A Stimulus Thought.

Bipartisanship, like ceasefire, cannot be unilateral.  If the other side doesn't want to work with you, there cannot be bipartisanship, same way that there is no ceasefire, if one side continues to fight.

That was my key gripe with the hope/change moto of the Obama campaign.  As goals, they are nice, as promises, they are pretty suspect.  You can't promise something that doesn't entirely depend on you, something that makes assumptions about other people's behavior.  

I think Obama is quickly finding out what I'm talking about in his effort to pass the stimulus legislation.  His attempt at bipartisanship has so far resulted at nothing anywhere near that.  In the process, it has empowered Republicans - at least on the face of it - so much that it feels like they have an overwhelming majority in Congress, not the opposite.  Clearly, their incentives are completely misaligned.  The GOP has no reason to seek a swift passage of the legislation - they know it will pass without them eventually and if/when it doesn't work they can say they opposed it - and tried to improve it.  And with a bill of this scale, scope and ambition it is bound to not work exactly as intended or as fast as necessary and for someone somewhere to have a reason to be unhappy about it.  So when that moment arrives, and it will, the GOP can capitalize on it.

Strangely I don't even find it as vicious and calculating as it sounds, just sort of normal.  Here's a party struggling to survive and redefine itself and then here's a guy who is happy to give them all the room necessary to make a lot of noise - who can blame them for taking advantage of the situation?

And you know what?  I say let them.  Selfishly, I hope they cut the tax rates as much as possible.  It's a stupid policy - it won't do anything for the economy, at least not for a while (most people will save the money, except for those in dire straights, like they did with Stimulus #1 in the summer of 08), it doesn't produce any sort of sustainable anything to show for it, and it will grow the massive deficit.  But at this rate all the interesting progressive ideas will be killed by the time the bill passes, because we need consensus, so I am dramatically losing interest in the Democratic agenda.  

Stimulus aside, I just hope Obama can learn from this experience and grow some balls. Otherwise this doesn't bode well for all his other ambitious goals. 

PS.  Cutting executive compensation at firms that receive Federal bailout money doesn't count as ballsy.  That's populist.

Yes, You Screwed Up. Big.

I am mad.  Very mad.

Healthcare being one of the issues I know a lot about and care about, I was beyond dismayed to hear that the tax-related problems derailed the nomination of Daschle.  Not because I was particularly fond of his specific views on healthcare (which I was, many of them), but because he had a unique combination of qualifications that are key in pushing any reform through the Congress - he knows healthcare more than many in DC AND he can work with Congress to get things done - they respect him and like him and - more importantly - he knows the ins and outs of the sausage factory that is the Congress.  In 1993-94, Hillary may have had a lot of good ideas in her healthcare reform proposals but she was the ultimate outsider.  Good luck getting something as complex, partisan and inherently emotionally charged as healthcare reform done without being able to work with the legislation.

Now, I am somewhat amazed at Obama saying so openly that he screwed up.  That's certainly a new phenomenon in the White House.  But it doesn't make the screw up any lesser, nor does it really explain the arrogance with which they went ahead with the nomination despite knowing about these tax issues.  Nor do I really understand why this reflects well on Obama - and reaffirms his committment to ethics - when it wasn't his decision to pull the nomination and if anything he kept insisting on it much like he did with Geithner.  Most of all, I am very disappointed with how long it took them to come forward with the information they knew for a while.  I may not know much about the White House, but I think it's a good rule of thumb that the longer you keep a secret, the harder it will come back later to bite you in the ass.  And, well, it did.  Lastly, I have to - and hate to - wonder, what else are they not telling us?  

I am dismayed, but I hope that if nothing else, team O will learn from this to be more upfront with inconvenient information.  If they hope to be different from the last presidency, that's a good place to start, and a lot of the other improvements will just follow suit.  

Change.

I just got an email from the big brother, I mean, change.gov, and I urge you to read it and act accordingly.

Hello Alexander,

We wanted to let you know that the first round of voting for the Ideas for Change in America competition will end this Wednesday, December 31 at midnight Pacific Time.

The idea you have voted for, "Equal Immigration Rights for same sex binational couples," is currently in 2nd place in the Immigration category. The top three ideas from each category will make it into the final round, so if this idea remains in 2nd place, it will qualify.

We expect a lot of last-minute voting, so you may want to consider making a final push on behalf of this idea to ensure it remains in the top three. The easiest way to increase the number of votes for this idea before the deadline is to email the following link to friends and encourage them to vote:

www.change.org/ideas/view/equal_immigration_rights_for_same_sex_binational_couples

You may also want to try posting the link on Facebook or any blog you may write.

If you have any questions, please let us know. Also note that the final round of voting will begin next Monday and end just before the Presidential Inauguration in mid-January.

