Testing time for Obama, and the nation
Much is riding on Obama's speech this Thursday, and whether he finds the inner strength to be a courageous, forthright leader in a choppy sea of troubles.
Pete Souza/White House photo
It's easy to be lulled by our marvelous late-summer weather and such diversions as Bumbershoot, but right ahead lie some big problems and decisions impacting our well being for an extended period. It's difficult to be optimistic. We need to talk frankly.
•Our economy: The most recent economic data are demoralizing. Some 14 million Americans are unemployed, 9 million working part-time but needing fulltime jobs, and another 6.5 million have lost their jobs and quit looking for new ones (and thus no longer even counted among the labor force). A majority of black teenagers are not fully employed and effectively on the streets.
These numbers have scared President Obama and his administration. Obama's scheduled Thursday night speech was to have been a presentation focusing on short-term job creation. Now it is being transformed into a more important one presenting job-creating proposals of a far larger scale. A separate presentation is to follow shortly on the equally vexing issue of long-term federal debt; more about that below.
There already has been a lot of stimulus in the Obama years: $4 trillion in federal deficits; $1 trillion in the so-called stimulus plan; and zero interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve. But unemployment still is above 9 percent and appears likely to hover there through 2012. Expected job creation has not taken place because of long-term structural changes in the economy, and those trends are not likely to bend more than slightly after new stimulus measures are applied following the presidential speech.
Western Europe's financial systems and economies are even more fragile than ours. Neither global nor domestic U.S. demand is likely to rise enough in the near future to trigger significant economic growth and hiring.
Even if we survive this economic flat spot, we still will have to contend with the huge public and private debt overhangs, which will have a dampening effect on longer-term growth. The numbers are well known. Federal debt alone already is above $14 trillion, with $1 trilion-plus to be added in each of the next 10 years. The congressional bipartisan Gang of Twelve, co-chaired by Sen. Patty Murray, is charged with framing a plan to address this by Thanksgiving. It is off to a promising start, with hearings scheduled on the root causes of the debt and appointment of a respected Republican congressional staff member as staff director.
But, listen: Even if the Obama jobs proposals are stronger and more effective than expected and even if the Gang of Twelve comes up with a credible plan that can gain bipartisan acceptance, we're still fated to experience historically low growth and high unemployment over the next decade. Yes, decade.
•National security: We observe this week the tenth anniversary of 9/11. During that decade we have degraded the leadership and capacities of the core Al Qaida group. But we are still subject, at any time and place, to a terrorist attack to be carried out by a handful of Islamic fundamentalist true believers. In the interim, we have imposed domestic security measures that have in many cases lacked common sense and have been expensive. Anyone traveling by air is familiar with onerous airport security measures which fail to distinguish between possible terrorist suspects and obviously innocent everyday travelers. Exquisite political correctitude was imposed in these procedures, from their Bush administration beginnings, so that no person of any gender, race, religion, age, or national origin might take offense at screenings. All of us, therefore, were to be screened equally — at huge public and private cost as well to airports and air carriers.
In the meantime, big security holes exist in air-cargo screening and in rail, bus, auto, and water transportation. Public and private buildings now operate with security safeguards. Osama bin Laden has been proven right in his prophecy that the United States and other Western countries would spend many billions, and tie themselves in knots, trying to protect themselves against 9/11 repetitions.
Otherwise we have been drawn into regional interventions that we would not have attempted had it not been for 9/11. The George W. Bush administration believed false intelligence that Saddam Hussein had ongoing nuclear, biological, and chemical-weapons programs and possibly intended to share them with fundamentalists. We thus waged war in Iraq and, only now, are making our exit from that country — leaving in our wake a regime that, quite likely, will tilt strongly toward Iran after our departure.
We defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan but have since found that its leaders, and related fundamentalist groups, have established bases of operation in Pakistan that we can only degrade with remote-control drones. The present caretaker government in Afghanistan is likely to last only until our promised departure (still a full three years away), at which time the Taliban are likely to reassume their domination of the country. It will not really matter, in any case, because we have no real vital interest at stake there. The real threat in the region is that fundamentalists could seize power in nuclear-armed Pakistan, but we are in no position to intervene militarily there.
Then there has been the Obama administration's recent attempt — amid the "Arab Spring," first cousin to the Bush administration's "freedom agenda" — to establish reformist, democratic regimes in Middle Eastern countries previously governed by oligarchs (although sometimes Western-leaning and cooperating oligarchs). The most recent military intervention has been in Libya, where the United States has "led from behind" by sending money and material to rebels but leaving immediate military operations to NATO partners, who soon ran into equipment and munitions ahortages. Qaddafi will soon be gone but the constitution of the new rebel government is still uncertain, and these rebel forces include a number of al Qaida supporters. There have been internal killings between rival tribes and factions, and some 50,000 Libyans are estimated to have been killed in this civil war.
