On the Contrary

I have taken President Obama to task in previous blogs for what I feel is his failure to lead once he got into office (Skating on the Thin Edge of Disillusionment).  It seemed that once he arrived in Washington he was overcome with the conventional wisdom of what was politically possible instead of the reason so many supported him, to overcome that conventional wisdom.  Well this morning Arianna Huffington wrote a delightful piece in the Huffington Post about David Plouffe’s new book, The Audacity to Win, making the point that he seems to have forgotten all the lessons that got him to the White House (The Audacity to Win vs. The Timidity of Governing).

I hope he reads this because from my seat he is becoming just more of the same without the courage to take really tough positions and push through real change.  I am not alone in these feelings as a recent article in the New York Times about how Iowa voters who voted for Obama back in the primary are losing faith (In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama).  I hope this shakes him out of his slumber and realizes this is not about eight years, but about changing the mindset of America.  The eight years is just a byproduct if he can really do this.  Right now he and his team seem to want to take victory laps for baby steps.

Today is an off-year election as if you didn’t know and have not been inundated by the media that seems to have nothing better to cover.  I won’t pretend to know the local politics of these elections, but the kind of statements we are hearing out of the press is to believe this is a predictor of all future elections.  “History tells us….”, “This election will foretell the future for the Democrats in 2010…”, are the common things they are all bloviating.  To me it is all nonsense as Republican pundits tell you it is a referendum on the Obama administration, and Democrats tell you it is meaningless.  Depending on the outcome of these election they will probably switch positions.  They all have their agendas.

What is telling is that Virginia might elect someone who thinks women are second-class citizens, and New Jersey would reject a governor who made some hard decisions about funding government.  Meanwhile Maine will attempt to deny rights to gays and lesbians also as second-class citizens.  I know it is not that simple, but it does demonstrate that the nation still lacks some kind of vision about where we are headed and are reacting to their fears and selfish interests.  Until we get a holistic narrative about what we are about and where we are headed, these elections just reflect the refusal of most voters to make hard decisions about sacrifice for the future or have a shared set of values.  So much can happen between now and 2010 that these elections are meaningless for predicting the future.

One last extraneous thought:  David Kwak, co-founder of the Baseline Scenario, wrote a really interesting piece titled, Do Smart, Hardworking People Deserve to Make More Money? He was responding to a posting about a story of a family that was down on their luck and struggling with high credit card bills, including plenty of fees.  Apparently the story triggered a wave of posts blaming the victim.  What was on display was the same thought process that blames a rape victim for their rape.  What is really going on is that as a defense mechanism, people like to think that they can control their lives.  This control gives them piece of mind and what is really subconsciously going on is “that would never happen to me because I would make better choices.”  If you really want to understand why some people are utterly devastated when something bad happens to them, it is because they feel a total loss of power and control.  The world doesn’t make sense to them anymore because they didn’t deserve it.

But what Mr. Kwak takes on is a fundamental conservative belief that success and prosperity are the result of discipline and hard work, ignoring the impact of chance.  It’s is that being in control thing.  Many people work hard and don’t prosper.  Some aren’t as smart as others through the chance of DNA combinations or opportunities good parenting brings.  So he asks a fundamental question in terms of a philosophy foreign to conservative thought:

“If you are willing to acknowledge that chance determines who you are to begin with, then it becomes obvious (to me at least) that public policy cannot simply seek to level the playing field, because that will just endorse a system that produces good outcomes for the lucky (the smart and hard-working) and bad outcomes for the unlucky. Instead, fairness dictates that policy should attempt to improve outcomes for the unlucky, even if that requires hurting outcomes for the lucky.”

If you understand this reasoning you are a Progressive and if you don’t, you are a conservative.  It is the classic insight into why conservatives lack empathy for their fellow Americans and judge self-worth in terms of wealth.  It is because they do not believe that chance had anything to do with it.  They deserve what they got and do not need to spend any time pondering the fate of others, because they don’t deserve to share in their bounty.

My nephew Jeff thinks I am more of a cynic when I am in a little pain.  Maybe so.  As I sit here in my chair with my leg propped up, ice on my knee, listening to the news and reading all the papers, let me tell you, things are in really bad shape.  No, that is not quite right.  Until this hiatus, I don’t think I realized how crazy our country has become.  We have stopped making sense.

