The record of the Obama administration on this fundamental issue of American democracy has surely fallen short of expectations. This is a lesson in “trust us.” Those in power are always certain that they themselves will act reasonably, and they resist limits on their own discretion. The problem is, “trust us” is no way to run a self-governing society.
Obama now speaks in strings of sentences like these: “The stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” The stock market, it would seem, plus corporate profits equals the economy: an odd equation to hear from a Democrat. Bill Clinton in 1995 is Obama’s only precursor on this terrain, but even Clinton would quickly have added that corporate profits are not the measure of all good. By contrast, Obama is now convinced that there is no advantage in putting in qualifications except as a formality.It does seem like Obama is firming up his chances on getting re-elected, and has given up on Congress, and wouldn't care if it went Republican.
A main inference from the State of the Union is that in 2011 and 2012, the president will not initiate. He will broker. Every policy recommendation will be supported and, so far as possible, clinched by the testimony of a panel of experts.... The idea is to overwhelm us with expertise. In this way, a president may lighten the burden of decision and control by easing the job of persuasion into other hands. Obama seems to believe that the result of being seen in that attitude will do nothing but good for his stature.Yes, his stature.
Today no one can easily say who Barack Obama is or what he stands for; and the coming year is unlikely to offer many clues, since all the thoughts of Obama in 2011 appear to concern Obama in 2012.Meanwhile, there is a good possibility that 2011 will turn out to be the year of the geopolitical game-changers that I have been blogging about. Obama has been strangely missing in the picture.
Obama did surprisingly little to fulfill the hopes and dreams he unleashed worldwide during the election of 2008. Moreover, he deliberately magnified them in the Arab world with his 2009 Cairo speech. But coupled with his continuation of America's cynical policies to prop up tyrannical Arab regimes, and particularly his spectacular failure to rein in the illegal Israeli settlements in the so-called Arab-Israeli Peace Process in 2010, Mr. Obama may have inadvertently exacerbated the explosive combination of frustrated expectations and business-as-usual that pressurized the current eruption of resentment, anger, and alienation among the Arab people in 2011.Kai Bird makes a similar point at Slate:
But now the moment has come when President Obama must demonstrate that his words were not just words. One way or the other, hard consequences will follow. The end of the Mubarak era will also spell an end to Egypt's cold peace with Israel. No post-Mubarak government, and certainly not one populated with Muslim Brotherhood members, will tolerate the continued blockade of their Hamas cousins in Gaza. Israel will thus be faced with additional strategic incentives to end its occupation of the West Bank, dismantle its settlements and quickly recognize a Palestinian state based largely on its 1967 borders. But as the recent leak of Palestinian-Israeli negotiating transcripts demonstrates, the detailed contours of a final settlement are all in place.But, Obama seems to be even more cautious than ever :( And, even worse, don't merely sit on that metaphorical fence. Stanford's Middle East historian, Joel Beinin, writes:
Change is coming to the Arab world. It can no longer be held back. So the pragmatist and not just the idealist in Obama would be wise to make it clear that he really is on the side of the protesters in the streets of Cairo. It is time to stop hedging our bets.
our president has remained silent about the demonstrators’ goal: a democratic Egypt. In his June 2009 Cairo speech, when nothing was immediately at stake, President Obama uttered eloquent words of support for democracy. If he spoke out forcefully in support of the Egyptian people, as he did for the Tunisian people in his State of the Union address, he could tip events in a direction that would earn America the gratitude of the Egyptian people.And, here is what Mohamed ElBaradei says, Mr. President. I hope you are listening:
This would go far to undoing the damage to America’s standing in the Arab and Muslim world created by the catastrophically wrong-headed foreign policies of the George W. Bush era. It would also do more to undermine al-Qaeda’s international campaign of hatred and terrorism than has been achieved by two wars and over a trillion dollars in military spending.
The whole world is watching. If the tanks of Tiananmen Square roll into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the people of the Middle East will know who to blame. Tell them "No," Mr. President.
"It is better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, 'It's time for you to go," he told CNN.
ElBaradei, a possible candidate in Egypt's presidential election this year, dismissed U.S. calls for Mubarak to enact sweeping democratic and economic reforms in response to the protests.
"The American government cannot ask the Egyptian people to believe that a dictator who has been in power for 30 years would be the one to implement democracy. This is a farce," he told the CBS program "Face the Nation."
