Obama's inside-out view of the public option

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I have been slowly working my way through Obama's memoir with a kind of wariness of being emotionally sucked in. Like all political memoirists, Obama presents himself as having made the best decisions he could given what he knew at the time. True, in the sense that his motives were good, his process was good, and his intellect is good. But still self-serving, and sometimes disingenuous.  

For all Obama's solicitation of a wide range of views, his narrative presents the predominance of certain views and voices as a given.  For example, regarding the size of the stimulus, Obama recounts this mid-December exchange:

Immediately after the election, examining the worsening data, we had raised the number to $500 billion. The team now recommended something even bigger. Christy mentioned a trillion dollars, causing Rahm to sputter like a cartoon character spitting out a bad meal. “There’s no fucking way,” Rahm said. Given the public’s anger over the hundreds of billions of dollars already spent on the bank bailout, he said, any number that began “with a t” would be a nonstarter with lots of Democrats, not to mention Republicans. I turned to Joe, who nodded in assent.

And that's it: political reality foreclosed, while Larry Summers foreclosed on the economic argument for more stimulus-- and Christine Romer's input is reduced to a "mention."  In Obama's telling, the stimulus his administration proposed was audaciously gargantuan by any current standard. 

The Appian road to autocracy

For Christmas, my wife bought me an excellent new history of ancient Rome, SPQR by Mary Beard, which has proved the best kind of present -- something I never would have bought myself that I'm enjoying immensely. It has the twin virtues of constantly acknowledging uncertainty and ambiguity while articulating a few memorable interpretive themes.

One of these should bring any American living in this moment up short. Previewing her treatment of a century of civil war leading to the end of the Republic, Beard writes:

Looking back over the period, Roman historians regretted the gradual destruction of peaceful politics. Violence was increasingly taken for granted as a political tool. Traditional restraints and conventions broke down, one by one, until swords, clubs and rioting more or less replaced the ballot box. At the same time, to follow Sallust, a very few individuals of enormous power, wealth and military backing came to dominate the state -- until Julies Caesar was officially made 'dictator for life' and then within weeks was assassinated in the name of liberty. When the story is stripped down to its barest and brutal essentials, it consists of a series of key moments and conflicts that led to the dissolution of the free state, a sequence of tipping points that marked the stages in the progressive degeneration of the political process, and a succession of atrocities that lingered in the Roman imagination for centuries (p. 216).

Our failures of political rhetoric are asymmetric

The study of rhetoric can yield great insights into the way power is structured and masses of people are moved. But those who study rhetoric closely are prone to mixing up cause and effect.

So it is with an essay by New York Times CEO Mark Thompson that usefully traces The Dark History of Straight Talk -- that is, of politicians' claims to authentically channel the mystical will of the people. Simpson begins with Shakespeare's rendition of Mark Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar, in which he claims to be "no orator," but a "plain, blunt man," eschewing the rhetoric that was the chief marker of political authority in Rome. He moves on to reaction against the rationalist language of the Enlightenment, to the hookup of "anti-rhetoric" with nationalism and Heidegger's fetishization of "authentic" language, culminating in his embrace of Hitler. Finally he focuses on the anti-elitism and demonization of out-groups by the current crop of authoritarians in western democracies, culminating (for the moment) in Trump.

All good so far. But here's where I think Thompson confuses conditions that make large numbers people responsive to "authenticism" with the current condition of rhetoric itself:

What we have lost and must strive to regain is a conception of rhetoric that strikes a balance between the demands of reason, character and empathy, and that strives for genuine truthfulness rather than theatrical “authenticity.”

That makes me wonder whether Thompson has ever listened to a certain Barack Obama, who won the presidency by sheer force of rhetoric -- and whose rhetoric has arguably balanced "reason, character and empathy" as powerfully as any president's since Lincoln (whose rhetoric Obama constantly, consciously channels).

Re the qualities Thompson thirsts for: for empathy, I suggest watching Obama tear up when speaking of the Sandy Hook shooting, or listening to him sing Amazing Grace after the Charleston, or read how he delineates the emotional logic of those who perceive reverse racism in his More Perfect Union speech in March 2009*, or lays out the plights of individuals who lack health insurance in his speech to rescue the health reform bill in September 2009.**

Optimism flash

Trump is scary for sure.* But after all the shit is shoveled in this shameful election season, the U.S. will probably have elected its first woman president, after twice electing its first black president. And both are arguably about the best choices a country could make. fit to govern the world's most powerful country.

