Libya: Obama Handled It Right

Libyan Revolutionaries have taken over large areas of Tripoli and are reported to have captured two of Qaddafi's sons. They deserve a great deal of credit for founding a new nation on the wreckage of the dictatorship.

Also deserving credit is Barack Obama. Much as the killing of bin Laden was a validation of Obama's Afghanistan policy, the triumph of the Libyan Revolution has validated Obama's approach to the Arab spring in general and Libya in particular. Obama provided the Libyan movement with moral and military support. But the United States refused to invade Libya, overthrow Qaddafi, and win the revolution for the protesters. By limiting American support, the Obama administration forced the Libyans to win their revolution themselves and the positive effects frofm that will be felt for decades to come.

Eleven Theses on the Debt Limit Showdown

Given the problems of the American economy and political institutions, it's a good time to give a nod to Karl Marx. Here's some quick ideas on the state of play in the Debt Limit Showdown modeled after Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach."

I. Are We Exceptional? You betcha. American exceptionalism now means that the U. S. has an extraordinarily large economy and an equally dysfunctional political sector. Having both the best and the worst of the bad is very American. For more than eighty years after the Revolution, we had both the best state of freedom and the worst kind of slavery.
II. The Way of the Whigs. The Debt Limit Showdown is the end of the Republican Party as we know it. The GOP used to be an alliance where global business interests were the senior partners and small business, Southern/Western regionalisms, and ultra-conservative factions provided a populist edge. The religious right, libertarians, and Confederate and frontier nostalgia buffs now dominate to such an extent that they can tell big business to take their global economy and shove it.

III. A Seat at the Table? The United States is the only advanced industrial country where large-scale business interests don't have a political home. The Democrats have a global business perspective but want more government regulation than big business can tolerate. The new Republican Party wants to end the role of government in the national economy and is willing to sacrifice the macro-economic interests of big business to do so. Big business carries a lot of weight, but can no longer advance its fundamental interests.

IV. All the Pretty Revolutions. Since the 1950's, the U. S. has been a caultron of reform movements for civil rights, women's equality, sexual freedom, gay rights, and language diversity. If Lincoln was right to characterize the Civil War a "new birth of freedom," we can legitimately view the last 60 years as "the Age of New Freedoms." Taken as a whole, these movements have changed the nature of everybody's life for the better in the United States.

V. A Critical Mass of Globalism. For all of their problems and limitations, America's urban belts, major cities, and university centers are characterized by a dove-tailing of multi-cultural diversity, global outreach, and high concentrations of financial and cultural capital. Seattle, the Bay Area, LA, Miami, the Bos-Wash corridor and other centers of commerce and technology have become global cities almost as much as they are American cities.

VI. Tea Party Agonistes. What the Tea Party represents is a pointed reaction against the social and cultural changes of the last 60 years. Both rejecting American society and feeling rejected and victimized, the Tea Party and its ultra-conservative allies would want to escape from America like the Boer trekkers or the original Mormon migrants, but can't because the authoritarian traditions they crave have died out in the West. As a result, the Tea Party is stuck with playing out the tragic farce of seeking to dominate American society without being contaminated by modern American life.

VII. A Specter is Haunting Barack Obama. When Barack Obama was elected president, both sides viewed him as the representative figure for the new multi-cultural America that had elected him. As a result, both sides have been disappointed with Obama's presidency. Progressives, African-Americans, hispanics, gay people, Jews, Asian Americans, and young people were all expecting Obama to embody their nascent vision of American society and saw it in his convention address and campaign speeches. Instead, they got a technical manager and moderate. Constituencies on the right were expecting and perhaps yearning for the anti-Christ and got somebody who was more worried about their happiness than anything else. Obama may win re-election but the stigma of disappointment will haunt him like it haunts Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

VIII. Like the Union Army. The American left is much like the Union Army before Grant--large, loosely organized, well-armed, well-fed, and led so poorly that it's painful. Weaknesses are legion, but the left is closely connected with the progressive development of American society over the last 60 years and has a diffuse structure of small groups and publications that allow it to survive defeat and disappointment. Two generations of national leadership have come and gone since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and people on the left still deserve better. Perhaps there's a left-wing version of Grant out there waiting to find his niche and his voice.

