So Stupid It Kills

Today, Obama fired his first Arabic linguist from the Army for being gay. People are dying because of this insane policy, and still we plod forward with our palms pressed against our eyes. That point is so obscene it bears repeating: This policy of discrimination for discrimination's sake has unequivocally led to the death of U.S. service men and women. As of two years ago more than 58 Arabic linguists had been dismissed because of this policy. Since 1994 more than 13,000 service members have been dismissed, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in training and recruitment. The public doesn't even support it.

The President that I voted for, went door to door for, and who campaigned on ending this policy (and who could follow through on that promise by signing a piece of paper) allows it to continue. How many more people have to die before that changes?

Write the White House and tell them it's unacceptable. We should all be outraged by this.

There's Something Happenin Here...

Barack Obama began his train ride to Washington today in a 1939 Pullman rail car. Read the story here. Spectators line the tracks to see him pass. People flood into Washington days in advance for the inauguration, not in hopes of seeing the event, but of standing out in the freezing cold watching it on giant televisions with other liked minded people.

I struggle for perspective on this weekend. It's been so long since there was anything ennobling about presidential politics, I'm not certain how much of what we are seeing is elation at the end of the Bush years, how much is just the hoopla that surrounds any coronation, and how much is the energy that flows through a moment of obvious historical significance.

For those interested in attempting to capture the zeitgeist, check out: Gail Collins, Bloomberg, Boy George, Reuters, and the man himself.

Selling the President

One product of Barack Obama's unprecedented internet campaign was that I found myself inundated with opportunities to buy overpriced t-shirts and stickers from him. I thought little of this at the time. After all, the man had a national campaign to win, and you don't do that without money by the trainload.

For some naive reason, I assumed that the opportunities to buy stuff from the Obama campaign would end, well, with the election. Instead, the Obama for America campaign site remains up and running. It continues to bill itself as somehow associated with the 2008 campaign, and most curiously, continues to offer to sell me $30 t-shirts. I got an email from it last night detailing my opportunity to purchase a modified Obama campaign poster, not really improved by the addition of what appear to be palm branches framing an announcement of the inauguration.

The most obvious question for me: where the heck is this money going? Is Obama literally planning to continue campaigning non-stop through 2012? And on a related note, does anyone over there at Obama for America believe that someone in my income bracket, who donated the amounts I did to their campaign, is unaware of the inauguration date and would need yet another garish campaign poster cluttering up my apartment to remind me?

I turn also to this story in HuffPo, detailing the degree to which Obama has inherited the mantle of Babe Ruth as a marketing opportunity for everything from commemorative plates to Ikea furniture. I realize that this sort of shameless marketing fits comfortably within the American tradition of working to transform our most fundamental hopes and aspirations into lucre. I do get that. But I remember attending a rally in Cincinnati last year at which I was assailed, for hours, by local vendors hawking bootleg t-shirts, buttons, stuffed animals, postors- pretty much anything. In fact, despite specific effort, I was unable to locate a vendor among the dozens selling legitimate Obama gear. I finally broke down, and bought my shirt off the website.

What are we to make of all this? It's almost cliche at this point to observe that Obama takes office more as a social movement than as a candidate, which I guess goes some way toward explaining the universal market appeal. But I can't help feeling that this cheapens the brand, in the larger sense. Clintonian wit to the contrary, Obama is not going to wave and bid the heavens open for him. As real-world decisions plant him ever more firmly to the face of the Earth, I have to believe that all the iconography is going to seem...misplaced. I don't have television and therefore cannot track these things, but if the late-night comics haven't turned to this yet, they soon will. I've suggested before that Obama, for all his obvious talent and preternatural self-assurance, is due for an unpleasant collision with the fiasco bequeathed to him by the Bush administration. All the...junk...is just going to make it harder to come to grips with reality.

Justice, In This Instance

This morning, the President-Elect told George Stephanopolos that he was "leaving the door open" on the possibility of investigating the Bush administration for "potential crimes." Here's the full story.

The implications stemming from such an investigation deserve careful, public consideration.

On the one hand, we have the obvious list of potentially criminal things the Bush administration did, repeated so frequently even in this blog that I will not subject you to a printed retelling of it, allowing you to stop the list in your head when it has reached sufficient size to make the point.

