The one sure thing about Barack Obama’s inaugural address is that it increased tensions within the progressive coalition about his taste for “bipartisanship” (or “post-partisanship,” if you prefer). Despite passages in the speech that were a very direct repudiation of the Bush administration, and a few strikingly progressive flourishes (e.g., the shout-out to religious “unbelievers”), the overall tenor continued his long rhetorical preoccupation with embracing values usually considered conservative as well as liberal, and deriding the partisan fights in Washington (this time in the Pauline phrase “childish things”).
As has almost always been the case with Obama, observers have reached very different conclusions when listening to him in the inaugural speech and in other recent utterances. Some conservatives profess themselves as pleased or even charmed by his invocation of “conservative” values like hard work, personal and mutual responsibility, sacrifice and discipline, even as they (typically) warn he may not really believe in them. Some progressives continue to be alarmed by his post-partisan talk, and even more (notably both Marie Coco and Michael Crowley in separate pieces today) suggest it’s a habit that will soon expire in the partisan exigencies of Washington. A few have divined somewhat less conventional ideological leanings in Obama; both Alan Wolfe and E.J. Dionne have noted the communitarian vein that runs deep through Obama’s rhetoric.
My own take is based on my ten-plus-years of facilitating a leadership training program for elected officials called “Values-Based Messaging” under the auspices of the Democratic Leadership Council. Unlike some of the other elements of the DLC’s agenda over the years, this training was never controversial, and has been very popular with a wide array of state and local Democrats from across the ideological spectrum, often as a party unity exercise in state legislative caucuses. To make a long story short, its central insight is that progressives in politics and government can and should build the largest possible audience for our more partisan policy goals and individual programs by embracing broadly-shared values that we often take for granted, but don’t articulate, making us vulnerable to the kinds of conservative stereotypes that have been so effective in the past.
This larger audience may begin to shrink once bold policy goals and detailed programs are advanced. But it definitely helps, and just as importantly, roots progressive programs in values and goals the public understands, while subtly undermining the invidious belief that Democrats represent government, rather than bending government to the popular will. It’s a simple way to occupy the political high ground and expose the narrow values base of the Right.
Whatever you think of this or that speech, Barack Obama is clearly a master of values-based messaging. And the inaugural address did not simply embrace broadly shared values beyond those usually emphasized by progressives; he went out of his way to argue that values often placed in opposition to each other are both reconcilable and essential (e.g., liberty and security, and public-sector activism and “free” markets). This may sound dangerously like Third Wayism to many progressives, but if reflects the fact that big majorities of the American people do in fact embrace such “contradictory” values, and do not want to see them vanquished or ignored.
This is probably why the public gave very positive ratings to the inaugural address and the accompanying events, even as most pundits panned it. And more generally, it is why Obama’s speechifying–so often criticized as “vague” or “abstract” by the punditocracy– resonates well with the public. There’s a time for ten-point platforms in political communications, but it’s essential to open the door to listeners by convincing them you live in the same “vague” and “abstract” moral universe that they inhabit.
Obama’s inaugural address, like all his speeches, did move into the territory of big policy goals as well as values, and on this front, he has some enormous advantages. Recent events have made reviving the economy an overriding policy goal for virtually all Americans, which is why Obama’s “ideas” for a stimulus package are gaining such strong popular support even as the details remain hazy to most people. But the inevitable drop-off of public support for those details will likely be smaller than would otherwise be the case thanks to Obama’s determination to set the table so carefully with communications about values and big goals.
Moreover, Obama’s second-order policy goals–such as achieving universal health coverage and radically changing the energy system–are very popular with the public across party lines, and the fact that many, and probably a majority, of Republican politicians and conservative gabbers don’t support those goals creates a tremendous partisan opportunity for Obama and Democrats moving forward. Indeed, the past Democratic tendency to talk about, say, health care, in terms of specific proposals like a Patient’s Bill of Rights and a prescription drug benefit has long enabled Republicans to blur partisan differences and disguise their own reactionary radicalism on health care.
Even the big policy goal that Obama occasionally mentions to the consternation of many progressives–“entitlement reform”–has, at the abstract level–a lot of public support. And the common assumption that Obama is playing on conservative turf by mentioning the subject probably sells him short, and reflects the age-old Democratic habit of conceding whole areas of public policy to the opposition. If, say, he can make Social Security more progressive, while folding Medicare into a universal health system, he will have taken away a common conservtive talking point without conceding anything.
This is why I’ve argued that Obama’s meta-political strategy, and the underpinning of his rhetoric about partisanship, represents “grassroots bipartisanship”–an effort to build public support for a progressive agenda beyond the current ranks of the Democratic rank-and-file, crafted as a thoroughgoing reform of Washington, not simply as a expulsion of the hated GOP. You can call it “pragmatism” or “centrism” or “post-partisanship” if you like, but it mainly represents a sensible approach to the preeminently appropriate task of tearing down the old partisan paradigm and rebuilding a new one that can command an enduring majority in support of a progressive agenda. It should at least be given a fighting chance.

