Category: Barack Obama

Obama’s Tech Guru(s)

ValleyWag has a post up trying to determine which individual connected to the Obama campaign’s new media team deserves credit for it all as top “web guru.” I can’t imagine a less relevant question. As the post shows, there were many people taking part in many key aspects of the new media operation. It was the most successful online effort by almost any measurable standard in Democratic Party history. Why in the world does it have to be tied to one person? Why does it make sense to pit, for example, three different influential members of the Blue State Digital team who were critical to Obama’s new media success against each other?

The team the Obama campaign assembled was top notch. They did top notch work and organized in ways most people had never seen, let alone thought of, before. Stop trying to figure out which one person was the most important, it’s a trivial and stupid question that diminishes the work of the entire Obama new media team.

Obama & the Rule of Law

I don’t know if there are any civil libertarians or scholars whose views on the rule of law I trust more than Glenn Greenwald’s. Glenn has been one of the most vocal advocates for defending the Constitution throughout the Bush administration and was a key player in bringing pressure to bear on Democrats during the FISA reauthorization fights of 2007 and 2008. That’s why I tend to take his views on how President Obama is handling rule of law questions, such as those raised by Charlie Savage in today’s New York Times, quite seriously.

I agree with Greenwald that Obama has made steps in the right direction, but has generally taken a longer view to resolving problematic powers left to him by the Bush administration. In the first few weeks of his presidency, Obama has issued some positive executive orders pertaining to the rule of law. At the same time, some of his underlings have taken positions on a number of issues that signal they want to continue Bush-era powers unabated. Glenn rightly points out that “Policies become policies when the President adopts them, not when some of his appointees advocate them.”

I would feel a whole lot better had Obama promised on the campaign trail, as Chris Dodd did,  that on the very first hour of his very first day in office, he would sign executive orders to restore the Constitution and the rule of law to America. Obama didn’t make this promise and he hasn’t acted to realize the same ends yet. I hope that he does. But as with Greenwald, we cannot rely on the fact that Obama is a Democrat and someone Democrats supported and thus infinitely better suited to hold the powers of the presidency as George W. Bush as cause to stop pressuring President Obama to restore the rule of law in America. As Glenn writes:

We don’t place faith in the Goodness and kindness of specific leaders — even Barack Obama — to secretly exercise powers for our own Good.  We rely instead on transparency and on constant compulsory limits on those powers as imposed by the Constitution, by other branches, and by law.  That’s what it means to be a nation of laws and not men.  When Obama embraces the same abusive and excessive powers that Bush embraced, it isn’t better because it’s Obama rather than Bush wielding that power.  It’s the same.  And that’s true even if one “trusts” Obama more than Bush.

A genuine reversal of the last eight years — meaning something more than just sand-papering the roughest edges — will come not from having a kinder-hearted and more magnanimous leader, but only from a restoration of the legal and Constitutional framework that makes a President’s magnanimity irrelevant, since his powers are exercised transparently and with real checks and limits.  It remains very much an open question whether that will happen.  There are some preliminary signs that it could, and some much more concrete signs that it won’t — at least not without a very concerted fight.

There really haven’t been any situations were President Obama (or president-elect Obama) asked the civil liberties base to “make him do it,” a la Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  But that doesn’t mean that progressives and people who believe in the importance of the rule of law to the American project should not push to make restoring the Constitution a top priority for Obama. Bush era policies on rendition, torture, wiretapping, state secrets, executive privilege, and habeas corpus must not live on in an Obama presidency. While we can hope that Obama will not misuse these powers as long as he possesses them, we cannot leave it to hope that he will simply do the right thing while keeping the powers for the presidency.

Standing up for the rule of law during an Obama administration is not a stand against Obama. Pointing out the need to recommit our nation to the rule of law is not an attack. And while I personally wish there had been more done on this front already – and that Obama’s appointees were expressing at minimum the same levels of commitment he made as a candidate on this array of issues – I do think, like Greenwald, that the door is still wide open for President Obama to restore the rule of law. I would just propose that Obama can go faster.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 19

President Barack Obama was quoted in two major publications about his support for labor and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Detroit Free Press:

“He also discussed legislation pushed by labor that could make it easier to organize. A supporter of the “Employee Free Choice Act” decried by business, Obama said he believes there is no economic risk to workers organizing and making a living wage – especially if workers understand, as he says they seem to, that unreasonable demands on the part of labor would only serve to destroy jobs in the long run. He said he hoped to see in coming weeks forces on both sides talk about common ground which could be reached on the legislation.”

Philadelphia Inquirer:

On other topics, Obama said he would not urge a delay in consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation sought by organized labor that would make it easier for unions to win the right to represent workers.