"Arguably"...I have always had doubts and qualms about Clinton -- her judgment, her ties to powerful interests, her political communication skills. But she probably has as good a grasp of policy -- issue by issue, detail by detail -- as any elected official in the country. She could be a disappointment -- or even, if she gets pulled into a stupid war, a disaster. But she could be great, too. Obama, early in his presidency, defined his task as turning the battleship of state a few degrees on multiple fronts. He's done that, and Clinton would (or should) ensure that we stay the corrected course.

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* I would have thought that Trump was too obviously fraudulent, infantile and incompetent to be scary in himself. What's scary is that a substantial chunk of the electorate finds him credible -- or, if those who respond to infantile rage are always with us, that our media and political system give such a buffoon oxygen.

Rubio on Obama vs. Obama on Reagan

Greg Dworkin, who does the Daily Kos Daily Pundit Roundup, was kind enough to storify a tweetstorm of mine beginning like this:

1. Rubio's "Obama knows what he's doing" recalls Obama's "Reagan changed the trajectory of American politics."

— xpostfactoid (@xpostfactoid1) February 7, 2016

In which Clinton slams Obama by articulating his "organizing principle"

A typical account of Hillary Clinton's assessment of Obama's foreign policy in the Goldberg interview ran like this one in the New York Times:

Her blunt public criticism of the president’s foreign policy in The Atlantic this week touched off frustration among Mr. Obama’s advisers and supporters, especially her suggestion that under Mr. Obama, the United States lacked an “organizing principle” in its approach to international relations. “ ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Three things to note about this takeaway:

1. Clinton didn't say that "don't do stupid stuff" is Obama's organizing principle, or that he lacks one. In fact she said the opposite.

2.  The "organizing principle" that Clinton articulated, when pressed, is indistinguishable from Obama's, and, just like Obama's, incorporates "don't do stupid shit" but doesn't end there  (though the particulars of her favored policies on specific issues may quite different, in disturbing ways -- more on this at bottom).

3. Obama has articulated that principle continually since his first year in office.

Obama's permission structures

Steve Rosen, "a former AIPAC foreign policy chief known for his hawkishness on Iran," gave the Obama administration a backhanded compliment that sheds some interesting light on complaints that "no one fears" Obama.  Regarding AIPAC's heavy-handed backing of the Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions bill that the administration is dead-set against, JTA's Ron Kampeas reports:

“AIPAC puts a premium on bipartisan consensus and maintaining communication with the White House,” said Rosen, who was fired by AIPAC in 2005 after being investigated in a government leak probe, though the resulting charges were dismissed and he later sued AIPAC unsuccessfully for damages.

Rosen noted AIPAC’s forthcoming policy conference in March; such conferences routinely feature a top administration official — the president or  vice president, the secretary of state or defense. At least one of these failing to appear “would be devastating to AIPAC’s image of bipartisanship,” he said.

Burning off the nerves on election night

I've been first too busy and work and then too keyed up (this evening) to blog for a couple of days, so I thought I'd work off a little nervous energy, not exactly with a live blog, but with a few scattered thoughts and notes.

1) I've been afraid to look at the early tea leaves, so when the Obama campaign texted me at about 8 ET to make some last minute calls, I responded and started calling Colorado an hour before the polls closed. The calls were to people who had requested mail-in ballots, to tell them that if they didn't get the ballot on time they could go to their polling place (provided on-screen) and fill out a provisional ballot. I reached a good handful of people, and they were very nice -- at the end, GOTV is almost all supporters, and a couple calmed me down a bit, as they were chatty and more sanguine than I was feeling.  I also learned something interesting from one guy: that if you didn't mail in your provisional ballot on time you could walk it in today, and it would be counted with conventional votes. So I started leaving that info, along w/ polling places, on voicemail -- all of 45 min to a half hour before closing time. Silly, but as good a way to kill the time as, say, this.

2) Earlier in the evening I had been calling PA voters, and that too offered a bit of reassurance as virtually everyone I talked to was a supporter and virtually all had voted already.  That indicates to me that the GOTV winnowing process was working well.

