…who are the 35% of the American people who think they’re doing better than two years ago?
Obama and the art of negotiation
Ever since Obama has become president, people have been giving him advice. It’s an odd phenomenon, as though they consider him a kid brother who needs a bit of assistance out in the big bad world.
Perhaps it’s because of his youth. Perhaps it’s because people realize he’s inexperienced. Perhaps it’s because (at least initially) people really wanted America’s first black president to be a success.
But all the good advice in the world won’t help if Obama won’t take it. Before the election of 2010, for example, he saw no reason to compromise—unless you define compromise as he defined it at the time, which is “you agree with me.”
November of 2010 changed that; now he feels more pressed to compromise in the usual sense of the word. How long that will continue is anyone’s guess.
This related article contains a Ronald Reagan quote that got me thinking:
“Before I took up my current line of work, I got to know a thing or two about negotiating when I represented the Screen Actors Guild,” Reagan famously said. “After the studios, Gorbachev was a snap.”
The comparison may seem laughable, and it was meant to be a joke. But Reagan did have negotiating experience, and what’s more he was pretty good at it.
And when you think about it, it’s one of the skills most important in a president. Even if the POTUS is fortunate enough to have, as Obama initially did, a strong majority in both houses of Congress and therefore not to require much negotiation there (at least theoretically; in Obama’s case it was the lagging Blue Dog Democrats who needed to be cajoled and bargained with), it’s still necessary in the foreign arena.
Obama’s towering self-confidence blinded many people, including himself, to the fact that he didn’t seem to have a significant amount of experience or skill in that arena. He also seems to have a marked distaste for it, and a personality unsuited to it as well.
[NOTE: Two other traits a president needs to have are the ability to make a decision without dithering unduly, and skill in choosing good advisers and then listening to them. Obama appears to lack these traits, too, and I think that even many of his previous and present supporters on the left would agree with that assessment at this point.]
John Lennon, 30 years later
It’s the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, and for the occasion, Rolling Stone has released the full text of an interview he gave three days before he died. It contains these ironic words:
These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship…
“What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I’m not interesting in being a dead (expletive) hero. .. So forget ’em, forget ’em.
Lennon understandably wasn’t interested in being a dead anything. But Mark David Chapman had other ideas for him.
I haven’t written much about Lennon on past anniversaries of his murder. When the event happened thirty years ago, I was distracted from taking more than brief notice by the fact that I was immersed in taking care of an active baby who didn’t sleep much. I’d been a Beatles fan, but not a rabid one. And besides, I was always more of a Paul girl.
Lennon’s murder was sad, it was awful, and it still is. But the veneration of John—or any of the Beatles, for that matter—has always struck me as odd. The Beatles were energetic and funny guys who both embodied and helped form the zeitgeist of the 60s, and they made fabulous music. That’s it—and that should be enough.
Who should play Assange in the movie?
It’s Neil Patrick Harris, hands down.
Pearl Harbor Day
Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Here’s a post I wrote a year ago in remembrance.
Holiday reminder: Amazon orders can help neo-neocon
[NOTE: As I said, I’ll be periodically posting reminders about this through the holidays.]
What better way to give the gifts that keep on giving than to use neo-neocon as the portal for your Amazon purchases? If you click on any of the Amazon widgets in the right sidebar, anything you buy during that visit will send a modest bit of money my way, and it won’t cost you an extra cent.
Thanks!! And Happy Chanukah to those who celebrate it.
Obama the compromiser
Obama’s capitulation to the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts has made the left furious. Katrina vanden Heuvel has this to say:
This president has a historic mandate. Just as Abraham Lincoln had to lead the nation from slavery and Franklin Roosevelt from the Depression, this president must lead the nation from the calamitous failures of three decades of conservative dominance.