In the process of discussing the collapse of prices in Europe’s carbon emissions permit market, and how that phenomenon illustrates some of the advantages of a cap-and-trade system over a straightforward carbon tax, Bradford Plumer at TNR notes one of the underpublicized upsides of the economic crisis: we’ll see less pollution.
Getting back to the EU, Plumer explains:

Back in 2005, prices dropped to zero because the EU set the cap too loosely and handed out more permits than companies even needed—that was a real flaw, and it got patched up. But this time around, permit prices are plummeting because a global recession has scuppered economic activity across Europe, and companies are polluting less. They’re also using more natural gas and less coal. None of that is a concern per se. Carbon emissions are, after all, going down. In fact, this might be one advantage of having a cap-and-trade regime instead of a carbon tax. During recessions, emitting carbon becomes cheaper under a cap (because fewer people are doing it), so companies can postpone decarbonization projects until the economy starts booming again and they can spare the extra funds to do so.

None of this is terribly surprising if you think about it for a few minutes. But it does underscore a political problem with carbon emissions limits specifically, and with action on global climate change generally, that has at least temporarily abated: the ancient argument that the economy (in either developed or developing countries) can’t afford to Go Green. That’s particularly true if, as Plumer suggests, governments aggressively promote (and subsidize) alternative energy sources and efficiency measures that further reduce the price of shifting away from fossil fuels.
This is not to say, of course, that opponents of action on carbon emissions won’t make the same old arguments with even greater force, claiming that it’s no time to “burden” industries with ambitious “green” goals. But at the moment, the same old arguments make even less real sense.

Those who watched the Obama inauguration, up close in Washington or at home, will have their own particular impressions and memories. Mine include a wheelchair-bound Dick Cheney looking for all the world like Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter; Joe Biden looking like the happiest man on earth; the Chief Justice bungling the administration of the Oath of Office; and Joe Lowery delivering a most entertaining benediction (“when the red man can get ahead, man…when the brown man can stick around, man”).
Obama’s address had a lot of interesting moments: his strong rebuke to his predecessor’s foreign policy; his shout-out, during the obligatory passage on religious diversity, to “nonbelievers;” his reminder that his father probably couldn’t have been served lunch in various parts of the country he was being sworn in to lead. The overall tone was obviously somber, part of an expectations-setting exercise that we can expect to continue for a while. There wasn’t a lot of “yes we can” rhetoric. There was plenty of talk about common purpose and sacrifice.
The vast, chilly crowd didn’t seem to care whether Obama delivered a barnburner of an address; the historic nature of the event was enough.
But for me, the big moment (other than watching Bush 43 walk up the steps to Marine One and leave the premises) was actually after the address, when I clicked on whitehouse.gov, and was greeted with a very large photo of President Barack Obama under the legend: “Change Has Come to America.” Yes, indeed, it has.

There will be a natural tendency this year to conflate the annual commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with the inauguration of Barack Obama. Without question, Obama’s election represented a milestone in the racial saga of the United States, and had he lived until now, no one would have been more pleased, and perhaps astonished, by this development than King himself. (It is a bit startling to realize that Martin Luther King was born just 80 years ago, and might today still be an active and respected voice–perhaps an Inaugural prayer-leader?–had he been permitted to live).
But it’s important to maintain the integrity of King’s legacy, which was reflected in Obama’s election, but hardly fulfilled.
King represented, after all, a perpetual challenge to the people of the United States that is always necessary, but can never be fully met: to live up completely to the civic and religious values nearly all of us claim to cherish.
He held up a mirror to the Americans of his time, and demanded they take a close look at themselves according to their own professed standards. Many refused, and some never forgave him for the audacity of the demand itself. But although Jim Crow finally died, and we now have an African-American president, the demand remains as provocative and essential as ever.
So take some time today, if you can, to read or re-read Letter From a Birmingham Jail, or, if you are a Christian, Paul’s Letter to American Christians. They haven’t lost their power despite the passage of years. And they still serve as a reminder of the fundamental radicalism of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Gospels.
All too many people think of MLK as merely a historical figure, and of his commemorative day as a tribute to the Civil Rights movement that culminated before King’s death. For such people, the inauguration of Barack Obama tomorrow will become just another reason to consign King and his mission to the history books. But if you actually read him or listen to him, it becomes clear that his message is as fresh and relevant–and radical–as ever.