First there is the news.  No I take that back.  There is no news anymore.  The level of professionalism is so low it denies description.  They are so bad they have become the gossip channel where fact checking is moot and opinions are out of control.  John Stewart on the Daily Show did the nation a favor when he exposed this lunacy when he showed how CNN fact checked an Obama skit on Saturday Night Live and then showed clip after clip where Republicans would make patently false statements with Wolfe or some other blithering idiot saying, “Well we have to leave it there” instead of correcting the record.  See video (Sorry for the commercial):

Is it any wonder that our nation is so poorly informed on most of the issues?  This isn’t just bad, it is criminal.  They are misinforming the nation and are part of the Republican problem.  Today I turned on the news and got a 25 minute press conference about the escaped balloon.  There is no national story here.  The guy may be a fruitcake but we have more important things to worry about.  I think we are living in a lunatic asylum when I watch this stuff.

Then there are the actual politicians that are being interviewed.  I never realized how stupid most of these people are.  They look nice, the can use all the buzz words, but there is no there there.  They are citing information that is flat out wrong or is carefully crafted by a biased source and they don’t seem to care.  These are the people whose hands we have put our lives in?  Look at our economy.  It is in shambles as employment is the issue and we still focus on the stock market.  The banks have been made whole and we have people losing their homes.  Meanwhile the morons in Congress continue to prevent any real change whether it is bank reform, agricultural reform, finance reform, real energy policy, climate change, or health care, as though the conservative approach will somehow regain it’s vigor.  The crazies are in charge.  Meanwhile on Meet the Press they had a panel about the problems women face.  The fucking place is burning down and we can’t seem to focus on the cause of the fire.

And one last word about the health care fiasco.  It is over.  There is no reform.  Have you seen the plans?  The best one doesn’t let the average guy have a public plan.  The Achilles Heel of the Democrats is that they care about people.  So the morons will settle for a plan that covers a few more people instead of saying Hell No and fighting for real reform.  What we are going to get is a plan guaranteed to fail as cost continue to grow and health insurers get richer.  Kind of reminds you of how we reformed the banks doesn’t it?  Meanwhile the press misrepresents this one as saying the liberal Democrats want a public option.  No.  Democrats want a public option; liberal Democrats want a single payer system.  And on this one they are right.  Real reform would be Medicare for everyone.  What is so hard about this?

Finally we have a President who talks a good game, but has done little.  The Saturday Night Live skit about President Obama that CNN fact checked didn’t need to be fact checked. Yes he has made some changes but where it counts he has failed to step up and lead us.  I don’t know if he understands yet that marginal changes from George Bush are just not good enough.  As he approves more troops for Afghanistan in a country that has no government and has no end game except some Republican dream about security for the locals (the Taliban are locals), this country sinks further into its own self-made quagmire.  The day we finally shrug off conservative lunacy, take charge of our country, and really change things will be the day I cheer up.  Other than Congressman Grayson, nobody is speaking for me these days.  The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and the country is running amok.

Oh, did I mention my crutches were made in China?  Insane asylum.

What is it about checking the polls before we do anything?  It has become the measure of what is possible.  How many people believe that global warming exists?  How many people support continued troop deployments in Afghanistan?  Is there strong support in the country for tough Wall Street Regulations?  What percentage of the voters thinks there should be a public option for health care?  What percentage thinks we should investigate torture?  It goes on and on and it tells us nothing about what we should do, only the challenge we face to convince people of the problem.

Leadership is about telling the people what they should do and then convincing them to follow.  We seem to have forgotten that.  Leadership is about finding what will really work to solve our problems and then convincing people to do it.  It would appear that we are getting buried in the conventional wisdom about what the voters will support, and everything else is getting buried as impractical.

Health care is the prime example.  Is it more important to know what the electorate wants or is it more important to figure out what will really provide 100% coverage and start to restructure our system to lower costs with better outcomes?  If the two aren’t aligned isn’t it the leaders job to show the voters what will work and convince them to support him?  If you believe that the Republicans will never vote for a public option, should you negotiate it away even if you think it is critical to your reform package?  Maybe if you really went out there and fought for the public option, there would be enough pressure on the Republicans to change some of their votes.  It’s called leadership.

I love the discussion that is going on right now whether the voters will stand for more troops in Afghanistan.  Wrong discussion.  The American voters will support a troop increase if they are convinced it is in our long-term interests.  So the discussion ought to be on what is our goal, what are the policy choices, what are our alternatives, and what does it cost.  Once you have a plan forward that you believe in, then the job is selling it.  It’s called leadership.

