Category Archives: Barack Obama

The Obama Doctrine, and the end of the Kent State Syndrome

Back on the initial post about the death of bin Laden, I got into an argument with some of my liberal Democratic friends about the extent to which “credit” is due to President Obama for this development.

Don’t get me wrong — I thought the president performed superbly. I was in considerable suspense last night between the time we knew bin Laden was dead and the president’s speech, wondering how he would rise to the moment. I needn’t have worried. He met the test of this critical Leadership Moment very well indeed.

Also, he seems to have made the right calls along the way since this intel first came to light. That’s great, too.

Where I differed with my friends was in their assertion/implication that this success was due to Obama being president, as opposed to He Who Must Not Be Named Among Democrats. Which is inaccurate, and as offensive as if this had happened on Bush’s watch and the Republicans claimed it was all because we had a Republican in the White House.

ANY president in my memory (with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, who had a tendency to resist boots on the ground and go with cruise missiles, which would have been the wrong call in this case) would have made more or less the same calls on the way to yesterday’s mission, although few would have delivered the important speech last night as well. (Obama’s the best speaker to occupy the White House since JFK — some would say Ronald Reagan, but his delivery never appealed to me.)

That’s the thing — Obama, to his great credit, has generally been a responsible and pragmatic steward of national and collective security. As most people who actually get ELECTED president tend to be. The continuity that his tenure represents may frustrate some of his base, but I deeply appreciate it, and have from the start. (I first made this observation before he took office.)

But I hinted that I thought that maybe there was ONE way that they were right, although it was not for a reason they were suggesting…

Here is that one way: Obama has been far more aggressive toward going after the bad guys in Pakistan. Which I think is a good thing. I’ve always thought it was. In fact, I first wrote about that in August 2007. At the time, Obama was criticized by many — including Hillary Clinton — for this:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obamaissued a pointed warning yesterday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying that as president he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists….

The muscular speech appeared aimed at inoculating him from criticism that he lacks the toughness to lead the country in a post-9/11 world, while attempting to show that an Obama presidency would herald an important shift in the United States’ approach to the world, particularly the Middle East and nearby Asian nations…

I applauded it.

And now we see that proposed doctrine translated into reality. Actually, we’ve seen it for some time. Pakistan has gotten pretty testy with us for our across-the-border strikes, which have been far more common under Obama than under his predecessor.

On Sunday, convinced that our most prominent individual enemy was “hiding” practically in the open in a Pakistan suburb, Obama sent in the troops and got him — and didn’t bother telling the Pakistanis until it was too late for them to interfere.

For THIS he deserves great praise. But folks, that’s not the sort of things that folks in his Democratic base praise him for (aside from some nodding that he was right to say Iraq was the “wrong war” — just before they demand we get out of what Obama terms the “right war” immediately).

This was not Obama being sensitive, or multilateral, or peaceful, or diplomatic, or anything of the kind. This was Obama being a cowboy, and going after the guy in the black hat no matter where he was. This was out-Bushing Bush, to those who engage in such simplistic caricatures.

This is not a surprise to anyone who has watched Obama carefully, or even halfway carefully. But it should be a HUGE shock to the portions of his base who are still fighting the Vietnam War, the ones who backed him because they thought he was an “antiwar” candidate.

I’m reminded of Kent State. First, don’t get me wrong — the killing of those students was a horrific tragedy, that was in no way justifiable. I, too, feel chills when I hear Neil Young’s song. Shooting unarmed civilians is never excusable. I felt the full outrage of my generation when that happened. But I’ve always thought the tragedy was deepened by the fact that the protest that led to the shootings was to an extent wrong-headed.

Folks in the antiwar movement were SO angry that Nixon had pursued the enemy into Cambodia. This, to them, was a war crime of extreme proportions.

Me, I always thought it was sensible and pragmatic. You don’t let people shoot at you and then “hide” by crossing a political barrier, not unless you like having your own people killed with impunity.