On the other hand, in jobs where almost any mistake you make probably violates a law, this sort of after-the-fact prosecution is precisely why Dick Cheney is trying to withhold his records. That and he's a sneaky git, but this is a credible reason. The term "corrupt politician" can sometimes seem like a redundancy, and in general individuals who break the law while holding office should be held accountable for their actions. But the last eight years have seen a systematic, methodical effort to undermine the structure of the US government carried on not just at the highest levels, but across large areas of entire departments. Prosecuting the handful of individuals who might eventually be held to account for this seems inadequate to the scale of what has occurred.

In a nation ruled by laws, no person or office should be allowed to rise above them, but shouldn't our effort be focused on mapping out the degree to which Bush et al have violated the public trust, and then trying to ensure that their legion transgressions can't be repeated? I for one would take no solace in seeing an Alberto Gonzalez behind bars. I would be greatly heartened to learn that an oversight mechanism that would actually do its job had been created to keep someone else in his position from filling the justice department with lawyers who had passed an ideological litmus test. The President Elect is probably correct when he says, "We must avoid any temptation simply to move on." But we must equally avoid any temptation simply to punish for the sake of vengeance. I believe that justice, in this instance, is better served by the pursuit of improved government in the future than by an exact accounting for past crimes.

That's No Moon...

Here is an interesting article detailing a conversation the Obama transition team is apparently having with NASA. In essence, they are considering integrating NASA and the Pentagon's space arm to save time in replacing the shuttle and accelerating the ability of the US to put people on the moon.

In part, dissolving the traditional firewall between the civilian space agency and the military would be a time- and cost- saving exercise. However, as the story details, it would also be a response to China's accelerating militarization of space. The Chinese have been working on technologies to disable the satellite network the US relies on to communicate, which the military would obviously prefer to avoid.

I don't have any first hand experience with NASA, or with the Pentagon for that matter, but it's difficult to believe that either entity would be entirely happy working with the other. It also suggests an interesting new dimension for the arms race between these two nations in the coming decades.

The Human Rights Campaign is a Feckless Organization

Leave it to the Human Rights Campaign to focus on what's important. This is what they had to say about Obama's decision to have bigot Rick Warren perform the invocation at Obama's inauguration:

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

A "genuine blow" you say? What a "deep level of disrespect" indeed. While we're at it, let's make a list of other genuine blows and deep levels of disrespect facing the LGBT community in the United States:

1) Don't ask don't tell.
2) An inability to get married in 48 states.
3) Presence of DOMA.
4) An inability to adopt children in Florida and Arkansas.
5) No employment protection in multiple states.

Rick Warren still seem like a big deal? Maybe the HRC, for decades the biggest and wealthiest LGBT lobbying organization in the US, should get an honest to god policy success under their belt before getting hot under the collar over which pastor reads a biblical verse or two at a ceremonial event. If they want to direct anger at Obama over something consequential, maybe they should hold his feat to the fire over his reported shelving of repealing DADT (a stance he's long advocated and campaigned on...in the primaries of course, not the general).

Note number 1: I think Rick Warren is a terrible pick as well, for all the reasons everyone else has put forward. I simply think the HRC has much bigger fish to fry.

Note number 2: I've given him an extremely rough time of it recently (witness here and here), but Andrew Sullivan has done by far the best job of anyone I've read in trying to hold the HRC accountable for being such an ineffective organization. I really urge anyone interested in LGBT issues to do a search for HRC on his blog for tons of great perspective and analysis on the organization.

Electoral College: Boo

The AP reports that Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States by the people actually empowered to select the president- the College of Electors.

I remember trying to explain the elegance of the American electoral system to confused Britons back in 2004, and the existence of the CoE was often central to their confusion. At the time, I would go out of my way to point out the perceived dangers of handing political power to regular people in the late 18th century, argue that the existence of this odd institution was just part of the colorful pageant of American politics, and anyway, before you go criticizing us, what's up with your "monarchy?"