"This first thing which will calm the situation is for Mubarak to leave, and leave with some dignity. Otherwise I fear that things will get bloody. And you (the United States) have to stop the life support to the dictator and root for the people."
[Schools] have a better record of fighting terrorism than missiles do and that wobbly governments can be buttressed not just with helicopter gunships but also with school lunch programs (at 25 cents per kid per day).That is from Nicholas Kristof's column in the NY Times today, in the context of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. The last few columns from Kristof have been of a flavor that is markedly different from many of previous ones. I like this version of Kristof much better--and way less depressing!
International security is where the money is, but fighting poverty is where the success is.
I have been cautiously optimistic about BHO ever since his campaign days. My first red flag was when I heard him being interviewed on NPR--I think it was with Michelle Norris. This was way back, even before he announced his candidacy. She asked Obama more than once whether he was planning on a presidential bid. And, every time Obama hedged his responses so well that I kept thinking he reminded me of somebody, but I could not place who it was.Which is why there is nothing for me to disagree with in the quote here (ht):
Later as the campaign picked up momentum, I concluded (and shared with maybe two or three people) that it was Bill Clinton he reminded me of, and that Obama was Slick Willie without the sex :-) Of course, I will gladly take a Slick Willie without sex over the muddler from Midland, or the phoenix that is older than the pyramids. But, hey, Obama is slickness as we have never seen before.
Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass. Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core.
Tight connections between Washington and Wall Street are nothing new, of course, especially when it comes to Goldman. Hank Paulson ran the bank before becoming George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary. Robert Rubin followed the same trajectory under Bill Clinton, then returned to Wall Street to head Citigroup’s executive committee. Dick Gephardt, the former Democratic House leader, lobbies for Goldman. Some 250 former members of Congress are now lobbying on behalf of the financial industry. President Barack Obama himself received nearly $15m from Wall Street during his 2008 campaign, of which almost $1m came from Goldman employees and their families.And then, Frank Rich in the NY Times:
Politicians cannot continue to have it both ways. The close nexus between Washington and Wall Street is eroding trust in government.
The truth is that both parties are too often in hock to the financial sector, and both parties bear responsibility for the meltdown. In response to a question from Jake Tapper of ABC News last weekend, Bill Clinton was right to say that he and two of his Treasury secretaries, Rubin and Lawrence Summers, “were wrong” to leave derivatives unregulated.
India, the only stable secular democracy in the region, is being actively prevented from helping in Afghanistan in order to appease the Pakistani regime, lest it re-enact the carnage that was visited upon Mumbai in 2008 and the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008 and 2009. Which raises the question: Is the U.S. objective in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, or is it to secure the country for Pakistan? To New Delhi, the answer looks increasingly like the latter.
Washington's critics trace the origins of today's crisis to the United States' abrupt abandonment of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. The trouble with this version of history is that it skips over the 1990s. But contrary to what is now conventional wisdom in the West, the Taliban in its current incarnation is not a remnant of the Cold War. It is a creation of Pakistan. It was during the 1990s that the Taliban -- actively backed by Pakistan -- seized control of Kabul. Since then, New Delhi has witnessed Afghanistan become a launching pad for anti-India terrorism.
Today, the tragic irony of President Barack Obama, who invokes the virtues of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi while simultaneously making overtures to the Taliban in an oxymoronic pursuit for "moderate extremists," has not been lost on India. A tiny but vocal band of skeptics in India is already questioning the wisdom of New Delhi's alignment with the United States over the last ten years. Of course, it is unlikely that New Delhi would directly oppose U.S. policy in the region. But in the first year of the Obama administration, much of the progress achieved over a decade of aggressive diplomacy to bring India closer to the United States has been undone.Hmmmm .....
My visit to Mumbai happened to overlap with Clinton’s, and this Indian-American felt quite excited with the fantastic appreciation for his adopted homeland, its president and the visiting secretary.
The hotel where Clinton stayed, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, was one of the targets of the terror attacks last November. Therefore, as one can imagine, security personnel seemed to be everywhere and prevented tourists, including me, from visiting one of Mumbai’s famous landmarks — the Gateway of India, which is adjacent to the Taj Mahal.
Yet people seemed to be genuinely happy that Clinton had opted to stay at the Taj to honor those who lost their lives that fateful November, and as a mark of defiance against terrorism.
