, have been making incursions into Pakistan and the unmanned Predator strikes have increased.

Why the renewed urgency after 7 years in power? On one hand, it is fair to assume, as Sheryl Gay Stolberg does, that Bush is seeking to salvage his legacy. On the other hand, it is quite clear that Bin Laden's capture will be a net positive for Senator McCain's campaign. I am convinced that the Administration is going to try to use this as a game-changer. If my hypothesis seems far-fetched, anyone recall the serendipitous timing of the raid to rescue Ingrid Betancourt and McCain's visit to Colombia a few months ago? (A great story considering McCain was himself a POW for about the same length of time as Betancourt). Watch screenwriter and commenetator John Ridley speaking to this point on Morning Joe in July.



The Obama campaign would be well-advised to be prepared to go on offense immediately Osama bin Laden is captured so that the Republicans don't use it to their advantage. His capture should be used to reinforce the simple point that if we had focused on going after Osama rather than being diverted to Iraq, we would have made much more progress in the "war on terror."

Update I: See NPR story along these lines here.

Why John Stewart is One of My Heroes