Well...here it comes...flip! The whole system of voting to elect people who can then vote on your behalf is an absurd affront to democratic principles when used like this, and distorts the conduct of national campaigns in ways detrimental to public discourse. We saw a "50 State Strategy" this year, and it was a controversial and bizarre departure from the normal fighting over just a few states deemed "in play." More importantly, it undermines the main remaining reason to preserve the current system, which is that it tends to limit campaign costs. Direct election would mean that every vote really did count, and would ensure that presidential politics wasn't so easily hijacked by minorities in swing states. I'm looking at you, Florida. We've had years of argument about campaign reform in recent years generally focused on how we pay for them. We should spend some time looking at what we say about ourselves when we organize them.

Approval Rating Nonsense

So, according to Gallup, President-Elect Obama has a 70% approval rating. To preface: I'm a huge stats dork. I currently have a man crush on Nate Silver (update: and apparently I'm not the only one). That said, what the hell does a 70% approval rating even mean? I hate to emphasize the bleeding obvious but, he's not president yet. What performance do these people approve of (or put a different way, what do the 30% disapprove of)? It reminds me of the stupidity of preseason rankings in college sports. Wait until the man gets into the game to judge how he's doing.

Different Takes, Different Problems

The New York Times has an interesting article discussing European reaction to Barack Obama’s election. The article dwells on the different problems the major EU nations face with their ethnic and religious minorities. The reaction of my community to Obama’s election was diverse, but largely positive: the older the person was, the more likely they were to view the whole thing with disbelief. Younger people, my high school students especially, were enthusiastic and not at all surprised. I was kind of surprised by the degree to which they accepted Obama’s election as a matter of course, but these students view African-American culture (especially hip hop and Rhianna) as more their birthright than mine, so they have an interesting take on ethnic identity in the US. I passed by a newsstand today that was selling a magazine with a large cover photo of Obama, whose title translated as “A History of Obama.” This country was never as anti-Bush as the rest of Europe, but everyone here is excited about Obama in one way or another

It’s different, however, when we talk about ethnic problems inside the country. The idea of one of the several ethnic and religious minorities in this country rising to a position of real leadership is outside what people see as possible. In the parliament, there’s a large, ethnically Turkish party that usually makes up about nine percent of the vote. While that party wields a lot of power in its ability to make or break various governments, it is emphatically a junior partner. Ethnic tensions are largely peaceful here although there is still a great deal of institutional and systemic racism at play.

On thing the article does not discuss and I think is worth mentioning is the degree to which European nations define citizenship and being part of a community in ethnic terms. It simply is not enough to speak German to become a German. One advantage that the United States has over Europe is, whether or not the founding fathers intended it this way (they didn’t), the framework they created allows us to embrace a constantly widening conception of “Americanness.” It doesn’t matter where your ancestors happen to be from, but if you are participating in American life you are essentially American. While that originally was based upon the differences of the major (mostly British) groups making up the thirteen colonies, it’s only a small step from that to everyone else. The racial problems that have long plagued the US do not, at their base, presuppose that those of different races are some how not American. The US is certainly not without problems, but the problems we have exist on a wholly different footing than the problems of Europe. Anyone can move to the US and become an American in relatively short order. If I move to Italy, speak Italian, marry an Italian, become a citizen of Italy and live the rest of my life there, no matter what I do, I will never be an Italian. Maybe my kids, but by virtue of the fact that Italian itself is an ethnic as well as a cultural category, I cannot access it, because I am not ethnically Italian. In the United States, we define ourselves culturally (speaking English, a (somewhat) shared vision of what the US means) and not ethnically. Hence, a mixed race child of a Kansan and a Kenyan with a Muslim name can grow up to be as American as the decedents of John Winthrop.

The Cleanup Crew

One of the most pressing issues that the newly minted President Obama will face is what to do about the giant clusterfuck called Guantánamo Bay. Bush is going to leave quite a mess behind, even if he doesn’t do anything to make it worse in the next seventy or so days. The Obama camp has already said that the detention camp will be closed, but the question is, what do you do with the people who are already there? Some of the people there undoubtedly have done things that deserve punishment, and a lot of them are innocent of any crime save bad luck. And then there’s the great middle ground of people there, where it’s just hard to say. Thanks to Bush’s torture and treatment policies, it might be impossible to obtain convictions of most of the people there.