Best of luck!

- The Change.org Team

Thanks.

Just One Note On Warren.

Inspired by Wonkette, I have to say just one thing.  That Obama would make a shrewd, political and calculating move is entirely unsurprising to me.  Actually that aspect of picking Warren is not interesting in the least bit.  I mean, really - this is a guy who voted for FISA and who changed his mind about campaign financing, remember?  He is no naive idealist.  

The thing that is surprising to me is just how much he fucked up this particular calculation.  He didn't have to pick him, there was no explicit or implicit expectation that he would.  Social conservatives couldn't care less about social issues right about now and anyway I don't really see how this changes anyone's opinion of him meaningfully.  On the other hand, it was entirely predictable just how outraged progressives would be at this symbolic gesture.  So the math is - conservatives may like you a little more; progressives will be mortally pissed.  Something doesn't quite add up.

This can be viewed as troubling:  just how disconnected is he from the social liberals (and, yes, gays) not to appreciate the message it sends?  While some interpret this as politicking at its worst, I actually suspect it could be just the opposite: a really bad misunderstanding of the issues at hand and the symbolism attached to a guy like Warren.

But, to leave this one on a bright note, it can be viewed positively.  Hey, maybe he just likes the dude - for whatever weird reason - and he genuinely didn't feel like politicizing this decision.  Maybe he is a different kind of politician after all.  Convinced? 

Blue-State Fox.

"I think—you know, I pay very close attention to what the independent media are saying and what bloggers and others are saying, and I think what—a sort of disturbing trend is that we have sort of blue-state Fox emerging, where people are, you know, sort of treating Obama in a different way than they would treat Bush or anyone else in power. And I think—remember, when Bush first took power, there was a tremendous outcry over all of these old Reagan hands that were being brought back in and the neoconservatives and others.   I mean, I think the time is now to call the question on the involvement of some of these people, that this is the precise moment when this kind of journalism matters, when we have to remind people of the history and the previous policies implemented by the people that are at the center of Obama’s foreign policy team right now, because we’re going to be living with these people for the next four years running the show. And I think it’s incredibly important to be all over this right now, before they’re named."

Abso-freaking-lutely.  Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now!, his piece on the topic here.  Incidentially, their review of potential Treasury Secretary suspects, here, is pretty critical of Geithner, who seems to be getting the job:  

Geithner, I think, yeah, maybe he would be marginally better, but if you look at the deal he initially did with Bear Stearns and JPMorgan, there are a lot of critics of that who say he was had. He was negotiating with Jamie Dimon, who sits on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank along with Geithner. And he’s—Geithner is considered to have been hoodwinked in that deal, because the New York Federal Reserve ended up mainly getting worthless subprime mortgage securities in return as collateral for the nearly $30 billion it put up. It’s already recorded a paper loss of $2.7 billion. And he outsourced the management of the collateral to BlackRock. Now, it’s probably just a coincidence that also as part of the—one of Geithner’s main advisers is John Thain, who was CEO of Merrill Lynch before it was swallowed up by Bank of America, and it’s probably just a coincidence that Merrill Lynch owns a 49 percent stake in BlackRock. And what this really represents is, you know, the old boy network. The Federal Reserve Banks are in many ways just Wall Street clubs. And so, I think Geithner himself would not be that good of an appointment, you know.

Well, at least he's good looking.

Not That Special, After All.

"Americans, indulging this month in our national pastime of unparalleled exceptionalism, need to rejoin the reality-based community. Pride is one thing. But telling ourselves that the Obama story could only happen in our country, in our time? That's hooey."

Good article over at Slate. 

Mutt Like Me.

"With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it's generated more interest on our website than just about anything. We have -- we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the -- so, whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."  President-elect Barack Obama in his first press conference.  

OK, I'm rapidly developing a crush.

Autopsy.

The argument I was making about McCain's loss implicitly in this chart and more explicitly in this entry is echoed by WaPo's Krauthammer today:   

In my previous life, I witnessed far more difficult postmortems. This one is easy. The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 -- caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) -- although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.  In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

The column proceeds to point out the non-exogenous factors, ie the mistakes that McCain made:  suspending the campaign and the Palin pick.  Indeed, the chart supports that - note the uptick in Obama "shares" on September 26th.

Just something to consider as we are making conclusions about what Obama's victory says about the American spirit, American democracy, American dream or any other noble power people seem to be invoking these days.

READ: Russia Endorses Obama

An interesting piece of news that is making its way around European press and will probably hit the US media with a splash (only to be turned into a new fear-mongering clip by the McCain campaign): certain Russian officials expressing preference for Obama.

