Damn the deficit, part II: Obama gives himself two years to spend

In his first weekly address, as noted in the post below, Obama framed the financial crisis as an "opportunity" to pass his proposed long-term investments in infrastructure, energy, healthcare and education.

Tonight, on 60 minutes, he gave himself a two-year pass to disregard the size of the Federal deficit:

Kroft: Where is all the money going to come from to do all of these things? And is there a point where just going to the Treasury Department and printing more of it ceases to be an option?

Mr. Obama: Well, look, I think what's interesting about the time that we're in right now is that you actually have a consensus among conservative Republican-leaning economists and liberal left-leaning economists. And the consensus is this: that we have to do whatever it takes to get this economy moving again, that we're gonna have to spend money now to stimulate the economy.

And that we shouldn't worry about the deficit next year or even the year after. That short term, the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.

Claiming a Keynsian consensus, Obama is plainly planning to take the heat as spending goes through the roof and the Democrats under his leadership push for New Deal II.

Obama: damn the debt, full speed ahead

In the third Obama-McCain debate, Bob Schieffer posed what came to be regarded as a baseline "responsible journalist" response to the financial system collapse:

Some experts say [the deficit] could go to $1 trillion next year....Aren't you both ignoring reality? Won't some of the programs you are proposing have to be trimmed, postponed, even eliminated?

But even as the chorus for Clintonian budget responsibility has swelled, a Keynsian counterpoint, led by Larry Summers and Paul Krugman, is drowning it out. The upshot: Clinton came in as a recovery was gathering steam, so deficit reduction was appropriate. But a mega-recession is no time to cut spending Krugman has argued that Roosevelt unwittingly spiked recovery in 1937 --after four years of massive stimulus -- by getting deficit religion too early.

Further, in Krugman's words, "the response to the economic crisis is, in itself, a chance to advance the progressive agenda." Major initiatives like alternative energy investment and health care reform should in fact be rolled into economic stimulus.

Obama has held steady with the "full steam ahead" school. During the campaign, he was regarded as evasive for refusing to name a major element of his agenda that would have to be scaled back in response to massive bailout outlays (though he did repeatedly rank priorities, beginning with alternative energy and ending with education).

In his first weekly address as President elect, Obama once again answered Schieffer -- and in fact, echoed Krugman, signaling in no uncertain terms that he's going for all-fronts-full-steam-federal-investment:

Even as we dig ourselves out of this recession, we must also recognize that out of this economic crisis comes an opportunity to create new jobs, strengthen our middle class, and keep our economy competitive in the 21st century.

That starts with the kinds of long-term investments that we've neglected for too long. That means putting two million Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools. It means investing $150 billion to build an American green energy economy that will create five million new jobs, while freeing our nation from the tyranny of foreign oil, and saving our planet for our children. It means making health care affordable for anyone who has it, accessible for anyone who wants it, and reducing costs for small businesses. And it also means giving every child the world-class education they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world.

Doing all this will require not just new policies, but a new spirit of service and sacrifice, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers -- in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. And that is how we will meet the challenges of our time -- together. Thank you.

Who's afraid trillion dollar deficits? Not Obama...

Phillip Stephens to Obama: Next Year in Jerusalem

Today, a second Wolf-Munch-Rock Award goes to the Financial Times's Phillip Stephens for a superb specimen of the kind of fact-based, non-ideological, think-your-way-to-a-conclusion commentary that sets the FT apart.

Stephens would have the new President believe that brokering an Israeli-Palestinian accord should be his first foreign policy priority. Since that's counter-intuitive on its face, he takes a contrarian route, setting up multiple hurdles to jump his argument over.

First, there's the insane competition for the President's attention:

The challenge for a US president rests in separating the urgent from the important..When he is not taking telephone calls from foreign leaders, we can assume president-elect Barack Obama is already being deluged with both the important and the urgent. Thick intelligence briefings will warn him of this emerging threat here, that rising peril there. His foreign policy advisers will be jostling to fix his focus on every part of the globe.