I don’t think you can overstate the moral component of why torture and unlawful detention are wrong, but from a practical level it simply doesn’t work. We are holding people we can’t try because of how we’ve treated them, we’ve made their families and countries distrust everything we say and now we have to decide what to do with people who have been in a prison for going on eight years. It isn’t just a moral disaster for the Union, it’s also a practical one: if you wanted to try and fight terrorism, this is about as far as you can get from a way to do it.

The New York Times had an interesting article this weekend dealing with rehabilitating jihadists in Saudi Arabia. Something like this is in order for the men we’ve kept hostage at Guantánamo Bay and our other extralegal detention facilities, known and unknown. As with crime, exercise and diet, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Renegade

So this is not exactly substantial, and I really should be getting back to writing about the still collapsing economy, but here we go...

The Daily Telegraph has listed here 50 things you might not know about the President Elect...including that he's won a Grammy, and as the title suggests, the secret service has worked out his security code name.

It's fluff, and worse, fluff feeding my rapidly growing annoyance with the pop-culturization of the new president, but it's still an interesting read.

Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends

A Democrat wins a presidential election, and the media begins the usual chorus for governing from the center. How many times do we have to sit through this same old song and dance? Obama doesn’t need to work with Republicans to win the public’s trust if “working with Republicans” means “giving up on a progressive agenda.” He just needs to make sure that the progressive policies he implements work. After the last eight years, it’ll be such a nice change of pace to see government that can walk and chew gum at the same time, I don’t think people will much mind if Republican backbenchers are complaining.

Sadly, Bush is Still President

I think for the next two months, every time something like Russians moving missles into the Baltic comes up, it’s going to be hard not to get a little worried about what’s going to happen.

Regardless, this is a great example of why we shouldn’t be trying to expand NATO simply to antagonize the Russians. This is the kind of move that, were it done by the US the media would have no problem with. But of course, as it’s the Russians, it will be viewed as an unconscionable act of aggression, further justifying our expansion of NATO. If I have one worry about President-Elect Obama, it’s that I feel he’s too hawkish. Part of that, of course, is the fact that Democrats have to appear “tough” or the media will tear them apart. Sadly, it seems far too often that “tough” should be read “stupid.” Let’s hope that he avoids that trap.

Here We Go

Watching the election on the internet at five o’clock this morning with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer was a pretty moving experience. It’s hard not to wish I was in Grant Park for Obama’s acceptance, but sitting and watching it with a friend was definitely a moving experience. Obama’s a big job ahead of him. He’s got to fix Bush’s mistakes – mistakes that are, unfortunately, ongoing – and he has to fight against the media’s inexorable pull towards the right – excuse me, center. But that can’t distract from all the other things this election means.

The thing that stands out for me most – beyond even Obama’s cultural heritage and race – is the competence, the skill and the class with which he ran his election. Several times over the course of this cycle, I noted to myself the way that McCain seemed to run against Obama, while Obama barely mentioned McCain. Part of that, of course, was the fact that Obama was running against Bush’s legacy. But more of it is the fact that McCain didn’t have a positive agenda. He just had Sarah Palin, a boxful of Karl Rove’s shopworn tricks he picked up at a Bush family yard sale and a quickly-fading reputation. Obama, unapologetically, ran on a platform – a progressive platform. More than anything, after two razor thin elections, it feels refreshing to see a candidate win.

Yes We Can.

The sun came up this morning, and it is a new day.

One of the regular questions historians grapple with is the "great man theory," an endless argument about whether great historical figures such as Napoleon, Lincoln, or Churchill are individuals of such ability that they reach out and mold the events of their time with the force of their personalities, or whether from time to time the course of historical events reaches a confluence, and creates an opportunity that would elevate any reasonably competent person to extraordinary significance. Are these people creators of their own destinies, or does destiny invent them at need?