IX. Like the Confederate Army. The Republicans and the Tea Party right has many of the virtues of the Army of Northern Virginia--audacity, organization, and effective leadership. Hell, I wish there was somebody on the left who was half as smart as Mitch McConnell. But they're fighting a losing battle for the horrible cause of yanking American society back into the 19th century.

Given the problems of the American economy and political institutions, it's a good time to give a nod to Karl Marx. Here's some quick ideas on the state of play in the Debt Limit Showdown modeled after Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach."

I. Are We Exceptional? American exceptionalism now means that the U. S. has an extraordinarily large economy and an equally dysfunctional political sector. Having both the best and the worst of the bad is very American. For more than eighty years after the Revolution, we had both the best state of freedom and the worst kind of slavery.

II. The Way of the Whigs. The Debt Limit Showdown is the end of the Republican Party as we know it. The GOP used to be an alliance where global business interests were the senior partners and small business, Southern/Western regionalisms, and ultra-conservative factions provided a populist edge. The religious right, libertarians, and Confederate and frontier nostalgia buffs now dominate to such an extent that they can tell big business to take their global economy and shove it.

III. A Seat at the Table? The United States is the only advanced industrial country where large-scale business interests don't have a political home. The Democrats have a global business perspective but want more government regulation than big business can tolerate. The new Republican Party wants to end the role of government in the national economy and is willing to sacrifice the macro-economic interests of big business to do so. Big business carries a lot of weight, but can no longer advance its fundamental interests.

IV. All the Pretty Revolutions. Since the 1950's, the U. S. has been a caultron of reform movements for civil rights, women's equality, sexual freedom, gay rights, and language diversity. If Lincoln was right to characterize the Civil War a "new birth of freedom," we can legitimately view the last 60 years as "the Age of New Freedoms." Taken as a whole, these movements have changed the nature of everybody's life for the better in the United States.

V. A Critical Mass of Globalism. For all of their problems and limitations, America's urban belts, major cities, and university centers are characterized by a dove-tailing of multi-cultural diversity, global outreach, and high concentrations of financial and cultural capital. Seattle, the Bay Area, LA, Miami, the Bos-Wash corridor and other centers of commerce and technology have become global cities almost as much as they are American cities.

VI. Tea Party Agonistes. What the Tea Party represents is a pointed reaction against the social and cultural changes of the last 60 years. Both rejecting American society and feeling rejected and victimized, the Tea Party and its ultra-conservative allies would want to escape from America like the Boer trekkers or the original Mormon migrants, but can't because the authoritarian traditions they crave have died out in the West. As a result, the Tea Party is stuck with playing out the tragic farce of seeking to dominate American society without being contaminated by modern American life.

VII. A Specter is Haunting Barack Obama. When Barack Obama was elected president, both sides viewed him as the representative figure for the new multi-cultural America that had elected him. As a result, both sides have been disappointed with Obama's presidency. Progressives, African-Americans, hispanics, gay people, Jews, Asian Americans, and young people were all expecting Obama to embody their nascent vision of American society and saw it in his convention address and campaign speeches. Instead, they got a technical manager and moderate. Constituencies on the right were expecting and perhaps yearning for the anti-Christ and got somebody who was more worried about their happiness than anything else. Obama may win re-election but the stigma of disappointment will haunt him like it haunts Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

VIII. Like the Union Army. The American left is much like the Union Army before Grant--large, loosely organized, well-armed, well-fed, and led so poorly that it's painful. Weaknesses are legion, but the left is closely connected with the progressive development of American society over the last 60 years and has a diffuse structure of small groups and publications that allow it to survive defeat and disappointment. Two generations of national leadership have come and gone since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and people on the left still deserve better. Perhaps there's a left-wing version of Grant out there waiting to find his niche and his voice.

IX. Like the Confederate Army. The Republicans and the Tea Party right has many of the virtues of the Army of Northern Virginia--audacity, organization, and effective leadership. Hell, I wish there was somebody on the left who was half as smart as Mitch McConnell. But they're fighting a losing battle for the horrible cause of yanking American society back into the 19th century.