Next, the apparently more urgent and obviously interlocking other problems in the "multi-dimensional jigsaw of the Islamic world:

Mr Obama is committed to a speedy drawdown of US troops in Iraq; likewise to bolstering the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and to rooting out al-Qaeda from the tribal areas of Pakistan. Iran promises to test both the new president’s strategic diplomacy and America’s relations with its allies; likewise Afghanistan.

All these problems, of course, are connected. Progress in Afghanistan is contingent on the co-operation of its neighbours – Iran as well as Pakistan. It may be too late to stop Tehran from acquiring the capability to build a nuclear bomb, but a serious effort to persuade it not to start a nuclear arms race will demand recognition of its security interests. On the other hand, the stability of a Shia-led and Iranian-backed government in Iraq will depend on the comfort levels of its Sunni Arab neighbours.

Finally, there's the extreme difficulty of the task itself:

The polls suggest that the Israeli elections are unlikely to deliver a coalition with the authority to strike a land-for-peace bargain with the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Likud leader, may emerge as prime minister. During his last spell in office Mr Netanyahu sought to derail the Oslo accords. I have heard it said that the one meeting that went badly during Mr Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe this year was his encounter with Mr Netanyahu.

For their part, the Palestinians remain divided in spite of the best efforts of Egyptian mediation. Hamas has so far refused to offer the recognition of Israel demanded by the international community. In the absence of a committed interlocutor on the Israeli side, it is hard to see what would prompt Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences.

But here's the alleged payoff:

The largest, and most important, piece in this multi-dimensional jigsaw is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is the issue that more than any other shapes attitudes in the region towards the US. On almost everything else, probably the best the incoming president can hope for is to damp the fires. A deal between Israel and the Palestinians would change the game.

Paradoxically, the very factors mitigating against settlement provide the stongest impetus to get it done:

The early years of his presidency will be his best, and quite possibly the last, chance to broker a two-state solution. Facts on the ground – demography, the West Bank barrier, Israeli settlements across swaths of the West Bank, Palestinian radicalism in Gaza – are steadily undermining the bargain that would give Israel security and the Palestinians a state.

Finally, Stephens invokes the enormous worldwide political capital Obama has won to close his own jigsaw puzzle: Obama has the capital; the opportunity in Israel/Palestine is fast waning; it's where he can have the largest impact; and success would change the chemistry of Western/Middle Eastern relations.

For all the formidable obstacles to an agreement, Mr Obama’s heritage and the nature of his victory has bestowed as much authority among Israelis, Palestinians and in the wider Arab world as any US president can ever expect. This precious political capital will diminish over time.

A serious and even-handed effort to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians would disarm the most serious charge against US policy in the region: that everything it does is rooted in double standards.

A deal would not settle all the problems and conflicts. Nor, of itself, would it repair the relationship between the west and much of the Islamic world. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates would find plenty of other reasons to attack America. Yet the creation of a Palestinian state would change profoundly the dynamics of the Middle East. It would make possible much that now seems beyond all reasonable reach.

As coup de grace, Stephens casts this Herculean task as the best conduit for success in Obama's own terms:

Brokering such an accord would be tough and thankless. Mr Obama might well fail in the attempt. But there lies the existential choice for Mr Bush’s successor. Does he want to patch things up? Or does he want to redraw the strategic map of the Middle East and thereby set a new direction for America’s role in the world? That, in the final analysis, is what will mark out the difference between a competent and a transformational presidency.

Much as I admire this argument's construction, I confess I'm not convinced. As Stephens highlights at the outset, to govern is to triage. So why start here? Why would Obama be less likely to effect a transformational victory in, say, our relations with Iran or in effective aid to Pakistan? It's not possible in 1000 words to take the measure of the relative difficulty of those tasks, and I'm not sure I buy the "change the chemistry" argument. Clinton was an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, and that fact did not tamp down Islamist rage. On the other hand, Clinton was not a successful broker. And to end on a crushingly obvious note, success is the sine qua non of (good) transformation.

