UP@NIGHT

With the debt deal done, here is a statement made yesterday by Jim Messina, a senior political adviser to the president, as reported in The New York Times, August 2nd.

But Jim Messina, the manager of the president’s re-election bid, said the discord among Democrats in Washington did not reflect what campaign officials were hearing from rank-and-file supporters of the president through nightly telephone calls and door-knocking.

And here are comments from Plouffe, Obama’s top campaign strategist, same piece.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, and I don’t see anything as contentious as this coming down the pike in terms of an intraparty situation,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president. “There will be a unified, motivated and very aggressive Democratic Party supporting the president next year.”

Just tell me it ain’t so, Joe (Biden)…..Is this really the line that Obama’s team is going to take: Democrats aren’t that unhappy with the debt deal and there isn’t any deep frustration?  It’s only Washington Dems who are pulling their hair out?  Heaven forbid!!  This could be the beginning of the end if they really believe this.  And if it is just a cover, it’s lame.  There is a real problem “out there.”  They need to address it.

Much more to the point were comments by Tom Strickland, found in the same article.

“There are parts of the base that are discouraged,” Ted Strickland, a former Democratic governor of Ohio, said in an interview. “I don’t know that it’s the result of any personal animosity toward the president, but going forward it’s going to be important for him to inspire us, lead us, challenge us and be a real leader.”

From CBPP

Yes, as it turns out, the deal that Obama cut with the Republicans is not as bad as it could have been.  They could have gotten away with the kitchen sink, that is, cuts in medicaid and social security without any tax increases for the wealthy.  But instead the Republicans will be getting cuts that won’t really hit the economy until 2013, and medicaid and social security are safe from arbitrary cuts, for now.  Perhaps we should be thankful, especially given the state of the economy.

But I don’t feel thankful.  I feel like the American people got rolled.  The Tea Party activists set the agenda and then engaged in blackmail.  Cut now or else…and of course no increase in taxes on the wealthy.  Yet without a revenue increase there isn’t a way to bring down the debt that won’t also bring down (almost all of) the American people.  But most thoughtful Americans know that we can’t get out of this economic morass through some magic bullet on the reduction side.  Most Americans wanted a deal that included budget cuts and revenue increases.

So what happened?  Obama and Co. made a set of calculations:  Better to give in now and (perhaps) fight another day when there isn’t a sword of Damocles hanging over the country.  They assumed that the political costs could be contained.  Independents will blame Congress more than the president.  And upset Democrats will eventually fall in line.  After all, where can they go in 2012?  (As I write the House just voted to pass the “compromise” bill on the debt ceiling.   Most Republicans voted for it.  The Democrats split.)  Last but not least, The White House welcomed not having to deal with a new economic crisis.

It all sounds so reasonable and politically expedient.  But they may have miscalculated.  Take me for instance.  I have been a strong supporter of the president.  I have viewed his deep (philosophical) pragmatism as a virtue.  I never assumed that he was an old-fashioned liberal.  I thought he had mildly progressive leanings but was quite capable of centrist or even center right positions.  Given our time and place in American history, this was about as much as one could expect out of a Democratic Party nominee.  I also liked that fact that he sought to play long ball.  That he seemingly wasn’t looking for superficial or quick balms.  And that he had the intelligence to play long ball.

But you can’t play long ball (in politics) unless you can move the ball.  Or better still, unless you can convince your teammates and the fans that you can do so.  What we have seen in this latest round is Obama drawing a line in the sand and then hopping over it when it looked like he might actually have to fight a serious battle.  And it was a very important battle.  The extortion that took place was not solely about getting the government to spend less.  It was about setting an agenda.  It was about how Americans understand who and what are responsible for the rut we are in, and who is responsible for helping to dig us out.

Corporations are sitting on mountains of cash.  And as the chart above shows, the rich continue to do exceptionally well.  Income and wealth disparities are becoming chasms.  Yes, we have had fine words from the White House about this.  But words are no substitute for actions, unless the words themselves are actions.  Obama should have called the Republicans’ bluff.  He should have said, ‘you want a default, go ahead and don’t compromise.  Go ahead and insist on no new revenues from the wealthy.  You will answer to the American people.  You will even have to answer to Wall Street when the Market sinks or crashes.   And you know what, you will have to answer to me.’  (He could have let them believe early on that he just might invoke the 14th Amendment if he got angry enough.  Instead he gave this bargaining chip away.)