Tunisia and Egypt have deposed oligarchs but successor regimes have not yet fully evolved. We are trying to oust the present Syrian regime but thus far have succeeded only in enraging it and contributing to the deaths of many thousands of Western-encouraged democratic protesters.
In short, we can applaud that bad leaders have been deposed in many Arab and Muslim countries but we are still not certain about the intentions and efficacies of their successor regimes. Will it be, as in the past, a case of "new boss just like the old boss" in those countries? Optimists say no; realists are dubious.
Some 6,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A recent Brown University study estimated that some 137,000 civilians had lost their lives in those two countries and in neighboring Pakistan as a result of those wars and 7.8 million refugees created. The same study put the wars' overall costs to the U.S., including interest payments and veterans care, at $4 trillion. Qute a contribution to the overall federal debt.
What next? Given our domestic financial and economic pressures, as well as those being faced by European partners, will we back off and limit future interventions to those where our vital interests clearly are at stake? It will take wise leadership to do that. In meantime, many administration, congressional, and media voices are still crowing about the "victory" achieved in inconsequential Libya.
•Leadership: Many of us invested great hope in President Obama. We saw his cosmopolitan upbringing, biracial origins, educational background, and oratorical skills as contributors to larger-minded leadership than we had received under the previous two presidents. What we did not count on, however, was his thin experience in governance and public policy. His policy views generally derive from the politically correct Ivy League climate of his school years; his political habitudes are mainly Chicago Raw, learned during his rise as a state legislator and U.S. Senator.
There is no reason, by the way, that someone out of politically correct Ivy League origins, or the tough Chicago political school, could not nonetheless be an effective and large-minded leader. Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and many of our first-tier presidents had origins which many scorned when they took office. Yet they led brilliantly at times. Now, when truly challenged, Obama has a chance to rise above the indifferent first years of his presidency to make the remainder of 2011 and 2012 truly productive years of leadership.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Sep 6, 8:33 p.m. Inappropriate
"These numbers have scared President Obama and his administration."
...and these numbers have energized the right, which is very likely to take over the presidency on promises to make corporations, and the individually wealthy, even richer so they can raise the masses up through their entrepreneurial genius and altruistic natures.
No.
The wealth that is continuously being transferred to corporations and individuals will NOT be invested back into America and American workers. It will be sequestered in corporate retained earnings, salted away in individual bank accounts, and invested in offshore financial institutions or offshore production facilities that contribute to even greater corporate and individual earnings.
It's easy to make dire pronouncements in troubled times.
At the risk of making a particularly dire pronouncement in these particularly troubled times: we're at a watershed moment (call it a "tipping point," if you'd like) in the history of American capitalism. On one side of the tipping point--the old-fashioned, superseded and no longer compelling 'narrative'--is the notion that the rising tide lifts all boats, and that prosperity for all is guaranteed by the unfettered application of American ingenuity, fueled by capital freely seeking its highest, best use. Remember the pin factory?
On the other side of the tipping point is the new, brutally realistic narrative--the awareness that capital, accumulated beyond a certain critical mass, is no longer dependent on or connected with the welfare of a 'domestic population'.
New Capitalists have no investment in, or dependence on, their country or their countrymen. Freed from the silly and naive notions of 'giving back' to the source of their wealth, New Capitalists (corporate and individual) horde their wealth or apply it in ways that maximize their own return with no need, felt obligation, or legal requirement to leverage it in the direction of fellow American citizens.
This is the crux of the current situation: America and its workers are becoming unhinged, and losing contact with, the entrepreneurs and financial institutions made wealthy by America's laissez faire attitudes, favoritism, and tax policies.
Anyone who harbors wan hopes of 'full employment' and 'living wages for all' in this brave new economic world is woefully out of touch with an all-too-evident movement.
However, they ARE in touch with the right and its return to power in the presidential, and probably congressional, locus. Whether it's Romney, Perry, Bachmann or Palin, a frightened and bewildered electorate is almost certain to propel a Republican into the White House in the forelorn hope that their bromides will produce a different result.
Unfortunately, the current president and his inept staff of Illinois operatives will have opened the door, and (can you spell 'Hoover'?) will be collecting their own unemployment checks in 2013.
Posted Tue, Sep 6, 11:39 p.m. Inappropriate
"focuses on the issues rather than on his poltical opposition, avoids blame-placing on others, accurately defines the challenges to be met, and is unafraid to make big proposals that have a chance to make a policy difference."