Yeah, I realize there are important differences in the two situations (the most obvious being that the Cambodian incursion was on a much larger scale). But I think it’s very interesting that some of my most antiwar friends here — antiwar in the anti-Vietnam sense — are even more congratulatory toward our president than I am, when he, too “violated sovereignty” to kill Osama bin Laden. What if Nixon had sent troops to a mansion outside Phnom Penh to kill Ho Chi Minh? The antiwar movement would have freaked out — more than usual. Again, not quite the same — but you get the idea.

One of my antiwar friends recently was arguing with me that the antiwar movement has, indeed, faded away. I had said it had not. But the more I think about this, the more I think Phillip was right. I try to imagine how the antiwar left would have reacted to such a move as this 40 years ago. And yes, we have changed. Then, college students rioted in outrage. Today, they gather outside the White House and party down with American flags. Both reactions seem to me inappropriate, but I’m hard to please.

One thing does please me, however: I do approve of President Obama’s performance on this (as I do, increasingly, on many things).

Osama bin Laden is dead. So what happens now?

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I originally wrote this BEFORE the president’s announcement. As you can see, I’ve now updated it with the video…

Waiting for President Obama to make the announcement that Osama bin Laden is dead.

And wondering what happens now. I’ve wondered that for 10 years: If bin Laden is dead, what does it change? Does the struggle end? Of course not. He’s now a martyr. But it’s still a huge moment.

And what will the president tell us it means, as he sees it? This is so un-Obama — Under my leadership, we have killed our enemy — what will he say? And what will he tell us to expect next? What will he say HE intends to do?

What does this mean NOW, against the context of the turmoil, the rise of democracy, sweeping through the region?

If I were the president, I’m not sure what I would say. So I’m preparing to watch, and listen.

I expect you are, too.

If you’d like to react, here’s a place to do it…

The most absurd thing I’ve ever heard a president of the United States waste time talking about

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After a breakfast meeting this morning, as I was about to get out of my car to go into ADCO, I heard, live on the radio, the most insane presidential press conference I’ve ever heard in my life.

Barack Obama was actually taking time out of his day to address the insane birther “issue.”

Above is the image he posted on Twitpic. Here’s a story on it:

Obama’s ‘Long-Form’ Birth Certificate Is Released

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

President Obama on Wednesday posted online a copy of his “long-form” birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, hoping to finally end a long-simmering conspiracy theory among some conservatives who asserted that he was not born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.

The birth certificate, which is posted at the White House Web site, shows that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his mother.

“The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, wrote on the Web site Wednesday morning. Mr. Pfeiffer said on the site that Mr. Obama had authorized officials in Hawaii to release the document broadly.

In a statement to the news media Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama said he decided to release the document in an effort to end the “silliness” about his birth that threatened to distract from the serious issues facing the country.

“Over the last two and a half years, I have watched with bemusement,” he said in brief remarks. “I’ve been puzzled by the degree to which this thing just kept on going.”…

Yeah, ditto, Mr. President.

And today in the paper, I see that 41.2 percent of GOP voters in SC belief that Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. Which tells me that 41.2 percent of GOP voters should be barred from ever entering a voting booth again. Yeah, I know that there are certain constitutional problems that raises, but come on. When we talk about the drawbacks of democracy, the fact that people who would believe something like this about a guy, just because they don’t like him (for reasons that don’t bear a lot of close scrutiny, if you’re at all squeamish), get to vote just like everybody else is one of the biggies.

Oh, and for those of you who want to spend more of the precious moments you have remaining in your lives on this “issue,” here’s the president’s correspondence with the state of Hawaii Department of Health, seeking the document he posted today.

How ridiculous can we get?

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Just noticed this headline over at the WashPost:

Fuel prices cut into Obama popularity

How ridiculous, how fickle, how petty can the voting public be? Yeah, I know, we’re always like this, but whenever I see statistical proof of the capriciousness of the public affections, I am disillusioned yet again.