Vanden Heuvel goes on to list as first step the reversal of the “perverse” Bush tax cuts that have led to “gilded-age” inequality etcetera etcetera. I wonder, though—even if you agree with her and interpret the election of 2008 as having given the president just that sort of sweeping anti-conservative mandate (which I don’t), would you not also need to acknowledge that it was rescinded in 2010 and the opposite mandate given? Ah well, let’s not expect consistency from vanden Heuvel.
Obama capitulated to the Republicans, it’s true. But it’s no time for Republicans to crow. I believe that the scenario I outlined here (right after the election) may be being played out:
…Obama actually will move towards the middle, in deed as in word. But it will be a temporary feint, a move made to convince doubters that he’s gotten the message and changed his ways.
It need only be until the next election. If Obama can moderate himself enough to be able to point to a few small but real compromises with the Republicans, he won’t be losing much and he’ll be gaining a lot. The American people are a generally genial and forgiving (not to say trusting) lot, predisposed to like him, and by then he may indeed have rehabilitated himself in the eyes of enough voters that he will win his bid for re-election and even increase the Democrats’ Congressional representation.
And then, and then””voila! Four more years! Four years in which he won’t have to answer to the electorate at all. He will be unleashed to do whatever it is he really wants. And does anyone think that would look moderate at all?
One more thing: if the economy improves as a result of extending the tax cuts, it will be seen by many (especially the moderates he needs in order to win) as another reason to support Obama in 2012. He can finally claim he’s bipartisan, and effective as well.
I hope the economy improves, because I think the country needs it. But I also hope voters see through the ploy, and defeat Obama roundly in 2012, because I fear that four years of Obama unleashed would be a disaster for the country.
Assange in custody
Julian Assange is in police custody in England pending a hearing on his Swedish rape charges. The judge has denied bail.
There are a few surprises here. One is that the British have had the will to follow through on this. Another (at least to me) is that Assange came willingly to the police station; I would have thought he’d have continued to hide. This tells me that either he thought he’d be granted bail and/or he thinks he won’t be extradited to Sweden by the Brits and/or he thinks the Swedes won’t convict him even if he stands trial. And what of the “insurance” file? Does it get activated now?
When I wrote “Swedish rape charges” in that first sentence, I didn’t just mean rape charges in Sweden. “Swedish rape” appears to be a different animal than rape as we know it in most places in the world. It includes murkier issues of consent given and then withdrawn as the act is in progress due to such things as non-condom use. It’s also the case that the conviction rate for rape in Sweden is only 10%, and so if Assange believes he’ll be found not guilty, this may have a very good basis in fact.
However, from the BBC coverage we learn that the rape charges against Assange may not be so mild as we’d been previously led to believe. One of the women charges that not only did he have unprotected sex with her, but it occurred while she was asleep (or at least, I’ll assume it began when she was asleep; if she continued to sleep all through the entire act, that doesn’t say much for Assange as a lover or a rapist). That scenario sounds to me like what even Whoopi Goldberg might call “rape-rape.”
And in a sidelight, who was among those willing to bail Assange out? Why, John Pilger, that’s who. Fellow-Australian and fellow US-hater extraordinaire Pilger has been making “documentaries” and crying “The USA is an imperialist pig!” ever since he cut his teeth as a journalist in Vietnam war era days.
Wikileaks vs. Climategate
This comment from “bubonicplacebo” appeared on one of the recent Wikileaks threads here:
Of course, when the story was all about hacked e-mails concerning climatology, the usual conservative knuckleheads were focused on discussing the merits of the find, rather than the demerits of the crime.
An interesting statement. But while it’s true that each information dump features the exposure of correspondence that was originally meant to be secret, that’s where the similarity ends.
Whatever one’s position is on the truth of anthropomorphic global warming itself, I think we can safely say that truth-telling is of the essence in science. Yes, scientists talk amongst themselves in emails and phone calls and other communications, and those communications are ordinarily private, and should be kept that way. But if such exchanges detail a scientific deception, especially a major one that affects a great many people, then the public really does have an overwhelming right to know.