X. Tragic Victories. My guess is that the Debt Limit Showdown will result in a fairly lengthy period of debt default with unknown consequences to the American and world economy. If either side gains a clear victory, the other side is going to strengthen itself in defeat as the whole of politically active America stews in bitterness. In this light, the best outcome might be a mutually unsatisfactory compromise.

XI. Nothing Wrong with Interpretation. Marx was right about the need to change the world rather than interpret it. But it wouldn't hurt if we had some better interpretations.My guess is that the Debt Limit Showdown will result in a fairly lengthy period of debt default with unknown consequences to the American and world economy. If either side gains a clear victory, the other side is going to strengthen itself in defeat as the whole of politically active America stews in bitterness. In this light, the best outcome might be a mutually unsatisfactory compromise.

XI. Nothing Wrong with Interpretation. Marx was right about the need to change the world rather than interpret it. But it wouldn't hurt if we had some better interpretations.

The Republican Plot to Re-Elect Obama

That's pretty much what the debt limit talks look like right now. Boehner, McConnell, and Eric Cantor are doing their level best to turn Obama into a "strong leader who stood up to the reckless bullying of the Republicans."

Begging Brooks

David Brooks begs Republicans to be reasonable. Not being optimistic about that, he begs "responsible" Republican elites to ignore the "fanatics" and be reasonable.

But that ship has already sailed.

Mitch McConnell and the other people in charge of the Republican Party have decided that fanaticism is their best bet.

Obama Must Be Doing Something Right

Interesting! Mark Halperin called a "dick" for the Wednesday conference. Given that Halperin's one of the biggest creeps in American public life, it's evident that Obama must have been doing something right.

In War Criminal News . . .

John Yoo criticizes the Obama administration for not going through proper process in deciding on the legality of their actions in Libya. Of course, Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, is more qualified than most presidents to make up his mind on these issues.

The GOP: A Bad Day at the Polls

Sure, one day does not make a real trend in daily tracking polls.

But that doesn't mean that eyebrows weren't being raised when Republicans saw Obama's approval rating at 53-39 in today's Gallup poll.

Ben Smith of Politico raised an eyebrow as well.

The problem for the GOP is that they are the ones who should be riding high. It's not like the Obama administration has gotten a lot of good news since the bin Laden hit. The economy is stagnant, gas prices are high, the country is involved in yet another unpopular war, and leading Democratic figures like Anthony Weiner and John Edwards are deep in scandal do-do.

Moreover, the GOP is on the offensive. Republican presidential candidates are out campaigning, the GOP lead House of Representatives are standing up for entitlement cuts, and Republican governors are pursuing an aggressive agenda of fiscal austerity, putting limits on public unions, and cutting government spending.

Perhaps this is just a one day trend.

But if 2010 demonstrated that most people don't like liberalism, 2011 might be showing that Americans like conservatism even less.

Chest-Thumping Hyperbole Needed on Left

A lot of notice has been given to the relatively grudging commendations for President Obama coming in from conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Here's Limbaugh.

"We need to open the programme today by congratulating President Obama," Limbaugh declared on his daily syndicated radio show on Monday. "President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed
out." As always with Limbaugh, his words were laden with sarcasm, poking fun at the idea that Obama single-handedly executed the mission:

Thank God for President Obama. If he had not been there, who knows what would have happened. It was only Obama who understood the need to get DNA, to prove that this was Bin Laden that we had assassinated.

And there were backhanded compliments from Limbaugh as well: "We need to never forget that President Obama deserves praise for continuing the policies established by George W Bush which led to the acquisition of this intel that led us to the enlarged hut in Pakistan that led to the assassination of Bin Laden last night."

Actually, it's unfortunate that nobody on the left is very good at the kind of chest-thumping, flag-waving hyperbole that Limbaugh would have given any kind of Republican for executing the hit on Bin Laden.

Obama deserves the hype.