Obama should have come into office declaring a national state of emergency.  He should have not promised to lower the unemployment rate with “traditional” measures.  He should have emphasized that unemployment was actually much higher than the “official” figures, closer to 16%-20%.  He should have used the fierce urgency of now to enact emergency measures.  He should have done this when he was riding high.

Yes, I know.  This is all history now.  It’s water under the bridge.  It’s Monday morning quarterbacking.  Yet it is still relevant.  If Obama doesn’t draw a tighter connection between what he he says and what he does, he may win reelection but his presidency will never be known for great things.  He will be the president who helped us muddle through our declining place in the world, instead of the one who assisted us in confronting the economic and political realities of the 21st century.

This is a, “I told you so” blog.   I have been arguing here and in other venues that Obama is a philosophical pragmatist and not just a political one.  At his press conference yesterday, in which he defended his compromise with the Republicans over taxes, he directly confronted a question about his core values.  He specifically placed his values in a wider framework, one that is clearly congenial to philosophical pragmatism.

Why is this important?  We need to understand the man if we are going to be able to work effectively for change.   Obama has a set of values that one might call “progressive” (and other values that might be termed “moderate” or even mildly conservative).   He is going to act on his (mostly) progressive views within a broader framework, which is his commitment to philosophical pragmatism.  This is not a sell out.  It is not a weakness in itself.  It is different from what we have seen in quite some time.   (This is NOT merely Bill Clinton’s political pragmatism, for example.)  Listen to how Obama defends his initiatives by citing the history of social security in the clip below. There is passion here.  And not the passion of someone defending a merely expedient outcome.  His commitment to pragmatism may often make him appear more conservative than he actually is.  For him, it’s about getting the best outcomes over the long term.  This is not to say that he hasn’t made tactical errors or errors in judgment and timing.  He certainly has.  It’s only to place his specific values in a broader context.

For those interested in learning more about the connection between Obama and pragmatism, there is James T. Kloppenberg’s new book, Reading Obama. The Afterword to my new book, Transcendence: On Self-Determination and Cosmopolitanism (Stanford) is on-line.  It discusses Obama’s pragmatism.   There is also the web site Barack Obama’s Pragmatism.

“The First Year,” photo credit: Whitehouse.gov

One of the recurring themes of pieces on Obama at UP@NIGHT is the nature of his pragmatism, which is as much philosophical as it is purely political.   We are once again, thanks to the election and Robert Gibbs’s comments about the so-called professional left, in the throes of debating not only Obama’s relationship to the left but his politics.   I thought I would collect here several links to discussions of Obama’s political thought and politics from the past couple of years at UP@NIGHT.

The entries most relevant to philosophical pragmatism are listed first.  There are a couple of critical pieces further down the list.  More to come.  But I think it important that we understand with whom we are dealing as we criticize Obama or his administration.  We should not fault him for seeking the possible when the more desirable was out of reach.

Obama’s Pragmatism (or Move over Culture Wars, Hello Political Philosophy)

Obama: Conservative, Liberal, or Ruthless Pragmatist?

Bronx on the Court, Empathy, and Obama’s Pragmatism

Obama’s Pragmatism and the Stimulus Package

Obama and Pragmatism

And for those who may still not have had enough, there is a discussion of Obama’s pragmatism and cosmopolitanism in an online (read, free) “Afterword” to my new book, Transcendence: On Self-Determination and Cosmopolitanism (Stanford University Press).

There is jabbering from the right.  There is remorse on the left.   Too much change.  Too little change.   But the promise was, change we can believe in.

Since the days of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists our Republic has always been, more or less, a house divided, and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.  Even wars don’t typically unite us.  To move the nation often requires an economic crisis, and then we argue about how to respond.  What then is a politician to do if he or she believes that change is necessary, for example, in health care?  Move too far to the right or left at any given time–unless there is a grave crisis, for example, the Depression–and your legislation is unlikely to make it through Congress or face repeal down the road.  And even if it isn’t repealed, there is the risk that it will not generate enough support to move the legislation off the books and into the real world.