But where in Stephen's jigsaw is success likeliest?

Is Obama's enormous task an evil one?

I was going to let it go when I heard Obama say it, but now Donna Brazile is citing what some might consider the President-elect's first malapropism in a fresh DSCC pitch for funds:

However, President-elect Obama has warned us about "the enormity of the task that lies ahead."

Most dictionaries define "enormity" as a moral outrage -- wickedness or an act of wickedness. It's true that some acknowledge, with varying degrees of disapproval, that it's often used as a noun form of "enormous"; Collins Essential English Dictionary even goes so far as to note that "in modern English, it is common to talk about the enormity of something such as a task or a problem." And in fact Obama may have wanted to stress the monstrous nature of the aggregated challenges he referred to -- fruit as they are, in his past characterizations, of unilateralism and deregulation run amok.

Minority retort

Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, former RNC co-chair, warns the party:

The fact of the matter is that Hispanics are going to be a more and more vibrant part of the electorate, and the Republican Party had better figure out how to talk to them. We had a very dramatic shift between what President Bush was able to do with Hispanic voters, where he won 44 percent of them, and what happened to Senator McCain. Senator McCain did not deserve what he got. He was one of those that valiantly fought, fought for immigration reform, but there were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we're going to be relegated to minority status.

The Republican Party, relegated to minority status by minority voters. Now that was a slow train coming. Since one-party rule is good for no one, here's hoping the dead-enders' day ends relatively soon, and the Republicans begin the slow work of reaching out to new voters with new ideas. Time they "dou that..."

A cross-immunized crossover?

This observation by Nicholas Kristoff made me wonder whether two potential electoral negatives for Obama may have cancelled each other out -- or multiplied to an advantage:

Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Not to overstate the case, but maybe many Americans found it easier to accept an intellectual because he's black (inherently cool, presumed tough) and a black candidate because he's an intellectual (not wedded to an imagined "black agenda," a phrase I heard repeatedly while phoning undecided Pennsyvlania voters). Two of Obama's most obvious traits may have cross-immunized him.

Our enemies relentlessly seek our prosperity

Arab reaction to Obama's victory is a complex stew. Here's one response worth contemplating:

“It would be no exaggeration to say that we Arabs and Muslims were the main unseen voters who decided the outcome of these elections,” wrote Abdelbari Atwan in Wednesday’s issue of the London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi. He wrote, “The transformation that will begin in the U.S. starting today in various political, economic, military, and social domains may well have been delayed for decades, had the new American century been crowned with victory, and had the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan taken the directions sought by the neo-cons — in other words, had there been political stability and economic prosperity, and had the citizens of the two countries targeted by the U.S.’s designs been totally subjugated by it.”

So if the neocons had had their way, Afghanistan and Iraq would be suffering from political stability, economic prosperity, and "total subjugation" to the U.S. Reminds me a bit of George W. Bush's first inaugural, as reported in The Onion. "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over..."

Funny thing is, take out the word 'total,' and these incompatible goals may not be too far from what the neocons were aiming for. Democracy, prosperity, bases, oil, pliancy. In fact, depending on your definition of subjugation, it's not a bad precis of consensus American foreign policy goals. Is Japan "subject" to the U.S.? Is Western Europe?

McCain on Georgia: lying or deluded?

Newly released accounts by the independent observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OCSE) of this summer's Georgian war, reported in today's Times, emphasize three conclusions:

1. Georgia's shelling of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali was not preceded by large-scale South Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, as claimed by Georgia. "According to the monitors...no shelling of Georgian villages could be heard in the hours before the Georgian bombardment. At least two of the four villages that Georgia has since said were under fire were near the observers’ office in Tskhinvali, and the monitors there likely would have heard artillery fire nearby."