King's New Birth of Freedom

The Vitality of the Day. Martin Luther King's birthday means many things and it should mean many things if it is to remain a meaningful holiday. Martin Luther King was an extremely protean figure. He was the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a creative force in social protest, an advocate for non-violent social protest, and a brutal critic of American society in general and American foreign policy in particular. Since his death in 1968, King has also become a symbol for the accomplishments of the civil rights era as a whole and a symbol for what's best in American society. Moreover, MLK has become a symbol for the aspirations of humanity as a whole. Here, the reverence given to King since his death has not been unlike that accorded to Nelson Mandela after his release from prison. With the still growing fame of the "I Have a Dream" speech, the fact that many of his writings are now required readings in history classes, and the proliferation of cartoons, books, and other commemorations, Martin Luther King's public persona continues to grow with the passage of time.

Americans celebrate MLK's birthday in a variety of ways. For African-Americans, it's a way to celebrate the emergence of black people from the bondage of segregation and MLK's birthday is a particular point of celebration for African-American groups, churches, civic organizations, and political figures. For millions of others, the celebration of MLK's birthday is a way to promote Christianity, commemorate King's vision of non-violence, participate in social service projects, and reflect on both the good and bad trends in American society. This year, President Obama seems to think of King's Birthday somewhat as a generalized version of Earth Day.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama planned to mark the day by participating in a service project in Washington.

"Martin Luther King Jr. lived his life for others, dedicating his work to ensuring equal opportunity, freedom and justice for all," Obama said in a statement. "I encourage every American to observe this holiday in honor of Dr. King's selfless legacy by volunteering in their own communities and by dedicating time each day to bettering the lives of those around us."

MLK in American History. MLK's Birthday should also be celebrated because the decisive role King and his movement have played in American history. King's historical significance might be best illustrated through a reference to Abraham Lincoln. Standing on the battlefield of Gettysburg to commemorate the cemetary for fallen soliders, Lincoln resolved that "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

That's a good way to summarize what Martin Luther King worked for and what he symbolizes: a new birth of freedom that fulfills the historical promise of America's democratic republic.

In fact, King was a good deal more successful in establishing a new birth of freedom than Lincoln.

In January, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and all slaves were eventually freed and their civic rights recognized by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

But Lincoln's "new birth of freedom" was overwhelmed by the forces of reaction. The white supremacist backlash was nationwide, but the South also created a brutal system of segregation that was worse than South African apartheid. Slavery was over, but what was established in its place could hardly be called "freedom" for black people. The new birth of freedom imagined by Lincoln cost 600,000 soldier deaths during the civil war but did not take root in American society.

Where Lincoln and abolitionism failed, King and the civil rights movement succeeded. The Montgomery bus boycott and Brown v Board of Education inaugurated an activist era that established African-American legal and political rights, opened doors to economic opportunity, and overcame much of the pervasive stigmatizing of blackness in American society.

Once again, there was a powerful wave of conservative reaction, but reaction decisively lost during the 1970's and 1980's. It's not insignificant that it was Ronald Reagan who signed the legislation establishing MLK's birthday as a national holiday. Although Reagan himself had given a state's rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi only a few years earlier, Reagan's people largely decided that proving they weren't racists was more important than maintaining official conservative opposition to civil rights. By the 1980's, white racists were subject to much the same stigmatizing as they themselves visited on African-Americans and political conservatives were looking for ways to escape being stereotyped as racists.

They still are.

Generalizing the New Birth of Freedom. Martin Luther King is also an appropriate symbol for the whole range of social protest movements from the 1960's, including movements for women, gay people, the disabled, the immigrant population, Native Americans, and other groups. With the success of the civil rights movement, other stigmatized populations saw their opportunity to achieve recognition of their full humanity in American society and used the kind of creative protests that characterized the civil rights era. Feminists, gay rights activists, hispanic activists, and other groups have successfully have viewed themselves as following up on the civil rights movement and have built on the wide range of marches, rallies, civil disobedience tactics, economic boycotts, and disruptive tactics employed by civil rights activists during the 1950's and 1960's.

As was the case with the civil rights movement, all of these other social movements have made fundamental advances and those advances have proven to be permanent despite determined conservative opposition. Obviously, a full civil rights agenda has not been adopted for either gay people or immigrants, but gay people have made enormous gains in employment, housing, media representation, military service, and marriage and there isn't much of a threat that their gains will be rolled back. The presence of immigrants isn't about to be rolled back either.