When Obama said that he offered change that we can believe in, most on the right and left took him to mean change that was so different, we could believe in it.  The argument seemed to be about whether we wanted dramatic change.   But this is not what someone with his temperament and political philosophy would emphasize.  It wasn’t the dramatic nature of the change that we were being asked to believe in, but its staying power, its resiliency, its endurance.

Am I pleased with all of the moves that Obama has made.  No.  Do I think that he has gone back on his campaign pledge?  Hardly.   What he asked us, and is asking us, to believe in is legislation that will stick, in policies that will have staying power, ones that will take root over time and lead to other changes.   But this is the route of the sell out, those on the left say.  Of one who has given up on principles.  No.  It is a reasonable way of trying to get as much of the cake as possible given the nature of our political and economic system, which is not changing in a fundamental way any time soon.  Of course those on the left may disagree about how much of the cake might be acquired.   This, however, is a debate about the possible, which is just how Obama approaches these matters.  In this regard, the slogan was always there for all to see.   Come the next presidential election I don’t doubt that one of Obama’s major themes will be:  I brought you change that was positive and sustainable.   (If you think it is a weak message, I ask you to consider how many “mainstream” Republican politicians are furious about health care.  I submit that one reason, and a big one, is that they know his plan can stick and it will be a game changer, and not a good one for them over time.)

In the New York Times on Sunday, January 24, 2010, Thomas Friedman writes in his piece, “More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,” about programs that can be helpful in getting the economy moving.  For example,

Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge. The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things.

Fine.  Let’s support programs that can provide education and opportunity.  But Friedman also gives the president some advice.

Well, here’s my free advice to Obama, post-Massachusetts. If you think that the right response is to unleash a populist backlash against bankers, you’re wrong. Please, please re-regulate the banks in a smart way. But remember: in the long run, Americans don’t rally to angry politicians. They do not bring out the best in us. We rally to inspirational, hopeful ones. They bring out the best in us. And right now we need to be at our best.

This is a bad piece of political advice.  It pretends that one can decontextualize a politician’s responses and hides behind the phrase “in the long run” in order to do so.  President Franklin Roosevelt sounded pretty angry when he spoke to the nation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—you remember, “a date which will live in infamy.”  And then there was his cousin, Theodore.  He got pretty angry at those old monopolies in order to help pass some progressive anti-trust laws.  In general, can you imagine how the American people would react if an American president did not get angry at a perceived threat, domestic or foreign, to the well-being of the nation?

To say that Americans don’t rally in the long run to angry politicians is one of those innocuous truisms that mean little in the real political world, for everything depends on what one means by “the long run.”  (As Keynes said, “in the long run we’ll all be dead.”)  In the short run, and medium runs, the American people surely do rally to an angry president, as long as they can connect with the anger.  They also rally to presidents who know when to get angry and when to be inspirational.  (Presumably this would mean getting angry on and off, so it would sort of be in the long run.)  Oh, yes, and then there are those presidential moments that combine anger and inspiration.

Since the statement about anger is so obviously off the mark and hackneyed, one might be inclined to look for some other motivation for Friedman tossing it out.  Here’s my guess.  Friedman is scared that if Obama goes too far in attacking the bankers a rift may develop between his administration and the wonderful world of capital.  And then America may find itself falling behind foreign nations in the new flat world of economic competition that we face.  According to Friedman, entrepreneurs, who at some point will require capital, are the movers and shakers in this world, and it will be a pretty scary place for those places and persons who aren’t on board in terms of the new world order.

But back home, in the meantime, Obama only gets to use the bully pulpit with one hand tied behind his back while he is trying to back Wall Street down.  (Note Machiavelli here: it is better that the prince be loved and feared.)  Friedman wants Obama to re-regulate the banks.  In the real world of American politics just how is he supposed to accomplish this without some heavy duty support in Congress?  And given the special interests standing in the way of reforms, you can kiss them good-bye if the American people don’t get sufficiently excited about the issue to get their representatives worried about reelection.