This, of course, is why we have never come up with a rational, comprehensive energy plan. We have a conniption over gas prices going up a little bit — something that would certainly happen, along with a lot of other things, if we were to get serious about energy policy.

So we don’t. Ever. Because our politicians only work with one hand at a time, because they have one finger of the other constantly held up into the wind.

I mean, Obama didn’t even DO anything to make prices rise, and this happens, just the way it always does:

Obama, like previous presidents in times of high oil prices, is taking a hit. Only 39 percent of those who call gas prices a “serious financial hardship” approve of the way he is doing his job, and 33 percent of them say he’s doing a good job on the economy.

No wonder politicos are terrified to take action.

Haley Barbour drops out: What does it mean?

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OK, so that last post about the 2012 GOP presidential field was a few days old. This one happened today:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced today that he will not run for president. The decision comes as something of a surprise — the Associated Press reported just Sunday that Barbour could launch his campaign as early as this week. He had been making moves toward a campaign, including a recent visit to New Hampshire.

“A candidate for president today is embracing a ten-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else,” Barbour said in a statement. “His (or her) supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required.”

Barbour had previously voiced concerns about the time commitment involved in running for president, and both his wife and son had expressed reservations about the campaign.

He was also struggling to get above the low single digits in polls, even in the south. His past career as a lobbyist, though he tried to present it as an advantage, was expected to dog Barbour on the trail. His stumbles in statements on civil rights raised questions about his readiness…

So what does it mean? I like that Aaron Blake of The Fix says that “Barbour already had obstacles as a southern governor with a thick accent…” Huh. And we-uns down heuh thought that was one of his strengths…

The Post speculates that this promotes Barbour buddy Mitch Daniels. Maybe so. Or maybe Pawlenty. I would imagine it would make the aforementioned Huntsman a little more sanguine about his chances in SC.

Something it just might indicate — and the slowness of the GOP field is getting rolling this cycle tends to back this up — is that Republicans who know what they’re about don’t think they can beat Obama. And it’s hard to get, as Barbour says, a “fire in the belly” for a long, hard campaign that would in the end be unsuccessful.

We hear so much from the Obama-hating fringe of the GOP that it’s easy to remember that fringes do not constitute majorities. The people who’ve been involved in politics a bit longer than the Tea Party’s been around know that…

Could Obama lose? Well, yeah, but it seems unlikely given current trends

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Saw this this morning on Twitter, from Political Wire:

Yes, Obama could lose… http://pwire.at/hfiOUM

To which I responded, “Yeah, and I could conceivably WIN – anything can happen – but what are the odds?”

ANYTHING can happen over the last 19 months (things that would turn this assessment around 180 degrees), but watching the sluggish “race” for the nomination to run against him — and seeing some of the characters getting the most attention (here’s a question for you conspiracy fans: Is the “liberal media” deliberately overplaying the likes of Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in order to undermine conservative chances?) — it seems extremely dubious.

Dubious to the point that I’d really, really appreciate it if the opposition would stop acting like he’s somehow illegitimate, and seeking to undermine everything he tries to do (like the health care reform the nation so badly needs, as inadequate as his efforts in that regard may be). Because folks, not only did he win the last election, but he’s probably going to win the next one. And I think the stronger potential GOP candidates know that, which is why we’re not seeing much activity from anyone but the extremists.

By the way, did you follow the link on that Tweet, which quoted a Salon article asserting that, if the economy doesn’t get better, “the GOP will be well-positioned to oust Obama in 2012, provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.”

Run that by again: “…provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.” Right now, that looks kind of like a big IF.

In 08, we were blessed by having both parties’ nominees being the less partisan options. It seems unlikely that we’ll be thus blessed in ’12. Unlike Democrats, who are cheering for the GOP extremists because they want to run against them, I hope the GOP does come up with a mainstream, sensible nominee because… as I say, ANYTHING can happen, and I’d like to reduce the chance of a having a nut job in the White House. But will that happen? I actually suspect it will. But I do worry.