It is too early to tell if we are now embarked on one of the periods that will be ranked among these moments in future, but it is not too early to understand that the President-Elect could handle such a burden. I offer this further response: faced with the greatest challenges of a generation- two interminable wars, the greatest financial crisis of a generation, and perhaps most seriously of all, and systematic erosion both domestically and internationally of the American idea- US voters reached for a man of ability and vaulted him ahead of the entrenched interests that would otherwise have dominated this election cycle. Faced with a less systematic assault on the checks and balances of the government, would a fresh-faced minority candidate have been able to outmaneuver Hillary Clinton and her inherited death grip on the party? Obama ran an amazing campaign, but voters would not have responded as energetically without such a poisoned climate for him to operate in.

I argued earlier in this blog that the weekend after the first bailout package failed to correct the financial crisis the McCain campaign was doomed- yes, in part because it further dented the Bush legacy, but more, because it made the election that much more serious. The more clearly we perceived the damage of Republican government, the less prepared voters were to, "...make a big election about small things."

George Bush, Karl Rove...Richard Nixon- your failure is, for the moment, complete. Voters under the age of 30 voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Voters making less than 50k voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Voters making over 200k- the voters Obama explicitly told were going to pay more taxes- voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Obama won in states that Democrats have not won in decades (what up, Virginia?). Markets around the world (what's wrong with you, Japan?) surged at the news of his victory. An Irish friend of mine, sitting stunned before the images from grant park, half-jokingly welcomed us back to the community of nations. Around the world, people who couldn't even vote celebrated. And he did it by trying to see the best in us, not as part of what my polysci classes taught me was the inevitable demographic chiseling that has marked recent American politics. What remains of the Republican party is increasingly old, white, isolated, and most seriously, morally bankrupt. I'm not one who believes in so-called "permanent majorities," but all those younger voters trending Democratic can only be ominous for conservatives.

Do men shape their own destinies? Yes, but to lift this rather out of context, they do not do so just as they choose. Obama is a product of this time as much as of his own will. It remains for him to master it.

And one final thought. To what extent does electing Obama constitute a final overcoming of the original institutional sin of the Republic? We obviously haven't swept away the many problems race still holds for US society, but surely this morning would have been almost as unthinkable in 1976 as it was in 1776.

The idea is the thing. The idea that this is the place you can come and make it, with ability, rather than any other measure of fitness. Today, that idea is greatly strengthened. What an amazing place this country is.

Unbelievable

Obama!

The Election from Over Here

It goes without saying that if you haven’t voted yet, you should stop reading this and go make sure that that gets done. Take the afternoon off work, if you’re still at work. Democracy is too important to be left to other people.

If you haven’t read PW’s great post about going door to door for Obama this week, you should check it out. I used to live in the same area, and it’s a pretty amazing story to hear. Can the Bush years really almost be over?

I live abroad at the moment and I wasn’t able to do any volunteering for the Obama campaign, although I would have liked to. It’s fascinating to read PW’s take on the sentiment in the US right now. Living in a small town in Eastern Europe, I don’t feel much of a connection with US news. People don’t know a whole lot about it, and they usually care even less. One of the most interesting things about this election, though, is the fact that my high school students know about Barack Obama. Some of these kids are in the eighth grade they were born in 1994 and 1995 – even Bill Clinton is ancient history to them, above and beyond being the president of a foreign (albeit hugely important) country. George W. Bush is the only US president they’ve ever really known. And over and over, they’ve told me that they think Obama is cool. They don’t even know who John McCain is. (I asked them how old they thought Obama was – they thought twenty-seven sounded like a reasonable age, the bastards) These are not kids who have any interest in politics.

Barack Obama is not going to solve all or even most of the US’s problems. If he wins, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him just getting us back to where we were before Bush. But, talking to people about the election it’s really convinced me that Barack Obama is exactly the president that we need right now. Plus, my students think he’s really cool.

A Few Steps On the Campaign Trail

I spent the first half of today "getting out the vote" for Barack Obama.

I realize that this has been something of a popular topic in thinky media sources recently, so I thought I'd go one up on them and publish my first-hand account. I will also admit, in the nature of full disclosure, that I am writing at this time on a wave of what our Victorian forebears would dismiss as "enthusiasm."

I would contend that my enthusiasm is not unreasonable. I canvassed today in the swinginest swing district of the swing state of Ohio, in the county with the highest poverty rate in the state, and I did it over the same ground that I covered for the same candidate during the primary election.