2. The shelling was indiscriminate - " Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area."
3. While hitting civilian areas throughout the city, the attack also targeted Russian outposts. "Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that by morning on Aug. 8 two Russian soldiers had been killed and five wounded. Two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they work with Georgia’s military, said that whatever Russia’s behavior in or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia’s artillery or rockets struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable. This clear risk, they said, made Georgia’s attack dangerous and unwise."

None of this proves that the Russians did not draw the Georgians into this suicidally foolish assault, or that Ossetians did not shell Georgian villages at some point prior to the attacks. But it does highlight the dangerous absurdity of John McCain's Manichean pronouncements and saber rattling in the wake of the Russian attack. (McCain has a long history as Saakashvili's enabler-in-chief. ) Here's Christian warrior McCain at Saddleback:

I'm very saddened here to be with you and talk about a Russian re-emergence in the centuries-old ambition of the Russian empire to dominate that part of the world -- killings, murder. Villages are being burned. People are being wantonly ejected from their homes. The latest figures from a human rights organization is 118,000 people in that small country. It was one of the earliest Christian nations. The king of then-Georgia in the third century converted to Christianity. You go to Georgia and you see these old churches that go back to the 4th and 5th century.

My friends, the president, the president, Saakashvili, is a man who was educated in the United States of America on a scholarship. He went back to Georgia, and with other young people who had also received an education, they achieved a revolution. They had democracy, prosperity and a great little nation.

And now the Russians are coming in there in an act of aggression. And we have to not only bring about cease-fire, but we have to have honored one of the most fundamental rights of any nation, and that is territorial integrity. We must respect the entire territory of Russia -- excuse me -- the Russians must respect the entire territorial integrity of Georgia. And there's only 4 million people in Georgia, my friends. I've been there. It's a beautiful little country. They're wonderful people. They're suffering terribly now.

And parrot Palin, distilling McCain's take to its essence:

"For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.

Palin, following McCain's logic to its apparent conclusion, pledged faith even unto World War III:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty [if George were admitted], wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

The airing of the OSCE observers' inconvenient truths should drive home what we've been spared by rejecting a McCain presidency -- policy driven by wishful thinking, reflexive posturing, Manichean polarization--not to mention cozy lobbyist relationships. McCain may well have made Cheney look like Gandhi, as Pat Buchanan forecast.

What Will.i.am had to work with

Obama's speeches are often called"poetic." In what sense is this so? He doesn't often wax metaphorical. He does employ a kind of stylized, compressed storytelling, taking listeners on quick marches through history (or an envisioned future) in which each era or event or action is evoked in a kind of metonymy, a naming of a thing by one of its attributes, or synechdoche, a substitution of a part for the whole. Take, for example, that 106 year-old woman whose story Obama told in his acceptance speech last night. She was herself a kind of synechdoche, an embodiment of America's last century. Each event she witnessed was evoked by its icon:

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

But Obama's speech is also "poetic" in a more primal sense, in its rhythms and pacing. Mostly it's a matter of strong repetition. The sentences are often long, with clause piled on clause. But those clauses are bound together by parallel structure -- most often by anaphora, the repetition of beginning words. There's really nothing fancy about it: anaphora is almost his only grammatical figure. There are few backflips or pirouettes such as Maureen Dowd loves, in which one phrase rings a slight variation on its predecessor and inverts its meaning -- as in "fail to plan, plan to fail." A long Obama sentence is like a row of Doric columns. The mind follows without fatigue, buttressed by the graceful repetitive structure.