Obama’s just looking better and better to me (and the UnParty) all the time

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And no, this isn’t just because the Republicans who would oppose him seem engaged in a contest to see who can be the biggest whack job. It’s more about Obama himself.

Earlier, I indicated that Obama was, after a weak outing in 2008, looking more and more like the Energy Party candidate for 2012.

Well, now… and I’m even more happy about this… he’s looking more and more like he wants the nod of the UnParty.

I saw this most clearly reading a piece in the NYT’s Week In Review from Sunday, “Obama, Searching for a Vision.”

Well, first off, I don’t think Obama’s searching for a vision. I think he’s got one, and it looks clearer, and better, every day. Perhaps he is, as the piece suggests, “being pressed as never before to define what American liberalism means for the 21st century.” At least, pressed by some.

But what I think he’s doing is something much higher and better — defining pragmatism for the 21st century. This is what I’ve always liked about him, but as he comes to embody it more fully, as the right hates him more passionately and the left whines louder about how disappointing he is, I see him more favorably than ever.

Perhaps this can be explained most simply by the fact that he keeps doing stuff I agree with. Take this passage from the piece:

Mr. Obama has always cast himself as a pragmatist and he seems to be feeling his way in the post-midterm election environment. In some areas, he has retreated. The decision announced last week to try the accused Sept. 11 plotters in a military commission at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, represented a 180-degree reversal under pressure from congressional Republicans and some Democrats. His embrace of a free-trade pact with Colombia continued a new emphasis on trade for a Democrat who once vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta.

The war in Libya represents one of the most complicated issues for Mr. Obama as he sets out his own form of modern liberalism. The hero of the anti-war movement in 2008 effectively is adopting Mr. Clinton’s humanitarian interventions in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s as a model, while trying to distinguish his actions from Mr. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Most of that I knew about, and have applauded. But somehow I missed that he had shaken off the completely irrational, amoral opposition of Big Labor to the Colombia Free Trade pact. Way to go, Mr. President!

Most political commentators, trapped in the extremely limiting notion that the politicians they write and speak about must either be of the left or right, can’t make him out. But he keeps making perfect sense to me. Perhaps I should send a memo out to the MSM letting them know that there’s a third way they can think of a politician (actual, there’s an infinite number of ways, but let’s not blow their little minds; one step at a time). There’s left (as “left” is popularly and imperfectly described) and right (as “right” is popularly and imperfectly described), and then there’s Brad Warthen. As in, “The candidate’s recent statements have been Warthenesque,” or “That was a distinctly Braddish move he made last week.”

It would open up whole new vistas for our national political conversation. Certainly a broader landscape than what we’re used to, with its limited expectations.

I LIKE a guy who at least tries to give us health care reform. I thought he didn’t go nearly far enough on that, but now that I see Republicans’ internal organs have turned inside-out in apoplexy at what little he’s done, I suppose he lowered his sights out of compassion for what REAL reform would have done to them.

I like a guy who realizes that closing Guantánamo (as both he AND McCain wanted to do, and generally for sound reasons) and trying all those guys in civil courts was impractical, and moves on.

And folks, please — he was never the “anti-war” candidate. Come on. He considered Iraq to be the “wrong war” — a respectable position to take — and that the “right war” was Afghanistan. Yeah, I have a beef with his timeline stuff, but at least he’s left a hole in that wide enough to drive a Humvee through. He’s been pragmatic about it. And yeah, maybe he got out-toughed by the French, but that’s a GOOD thing. Let France feel like the knight in shining armor for once. Maybe it will be less surly in the future.

But seriously, the guy just looks better all the time — from an UnParty perspective.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings: The video launching Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign

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Have you viewed the video kicking off Obama’s re-election campaign (which was all anyone was Tweeting about this morning, it seemed)?

Not much to say about it — because it doesn’t have much, or really anything, to say.

All it really conveys is… feelings. Vague feelings at that. And even for communicating vague feelings, it’s low key.