As the George W. Bush Era comes to a merciful close, and we bid farewell to his many appointees, there are plenty of retrospectives being written and published, mostly negative, a few more mixed or even hilariously positive.
But one of the most eerily consonant assessments was actually published more than three-quarters of a century ago, by The Nation, in an editorial goodbye to Herbert Hoover and the GOP ascendancy he represented, entitled “A Farewell to Republicans” (republished this week). Here is one very pertinent excerpt:

[W]e are taking leave not merely of a single Administration. For twelve years the Republican Party has been in power. During ten of those years it controlled the executive and legislative branches of the government. When, a few years hence, an attempt is made to minimize the disaster of this last quadrennium, and to point to a preceding eight year period of material development and growth, let it be noted that in a purely material sense the American people are much worse off today than they were twelve years ago. Far more than was gained has been swept away. Savings have been dissipated, lives have been blasted, families disintegrated. Misery and insecurity exist to a degree unprecedented in our national life. And spiritually the American people have been debauched by the materialism which made dollar-chasing the accepted way of life and accumulation of riches the goal of earthly existence.

And the editorial concludes with an observation about the new administration that should sound familiar to many contemporary readers of The Nation:

Have these captains and kings departed—not to return? The epoch of their wanton and repulsive leadership is ending. Their incompetence and their betrayal are manifest. But much of the evil they have done lives after them. The coming years will see the struggle to purge America, to reassert the promise of American life, to validate, in consonance with the changed times and conditions, the high aspirations of the founders of the nation. Mr. Roosevelt has the opportunity to be the leader of this renaissance, but he will have to forge as his instrument a wholly different Democratic Party from that which so long has been indistinguishable from the Republican.

I think it’s reasonably safe to say that the New Deal made it a lot easier to distinguish Democrats from Republicans (unless you were an African-American living in the Solid South, of course), and I think the same will be true of the two parties during the Obama administration, the talk of “bipartisanship” notwithstanding. It’s less clear that today’s Republicans will go through the gradual transformation that eventually, and for a time, discredited laissez-fair domestic policies and isolationism in the GOP. But in any event, it’s fascinating how much the transition of power looked the same in 1933 as in 2009.

No, I didn’t watch George W. Bush’s “farewell address” last night, figuring my blood pressure was high enough. Reading it today brings no particular insights, other than the feeling that Bush’s once-proud claims have now become bits and pieces of self-exculpatory evidence of the sort that criminal defendents offer at sentencing hearings.
Spencer Ackerman, in the Washington Independent, offers the best brief take I’ve seen:

It’s hard to remember, but in 2000, Bush’s campaign plane was called Accountability One. Nearly nine years later, his speech is about why he shouldn’t be judged by his disastrous results, but instead by what was in his heart.
If there’s any real parting gift that George W. Bush has given conservatives, it’s that they can no longer use Jimmy Carter’s presidency as a laugh line. Carter never seriously argued that his presidency succeeded because only 3000 people died from terrorism on American soil while he was president. Indeed, the speech’s most inspiring stories are about people who persevered despite his policies:
“We see America’s character in Dr. Tony Recasner, a principal who opened a new charter school from the ruins of Hurricane Katrina … We’ve seen it in Staff Sergeant Aubrey McDade, who charged into an ambush in Iraq and rescued three of his fellow Marines.”

Indeed, the only “results” Bush could cite in his speech was something that didn’t happen, another terrorist attack on the United States. I’ve always felt that this “accomplishment” was ultimately the reason he was re-elected in 2004, even if few Americans really bought the idea that invading Iraq had cowed or distracted al Qaeda into inaction. But eventually the visible results of Bush’s policies overwhelmed his one invisible claim to success. And that’s why he bids us farewell offering the plea of all failed leaders: I Meant Well.