I have a piece of advice for Mr. Friedman and I hope that he won’t mind.  It is in the spirit of his advice to the president:  Don’t worry!  Obama won’t forget about being loved over the long run.

….

UPDATE, January 27, 2010

For readers who may have felt that I was being a bit unfair to Friedman by claiming that he may have been motivated by fear, I suggest that you check out his column today, “Adult’s Only, Please.” Here is an excerpt.  Catch the last line.   (He does acknowledge that Obama might be justified in being a bit peeved by the way some on Wall Street have behaved, but hey, just let’s not make them too angry.  And if you do, well, you are not being an adult, which of course Friedman is.)

Lately, we’ve seen an explosion of situational thinking. I support the broad proposals President Obama put forth last week to prevent banks from becoming too big to fail and to protect taxpayers from banks that get in trouble by speculating and then expect us to bail them out. But the way the president unveiled his proposals — “if those folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have” — left me feeling as though he was looking for a way to bash the banks right after the Democrats’ loss in Massachusetts, in order to score a few cheap political points more than to initiate a serious national discussion about an incredibly complex issue.

President Obama is so much better when he takes a heated, knotty issue, like civil rights or banking reform, and talks to the country like adults. He is so much better at making us smarter than angrier. Going to war with the banks for a quick political sugar high after an electoral loss will just work against him and us. It will spook the banks into lending even less and slow the recovery even more.

I am a professor by trade.  I like the idea of making people smarter (or perhaps I should say, better educated), especially over the long run.  But I think we all know the danger of coming off like a professor discussing fire codes while the house is burning down.

Photo Brendan

William James………………………Teabaggers

Compromise is at the heart of American politics; yield in order to gain.  Politicians and citizens compromise because self-interest demands that they do so.  But at times they also compromise because they come to see the other person’s point of view.  Or as Obama likes to put it, they stand inside the other guy’s shoes.  This doesn’t necessarily mean, as Bill Clinton was so fond of saying, that I feel your pain.  We don’t have to go this far to see the other person’s point of view, although sometimes we might.  We just have to be willing to engage in an imaginative act that allows us to step outside of our comfort zone.  Functioning democracies depend on this ability.  Without it they descend into gridlock, civil strife, and even civil war.

However, sometimes we can’t empathize with others.  Not, for example, because they are hardened criminals whose ways are simply unacceptable, but because the ways in which other people understand and experience the world are beyond our powers of imaginative reconstruction.  Our failure here is not due to a lack of good will.  It relates to a distinction that the philosopher William James makes in his essay, “A Will to Believe,” between two kinds of hypotheses: living and dead.  That the earth is round is a living hypothesis for most every American in 2010.  That the earth is flat is a dead one.   This was not always true.  For much of human history the opposite was the case.  Today there are those for whom God is a living hypothesis, and the Deity is a vital and accepted feature of their experience.  But others, convinced atheists, can make no connection with this hypothesis.  They do not experience God as a living hypothesis and no amount of arguing or cajoling will change their minds.  Agnostics on the other hand experience God as a living hypothesis, but they also experience the notion that there is no God in a similar fashion.  They have what James calls an option: a choice between two living hypothesis, although it is possible that they may never choose.

How then does this relate to Obama and health care?  Obama is a savvy politician, who is both politically and philosophically pragmatic.  This doesn’t mean that he is without values.  It means that he thinks about their realization in terms of what will work.  And this may mean modifying his goals, compromising if necessary on his goals, in order to create some reform.  Obama is also a storyteller, one who understands that storytelling requires being able to see different points of view.  As a storyteller he appreciates the importance of empathy in the go of human life.  It wasn’t accidental that he spoke of it when he nominated Judge Sotomayor.  And he has also spoken about empathy as a lesson that he learned from his mother.  That he can listen and stand inside the other guy’s shoes is one of his strengths as a storyteller and as a politician.  Empathy, no doubt, can be an important tool in a politician’s toolkit.  But it can also be an Achilles heal.