That pretty much sums up his approach so far, and where has it gotten him, and us? There is literally nothing he could propose that will garner the approval of the contemporary Republican Party, which has placed his downfall as their secondary goal after first preventing any new taxes on the wealthy. He could announce that he is changing his party to become the Eisenhower Republican in name that he's been in fact, but they will never accept him. The faction in control now are the heirs of Birchers that labeled Ike "a dedicated conscious agent of the communist conspiracy" after all. Trying to find a middle ground with them is a fool's errand, and he'd be better off to challenge them to accept his program (whatever it might be) or accept the blame for the consequences of inaction.
Huntsman is much less of a moderate than you imply, and Romney is so busy trying to curry favor with the Tehadists that he's left any pretension to moderation far behind. Christie currently couldn't deliver his own state to his ticket.
But it's true, if Obama fails to lead one of the crazies might well end up in the Oval Office. Perhaps if the press in this country were to follow your notion that substance on issues counts for more than the superficial horse race of the day we'd have a better informed electorate, which is never a bad thing. Call me a dreamer.
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 9:09 a.m. Inappropriate
I totally agree with NickBob and disagree with TVD on the issue of somehow compromising with Republicans on the issues. Ain't going to happen despite President Obama's strenuous efforts up to now to get congressional Republicans to work with him. He absolutely needs to make a strong jobs and mortgage relief proposal and aggressively highlight how Republicans are obstructing any progress on these issues. TVD, like David Brooks, keeps expressing the increasingly desperate hope that somehow moderate Republicans will come out of the woodwork and save the Republican Party from Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman. I don't think it's going to happen because the old moderate wing of the GOP is gone or is cowering in a corner somewhere. How many GOP moderates have emerged to talk sense to the candidates about climate change or the need for financial regulation or health insurance expansion or any of the other issues that moderate Republican leaders used to talk about? It's not going to happen. Obama cannot work with these people, and TVD and others need to face that new reality of American politics.
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 11:41 a.m. Inappropriate
"The George W. Bush administration believed false intelligence that Saddam Hussein had ongoing nuclear, biological, and chemical-weapons programs and possibly intended to share them with fundamentalists."
This is a crock. The Bush administration went to war with Iraq over oil. They had the information about the WMD's being destroyed after the previous war.
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 11:47 a.m. Inappropriate
"We are trying to oust the present Syrian regime but thus far have succeeded only in enraging it and contributing to the deaths of many thousands of Western-encouraged democratic protesters."
Another bit of dreaming and assuming guilt where none exists. The USA has had absolutely no effect on the Syrian Government's action to kill the protesters. Read the NYTimes article "Syria's sons of no one." For a much better clue as to what is happening there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/magazine/syrias-sons-of-no-one.html
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 11:51 a.m. Inappropriate
"My hopes presently ride with Obama and the possibility that he will rise to the occasion Thursday, and from Thursday onward, and govern as if there was no 2012 election — only a country to be led for however long he occupies the White House. If he leads effectively, that might be for a longer period than he suspects."
Unfortunately his recent past has been to give a great speech and then immediately cave to whatever crazy idea the Republicans put out, then cave again when they see how easily he caved on the first round, until there is nothing left but a hollow shell of a program that does nothing. The Republicans want nothing more than him out of the Whitehouse and even though they have only crazies running for office, they'd prefer that to 4 more years of that black guy in the white house. God help us all.
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 12:47 p.m. Inappropriate
Here's the link to Iraq and George Bush Jr.
http://www.truth-out.org/price-911/1315403131
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 1:46 p.m. Inappropriate
Why do weak liberals always make excuses for the Democrats by attributing their failures to moral shortcomings? Why do you believe (have unquestioned faith) in the heroism of the Democrats when they show over and over again that they are not what you believe they are?
I can sit for days and days and days and hope that the pencil in front of me will jump up in the air and dance for me. It will never happen. Because pencils don't do that. The pencil can not dance because pencils do not dance. And Obama will never be the leader progressives and liberals demand he be because he is not that leader. The Democrats will never be the party you want them to be because they are the party Wall Street wants them to be. They're doing a great job: when Bush was in office, people protested. With Obama in office, the antiwar movement is stagnant (but the wars still rage and more are launched).
Obama is doing EXACTLY what he was put in office by Wall Street to do: pushing through the capitalist class's austerity agenda while coopting and diverting resistance from below. That's the role the Democrats have played in American history since at least the 1890s. The ruling class would prefer the Republican to be in power. They are cold-hearted, bloodthirsty, and willing to cut to the bone without shedding a tear. But sometimes they go too far and working people fight back. The Bush presidency was a perfect example of this. And when the Republicans fuck things up too much, Corporate America pulls out their Plan B: the Democrats (Obama received FAR more campaign contributions from Wall Street than McCain did and they were richly rewarded for their support). The Democrats provide a false opposition to the Republicans. Millions of people voted for Obama to end the wars, but the Democrats are as committed as the Republicans to the notion of endless, pre-emptive war for oil. They disagree with the Republicans over HOW we attack and occupy other countries, not WHETHER WE SHOULD OR NOT.