Paul Krugman closes his own private enthusiasm gap

No one on the more or less mainstream left has been harder on Obama than Paul Krugman, who began tearing out his hair at the proposed size of the stimulus before Obama took office and did not let up for almost three years thereafter. The nadir came as details of the debt ceiling deal emerged last summer: Krugman's July 31, 2011 column was originally titled "Capitulation" and lives on online as The President Surrenders.  His bitterness reached this crescendo:

In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

Yes, the debt ceiling deal was disillusioning, and droves of Democrats followed Krugman into the slough of despond.  Nine days later, the disgust peaked with Drew Westen's What Happened to Obama, a 3000-word screed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review that portrayed Obama as a craven conflict-averse surrender monkey while belittling his legislative accomplishments.  As I pointed out at the time, this rhetorical nuke dropped on ground zero in the liberal heartland relied almost entirely on Krugman's critique of the stimulus for its substantive attack on Obama's record.

Yet Krugman has had a change of heart over the past year. His esteem for the president has grown more swiftly than the economy -- to the point where, if Obama's base followed Krugman's lead, there would be no enthusiasm gap. Perhaps it's an accelerating case of 'you don't know what you've got till it's [almost] gone.

At the close, a ritual slaughter

Lord-a-mercy, Obama just killed Romney on the 47%. Was it genius, or luck that he saved it for the end, when there was no time for rebuttal?

The structure of that answer will be studied and go down in debate lore [update: text below]. The voter's question: what misconception does the public have about you that you would like to correct? (Good question, by the way.) Romney's answer: I care about 100% of the people. True in its way. Obama's...what's lovely is that a direct answer to the question was the perfect segue to the contrast. The misconception about me, he said,  is that I want government to do it all -- and he was eloquent in affirming his belief in private enterprise and in government as midwife, hand up.  Then, the pivot: Romney is a good man. But. In that private room, he said what he said...and Obama ticked off beautifully the groups who don't pay income taxes: seniors, students, soldiers.

Unlike in the last debate, that denouement cemented a theme he had hit all night: that Romney believes that helping the richest helps the economy.  I was thinking that that core point had been made but was a bit effaced, until that closer.

Meanwhile, outside our sandbox...

In service of my lifelong reflex to ward off nemesis...as we near the end of a blissful political week for Obama and Democrats, in which Romney was exposed as a sneering oligarch mouthing Randian shibboleths, writing off a Palestinian state and licking his chops at a potential October surprise...as the multi-tiered depravity of that tape sinks in bit by bit, polls swing a bit Obama's way and he sticks the shiv in without apparent rancor or glee; as Romney campaign operatives point fingers at each other and GOP Senate candidates run from him...

I can't help but pick my head up from the Twitter sandbox to worry whether the world meanwhile will blow up on Obama, and us, before the election -- or, for that matter, after. That is, as our effort in Afghanistan verges on collapse, and Netanyahu continues to threaten his own October surprise, and the mobs keep surging at UN missions, and a decision looms re Spanish debt -- there is so much beyond the control of Obama, or this nation, or rational human effort. And some ill-timed accident or well-timed plot could still put an unprincipled plutocrat in pawn to extremist ideologues and monied interests into the White House.

Just a friendly reminder.

Print those "Don't Worry About Me, Mitt" tee shirts! (or on second thought, don't)

Jesus Joseph and Mary, as my Irish grandmother-in-law would have said.  Was Romney really caught on tape saying this at a high roller fundraiser?

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Relatively speaking, doesn't Barack "they cling to guns, they cling to religion" Obama positively ooze with empathy and respect for his opponent's voters?

Hey, maybe the Budget Control Act was a 60-yard punt for Obama after all...

so I wondered when the supercommittee failed and Obama coolly let it:

If you assume that a) Obama wanted a deal that included at least as much in cut spending as the BCA mandates; b) he is willing to live with the large defense cuts if he can't renegotiate them on his own terms; c) he will finally make a firm stand on the Bush tax cuts in 2012, insisting on either a restoration of the Clinton era top marginal rate or tax reform that provides more revenue than just that sunset would yield; and d) once Boehner backed out of the summer deal, a good outcome was impossible without and until Obama's reelection... then maybe he tacked his way to the lowest risk/highest yield strategy available to him.