Leave aside for the moment the content of Obama's acceptance speech last night. Here, in selected sentence fragments, is the cadence that so many have keyed into:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts
who still wonders
who still questions
tonight is your answer

It's the answer told by lines that stretched
It's the answer spoken by young and old
It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to
be cynical

It was built by working men and women
It grew strength from the young people
from the millions of Americans who volunteered

But I will always be honest with you
I will listen to you
I will ask you join in the work

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism
Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores
To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you.
To those who seek peace and security - we support you.
And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright -

At a time when women's voices were silenced
When there was despair in the dust bowl
When the bombs fell on our harbor

A man touched down on the moon,
a wall came down in Berlin,
a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

This is our chance to answer that call.
This is our moment.
This is our time...
time -

This signature repetition underpins, I think, the power of Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" song. "Yes we can," by itself, has a kind of brainless insistence. But the speech that the song lip-syncs winds down to each "yes we can" by evoking historical moments united by grammatical parallelism as they are by theme: that each defining act of American history is an embodiment of this can-do "creed":

It [yes we can] was a creed written into the founding documents...It was sung by immigrants...It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballots, a president who chose the moon...a King who took us to the mountaintop..."

Almost every Obama speech tells the same story: of a country struggling in chapter after chapter to fulfill the promise of its founding documents. He borrows the concept from Lincoln: we strive in each generation to form a "more perfect" -- never perfected -- union. His sentence structure and rhythm express this aspiration -- giving us the momentum of an idealized past to make us feel we can roll back the oceans.

Related posts
A nation's education: Obama's conversation
We've been here before: how Obama frames our history
Audacity of Respect: What Obama Owes to Reagan II
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Lewis Carroll to beamish Obama

Jabberwocky captures the mood of millions:

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

Obama: "Republican values we all share..."

In imagining Obama's acceptance speech, I thought vaguely that he might quote Thomas Jefferson, speaking in his first inaugural address at the victorious end of a bitter factional battle: "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." But Obama's personal model is Lincoln, so in his appeal for healing and unity, he chose one of Lincoln's great appeals to unity, the unheeded plea in his first inaugural:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.

And with supreme grace, enacting what he spoke, Obama credited that sentiment as an expression of "Republican values...we all share." We are all Republicans, indeed. I guess he did quote Jefferson as well.

More on this magnificent speeech tomorrow.

Two elections and three prophets

On August 29, 2004, British-born historian Niall Ferguson, drawing an analogy between a possible Bush victory in '04 and John Major's catastrophic victory (to borrow a Bushism) in '92, may well have called today's election:

The lesson of British history is that a second Bush term could be more damaging to the Republican Party and more beneficial to the Democrats than a Bush defeat. If he secures re-election, Bush will press on with a foreign policy based on pre-emptive military force, ignore the impending fiscal crisis (on the Cheney principle that "deficits don't matter") and pursue socially conservative objectives such as the constitutional ban on gay marriage. Anyone who thinks this combination will maintain Republican Party unity is dreaming; it will do the opposite. The Democrats will have another four years to figure out what the Labour Party figured out: it's the candidate, stupid. And when the 2008 Republican candidate goes head-to-head with the American Blair, he will be wiped out. (Independent, UK -- sorry, no link.)

At what cost the Democratic victory, though? On the bitter morning after Kerry's defeat, my father said to me, "We'll survive, but we'll pay a price" for re-electing Bush.

Right on both counts. As Gideon Rachman writes today:

The economy has been Mr Obama’s friend during this campaign. It would become his enemy the moment he stepped into the Oval Office.

Democracy's saving grace is self-correction. The next president will have to reverse several courses at once, and square more than one circle.

You must become as little children...

Vaclav Havel, addressing the newly self-liberated Czechoslovaks at his inaugural on Jan. 1, 1990, was speaking to a nation in circumstances very different from those of the U.S. today. But his wonderment that a nation steeped for decades in a "contaminated moral environment" could renew itself comes to mind again and again as election day approaches:

Where did the young people who never knew another system get their desire for truth, their love of free thought, their political ideas, their civic courage and civic prudence? How did it happen that their parents -- the very generation that had been considered lost -- joined them?