In all the obsessive focus over the economic stimulus package, somewhat lost in the shuffle has been Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul the health care system. The CW is that the budgetary resources and political capital necessary to pass the stimulus bill are so large that any steps towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) must be delayed until some indefinite point in the future.
In TNR’s new health care policy blog, The Treatment, Jonathan Cohn assesses the CW and suggests that a major health care system reform proposal could still arrive later this year:

[E]verything I’ve heard from both the transition team and Capitol Hill suggests nobody is backing off major reform yet. Staff and advisers are proceeding under the assumption that it remains a “year one” priority for Obama. That means they are continuing to do what they’ve been doing for the last few months: Crunching numbers, consulting experts, meeting with interested parties–all in the name of fleshing out a plan that Congress could formally consider sometime before year’s end.

Whether or not that’s accurate–and it will all probably depend on the economic and political situation a few months down the road–it’s worth noting that incremental steps towards UHC are actually moving along. The stimulus package itself includes a Medicaid “super-match” that will encourage states to maintain and in some cases actually increase coverage for low-income citizens. It also includes a provision allowing unemployed people over 55 to continue COBRA coverage (with new federal subsidies) until they are eligible for Medicare, which could affect a sizable group of the newly uninsured. Health care IT investments considered integral to UHC are included. And on a separate track, earlier this week the House passed the SCHIP eligibility expansion that Bush vetoed.
Cohn regards these steps as potentially representing a more cautious UHC strategy for Obama:

One thing to keep in mind, as the debate moves forward: Obama and his allies may well decide they need to address health care affordability sequentially. The “down payments” could then take the form of institutional changes (like setting up an institute to study the effectiveness of new treatments) and significant coverage expansions (starting with Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) that might still fall well short of universal coverage. The idea, then, could be to return later on–maybe in 2010 or 2011–with additional legislation, backed by additional funding, designed to finish the job.

At a minimum, it’s clear that Obama is determined to avoid actual reductions in health care coverage due to loss of employer-based insurance or state budgetary decisions. Beyond that, it’s hard to say whether steps he’s taking now represent a return to an incremental strategy for achieving UHC, or a foundation for a big UHC proposal in the near-term future.

It was inevitable, I guess, that the departure of George W. Bush from the White House would stimulate at least a few would-be revisionists or sycophants to argue publicly that the man wasn’t really the disaster that most of us perceive him to have been. But a British historian named Andrew Roberts took to the pages of the Telegraph to pen a paen to W. that is my personal nominee for Worst Column Ever, worse even than Andrew Klavan’s infamous “Dark Knight” column lionizing Bush for his brave willingness to break or ignore laws.
You need to read the whole thing to fully absorb Roberts’ breathtaking mendacity on a variety of issues related to Bush’s tenure in office. It says a lot that perhaps his least objectionable assertion is the claim that warantless wiretaps by the administration saved many thousands of American lives. The following may contain more howlers than I’ve ever read in one sentence:

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support.

Yeah, that’s George W. Bush in a nutshell, all right.
Then there’s this masterpiece of economic analysis:

The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush’s very
un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.

I particularly like the phrase “credit-unworthy people” as the cause of the financial crisis. Not “people who could struggle to make their mortgage payments,” mind you, but “credit-unworthy people,” a fascist word-construction if ever I have read one. And it says a lot about Roberts’ sycophancy that he praises the Bush-Paulson “rescue package,” which most conservatives of the sort who like to sniff about “credit-unworthy people” absolutely loathed. As for the idea that Bush’s earlier tax cuts will help make America “the first country out of recession,” we are perhaps mercifully left in the dark about Roberts’ “reasoning.”
There are plenty of conservatives in the world of gab with whom progressives strongly, even violently, disagree. But they can be roughly divided into those who make the conservative case with logic and some reference to verifiable facts, and those who really don’t bother. One of the worst features of the Bush Era is the great encouragement his administration and its support network offered to the latter. For that reason, perhaps George W. Bush has found his most appropriate court minstrel in Andrew Roberts, who did not have to suffer the inconvenience of actually living in the United States over the last eight years. I do know this: as an avid reader of history, I will give the works of Andrew Roberts a very wide berth. Certainly his prediction that “history” will vindicate Bush as a great and misunderestimated man should stimulate some questions about his credibility to write “history” with anything other than crayons.