Now lo, Republicans are loathe to let the ax they rigged let fall, reports Jonathan Weisman:

Best Bill Clinton story ever?

Gail Collins, after a little inside dope illustrating the shallowness of John Edwards' engagement with policy questions, has this about Bill:

I’ve listened to in-depth policy discussions with a lot of presidential hopefuls. I once rode in a car with Bill Clinton, during which he gave a nonstop disquisition on highway funding that I found a little disjointed until I looked over and noticed that he had actually nodded off and was talking in his sleep.

Ditto for Hillary. When the firestorm broke in May 2008 over her reference to Bobby Kennedy's assassination (as evidence that primary fights should really just be getting going in June), I watched the whole 60 minutes of her interview with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in which that gaffe occurred (in the final two minutes). She too looked gaunt, exhausted, ready to fall asleep in mid-sentence. But I wish the tape or transcript were still up and you could hear that woman discourse on Native American policy and the varieties of potential ethanol sources and western water distribution arrangements.

Obama is the same way -- now, if not always in 2007-2008. But then, policy fluency isn't eveything...

Another unheeded warning from Cassandra Krugman

Those who find Paul Krugman unduly strident, or unduly...self confident must confront an inconvenient truth: the man has been right about the big stuff.

He was right about the Euro [update added 4/5/13 - more at bottom]. He was right about the Bush tax cuts. He was right about the Iraq war [update added 3/13/13]. He was right about the housing bubble. He was right about the size of the stimulus.  And, I just accidentally reminded myself, he was right about Obama's dreams of postpartisanship.

On Jan. 28, 2008, with the country in full flush of Obama fever, Krugman posted a warning that Obama ignored for the first 32-odd months of his presidency:

It’s starting to feel a bit like 1992 again. A Bush is in the White House, the economy is a mess, and there’s a candidate who, in the view of a number of observers, is running on a message of hope, of moving past partisan differences, that resembles Bill Clinton’s campaign 16 years ago....to the extent that Barack Obama 2008 does sound like Bill Clinton 1992, here’s my question: Has everyone forgotten what happened after the 1992 election?

FDR was Hoover, too

We've all heard by now that FDR cut spending in 1937, sending the economy into a sharp recession that reversed much of the rapid economic growth his New Deal policies had helped spur in his first term. 

What's less well known, I think (at least to me), is that when he reversed course after this disastrous bout of balanced budget fever, he did so only fitfully, with ambivalent half measures, and the economy sputtered on with weak growth and unemployment near 20% until 1941, when wartime spending kicked in. Moreover, his assault on big business, via populist denunciations and new corporate taxes -- driven mainly by a need in 1935-36 to cover his left flank and stave off a feared populist third-party challenge -- left a widespread perception that he'd driven away the confidence fairy. David M. Kennedy summarizes in Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945:

Yet so far as the economy was concerned in 19838, Roosevelt's actions looked for the moment to be something considerably less than revolutionary. The president may have planted the seeds of the "Keynesian Revolution" in American fiscal policy, but it would be some time before they would fully flower. In the meantime, Roosevelt seemed to have wrought the worst of all worlds: insufficient government spending to effect recovery, but sufficient government sword-rattling to keep private capital cowed. "The President won't spend any money," an exasperated Jerome Frank exclaimed. "Nobody on the outside will believe the trouble we have with him. Yet they call him a big spender. It makes me laugh." As for private businessmen, they still hesitated to make new investments. Why, the president mused on night at dinner, did they lack confidence in the economy? Eleanor replied tellingly, "They are afraid of you."  Deprived of adequate public or private means of revival, the economy sputtered on, not reaching the output levels of 1937 until the fateful year of 1941, when the threat of war, not enlightened New Deal policies, compelled government expenditures at levels previously unimaginable.

If I could poll Congress...

I wish I had the means to get every senator and House representative to answer this question anonymously:

If you were granted the power to personally appoint the next President, but it had to be a member of the party opposing your own, whom would you pick?

I wonder how many would pick the person they thought would be best for the country; whether some would pick someone they hoped would fail, but not so catastrophically as to destroy the country -- and what in fact those choices even mean. Someone of sincere ideological conviction would have to hope that his or her pick "failed" in some senses, i.e. in getting preferred policies enacted, while succeeding in others, perhaps mainly on the foreign policy front. 