I’m a bit of a wonkish sort, and prefer a tad more heft than this — not much, just a bit would do. Presumably, more substance is to come. But then again, I’m reminded that Obama is a Democrat, and that party reflects the distaff side of the gender gap, so…

OK, there’s more I could have said there, but I thought better of it. Each party has its aspects that fail to connect with me, and with the Dems it tends to be a certain… femininity… in communication style.

There, I said it. Fine. I haven’t been yelled at all day; might as well start.

Of course, hats off to the ad wizards behind this because they DID start off with a Southern white guy. From the beginning, you hear that voice, over the touchy-feely strumming of an acoustic guitar, and you think: Who’s that? Certainly doesn’t sound like most Obama supporters I know. Which, of course, is what I’m supposed to think. What that guy is saying, by being who he is demographically, is “Don’t put Obama in a box.”

Anyway, what did y’all think of it?

Welcome to the Energy Party, Mr. Obama (I hope)

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Hope. Change. Energy Party... /2008 file photo

Heard an encouraging report on the radio this morning that I can’t seem to find now online, but there’s this from the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama, under pressure to respond to rising gas prices, will outline Wednesday a series of initiatives to cut the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, including new initiatives to expand oil production, increase the use of natural gas to power vehicles and increase production of ethanol….

The political heat over energy policy is rising in tandem with the price of gasoline and diesel fuels at filling stations, in a ritual that has become familiar in Washington since the oil price shocks of the mid-1970s. “We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now,” Mr. Obama said during a March 11 news conference. “Every few years, gas prices go up; politicians pull out the same old political playbook, and then nothing changes.”

The White House will cast the new effort, a combination of new ideas and previously announced initiatives, as an effort to deal with the nation’s long-term energy challenge, not just the high gas prices of the moment.

Mr. Obama will put forward an overall goal of reducing oil imports by one third over a decade, with half the reduction from decreasing consumption and half from increasing domestic supply, according to two people briefed by the White House…

And this from the NYT:

WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices rising, oil supplies from the Middle East pinched by political upheaval and growing calls in Congress for expanded domestic oil and gas production, President Obama on Wednesday will set a goal of a one-third reduction in oil imports over the next decade, aides said Tuesday.

The president, in a speech to be delivered at Georgetown University, will say that the United States needs, for geopolitical and economic reasons, to reduce its reliance on imported oil, according to White House officials who provided a preview of the speech on the condition that they not be identified. More than half of the oil burned in the United States today comes from overseas and from Mexico and Canada.

Mr. Obama will propose a mix of measures, none of them new, to help the nation cut down on its thirst for oil. He will point out the nation’s tendency, since the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, to panic when gas prices rise and then fall back into old gas-guzzling habits when they recede.

He will call for a consistent long-term fuel-savings strategy of producing more electric cars, converting trucks to run on natural gas, building new refineries to brew billions of gallons of biofuels and setting new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. Congress has been debating these measures for years.

The president will also repeat his assertion that despite the frightening situation at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex in Japan, nuclear power will remain an important source of electricity in the United States for decades to come, aides said.

He will respond to members of Congress and oil industry executives who have complained that the administration has choked off domestic oil and gas production by imposing costly new regulations and by blocking exploration on millions of acres of potentially oil-rich tracts both on shore and off.

The administration is not prepared to open new public lands and waters to drilling, officials said, but will use a new set of incentives and penalties to prod industry to develop resources on the lands they already have access to…

Wish I could find the radio report, because it pretty much painted what the president will have to say as being VERY Energy Party. As you may recall I took both Mr. Obama and John McCain to task in 2008 for being unworthy of Energy Party support, however many other virtues the two may have possessed (and as you know, I liked them both — it was the first time ever that both parties nominated my first choices in their respective fields).

But increasingly, Mr. Obama seems to GET IT — that it’s not about keeping gas prices low; it’s not about pleasing the left or the right. It’s about freeing this country from its dependence from foreign oil, for all sorts of economic and geopolitical reasons. Nothing we could do would be more likely to make the nation stronger and healthier.