All of these other movements have their own symbols. However, given that all of these movements stood on the shoulders of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King can legitimately serve as a national symbol for the accomplishments of those movements as well.

Over the last fifty years, American society has experienced a new birth of freedom on a world-historical scale and Martin Luther King is a fitting symbol for that new birth.

MLK and the Meaning of the Past. Martin Luther King wrote in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

King was claiming the civil rights movement was bringing the nation back to its roots in the founding fathers, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. In a certain way, nothing could be farther from the truth. Many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, Jefferson did not mean the "rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to apply to black people any more than he meant them to apply to women, and the authors of the Constitution wrote the protection of slavery into the founding document.

But King and the civil rights movement not only changed the present, they also changed the meaning of the past. Whether it's child history videos, grade school history books, or academic historical writing, the founding era has been re-evaluated in terms of it's part in the story of progress toward the civil rights movement. Looking at the Founding Fathers isn't just a matter of evaluating their part in the Revolution and Constitution, it's become a matter of examining their relation to slavery and abolition, their treatment of black slaves if they were slave owners, and their stance on the rights of black freedmen if they were not slave owners. Whether we today can identify with the Founding Fathers is now a matter of how they relate to our concerns for the broader freedoms that have been inaugurated in our era.

Some of the Founding Fathers have come off better, some worse. It's hard to find any of them who believed in full black equality as Americans do now, but we tend to follow Martin Luther King in defining meaning of the freedom promised in the Founding documents as freedom for everybody. In other words, we now look at the Founding Fathers through a political lens that was defined by Martin Luther King.

The Fourth of July. The monumental significance of the Fourth of July, 1776 is that it was the day that the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain. It's the foundation stone for a positive sense of American nationhood and the core values of freedom and equality associated with the American republic. The current age is just as important to the history of the American republic because figures like Martin Luther King greatly expanded the reach of freedom and political equality promised in the original founding. Perhaps the best way to understand Martin Luther King's Birthday is that it is the Fourth of July for the new American republic that's been created over the last fifty years.

Cracking the Disinformation Apparatus

One of the frustrating dimensions of the health care debate was the perception that opposition to health reform was mostly a product of media manipulation. Bill Clinton had campaigned on health reform in 1992 but was stymied as the bill moved through the legislative process because a wave of attack ads made the legislation impossible. By the time the insurance companies got done with their campaign, Harry and Louise were better known than Bill and Hillary

Health care reform was an even bigger part of Obama's 2008 campaign, but so was the effort of the conservative media apparatus to manipulate popular opinion against health care reform. The villification of Obama as a socialist, fascist, etc., the "death panels" scare, the disinformation about the relationship between reform legislation and the deficit made the legislation so unpopular that a majority of the population wanted to see health reform repealed even before the legislation was fully implemented.

But the 2010 election is over and the conservative disinformation apparatus is no longer united. As a result, opposition to health care reform is beginning to diminish. According to an AP/GfK poll, about 41% of the population supports health care reform while 40% oppose. Of that 40%, a certain percentage would have opposed the Obama legislation because they don't think it went far enough. I wish the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats had gotten the public option myself.

Moreover, support for repealing the legislation has dropped significantly.

As for repeal, only about one in four say they want to do away with the law completely. Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.

The movement to repeal health reform was a kind of speculative media bubble. Once the forces that created the bubble were no longer synchronized, support for repeal pretty much dissolved.

What were the forces that created the anti-reform bubble? There were several. In my opinion, the root of the anti-reform bubble was the wave of white conservative revulsion over electing a black Democrat for president. Conservatives might have revolted over any Democrat, but the fact that Obama is black and so much of conservatism is invested in feeding racial animosities made the election of Obama particularly revolting to the right.

Republican politicians, lobbying groups, and the conservative media apparatus fed the beast of Obama villification in various ways. Republican consultants and lobbying groups bankrolled the Tea Party movement, Obama was regularly villified as a socialist, fascist, and Nazi in the conservative media, Republican politicians sought to undercut any attempt by Obama to act presidential (i.e., the controversy over Obama's address to school children).

And it worked.