In the words of Konstantin Kosachyov, Russian Duma's foreign affairs committee:

"McCain got his political formation during the Cold War, he dedicated most of his life to the fight against communism. It's clear that to this day he still thrashes along that front without seeing any real difference between the Soviet Union and modern Russia."

"Obama doesn't differ particularly in his beliefs about Russia from the Republican candidate, but he is a young politician, without prejudices and so, more ready to take on a new proposals and approaches."

He couldn't have said it better, though a small part of me wishes he didn't, for Obama's sake.

READ: Taking a Peak

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria, former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin makes me feel good about the kind of leader that Obama would be:

ZAKARIA: People talk about a crisis and how it's going to test the next president. Well, you've been watching, in a sense, a crisis that is testing Barack Obama already, the financial crisis. You've been in on a number of meetings where he has formulated and decided what his position is going to be, what he would do if he were president -- all that kind of thing.  Describe what Obama is like in those meetings.

RUBIN: I think he's remarkable, Fareed. I first met him about four years ago through a fellow who had worked with me at Treasury -- my chief of staff at Treasury -- who had been on the Harvard Law Review with him.

And then after Hillary dropped out, I got very involved with Barack. And they're a small group of us -- Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, Paul Volcker, in some measure Warren Buffett, and a few others a little bit more intermittently -- who have been very involved with him. And I would say that we probably talk with him once a week perhaps, either on the phone most of the time, or occasionally in person.

And each time he does the same thing. He says, "I want to put all politics aside. I want to put the campaign aside, and I want to really focus on what's happening."

And it is a remarkable thing for somebody to do in the middle of a campaign. He has tremendous seriousness of purpose. He is very bright, as we all know.

He thinks, he makes decisions very much like President Clinton did. He wants to get all the factors on the table, and then he weighs and balances them, and tries to judge what the probabilities and the tradeoffs are.

And he's very much the leader of these discussions. He is the leader of his own economic team. I think he's really and truly terrific, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: How would he -- but he seems very different temperamentally from Clinton.

RUBIN: He's different temperamentally, but he's very similar in the way that he approaches decisions. He recognizes the inherent complexity of issues, and he's very much focused on trying to get in front of him all the considerations, including the views of those who disagree with him. And then he's very much a weigher and a balancer.

You know, temperamentally, it's interesting. They are somewhat different, but they both have a sense of humor. Obama has a very good, sort of ironic sense of humor. And they're both very similar to work for, in the sense that they're engaged, they're interacting.

And I don't think that Senator Obama cares whether you're a 35- year-old who's sitting at the table, or you're double that age and much more experienced. What he cares about is the substance that you bring to the discussion. And that's exactly the way President Clinton was.

To address a potential source of skepticism about this testimonial, later in the interview Rubin says: "I'm not going back to Washington."

READ: Here's One from the Left

During my daily check in to the über liberal universe of Democracy Now! I came accross this interview, in which two chaps expressed concern over the implications of Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama

..what disturbs me most is, is this idea that not only is Powell endorsing Obama—Obama can’t prevent that—but that Obama has responded by saying that Powell might play a key role in an Obama administration. And we should ask ourselves, what does that say about Barack Obama’s promises to end this war quickly? I don’t think it necessarily says something good if he’s putting someone around him who helped get us into this war, who helped lie us into this war and has been basically unrepentant about that.

It's almost refreshing to hear a criticism of Obama that comes not from the right side of the political spectrum but from the left.  As a reminder, the left in the US is an approximation of where the much of the rest of the world is philosophically, so it is kind of useful to consider this as I am pondering about the US foreign policy post-election.     

READ: An entry inspired originally as a response to the Discerning Brute's "NADER Returns"

http://thediscerningbrute.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/nader-returns/

The more I read about people's shock and disbelief as they wake up to the cruel reality of the situation that Obama is, after all, a politician and that he is not exempt from the politics of compromise and deal-making, the more it annoys me that people didn't approach the rhetoric of "change" with just a little bit more common sense skepticism. It was nice to have a "movement" come about that lifted him above what seemed like an insurmountable lead his opponent had - to see people engaged and excited. Not to mention it was also greatly annoying at the time, since I was a fairly firm supporter of Clinton during the primary. However, rather than whine about what was or what could have been, I want to point out to all those "disillusioned" that it is irresponsible to abandon him now. Yes, shame on Obama for not being more in charge, for not communicating his views (whatever those may be) more clearly. For not making it more clear that the new post-partisan world (or whatever people were expecting to happen) is not going to mean the democrats and the republicans uniting at the far left, holding hands. Or for running on that strangely insane platform in the first place. Whatever. It is what it is and unless people figure out a way to get behind him now and allow him to understand what they need from him, when he needs it most, they are hardly anything other than flip-flopers themselves.. with a bad case of AADD.