It’s about being a grownup, and taking the long view.

Here’s why “left” and “right” are all one to me

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Actually, what this is is ONE reason why the distinctions between left and right — which seem to mean so much (and of course, I would say far too much) to so many in this country — are of little concern, and NO appeal, to me:

The Few, the Proud, the Anti-Libya NFZ Republicans

Posted Monday, March 21, 2011 12:31 PM | By David Weigel

The Republicans who out-and-out oppose attacks on Libya without congressional authorization are few, and their names are not surprising anyone who follows debates over war funding. Here’s freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich, who was backed by Ron Paul last year.

It’s not enough for the President simply to explain military actions in Libya to the American people, after the fact, as though we are serfs. When there is no imminent threat to our country, he cannot launch strikes without authorization from the American people, through our elected Representatives in Congress. No United Nations resolution or congressional act permits the President to circumvent the Constitution.

I love that libertarian indignation in “as though we are serfs.” He means it, too. To people of certain ideological stripe, we are all right on the verge of serfdom, every minute.

Here’s the president’s letter ‘splaining things to Congress, by the way. The 119th such letter sent by a president.

Beyond the serf stuff, do some of those phrases sound exactly like the antiwar left to you? Yeah, to me, too. But there’s nothing surprising about it. I think I shared the story with you recently of one of my wife’s leftist professors who supported George Wallace because he’d never get us involved in a Vietnam.

Now, for you Paulistas: Do I not care about the Constitution? Of course I do. And before this nation actually goes to real WAR with an actual other NATION, the kind of debate that leads to the declaration of war is a good thing, and the Framers were wise to include the requirement — particularly given how weak and vulnerable this nation was in those days, and how ruinous a war with one of the great powers could have been.

But of course, that very generation, and the first president of the limited-national-gummint party, Thomas Jefferson, did not see such a declaration as necessary to deal with the Barbary Pirates. You know, the shores of Tripoli?

They DID think it meet for Congress to authorize the president to act — as Congress did before the Iraq invasion, and before the Gulf War.

If anything, the issue here is whether Obama should have paused long enough to wait for such a formal authorization in this case. Did he act too soon? Did he cave too quickly to Hillary telling him to “man up” and act? I don’t think so, given the circumstances — the dire situation on the ground in Libya, the fact that the Brits and the French (yes, the French!) were ready to go. But frankly, I didn’t think about it before just now. Should we have had a big national debate between the UN resolution and action (regardless of whether it then would have been too late)?

What do y’all think?

Graham grateful for Obama’s “strong women”

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Check out Political Wire’s Quote of the Day:

“I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by NBC News, on how it was President Obama’s female advisers that prevailed in arguments to take military action in Libya.

Here’s more from the item that came from:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported Saturday night on the internal debate about the decision to go into Libya. “In the end, it became the women foreign policy advisers against the men. Although Hillary Clinton initially resisted the idea of a no-fly zone, she was persuaded at the beginning of this week by the Arab League’s endorsement of military action, and she had intense meetings with the Arab League leaders and a Libyan opposition leader this week. She actually joined U.N. ambassador Susan Rice and two other women in the National Security Council, who had been arguing for some time for more aggressive action in persuading the president on Tuesday. This is a rare instance, by the way, of Clinton going up against Defense Secretary Bob Gates and the National Security Adviser Tom Donilon among other men in the White House who were much more cautious about this.”

To that point, here was more Lindsey Graham on FOX: “I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

Presumably, since he’s for strong women, Lindsey won’t get any overwrought letters from Eleanor Kitzman…

Obama: Ready To Tap Oil Reserve If Needed — which it ISN’T, not by a long shot

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The president at this afternoon's presser. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Well, gasoline prices are rising toward levels that might, just might, cause some of us to face reality and acknowledge that it’s not a good idea at all to be so desperately dependent on cheap oil from crazy-dangerous parts of the world, and what are our elected leaders — Democrats and Republicans — doing?

Why, what they always do — pandering. But there’s pandering, and then there’s pandering.