Or look at immigration. Millions marched against the Sensenbrenner bill in 2006, effectively stopping it. Millions of voters elected Obama to "reform" immigration. But because the Democratic Party represents the capitalists while trying to win the immigrant vote, Obama has increased raids, deportations, and terrorism against immigrants.
Can we end the near 100-year history of progressives and liberals sacrificing the rest of the damn country for their obsessive "faith" that the Democrats will be what they are not? When will Ted Van Dyke find the "inner strength" and "courage" to be "forthright" about the fact that he supports a right wing, pro-war, pro-corporate, pro-Wall Street, anti-gay, pro-racist, pro-sexist, anti-environment political party?
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 2:41 p.m. Inappropriate
“Now, when truly challenged, Obama has a chance to rise above the indifferent first years of his presidency to make the remainder of 2011 and 2012 truly productive years of leadership.”
Indifferent (adj): 1. Having no particular interest or concern; apathetic (indifferent to the suffering of others). 2. Having no marked feeling for or against. 3. Not mattering one way or the other. 4. Characterized by lack of partiality; unbiased. 5. Not active or involved. (Source: The American Heritage College Dictionary)
It would seem to follow that the President was indifferent to:
- US financial crisis and all of its ramifications – auto industry survival, mortgage defaults, unemployment insurance, excessive high income tax breaks, low and middle income tax reduction
- Long-term economic health – deficit and debt reduction, regulatory reform, controlling health care costs, Social Security and Medicaid solvency, export trade
- Global economic security - China’s currency policy, regulation of international financial markets
- Environmental sustainability – alternative energy
- Natural disaster recovery and reconstruction – Haiti quake, Pakistan flood, Japan tsunami
- Confronting terrorism – bin Laden and al-Qaeda
- Ending current wars – Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan
- Preventing new wars – Palestine & Israel, Iran & Israel
- Supporting budding democracies – Arab spring
- Halting and reversing nuclear proliferation – New START, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, North Korea’s growing stockpile
- Global sustainable development – poverty reduction, food security, health care, education
- Big (corporate and union) money in elections
A suggestion: As for all of us in real life, pundits should choose words carefully. It's one thing for a president to be wrong more than right, but even George Bush was not indifferent.
Posted Wed, Sep 7, 5:15 p.m. Inappropriate
I completely disagree with the premise of this article. Nothing is riding on this speech. Americans have already given up and turned their backs on DC. A 9% approval rating pretty much confirms that.
Instead of hoping Obama will say something that's going to save the country, let's wake up and realize he's not going to do that.
Maybe we should comment on what WE would say if WE were President or what we want to hear. What I want to hear is something like this:
"My fellow Americans. Washington, DC is hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional. All 3 branches of government are owned and operated by the oil companies and transnational corporations. The reason no one is addressing your joblessness is that nobody in DC cares. All we care about is making money and profiteering on the wars and the cleverly named 'war on terror'."
Something like that might give me hope.
Posted Thu, Sep 8, 9:46 a.m. Inappropriate
Hi Richard,
I totally agree with you. Cities, and Mayors are where the action is. That's in part because you don't have a long distance travel to make yourself heard. And Mayors have to live in the city that they govern so they suffer the consequences of their decisions. Including meeting the citizens in the grocery store etc.
Posted Thu, Sep 8, 10:18 p.m. Inappropriate
Thanks Gary. Don't get me wrong... the changes need to be made in DC. Big changes. Massive reforms to make the elected officials more than just lobbyists for the corporations that get into office. Unfortunately with the Corporate Supreme Court and the Citizens United case, we're moving further down the gutter and things are only getting worse. And unfortunately, articles like this and really all of the media are engaged in happy talk that just nibble around the edges and pretend like things really aren't all that bad. But we're in a serious crisis.
Posted Fri, Sep 9, 8:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Hi Richard,
Yes national politics needs reform, and I have my own theories on how to get the money out of it. But until that happens, the one place we "the people" have left which we can affect change is in the cities. Yes it would be easier if the national government helped us with money and removed stupid regulations/interference like "no child left behind" but there is heaps we can do with the money we collect locally. I look to Portland as an example of a city working hard at transportation issues. San Fransisco and it's Sick leave laws soon to be implemented here in Seattle. How we handle homeless, "housing first" which reduces the health care costs of our perpetual drug abusers/homeless. etc. etc.
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