Republicans scored a big win in the 2010 mid-term elections.

But once the Republicans got control of the House, the forces that created the anti-health bubble began to dissolve. The Republican leadership began to compromise with the Democrats on tax cuts for the wealthy and moderate Republicans pealed off to support the repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell and funding for 9-11 first responders. Once Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and other Republicans split off somewhat from Jim DeMint and the Tea Party activists, the conservative media began to split as well. Instead of continuing the non-stop villification of Obama and the Democrats, Fox and other right-wing sources have had to slow down and parse out the compromises.

And that took the wind out of the conservative apparatus.

A Little Less Cautious In My Optimism

Nate Silver of Five Thirty-Eight and now the New York Times is very cautious in his optimism about Obama's chances of winning re-election.

I'm a little less cautious.

That's mostly because I expect Obama to be facing weak opposition.

If Obama is currently topping out at 49% in public opinion polls, Sarah Palin's ceiling is more like 43-46% and that's being pretty generous.

But I don't think Mitt Romney would do much better.

Where Palin is provocative and divisive, she at least comes off as honest and consistent. There is a sense that she wouldn't give up her core politics and personality to become president.

To the contrary, Mitt Romney gives off a air of creepiness rooted in his willingness to do anything to win..

Right now, it appears that neither of the two top Republican contenders would be as appealing as John McCain was in 2008.

Which is grounds for reasonable optimism about Obama's re-election chances.

Excellent Delusions from Dinesh D'Souza

It appears more and more that conservative activists just live in an alternate universe. Dinesh D'Souza, a right-wing think tanker who might as well be a brand name for stunning mediocrity, has an article in Forbes on how Obama's ideas on things like health care derive from the "anti-colonial" ideology he inherited from his Kenyan father.

Back in the real world, Obama's health care ideas were quite a bit like Hillary Clinton's whose ideas were quite a bit like Joe Bidens in 2008 and pretty much the same as Joe Lieberman's in 2004.

That's pretty much the same with all of Obama's ideas. They're a lot like Democratic ideas that have been floating around for a long time.

But for conservatives, being a Democrat is not enough to explain Obama. For the right, everything Obama has to be traced back to A-f-r-i-c-a.

Not that it bothers conservatives that Obama is black.

Not that the right-wing is engaged in race-baiting.

Not that they're racists.

Well, maybe a little.

A Pre-Written Headline on Obama

The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper in a minor soccer playing island on the edge of the European continent, has a headline saying that Obama's firing of Gen. McChrystal "shows weakness." Of course, they would have had the same headline if Obama had kept McChrystal.

Obama's Image Problem

Obama's image problem boils down to this.

"In Your Face" leadership responds to everything and doesn't accomplish much other than mobilizing opponents. George Bush is testimony to that.

But "In Your Face" is addicting.

People on the left want it just as much as people on the right.

HuffPost wants it just as much as Sarah Palin.

In that context, Obama's "Not In Your Face" leadership looks like "unengaged" and the right is beginning to pounce on it.

Keep the Idiot McChrystal

Let's play the "you get to be president" game. Here's the scenario: your top military commander in your hopeless war grants a rolling interview with a popular music magazine.

That's stupid enough.

I mean, what exactly was the chance that Rolling Stone would come out with a positive story about the war in Afghanistan?

Then, it turns out that the idiot four-star general lets the Rolling Stone reporter see him and his ten man in full rap star mode, with his whole ten-man posse of "killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs" letting their hair down. Everybody's in full wise-guy mode. They're wise guys. They're "completely shitfaced" at an American bar in Paris. They're belligerent. They're t0tal assholes. McChrystal's posse doesn't just dump on President Obama in McChrystal's name. They make sure they name the name of every civilian official they don't like and why--including Joe Biden, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador Karl Eichenberry, and National Security Adviser James Jones.

Wait a minute! They forgot to dump on Jones' secretary. Well, thank God for that.

But they do like Hillary Clinton because she's for giving McChrystal everything he wants.

Then, to make matters worse, General Stan and his posse proceed to dump on the war he's supposed to be winning. It turns out that the General doesn't think he's winning and doesn't think the war can be won.

