Grab Bag Posting

Update: Commenter zic points me to this Brad DeLong post containing the C-SPAN coverage of Obama engaging Q&A with the House Republican Conference in Baltimore. Indeed, this event has been getting rave reviews for Obama and rightly so. This might just be what Obama ready to rumble but in his own way looks like.

As Marc Ambinder reports over at the Atlantic Politics Chanel,

The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here’s an except from one of them: “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows… I’m definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn’t take another 12 month vacation.”

This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat.

Let me just add that as much as I like seeing this showing from Obama, what I would really like to see is him do the same thing with his own Blue Dog/Reagan Democrat Caucus.

It was watching the healthcare reform debate and Obama’s lack of presence in it that really started me worrying about the administration. And while I will whole-heartedly agree that Republican obstrucionism didn’t help having a healthy debate and legislative process, it was really a pocket full of Democrats who, to my mind, tarnished the procees and weighed it down to the sinking point.

Republicans need to have some of the assumptions challenged in a vigorous way, for sure (and vice versa as the President noted). But Democrats also need to have an out in the open and up front debate about the philosophical differences and challenges facing the Party. And perhaps Obama could be the right person to initiate that process — someone has to.

It seems that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had second thoughts on the idea of holding the KSM trial in Lower Manhattan with the help of some heavy-weight lobbying and has successfully petitioned the White House to look at moving the trial,

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.
“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

Obviously you can’t go ahead with an extraordinarily high profile trial in a location where the once supportive Mayor is now arguing in opposition along side a sizeable chunk of the business community, so this move makes a lot of sense. I had previously expressed my own skepticism about the likely outcome of symbolically holding the trial in New York. I think that skepticism is only more applicable now. If the SOTU and responses to it showed us anything, it is, I think, that people are generally disenchanted with the notion of doing things in a symbolic fashion and are looking for concrete and specific action to get things done.

Nose to the grind stone is the order of the day for the foreseeable future.

Noting Bruce Bartlett’s recent Forbes article on Obama v. Reagan, Kevin Drum talks about what he sees as Obama’s big blind spot,

I’m a fan of Obama’s, but this has always been his big blind spot. He came to office convinced — sincerely, it seems — that he could change the tone of Washington DC. That was always a fantasy. The way to get things done is to make a case for them, build public support for them, blast your enemies for opposing them, and just generally fight like hell for them. It can be done with a smile, but it has to be done. Obama seems to have a hard time getting that.

That is, in my estimation, exactly right. I have been mounting an increasing pile of “Obama, you suck” posts, or at least they could seem to read that way. That is not how they are intended. People I admire the most tend to come in for the sharpest criticism (see: Andrew Sullivan) precisely because of how much I admire them and how much I consaciously and explicitly raise expectations for them.

I’m disappointed in Obama of late, but I too remain a fan. I think that if the President isn’t prodded on shortcomings by his supporters — preferably those who were capable of voting for him — then it is unlikely that he is going to address and overcome those deficiencies. I’m not totally convinced that chanigng the tone of Washington was a fantasy, pace Kevin, but I do think that there needs to be a recknoning about what the practice of politics is and how one wants to go about doing it. Politics is a fight, on that front I’m with Kevin. But how one goes about fighting remains a decision facing the individual participants.

Obama wasn’t handed the Democratic nomination, he had to fight tooth and nail for it — and he did so in what seemed to be his own way, in a fashion that was different and that inspired people and seemed to set a different tone. It just doesn’t feel like Obama is willing to apply that lesson to an in-office context. Or maybe he’s still figuring out what that means, I don’t know.

At the end of the day, though, the practice of politics is what it is and it is Obama’s choice to find a way of engaging that practice in a fashion that strikes a pose of integrity and intelligence with which he is comfortable (“with a smile” as Kevin suggests). But the tone of Washington is going to be changed by the act of engaging in the practice that goes on there, not by virtue of simply showing up and recoiling in horror.

I remain fascinated by the idea of the political process pace Obama, but part of my doubts also revolve around the idea that, congentially speaking, I’m waiting for something that isn’t coming. If it isn’t in Obama to be the guy who gets down in the trenches, but finds a way of doing so that changes the way the trenches work, then it seems kind of silly to continue pointing out ways he might do so.

And on that note, the President deserves praise for the DADT announcement, even though there are some who would suggest it comes too late. I also think that the idea of taking monies repaid by the banks to create loand for small businesses and increase liquidity for Main Street was a great feature of the SOTU. I’m also heartened to see Obama seeming to get tough on the banks themselves in terms of modest repayment fees despite (because of?) the wailing from Wall Street. The market dropped after the announcement of the Volker-rule… shocking. It’ll rebound, trust me. Meanwhile, average indivisuals deserve some indication that they aren’t the only ones paying for past indiscretions.

And speaking of the SOTU, you should check our Dan Summers’ own parsing of Obama’s speech at Bleakonomy.

Kyle at Voegue Republic looks at Lawrence Lessig’s response to Glenn Greenwald on Citizens United and offers his own thorughts.

And Ken at Popehate talks about censorship and Anne Frank’s.. well, just go read it for yourself.

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Tags | anne frank, barack obama, citizens united, kevin drum, ksm trial, Michael Bloomberg, nyc, SOTU