Canvassing, for those who prefer to sleep in, involves getting a regional media pack containing fliers for distribution, a script or talking points, a list of names and addresses for registered voters, and maps, then knocking on every door on the list and engaging whomever opens it. The mass use of this practice, for those who prefer not to follow politics, has been a hallmark of the Obama style of campaigning.

During the primary, it was a difficult business. People, obviously home, refused to answer their doors. Many who did answer their doors, dismissed us with relative indifference, if not mild hostility. This, after all, is Real America, where churches still win votes for candidates railing against the evils of alcohol and gambling. Needless to say, there is a strong tradition of conservative voting. A few people shooed us off their porch last March with choice words about voting for racial minorities. Certainly, there were Obama supporters, but I would say they amounted to, at best and including some very liberal neighborhoods, half the doors we knocked on.

All of which made today a revelation. Maybe all the door-knocking practice has refined our style. Maybe it was the absurdly pleasant 60 degree sunshine. Certainly, my small canvassing "team" was well past needing the talking points provided by the campaign, and that no doubt helps. In any event, at least 3 out of every 4 people we spoke to eventually expressed their support for Obama. Those who didn't, weren't even rude about it. They answered the door, took the fliers, chatted for a minute, sheepishly admitted they were for McCain, and sort of backed away. Even the folks for whom 11am was Miller time, and who pointed out that they didn't vote because everyone in Washington was a lying bastard who would burn in hell, seemed happy to discuss that interesting perspective with us.

The best part of today was the ten minutes I spent engaging a man in conversation who was still so angry over Hillary's defeat that he was going to vote for McCain.
I still can't quite believe that he existed. It was like seeing bigfoot- you know what you saw, you've seen the sketchy photos, but damn, seriously? I pointed out that if he supported Hillary's policies, Omaba was much closer to them than McPalin ever would be. I pointed out that in a state Bush won in 04 by an average of 9 votes per precinct, swing state voters could ill afford protest votes. We wondered aloud, together, how someone who'd voted for Democrats his whole life could possibly support 4 more years like the eight we'd just been through. In the end he shook my hand, said I reminded him of his son-in-law, and promised to think it all over again. Who knows how he'll actually vote. I have mostly convinced myself that if I had that conversation back, I could have been a little bit more aggressive, and I could have flipped him.

Either way, today was fantastic. I couldn't have had a better experience if I'd been running for something myself. I guess this is the merest taste of how it feels to ride on presidential coattails? It is also, no doubt, the fruit of people winnowing down the canvassing lists to people who were mostly either favorable, or at least undecided, with regard to Obama. Still, today was qualitatively different from the experience of doing this job 8 months ago. I guess that's my slice of political America, on 1 November 2008, with 3 days to go.

Case in Point

So, right on cue, here is the story alleging that Obama's aunt is an illegal alien on Politico.

Here is the excellent piece on TPM detailing how Rupert Murdoch's Times of London newspaper broke that story, just in time to have AP pick it up and make it sound all respectable.

It certainly could be that the Times might have just acquired this story in time for publication today. There are other, less savory possibilities. No proof either way. Convenient timing for a scoop though, isn't it? Murdoch has an unpleasant habit of weighing in on political campaigns, and this does fit his penchant for drama.

Now that we've started, more no doubt to follow.

Obama, rather lamely, responds that he was unaware of his aunt's status on Huffpo. Even if that's true, it comes off awfully weak.

...by the content of his character...

So here's an NYT article addressing the statistical landscape as we head into the final week. Among the most striking outcomes is this one:

Some perceptions of race are changing, with a marked increase in the number of people who say they believe that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in America today.

The article goes on to detail the difficult landscape for a McCain victory over the next seven days, in case that story remains new or novel to you. Incredible, however, that Obama is leveling perceptions of the racial landscape in measurable ways without having even been elected yet.

**update**

On the other hand, the Houston Chronicle reports that 23% of Texans think Obama is a muslim. The more I think about that, the more incredible it seems. How, at this point, could you possibly still have that misconception? Little short of a willful desire not to believe what you hear on TV, a self-selected media bubble so narrow as to exclude the vast majority of the world's media, or residence under a rock. The mind reels.