The press and the public seemed to treat her as a celebrity as much as they recognized her as America’s chief diplomat. Clinton impressed Indians not merely with her tactfulness, but even her handling of spicy Indian foods.
One newspaper reported that, “She likes hot and spicy food. Back home she travels with a bottle of hot sauce to pep up her food wherever she goes; she believes it keeps her healthy.”
I thought the talk about Clinton’s penchant for spicy foods was nothing but polite, diplomatic speak until I read, after her departure, about how Clinton added her own touch by doing something absolutely out of the ordinary.
According to one magazine, “Hillary was given a chili and to her credit she bravely chomped her way through it, and didn’t even wash it down with water.”
Eating a chili without hastily toning it down with sweets or even water earned Clinton all kinds of admiring metaphors; one, for instance, called her a “woman of steel.” (A note: “chili” is not the spicy stew that is consumed at Super Bowl parties all across America, but refers to the green and red peppers.)
America and the current administration are certainly viewed positively. After years of neglecting India and favoring Pakistan, in response to the geopolitical realpolitik of the Cold War years, there has been a distinct favorable tilt in the Indo-American relationships. President George W. Bush largely continued to build on the new foundations that President Bill Clinton had laid, and so far it appears that the Obama administration is keen on further expanding and deepening this relationship between the world’s largest democracies.
There is also a little bit of insecurity in the Indian push for better relations with America, stemming from an underlying concern that America might lean more and more toward China because of the multibillion dollar Sino-American economic ties, which might then make India’s interests less important to America. In addition to the Chinese angle, there is the ever-present worry that America might at any time ditch India in favor of Pakistan.
Of course, Hillary Clinton having a successful India trip was viewed with suspicion across its borders, particularly in Pakistan. Her forceful remarks that “we hope Pakistan will make progress against what is a syndicate of terrorism” were not received well in Pakistan. “A syndicate of terrorism” is a wonderful phrase, indeed, to describe the many outfits operating out of Pakistan, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
I sense here in India an immense and almost unconditional support for America. It is, therefore, no surprise that there is a lot of excitement about the possibility of President Obama visiting India, even though it was triggered by what appears to be a polite response from the White House press secretary, who remarked, “I know the president at some point will travel to India.”
Maybe prior to a trip to India, whenever that happens, the athletic Obama should practice playing cricket over a couple of weeks. When in India, Obama could then don the appropriate game gear and play for a few minutes with a bunch of youngsters.
That “cricket diplomacy” might seal forever the admiration for the United States in this cricket-crazy country.
[A] spokesman for the White House budget office said postponing the review from mid-July until mid-August isn’t unusual during a president’s first year in office.Exhibit B (Economist's Voice):“Because of the unique circumstances of a transition year, we are, like President George W. Bush in 2001, releasing the mid-session review a few weeks later than as is usual in non- transition years,” Kenneth Baer, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget, said.
Bush’s first mid-year review was released Aug. 22, 2001, and the one issued in former President Bill Clinton’s first year in office came out on Sept. 1, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. ...
A worsening jobs picture compared with February’s forecast and a still-weak economy may make the deficit picture look worse than the $1.84 trillion forecast this year, about four times the previous record of $455 billion. Next year’s deficit was projected to decline to $1.26 trillion.
Gibbs said he expected the review to show “the budget situation is going to be even more challenging” than February’s forecast. He didn’t elaborate.
Although this year's record deficit has attracted a lot of attention, the real concern is the unsustainability of the federal budget over the next 10 years and longer. The budget situation presents policy makers with a very delicate balancing act between encouraging economic recovery and establishing fiscal sustainability, according to Alan Auerbach of U.C. Berkeley and William Gale of Brookings.The following sentence in Exhibit B is a mind-boggler:
In 2009, the U.S. federal deficit will be larger than the entire GDP of all but six other countries.All but six other countries have GDPs less than the US federal government's deficit. What a way to understand how huge our economy is!
Writes Judith Warner:Tom Daschle collected nearly a quarter of a million dollars in fees in the last two years speaking to leaders of the industry President Barack Obama wants him to reform as the administration's health secretary.That was just a portion of the more than $5.2 million the former South Dakota senator earned as he advised insurers and hospitals and worked in other industries -- real estate, energy and telecommunications among them, according to a financial statement filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