Obama made several tactical judgments on how best to pass health care legislation.  One of them, however, was not actually a tactical judgment, although it could be read this way.  It was actually an assumption.  He believed (at times) that his use of empathy would be reciprocated by the opposition.  Obama has an unusual ability to empathize with others.  It is natural for him to take the perspective of others.  He assumed too much, or had too much faith, in the opposition possessing a comparable skill.  Although he certainly understood that powerful special interests  would be aligned against him, he appears to have forgotten how James’s notion of live and dead hypothesis could come into play.

There are forces out there, forces for whom the idea that the federal government can be a force for good is a dead hypothesis.  The birthers and teabaggers fall into such a camp.  It is not that they merely have firm convictions or values.  It is that the hypothesis that the federal government can be a force for good is simply not a part of their repertoire.  It is a dead hypothesis.  There are Republicans in Congress who believe this.  And there are also Republicans in Congress who need to pretend to believe it so that they can get reelected.   A fatal brew for a reformist president whose natural inclination is to try to compromise with the opposition, and who was once convinced that a cooperative bipartisan approach to health care would carry the day.

So where does this leave Obama?  Of course he knew that his initiatives would give raise to strong opposition.  But there is a difference between strong opposition and folks like the teabaggers.  There will be no compromising with those for whom health care reform is part of the dead hypothesis of “the good federal government.”  Resurrecting the federal government for them is like resurrecting God for the confirmed atheist.   And there will be no compromising with those who have been captured by them or their ilk.  They will hold their ground on every new initiative, and they will carry along the entire GOP, unless the self-interest of (some) Republicans leads the party in another direction.  (Pay attention here to how Brown handles himself in Massachusetts.)

It’s not that Obama doesn’t know this.  Yet he has been hesitant to acknowledge the limits of empathy and compromise, not just intellectually but perhaps more importantly emotionally.   The paradox here is that recognizing the limits of empathy and compromise may very well lead to substantial movement on legislation that Obama supports.  The savvy politician in him knows this.  It’s going to have  to bring the storyteller along, at least for now.  There will always be times for tales.

Most Americans generally shy away from absolutes.  They don’t like to think of themselves as driven by dead hypothesis.  Most Americans are more like agnostics than atheists or the religious when it comes to the federal government, ready to shift one way or the other depending on circumstance.  They will become (temporary) believers if they are given something that they believe will work.  Give them a reason to believe that the federal government can be an active and helpful feature of their lives and they will take it.  Give them a reason to believe the opposite, and they will, at least for the time being.  Regarding health care, Obama’s rhetorical task is clear.  He must help make (temporary) believers of the agnostics with regard to the federal government.

(UPI Photo/Alexis C. Glenn)

Wall Street……………………….Henry Adams

Yes, it is certainly easy to be a Monday morning quarterback once the game is over.  But the game is far from over for the Democrats and Obama.   Brown’s victory in Massachusetts—won in part because Obama supporters sat out the election or actually voted for Brown because they were upset about Obama not being progressive enough on health care—is indeed the proverbial wake-up call.  Obama now knows that his administration is going to have to take a more political turn.  What does this mean?   Harnessing the populism that propelled Brown and Obama into office.  Of course those who supported them aren’t all the same populists, but there is an overlap.

People feel ripped off and they should.   They have been ripped off by Wall Street and now they are worried that the government will rip them off with new health care legislation.  That the former is true, and the latter is not, makes little difference to current politics.  What should have happened, and what now must happen, is that Obama must harness the outrage against Wall Street into outrage about how the insurance companies have ripped people off and will continue to do so unless stopped.  This doesn’t require that Obama become a flaming radical.  But it does require that he worry less about what the big bad banking system will do to us if we don’t cater to its wishes.

American capitalism will not go down the tubes if we make prudent decisions about what banks can and can not invest in.  It’s now clear, once again, that commercial banks that take deposits should not become investment houses.  This was the law of the land for more than sixty years until Republican Senator Gramm, and Republican Representatives Leach and Bliley, helped change things in 1999 with the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.   While there are of course numerous reasons for why stocks are not worth any more today than they were back in 1999, it does seem that GLB’s legislation has not helped to protect us from bad times.  As a matter of fact, it undoubtedly was a major factor in the banking crisis.