Climategate was not a generalized dumping of secret information. Nor was any generalized future dumping threatened by the Climategate leaker. The motivation seems pretty clear: to divulge the fact that in one particular instance (proof of AGW) the books seem to have been cooked in a manner antithetical to the very essence of science, and with possible dire consequences.
Whether this exposure was a crime or not is unclear, because we don’t know whether the emails were stolen or whether (as is more likely) the leaker was an insider whistleblower. At any rate, there is no protected intelligence here, no national security issue, although there are certainly privacy issues.
Wikileaks is substantially different. It is a generalized dump of classified information, with much more promised. The targets are countries such as the US, but much more than that: it is Western society as we know it and its ability to negotiate in the world and to defend itself. Later on there will be whole industries targeted, as well: for example, banks. No specific crime or even special wrongdoing is alleged, nor was one revealed—except for secrecy itself, which of course is not a crime.
What’s more, the subject matter so far—diplomacy and intelligence—are about as unlike science as they can be. If truth is of the essence of science, secrecy and deceptions are of the essence of diplomacy and intelligence. We may not like it, and we may not trust the government to do right by us in these arenas. But without secrecy, these activities cannot be successfully carried out.
So Climategate is rather the opposite of Wikileaks in a very basic way. Without truth, science cannot be successfully carried out. Science is supposed to be open and transparent and truthful. Diplomacy and intelligence are not, and although that fact is both troubling and paternalistic, most people are aware that it’s a reality that cannot be changed.
As for motives, here’s the best evidence so far (as if we needed more) of Assange as megalomanical blackmailer interested in power and chaos:
Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets…Assange has warned he can divulge the classified documents in the insurance file and similar backups if he is detained or the WikiLeaks website is permanently removed from the internet. He has suggested the contents are unredacted, posing a possible security risk for coalition partners around the world.
Assange warned: “We have over a long period of time distributed encrypted backups of material we have yet to release. All we have to do is release the password to that material, and it is instantly available.”
The “doomsday files” are part of a contingency plan drawn up by Assange and his supporters as they face a legal threat. He is wanted in Sweden over sexual assault allegations, and the US administration is reviewing the possibility of legal action after the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables.
He’s threatening the world with blackmail if it dares to thwart him.
Still think Assange…
…is some sort of hero, motivated by an interest in transparency? Think again.
And then think some more.
[NOTE: I’m having trouble figuring out a category under which to file posts on Wikileaks and Assange. I don’t have a category (yet) for “megalomaniac world blackmailers of the anarchist variety.” So I’ve decided to use “terrorism and terrorists” or sometimes “press,” neither of which exactly fit but will do for now.]
Let’s make a deal: taxes and unemployment insurance
We’ve gotten so unused to Congressional deals during the past couple of years (except among the Democrats themselves, to get votes from Blue Dogs) that the prospect of this one seems odd and novel.
But the Dems are poised to allow a temporary—perhaps two years—extension of the Bush (how that word must stick in their craws!) tax cuts in exchange for a Republican concession on extending unemployment benefits.
I’ve read opinions stating that a temporary extension of the tax cuts won’t do, because it won’t stabilize expectations enough. I think two years is a decent amount of time, and much better than nothing. As McConnell is quoted in the article as saying, President Obama would not sign a bill for a permanent extension anyway.
Two years of tax cuts might give us some data which can then be analyzed to see what effect they may have had on the economy and the deficit. Whatever that effect might be (or might be claimed to be), you can be sure it will be used during the campaign of 2012, which already is starting to sound not so far away:
Democrats say they would not mind the issue coming up during Mr. Obama’s re-election bid, because they see it as politically helpful to them in painting Republicans as defenders of the rich. The debate, of course, could cut the other way, with Republicans again portraying Democrats as seeking to raise taxes.
Big Brother Wikileaks is watching
I’ve got a new article up at RightNetwork. It’s about Wikileaks, Assange, and privacy.
Feel free to comment here or at RightNetwork.