The LA Times’ Peter Wallsten confirms today that the long-awaited successor to Barack Obama’s campaign organization–generally known as “Barack Obama 2.0”–is being designed as a privately funded arm of the Democratic National Committee, supplemented by a private-non-profit “service organization” that will keep grassroots supporters engaged.
But it appears that the DNC-affiliated organization will break precedent by lobbying Democrats as well as Republicans to support Obama’s legislative agenda, essentially continuing as a personal political machine:

Organizers and even Republicans say the scope of this permanent campaign structure is unprecedented for a president. People familiar with the plan say Obama’s team would use the network in part to pressure lawmakers — particularly wavering Democrats — to help him pass complex legislation on the economy, healthcare and energy.

This arrangement could mean that the Obama network will, as John Heilemann suggested in New York magazine the other day, dominate the DNC (chaired by close Obama associate Tim Kaine with, as executive director, his former campaign staffer Jennifer O’Malley Dillon) and state party organizations instead of simply putting on the party harness and fading away as a personal organization.
Barack Obama 2.0 would be financed with $75 million in campaign funds, an enormous amount for a non-election organization.
Wallsten’s account of the separate “service organization” is a bit sketchy, but it would supposedly enlist grassroots Obama supporters “to help victims of natural disasters, but would do so under the Obama umbrella while continuing to build the overall network’s massive e-mail database.”
As Wallsten notes: “The prospect of a president being able to guide a service or relief agency outside the framework of his government is a unique development.”
Sounds like it would also operate as sort of a ready reserve for the political organization as well, aside from its obvious utility in fundraising.
The whole plan, which is apparently still under development, is a pretty big and–if you will excuse the expression–audacious deal, and an indicator that what I’ve called Obama’s “grassroots bipartisanship” will benefit from a huge organization that will indeed dwarf the resources of the DNC and the state parties:

Strategists in both parties said the ideas being discussed would create an on-the-ground weapon for policy battles far more powerful than the speeches, news conferences and donor-targeting techniques traditionally used by presidents.
“No one’s ever had these kinds of resources,” said Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who led political operations under President Reagan. “This would be the greatest political organization ever put together, if it works.”

It will be most interesting to see if Barack Obama 2.0 is up and running in time to mobilize support for Obama’s stimulus package.

All mad props to Jeffrey Rosen for his TNR post on the new ABC show, “Homeland Security USA.” In case you have been blessed enough to miss the show’s premiere, it’s a breathless tribute to the “heroes” who work for this famously screwed-up federal mega-agency. As Rosen explains, the first episode trades heavily on the hope that DHS is protecting us all from terrorists, but actually focuses on more quotidian border control actions dealing with drugs, immigration documents, and, well, belly-dancing accoutrements.
Yes, a big chunk of “Homeland Security USA” deals with an incident wherein a Swiss belly-dancer seeking admission to the U.S. is detained and questioned, mainly because she lacks a work permit. The ABC voice-over for this segment tells you everything you need to know: “Something seems amiss with this Swiss Miss.”
This is relevant to a political site, and to U.S. taxpayers, because “Homeland Security USA” boasts of the cooperation it has secured from DHS, and because the show will obviously have a bearing on how Americans perceive DHS and their own degree of safety.
It’s pretty clear that this ludicrous show is the crown jewel of DHS’s own propaganda efforts, reflected in the establishment in early 2005 of a Office of Multimedia designed to vet Hollywood film and television projects and scripts that might requite cooperation from the Department. The original director of this office was a former actress (who once played a hooker on Designing Women) named Bobbie Faye Ferguson, whose one reported triumph was the torpedoing of a movie script that did not sufficiently meet DHS needs.
This all might be nothing more than a silly sideshow if not for the simple fact that DHS is haphazardly organized department whose only overriding mission is to enlist American citizens in a self-confident national effort to protect the country from the new threats of the 21st century, which do not, by most accountings, include poorly documented Swiss belly-dancers.
DHS badly needs new leadership and a new sense of coherent mission, even if, as it probably does, it also need a reconsideration of its component parts. If that can’t be accomplished, the whole idea of the department needs to be skeptically reviewed. What it doesn’t need is hamhanded and self-parodying propaganda via publicly-endorsed vehicles like “Homeland Security USA.”
Janet Napolitano has her work cut out for her at DHS, and as a big fan, I wish her well. But she could go a long way towards signalling a different philosophy for the department if she’d mock “Homeland Security USA” during her confirmation hearing.