No doubt Obama was worried that if he didn’t cater to the banks the American economy would recover more slowly.  But the political risk, and the risk to our economy in the future, is simply too great now not to harness the populist sentiment in the country.   And you know Americans have had a long distrust of bankers.  Writing at the turn of the twentieth-century about his reaction to bankers in the 1860′s, Henry Adams, grandson and great-grandson of presidents, said the following.  (He speaks about himself in the third person.)

He [McCulloch] was a banker, and towards bankers Adams felt the narrow prejudice which the serf feels to his overseer; for he knew he must obey, and he knew that the helpless showed only their helplessness when they tempered obedience by mockery.   The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter XVI

So enough jokes on late night TV and more teeth in actual measures to reign in the fat cats, especially since the Supreme Court has decided to make money the undeniable king of our future elections by unleashing corporate wealth to finance elections.

And Adams would have a warning for Obama as he proceeds.

The most troublesome task of a reform President was that of bringing the Senate back to decency.  The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter XVII

Nostradamus  Vs.  UP@NIGHT No Contest

It has been over a year and a half since I began UP@NIGHT and my career as a pundit, for lack of a more refined label.  I suppose part of the challenge was to see how a philosopher by trade might do in the prediction business.  How I would stack up against the pundits in the media.  You know, mano a mano.

I thought that it would be fitting and fair to readers, and myself, to look at blogs in which I predicted the outcome of events in the political world to see if my track record was any good.  Low and behold, I discovered that if I had been a betting man, I could have made some good money.  So, without further ado, and no false modesty, here are the predictions.  Roll Over Nostradamus.

The titles are linked to the original blogs.

Correct Predictions:

(Print, Southern Labor Archives.  Caption:  History Repeats Itself–The Robber Barons of the Middle Ages, And The Robber Barons of To-Day)

….

Guess what?  The fat cats on Wall Street not only think that they will be doing as well or better this year than last, they think that any attempt to limit their outrageous salaries and bonuses will stifle innovation.   The following is from a Bloomberg.com story, “Bankers Expect Rising Bonus Pay to Break Records in Global Poll,” (Oct. 30, 2009).

Having shaken off the biggest economic decline since the 1930s, almost three in five traders, analysts and fund managers believe their 2009 bonuses will either increase or won’t change, according to a quarterly poll of Bloomberg customers. Only one in four see a decline. Asians are the most optimistic about pay and Americans and Europeans somewhat less so.

“The large banks are knocking the cover off the ball,” said Daniel Alpert, managing director of New York-based investment bank Westwood Capital LLC. The industry is “making money, though with government help.”

Worldwide, a majority of market professionals in the survey also turn thumbs down on government attempts to limit compensation, with 51 percent saying restrictions will stifle useful innovation. Only about 38 percent think pay limits will control excessive risk-taking.

In the U.S., where President Barack Obama has chided Wall Street for being “motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses,” 65 percent say the restrictions will damp innovation.

So, we are supposed to believe that if “market professionals” lose some of their bonuses, it will decrease their capacity and motivation to think about new ways to make money.  This claim is as lame as it is self-serving.  You would think that some loss would only drive them to new heights of creativity, given their alleged professionalism.  Yet they keep managing to get away with offering ever weaker rationalizations for why they need ever increasing salaries and bonuses.  Laughing all the way to the bank(s).  It seems that we have our own version of the Robber Barons.  They may oppose tariffs, but they have the equivalent of monopolies in many areas.  They work for institutions that are, after all, too big to fail.   Yet these “professionals” should remember that Americans have a limited tolerance for aristocrats, and they are beginning to skate on the thin ice of class: they are becoming an entrenched moneyed aristocracy.

If you question my assumption about Americans’ limited tolerance for self-inflated moneyed folks, I ask you to take the Gilligan’s Island test.  Which character or characters on Gilligan’s Island do you least trust: Gilligan, the skipper, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor or Mary Ann?   (Hint: notice that there is only one character not looking at you.)

AP/photo Boston.com