By way of more prosaic explanation, an early prophet of this election cycle (who from the wilderness has willed himself to support McCain), David Frum, wrote in the Financial Times on February 6, 2008:

If they eat right, exercise and wear seatbelts, today's 20-somethings will be voting against George W. Bush deep into the 2060s.

Democracy, thy name is self-correction. Repentence. Atonement. Throw the bums out.

Digging deeper, into American history for an explanation, The New Yorker dared this comparison and its dangerously great expectations:

Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

Last word to Obama (Jan. 5, ABC debate), daring us to hope:

And, you know, so the truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

White flag of surrender on SNL?

Fallows thinks that McCain threw in the towel on Saturday Night Live last night:

For a candidate who thinks he's ahead, and might actually become president, inevitably there's a tone of new seriousness right at the end: What we've been working for years is within our grasp, let's not screw this up, and let's be sobered by how different the world is going to look in a few days.

So if McCain really thought he had a chance of catching up, he wouldn't have wasted time on an audience that might repair his reputation among liberals and journalists but does him no good with the crucial swing votes. And if he thought he were secretly ahead, he wouldn't comport himself this way. He would be more like the stiff character we saw in the debates.

Outside of the political skits, I think SNL is pretty wretched. But if Obama does win, Tina Fey & co. will have helped decide this election. In Newsweek's recent poll, 34 percent of independents said that the Palin pick makes them less likely to support McCain. In the Washington Post-ABC News poll, 58% of Americans said that Palin was unqualified to be President. Palin made that impression; Tina Fey baked it in.

Of phantom snowstorms and Bosnian snipers

This perfectly innocent memory correction by James Fallows inevitably recalls a more famous lapse:

I mentioned that the only time I missed voting in a presidential election was eight years ago, when "an early blizzard and ice storm" kept the small airplane I was flying grounded for four days in Duluth, Minnesota.

Someone who was actually in Duluth that day reminded me that there was no blizzard on November 7. Fair point! The historical weather records for election day show frigid rain. But even without the (imagined in retrospect) snow on the ground, the clouds were low and full of the perfect ingredients for a small-airplane crash: sub-freezing temperatures and "supercooled droplets," which together make for "airframe icing" and bring airplanes to the ground.

If freezing rain could harden into a blizzard in Fallows' memory banks, I guess an evasive maneuver or two in that plane carrying Hillary Clinton to Bosnia in 1996 could mind-morph into ducking sniper fire when she landed. Of course, Clinton did keep repeating the tale long after it had first been questioned. Could the false memory have become that real to her?

Coates: of arms and Obama he sings

After a bout of fussing and fret, this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates broke something loose in me:

OK, I'm tired of this. Someone--who shall remain nameless--just asked me if I was "nervous" about Obama. FTDS. I don't believe in black cats. I don't toss salt over my shoulder. I step under ladders whenever the mood strikes me. I break mirrors in my spare time. I've made a hobby out of splitting poles. Thirteen is my favorite number. So fuck it, I'm gonna say it--Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

The exorcism works because Coates nails Obama's achievement:

This [presidential politics] is a war, and you don't lose wars because of abstract principles, but because of hard immovable facts. Is your army bigger than theirs? Are you attracting more recruits? Are you deploying in the right places? Who has more resources? Who has the technology edge? These are the reasons I voted Obama in the primary. I didn't think he was "more principled" than Clinton, nor did I really care. I thought she was tough, but I knew he was tougher. I thought her campaign was smart, but I thought his was smarter. I thought one person was talking about being a fighter, and another was out there actually being a fighter. The general is bearing all of this out, because right now, Barack Hussein Obama is beating John McCain like he stole something--from Toot, no less.

Read the whole thing - or rather view it -- the poster art is even better than the post.

My only caveat: I think that Obama was more principled than both Clinton and McCain - and that that's a major source of his firepower.