Business groups are fiercely opposed, saying that the bill – which would allow unions to be certified by workers’ signatures, without a secret ballot, and would require arbitration – would increase costs.

“I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective-bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment,” Obama said. “If you’ve got workers who have decent pay and benefits, they’re also customers for business.”

At the same time, Obama said business had legitimate concerns. He said he would like to see labor and business groups work together on a compromise.

“Whether those conversations can bear fruit over the next several months, we’ll see,” he said. “But I’m always a big believer in before we gear up for some tooth-and-nail battle, that we see if some accommodations can’t be found.”

Barack Obama is a supporter of labor and I think we’ll see massive steps forward for working Americans during his presidency.

The GOP Minority’s Honeymoon with the Press

It’s starting to look like what it always looked like during the Clinton years – no matter what Obama does, he can’t win with the Beltway press. Peter Baker’s wank-tacular piece of “news analysis” in the New York Times today shows exactly what Obama is up against. Namely, the press corps refuses to recognize that Republican obstructionism has a direct relationship to President Obama’s diction regarding the economic recovery package.

Baker’s piece is titled “Taking On Critics, Obama Puts Aside Talk of Unity.” Well, yes, this is what Obama has done. But nowhere in Baker’s article does he document the causal relationship between how Republicans have obstinantly opposed Obama’s overtures and the inevitable shift towards a harder line by the Obama administration. The actions of Republicans in response to Obama’s efforts at unity and bipartisanship simply do not play into Baker’s piece, making it nigh impossible for a reader to know that President Obama isn’t taking a stand on the economic recovery out of narcissism or partisanship or because he had the urge to take pot-shots at the Bush administration.

President Obama has done exactly what the Washington press corps and the Conventional Wisdom set have asked of Democrats for decades. He put aside ideology and reached across the aisle to accomplish legislation for the good of the country at a time when we are in crisis. The Republican response to his outreach, his overtures, his invitations, and his cocktail parties has been to reject him outright. That three Republicans in the Senate have supported a watered down version of the recovery package in itself is a tremendous accomplishment in the name of bipartisanship.  Despite acting exactly as he promised to act during the campaign and putting forward a post-partisan effort to pass this legislation, Baker hits Obama at the moment when he’s pushing for the best bipartisan legislation he could possibly get from the current group of Republicans in Congress.

It might be easy for Baker to write this article. After all, false claims of equivalence have long been a hallmark of the Washington press corps’ hostility towards Democrats. In the end, that’s exactly the sort of article this is, a “gotcha!” attack on a popular president. Baker’s article could be summed up as: “Obama promised to be post-partisan, but it turns out he’s a Democrat!”

The larger problem with Baker’s piece, outside its gotcha style, is that it completely ignores the existence of Republicans from the course of events surrounding the economic recovery package. As far as I can tell from Baker’s piece, Republicans are merely passive flowers that are the subject of harsh words from Democrats. Had Obama spent more time sprinkling them with sugar water while promising to pour vinegar on nasty Democrats who want to vote for the recovery package Obama supports, perhaps then he would have lived up to whatever twisted expectations Baker has for his behavior in The Village.

It’s hard to process the extent to which Republicans are getting a pass for their absolutist obstructionism in the early days of the Obama administration. Baker’s article today is a perfect microcosm for the honeymoon Republicans are getting with the press. I’ve already seen quotes to suggest that the Obama honeymoon is over, less than a month into his administration. But something tells me that the Republican minority’s honeymoon with the press will continue for a long, long time to come…and at the expense of the Obama administration’s ability to get things done for the good of the country.

On Political Capital

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what “political capital” means. Conventionally it’s thought of in a fairly similar fashion to gold coins collected in a video game that allow the possessor to buy a bigger sword or magic healing potion. The most dynamic conventional wisdom notes that political capital will disappear if not spent in a reasonable amount of time, but that’s about as close the words “political capital” will ever find themselves to the words “savvy analysis.”

Big Tent Democrat raises a point about the relative influence of George Bush early in his first term as comparted to Obama’s early days.

George Bush, who LOST the popular vote in 2000, had the political juice to pass a 1.2 TRILLION dollar tax cut in 2001. Barack Obama, who won a sweeping victory last November, can barely muster $500 billion in stimulus spending in the face of the Greatest Depression. Some “victory.”

The issue of political capital is raised here in a somewhat roundabout way. What allows Bush, who went into office under the shadow of a constitutional crisis, let alone without winning the popular vote, to achieve a bigger ideological goal out of the gate than Obama? I don’t think there’s any objective use of a subjective measure like “political capital” that would suggest that Bush actually started his term with greater political capital than Obama has.