And of course, McChrystal's interview with Rolling Stone also provides an occasion for all the highly placed opponents of the war in Afghanistan to have their say and for all the opponents to look extremely reasonable because the general himself pretty much agrees with them.

Talk about stupid!

So, if you're president, do you keep General Stan in his job or do you fire him for being a belligerent asshole and a fucking idiot?

My considered opinion is that Obama should keep the idiot, but that he should force the idiot to replace every last person on his posse--er, staff--who talked for the Rolling Stone interview.

Every last one one of them.

The case for firing McChrystal is that he's another "idiot general" in the vein of Douglas MacArthur and that he's a threat to civilian authority over the military.

I don't think so.

McChrystal didn't make the derogatory comments about Obama himself and is not defying Obama's orders. That takes McChrystal out of MacArthur territory right there. McChrystal wasn't quoted as criticizing the president's strategy for the Afghanistan War either. In relation to McChrystal, the main problem with the interview is that he let the Rolling Stone reporter see the normal ups and downs of communication with people like Richard Holbrooke.

That's stupid, but it's not betraying the Constitution.

The other big problem is that his staff people are clueless about just about everything except fighting the war on the ground.

But the article doesn't make McChrystal and his staff look that bad in terms of fighting the war on the ground.

(to be continued)








Did I mention that McChrystal and his staff were total assholes?



It's

Damn That Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein pretty much gets it right on Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan when he says that Kagan looks a lot like Obama himself.

When Obama announced Kagan's nomination, he praised "her temperament, her
openness to a broad array of viewpoints; her habit, to borrow a phrase from Justice Stevens, 'of understanding before disagreeing'; her fair-mindedness and skill as a consensus-builder." This sentence echoes countless assessments of Obama himself.

Obama is cool. He makes a show of processing the other side's viewpoint. He's more interested in the fruits of consensus than the clarification of conflict. In fact, just as Kagan is praised for giving conservative scholars a hearing at Harvard's Law School, Obama was praised for giving conservative scholars a hearing on the Harvard Law Review. "The things that frustrate people about Obama will frustrate people about Kagan," says one prominent Democrat who's worked with both of them.

Still, I've been thinking that all day myself and hate to admit that Klein wrote it first. Damn you, Ezra Klein.

Shelby Steele Gets Obama Wrong Again

For Shelby Steele, all of the problems that President Obama now has or will ever have are caused by the self-importance Obama derives from being black.

Well, suppose you were the first black president of the United States and, therefore, also the first black head-of-state in the entire history of Western Civilization. You represent a human first, something entirely new under the sun. There aren't even any myths that speak directly to your circumstance, no allegorical tales of ancient black kings who ruled over white kingdoms.

Of course, Steele offers no credit to Obama or anyone else for the accomplishment--no acknowledgement of the generations of civil rights activists, everyday African-Americans, white liberals, or other minorities who made Obama's presidency possible.

And none was expected. Shelby Steele is a salaried conservative at the Hoover Institute who has exactly as much intellectual freedom as David Frum had at the American Enterprise Institute.

In other words--none.

Sour grapes might play a part here as well. Steele wrote a book predicting that Obama could not win the presidency because of his connections with the black community.

Anyway, Steele's argument is that the monumental character of Obama's accomplishment in getting elected has created an enormous self-importance that pushes Obama to push "big ideas" like health care reform.

Does this special burden explain Barack Obama's embrace of scale as vision (if I don't know what to do, I'll do big things)? I think it does to a degree. It means, for example, that a caretaker presidency is not an option for him. His historical significance almost demands a kind of political narcissism. For him the great appeal of massive health-care reform—when jobs are a far more pressing problem—may have been its history-making potential.

Here was a chance for Mr. Obama not just to be a part of history but to make history. Here he could have an achievement commensurate with his own historical significance. To have left off health care and taken up jobs would have left him a caretaker rather than a history-maker. So he hung in with health care and today it can be said: Barack Obama has signed the most significant piece of social legislation in 45 years—achieving something that has eluded every president since FDR.