Though I'm not in Congress, I have a preferred Republican, but my choice is a kind of cheat: Michael Bloomberg, a genuine RINO. Beyond that, I'm kind of clueless.  Huntsman seems able and sane, but I honestly probably just vacuumed that impression up from Fallows.  Bush Sr., I guess, is a little old for the job.

P.S. I wonder how many Republicans would choose Barack Obama.

Moan...a Lizza warning on 2012

Before I got sidetracked by the sheer mendacity of Mitt Romney's campaign launch speech yesterday, I was going to point out that it mounted a powerful assault on Obama's obvious vulnerability -- the still-moribund economy.  Ryan Lizza adds some important context -- the difference between social-conservative Mitt in 2007 and economic Mr. Fixit Mitt today -- and clips the same set piece I had pasted up:

Barack Obama has failed America.

When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer.

Three years later, over sixteen million Americans are out of work or have just quit looking. Millions more are underemployed.

Three years later, unemployment is still above 8%, a figure he said his stimulus would keep from happening.

Three years later, foreclosures are still at record levels.

Three years later, the prices of homes continue to fall.

Three years later, our national debt has grown nearly as large as our entire economy.

Families are buried under higher prices for food and higher prices for gasoline.

It breaks my heart to see what’s happening in this country.

These failing hopes make up President Obama’s own misery index. It’s never been higher. And what’s his answer? He says this: “I’m just getting started.”

No, Mr. President, you’ve had your chance. We, the people on this farm, and citizens across the country are the ones who are just getting started.

Leaving aside the lie that Obama made the recession worse, this is a perfectly fair, inevitable, obvious line of assault.  If unemployment does not soon drop significantly, as it did for Reagan beginning in July 1983, this line of attack will be effective whoever delivers it.  

The brief against a sitting president probably always has this rhythm - short declarative sentences laying out what went wrong.  Compare John Kerry on September 24, 2004:

The audacity of nuance

James Fallows today puts his finger on "complexity" in Obama's speeches:

Obama's big speeches have been unusual, because the side they come down on is that of complexity. In his classic Philadelphia "race in America" speech: the recognition that every part of our racial mix has its insecurities and blind spots. In his Nobel prize address: that military force is not the answer but is an answer. In his West Point speech a year and a half ago: that the U.S. can't stay in Afghanistan forever but should stay for a while. You can apply this analysis to almost every major address...

From some politicians, for instance those otherwise dissimilar Georgians Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich, a collection of "complex" ideas often comes across as just a list. Obama, most of the time, has pulled off the trick of making his balance-of-contradictions seem a policy in itself. Rather than seeming just "contradictory" or "indecisive." This is unusual enough that it's worth noting.  (And for another time: the vulnerabilities this approach creates.)

I would add two corollaries, one implicit above.  First, those "complex" speeches generally explain or presage complex hybrid policies -- not only in Afghanistan, as Fallows notes, but also in Libya, and in the tax cut deal Obama cut with Republicans last December.  Second, the embrace of complexity also defines his tactical approach to striking legislative or international deals. In formulating his role,  he seems to have internalized, and has in fact explicitly voiced the principle, backed by political science data and the experience of long-term legislators, that a president's public advocacy of a given policy proposal from the "bully pulpit" polarizes party positions and lessens the chance of compromise. As he put it with regard to long-term budget/tax reform negotiations in a Feb. 15 press conference:

Worshipping success

Like almost all Americans, I am very glad that U.S. forces were able to locate and kill bin Laden.  I'm glad that Obama chose to send in commandos, rather than obliterate the compound with bombs.  I believe that the president acted and planned wisely. I hope he gets a lasting boost in approval ratings, and that he gets reelected.

But I am really getting success of the success narrative that reads this event as an ultimate expression of Obama's character -- along with the obligatory foil, the failed attempted rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran as an expression of Jimmy Carter's ultimate leadership.  Grant that planning meticulously, and in particular adding extra helicopters, boosted the odds for success in this case. Note, as Obama said on 60 Minutes, that the capabilities of the U.S. military in operations of this kind are far beyond what they were "20 or 30 years years ago."  Note too that as it turned out, this operation had to be orders of magnitude simpler than rescuing 52 hostages would have been.