As far as I can tell, then, “political capital” is really a measure of ones willingness to exert ones will in Washington. It’s not a measure of what has been accrued, but rather who someone really is. You’re either willing to impose your will in a legislative fight or you’re going to enter a fight ready to concede stakes to your opponents.

The challenge facing President Obama is that so much of his campaign has been framed around post-partisan goals. Even since taking office he’s been seen decrying Washington partisanship as a problem we need to overcome (as opposed to, say, Republicans clinging to failed ideas in a time of crisis). When Obama stands up as a fighting Democrat, as he did last week with House Democrats, he is more likely to be painted as partisan than as principled (something Steve Benen noted earlier today).  Obama will have to reframe his agenda around his ideology and his principles, and away from bridging philosophically necessary divides between the Democratic and Republican parties. Only in this way will he begin to have space to exercise his will qua political capital. We can’t expect him to be able to turn electoral mandate into legislation as long as he’s incorrectly identifying the challenges that need to be overcome and who is responsible for them.

The Conscience of the Liberals

There’s a case to be made that since the nomination of Barack Obama to be President, but especially since his election, Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been the leading liberal spokesperson in America. He’s pushed back against timid policies and incorrect statements by the Obama transition hard than any other prominent Democratic figure. And his writing on the stimulus and the Wall Street bailout has been the most critical from the Left, at least in mainstream sources.

As I see it, Krugman is distilling much of the anger and energy of the progressive online movement and filtering it out to a national audience. His main targets have been policy timidity at a time when we can ill afford restraint. Republican ideas have had the spotlight for eight years. The result has been unmitigated failure. Our country heads towards an economic precipice; now is not the time for half-measures between what is wrong and what is right. Krugman’s other main target is bipartisanship, which I’ve recently blogged extensively about and is surely the nextdoor neighbor to timidity. Krugman’s column today, “The Destructive Center” is a confluence of his writings against timid Democratic policy goals and the damage non-ideological bipartisanship does during times of crisis.

During the transition, Obama said that he would take Paul Krugman’s economic advice. It’s fairly clear that he isn’t doing that, but now is the time for Obama’s team to reevaluate and start listening to Paul Krugman. He’s one of the few unabashed liberals in American public discourse and our leadership fails to listen to him at the country’s peril. Moreover, Krugman’s drumbeating columns against centrism, bipartisanship, timidity, and post-partisanship have the ability – far greater than anything the blogosphere does – to create meaningful cover for Obama and Democrats on the Hill to move to the left. He is a powerful voice with a large microphone and there are few people who can currently challenge him for the position as conscience of America’s liberals today.

More, Please

This is great stuff from President Obama, pushing hard for the stimulus. He’s an incredible communicator and this is what it looks like when he takes the gloves off for his agenda. The Obama administration has bent over backwards to bring Republicans along so far, but I think this speech is a signal that they are recognizing that the GOP is going to stick with opposition at the expense of the country. As Paul Krugman writes:

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

I take it Krugman’s column was written before Obama’s speech last night, because I think this is exactly what he’s done. Hopefully it is a sustained attitude shift, and not a flash in the pot.

Parody, Thy Name Is Andrew Card

It’s really hilarious to listen to someone who helped to douse the Constitution in gasoline and set a match to it complain about how a relaxed dress code in the Oval Office is disrespectful to the Constitution. You know your take on the execute branch is twisted when you care more about baroque codes of dress than the rule of law.

…Adding, Obama’s style of dress was actually a subject of extensive Republican criticism and media discussion during the campaign.  Remember when his penchant for a white shirt with no tie and an open collar led to breathless attacks on him for dressing like Iranian president Ahmadinejad. I would say that much like Obama’s economic policies, Obama’s style of dress was vetted by the public and the public overwhelmingly supported his style of business casual.

Liberals on the Supreme Court

While it is likely that President Obama will have to fill a Supreme Court seat during his term, it will almost certainly be to replace one of the more liberal members of the court. If moving the court to the left is a priority at all for the Obama administration, then he should appoint someone is more liberal than the person that judge replaces. However I find it highly unlikely that such a thing would happen. The freak-out from the right over the appointment of someone more liberal than, say, John Paul Stevens would likely be more than a post-partisan administration could handle. The press assaults would be deafening and concrete assertions about how a justice would rule on issues would be pressed for in a way unseen with Alito or Roberts, to say the least. I’d love to be proven wrong, but in the early going of the Obama administration getting things done seems to be a higher priority than getting things done along a particular ideological line.