That idea might have some credibility if Obama's had been the first Democrat to pursue health care reform or his health care proposals had been any kind of surprise. But Democratic presidents have been pursuing health care reform going back to FDR and all Democratic presidential candidates who even pretended to being serious contenders in 2008 had to have a detailed health reform plan. Obama, Hillary, and John Edwards all had big health reform proposals. I bet Joe Biden and Bill Richardson had them too. Even Joe Lieberman had a big health care proposal when he was running for president in 2004.

Barack Obama didn't have to be black to have big ideas on domestic policy, he had to be a Democrat. Of course, one can argue that the Democrats have been heavily influenced by the African-American wing of the party since the heyday of the civil rights movement and that all Democrats have something of an African-American optimism concerning hope for social reform.

But that would have made Bill Clinton the first African-American president and forced hacks like Shelby Steele to blame all of Bill Clinton's shortcomings on the fact that he was black.

Maybe That William Ayers Wrote Obama's Book!

The White House released a partial list of the people visiting the White House in the ten months of the Obama presidency. Some famous names made the list.

Given that up to 100,000 people visit the White House each month, the names published Friday included people with some very familiar names -- including William Ayers, Michael Jordan, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright and R. Kelly

But the guy named Michael Jordan was not THE Michael Jordan. None of these famous names were connected to famous people.

"The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House . . ."

But maybe THAT William Ayers was the one who wrote Obama's book rather than the 60's radical.

A Few Words on the Obama Feud with Fox

I'm glad to see the White House punching at Fox. Most importantly, they're right. Fox News is a joke as a news organization. Why can't the White House say it just as much as HuffPost? Doesn't the Obama administration have freedom of speech?

The second thing is that it's important for the White House to not be a day in, day out punching bag for the conservative movement. Obama has always shown that he's capable of effective counter-punching and that's what he's doing now, some nasty counter-punching against Fox News. Good for Obama.

The New York Times wants the Obama administration to be above tangling with the "cable shouters:"

Tactics aside, something more fundamental is at risk. Even the president’s most avid critics admit he exudes a certain cool confidence. The public impression of him is that if anyone were to, say, talk trash on the basketball court with Mr. Obama, he would not find much space for rent in Mr. Obama’s head. ...

People who work in political communications have pointed out that it is a principle of
power dynamics to “punch up “ — that is, to take on bigger foes, not smaller ones. A blog on the White House Web site that uses a “truth-o-meter” against a particular cable news network would not seem to qualify. As it is, Reality Check sounds a bit like the blog of some unemployed guy living in his parents’ basement, not an official communiqué from Pennsylvania Avenue.

The American presidency was conceived as a corrective to the royals, but trading punches with cable shouters seems a bit too common. Perhaps it’s time to restore a little imperiousness to the relationship.

As usual, the NY Times has their heads up their butts. The Times itself is losing ground to the guys and women blogging from "their parents basements." Why shouldn't the Obama administration get in on the action before they start losing ground?

By attacking Fox News, the Obama administration has signaled that it's willing to mix it up in its efforts to get health reform and cap and trade passed.

That's as good as news can get right now.

On another note. Personally, I like what Fox is doing in the sense that Fox has blazing a trail as a television network of political opposition. Unlike the other networks, Fox is an independent entity that is not beholden to the government for stories. When networks with more liberal political agendas start following Fox's example, the world will be a better place.

Worries About Glenn Beck

Thinking about Glenn Beck, I'm worried that he's going to start running out of Obama/Nazi analogies. What's he going to do then? How is Glenn Beck going to bring the truth of the Obama administration to the American public if he can't compare Obama to Hitler and Goebbels? Beck can't allow the well to run dry.

But there's hope America.

First, Glenn Beck should start using images of himself being tortured.

Here's a couple of examples.

There's waterboarding: "these attacks on Fox News make me f -e-e-l like I'm being thrown into the water . . . and it's getting into my lungs . . . and I'm coughing uncontrollably."

Having his testicles sliced open like a former terrorism suspect: "these thugs from Chicago want to make it impossible for someone like me to be a man anymore. There, they're slicing open my testicles and the pain is excruciating. But I'm willing to go through this in order to show the world what Barack Obama . . . is . . . doing . . . to . . . America."

More torture and animal rights comparisons tomorrow.