Firing up the database: a volunteer's story

Crashing the HuffPost's OffTheBus, xpostfactoid channels a local hero: retired social worker Roz Blau, who's turning out Union County, New Jersey for Obama and getting the occasional mind meld on the phone:

My greatest delight is to get to connect with people I talk to. One day last week, I spoke to a woman in her mid-seventies, a black woman, president of the NAACP in this county. She started talking about how excited she is - she said it doesn't even matter if Barack wins, just to see what this means to her children, her grandsons. I get goose bumps just thinking about it. To be able to talk to people about what he means to children, grandchildren.

One other young woman I spoke to who I had called to see if she could help with the GOTV told me that when Barack won the nomination, she and her family booked hotel rooms in Washington for the inaugural. They are all going to meet in Washington, and I thought, how did they think of that? She said, "We just all want to be there together." I'm impressed with how families think together about things like this.--maybe it's the social worker in me. Her whole family had come together to plan this, and now they're going to come together to celebrate this event, gathering from all over the country.

A nation's education: Obama's conversation

James Fallows, cataloging Obama's communication skills, puts foremost his ability to be "serious in trying to present a main idea." To that I would add a rare ability to present a complex idea in understandable terms - to break it down, to present it as a narrative or a lay down a cause-and-effect chain. A few examples, in a stroll down memory lane:

1. How the bailout will help ordinary people - from the final debate:

Well, Oliver, first, let me tell you what's in the rescue package for you. Right now, the credit markets are frozen up and what that means, as a practical matter, is that small businesses and some large businesses just can't get loans.

If they can't get a loan, that means that they can't make payroll. If they can't make payroll, then they may end up having to shut their doors and lay people off.

And if you imagine just one company trying to deal with that, now imagine a million companies all across the country.

So it could end up having an adverse effect on everybody, and that's why we had to take action. But we shouldn't have been there in the first place.

2. The strategic case for drawing down forces in Iraq - from the first Obama-McCain debate:

Look, 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 Qaeda 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.

We have weakened our capacity to project power around the world because we have viewed everything through this single lens, not to mention, look at our economy. We are now spending $10 billion or more every month.

And that means we can't provide health care to people who need it. We can't invest in science and technology, which will determine whether or not we are going to be competitive in the long term.

There has never been a country on Earth that saw its economy decline and yet maintained its military superiority. So this is a national security issue.

3. Why Wall Street blew up -- from the March 27 speech at Cooper Union:

...we have deregulated the financial services sector, and we face another crisis. A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business has changed. But by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.

Since then, we have overseen 21st century innovation – including the aggressive introduction of new and complex financial instruments like hedge funds and non-bank financial companies – with outdated 20th century regulatory tools. New conflicts of interest recalled the worst excesses of the past – like the outrageous news that we learned just yesterday of KPMG allowing a lender to report profits instead of losses, so that both parties could make a quick buck. Not surprisingly, the regulatory environment failed to keep pace. When subprime mortgage lending took a reckless and unsustainable turn, a patchwork of regulators were unable or unwilling to protect the American people.

The policies of the Bush Administration threw the economy further out of balance. Tax cuts without end for the wealthiest Americans. A trillion dollar war in Iraq that didn't need to be fought, paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting – coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement – allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long term consequences. The American economy was bound to suffer a painful correction, and policymakers found themselves with fewer resources to deal with the consequences.

Today, those consequences are clear. I see them in every corner of our great country, as families face foreclosure and rising costs. I seem them in towns across America, where a credit crisis threatens the ability of students to get loans, and states can't finance infrastructure projects. I see them here in Manhattan, where one of our biggest investment banks had to be bailed out, and the Fed opened its discount window to a host of new institutions with unprecedented implications we have yet to appreciate. When all is said and done, losses will be in the many hundreds of billions. What was bad for Main Street was bad for Wall Street. Pain trickled up.

4. On the need for soft power - March 19 in Fayetteville, N.C.:

What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.

5. On the role of race in politics - Philadelphia, March 18:

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many...