My real consternation is with this idea that health care needs to be bipartisan to work.  Actually it needs to have the right elements to work and if the Republicans continue to try to block things, then the President should lead for an effective policy, not one that is fatally flawed so we can include elements of failed philosophical ideas.  Sometimes the other side just doesn’t have any good ideas and it is just time to move on.  Now is that time.  Right now 66% of our population is “confused” about health care.  If that is not an indictment of failed leadership, nothing is.

For my own part, I take issue with most of the conventional wisdom of today about most of our policy issues.  The conventional wisdom is that we should not be too far to the left or right, but continue a middle of the road approach that most of the voters will be comfortable with.  But as I look at the challenges that face us, I am convinced that old go slow approaches are no longer operative.  In order to get back into the race, regain a leadership position in the world, and secure the financial security for our children, we need a totally different approach.  This means government has a major role in bringing about these changes because the market place has shown that its only interest is in the status quo of the moneymakers.  Not only do we need to convince the voters of this, but we need to convince these same people to make the necessary sacrifices in taxes and life choices, to secure our future.

David Brooks in his column on Monday said, “It means he (the President) has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.” But the political center, by which he means right of center, and decentralized authority, is what is leading to our downfall.  It doesn’t mean we give up on market solutions, it just means that the market is not the be all and end all of policy solutions.  It is time to move in another direction and we need the leadership to show us that direction.  So far it has been sadly lacking.  If you think I am wrong, ask yourself why 66% of the nation is confused on health care.  This one is a no-brainer.

We got a wakeup call from of all people, conservative columnist David Brooks.  In his column yesterday in the New York Times, Vince Lombardi Politics, Mr. Brooks made the point that maybe winning isn’t everything, and compromising on legislation to get a win or to achieve what is politically possible may, in fact, pass legislation that is at best ineffective.   That would seem to be the modus operandi of the Obama Administration and the Democrats these days and it is so sad that even the conservatives see the obvious.

Take health care.  On Meet the Press Sunday, Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod, when pressed on whether the Obama administration would get health care reform passed with a government option, Mr. Axelrod kept repeating that we would get health care reform passed.  In other words they were willing to compromise away a government option if that is what it took to get a health care reform package through Congress.  As I have written before, what’s the point?  Without a robust government option there is no reform.  The fear of many of us is that if you compromise away real reform now in order to get a bill under your belt, you may also waste a crisis to force real change.  One might ask when are we ever going to draw a line in the sand and say no more back sliding?  When will we be willing to wait in order to get what is really need instead of the quick fix to say we won?

Take energy and climate change.  Because the Republicans are brain dead and deny both our energy problem (addiction to oil) and climate change, there will be little support from these morons, so quit trying.  But then there are the Democrats from coal states with the same myopia.  In order to bring them along, the bill got watered down to the point where it is a very timid approach to our problems.  Even with all amendments to make the plan almost ineffective, most pundits were urging passage in the Senate because at least it is a beginning ( See Tom Friedman’s column,  Just Do It).  The fear is that the Senate will water it down even further.  Again what is the point if in order to appease all the little self-serving people in the Congress, we finally pass a bill that is at best neutral?  Are we once again compromising away our future?

I listened to a discussion of the impact of finally seating Al Franken in the Senate, bringing the 60th vote for the Democrats.  Because the Democrats are anything but in lock step like the Republicans have been and are, there is little chance this would guarantee anything.  But what I found most interesting is that they felt there would be a power shift away from the moderate Republicans (Snow and Collins) to “moderate” Democrats like Ben Nelson.  What I found interesting was calling Nelson and his ilk moderate.  The nation has moved center left and Nelson and other conservative Democrats are center right and yet the Press still refers to them as moderate Democrats.  The Republicans have become the far right with no viable solutions for our future, the conservative Democrats have become moderate Republicans, and the mainstream Democrats are the center today and nobody gets it.  Worse we keep watering down our agenda to keep these “moderate” Democrats happy and what we are really doing is legislating a moderate Republican agenda while the nation cries out for a Progressive way forward.

I think it is time to quit compromising or looking for bipartisan support.  All one has to do is read the polls to know the nation is far ahead of our Congress.  That is when we expect our President to lead, and instead what we are getting is compromise to nowhere.  The future is no longer clouded and if President Obama continues to give up the ship in order to get a legislative win, then he will lose both the American public’s support, and he will have lost one of the greatest opportunities given to a President.  If he fails to start challenging the system, then he will be seen as just one more political hack that sounded good and did nothing.  He himself has said that we are at a turning point.  So just when does he rise to the crisis and start leading?