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

6. And finally, on the role of rhetoric in democracy -- January 5, ABC Democratic debate. Challenged--not for the last time!--about being more talk than action, Obama meditated aloud about how change works:

Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes.

I actually give Bill Clinton enormous credit for having balanced those budgets during those years. It did take political courage for him to do that. But we never built the majority and coalesced the American people around being able to get the other stuff done.

And, you know, so the truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

When challenged on his relatively slight record, Obama has often said, "look at my campaign." He's meant mainly that the campaign is proof of his executive ability. But looking at his campaign speaks also to the role of rhetoric in getting things done. Part of Obama's platform is to change the conduct of our politics, and in large measure he's already done that. For some twenty months, he has educated and elevated the nation. He's made us believe again that we can have a meaningful debate. He's carried on a conversation among adults -- above and below the shouting.

The nation already owes Obama an incalculable debt.

Confederating with Obama

I've read of strange cognitive dissonance in some undecideds and ambivalent Obama supporters (and encountered it, canvassing and phoning for O in Pennsylvania). But this beggars the imagination:















That little Confederate circle evokes the Obama logo. Okay, it's not surprising that both would be red-white-and-blue, but the circle/O is Obama's escutcheon.

Confederates for Obama...now that's change to blow your mind.

Silver bullet in the War on (electoral) Terror?

In this corner we have Nate Silver, data-crunching young technocrat with a dizzying array of charts and an astounding track record, coolly assuring us that John McCain's chances of winning the election stand at 3.8%, that state poll data remains strong for Obama, and that any national poll tightening is as yet insignificant. And in this corner, nailbiting TNR vet Noam Scheiber:

I'm not popping anything just yet, except maybe some sleeping pills to get me through the night... In the last few days, pretty much every tracking poll I trust (WaPo, Gallup, Rasmussen) and several I either don't trust (that would be you, Zogby) or don't have much of an opinion about (Kos, Investor's Business Daily) has shifted toward McCain, in some cases sharply. ...

As of this writing, Obama's lead in the national tracking polls looks to be around five points (I get 5.5 when I average all six of the trackers I mentioned, along with the Hotline and Battleground trackers, which haven't changed much in the last few days). If that drops two-to-three points, as it easily could in a week, I don't think it's crazy to think McCain will have a shot at winning Pennsylvania, Virginia, and/or Colorado. Unlikely, yes, but not crazy.

And then again today, ironically citing the more sanguine John Judis:

Judis makes a great point in his otherwise overly-optimistic post on the polls:

I mention the Bradley effect because I think, too, that McCain and Sarah Palin's attack against Obama for advocating "spreading the wealth" and for "socialism" and for pronouncing the civil rights revolution a "tragedy" because it didn't deal with the distribution of wealth is aimed ultimately at white working class undecided voters who would construe "spreading the wealth" as giving their money to blacks. It's the latest version of Reagan's "welfare queen" argument from 1980. It if it works, it won't be because most white Americans actually oppose a progressive income tax, but because they fear that Obama will inordinately favor blacks over them.

Agreed.

Worse, though I have no evidence for this (nothing new there), I worry that these insinuations are reinforced in the minds of working-class whites by the millions of African-Americans lining up early to vote for Obama. How sad for the country if McCain ends up jujitsuing something (i.e., record turnout) that should be a source of pride.

Silver is brilliant and has all the confidence of a young black box hedge fund manager. Scheiber, however, has been around the block a few times. Silver writes sanguinely about McCain's need to shave a half-point off Obama's cumulative poll lead per day and the historical unlikelihood of doing so. Scheiber speaks to that gut feeling that polls can shift a lot more suddenly than that.

I'm off to barackobama.com to contribute one last c-note.

UPDATE: Make that $120. Those clever devils have moved the defaults to base 6. I consent to be upsold!

P.S. Behind the cool Silver, there's the even cooler (and equally data-based) Obama...