The GOP is busily blaming Barack “Root of All Evil” Obama. The president himself is responding by saying, at a press conference today, that he’s prepared to tap the strategic oil reserve, if needed.

But that last part is key, and his way out as a rational man. It’s like his promise to “start” withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by a certain date, which in no way commits him to draw down dangerously before it’s wise to do so. Obama’s smart; he’s not going to pander so far that he commits himself to something irresponsible. This is a quality that he has demonstrated time and again, and which has greatly reassured me ever since he beat my (slightly) preferred candidate for the presidency. This is the quality — or one of them — that made me glad to say so often, back in 2008, that for the first time in my editorial career, both major-party candidates for president were ones I felt good about (and both of whom we endorsed, in their respective primaries).

It’s certainly more defensible than Mr. Boehner’s reflexive partisan bashing. And it’s WAY more defensible than Al “Friend of the Earth” Gore asking Bill Clinton to tap the reserve to help him win the 2000 election.

To quote from the report I just saw on the NPR site:

Obama said he’s prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed. But as gas prices climbed toward $4 a gallon, the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.

“We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now. Every few years gas prices go up, politicians pull out the same political playbook, and nothing changes,” Obama said.

“I don’t want to leave this to the next president,” he said.

Some in Congress have been calling on Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And the president made clear Friday that that was an option, although he indicated he wasn’t yet prepared to exercise it. He declined to specify the conditions that would trigger the step, but said it was teed up and could happen quickly if he chooses to call for it….

His threshold, based on what he said, is a Hurricane Katrina, or worse. Personally, I’d raise the bar a bit higher than that, but he’s on the right track, trying to set a high standard. (You make a disruption like Katrina the standard, then next thing you know, you’re tempted to lower it to, say, a BP oil spill — and that’s not the direction you want to go in.)

The key word here is “strategic,” a threshold that I would think wouldn’t be crossed until we have a sustained inability to GET oil to power our economy — something we came close to, in spots, in recent crises. But it seems to me one only turns to such “strategic” options as a last resort. The president should be “prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed” in the same sense he is expected to be prepared to crack open the “football” and activate the codes for going nuclear. OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get where I’m going with this. It’s something we hope and pray never happens, and we do our best to pursue policies that avoid such an eventuality.

By the way, back to that excerpt above. I particularly love “the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.” Earlier today, I disparaged the president for being no Energy Party man. (I was essentially repeating an observation I made about both him and McCain in a July 6, 2008, column.)

But maybe I was wrong. If he keeps saying things like that, he may deserve the Energy nomination in 2012 after all.

Uh-oh — I posted THIS on Facebook. Will I have to resign from the blog now?

Joe’s alternative to the alternative to the GOP response

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I got bushed and went to bed last night before getting this video, which is Joe Wilson’s response to the State of the Union.

So… since some guy named Paul Ryan gave the “official” Republican response, and Michele Bachman (another nonentity to me, but I’ve vaguely aware she’s one of those fringe people the shouting heads on TV go on and on about, like Sarah Palin) delivered a sort of self-appointed alternative response as a way of playing directly to the Tea Party, that means Joe’s clip is sort of the alternative to the alternative. Or maybe, since the “official” GOP response is in itself offered as an alternative to the actual State of the Union, Joe’s is an alternative-alternative-alternative. Which sounds way more avant-garde than the way I think of Joe Wilson.

Speaking of Joe… I ran into his guy Butch Wallace this morning at breakfast and told him — sort of joshing, sort of serious — that I appreciated that Joe had behaved himself last night, adding that I suppose it was hard to do otherwise sitting with those Democratic ladies. Butch smiled politely. Then I added, quite seriously, that I appreciated that Joe had wanted to make that gesture — which others in our delegation refused to do, even though it would have taken them so little trouble. Butch said Joe wanted to work with all kinds of people, regardless of party, and I said that’s good — because the more folks you’re willing to work with, the more you’re likely to get done.

As for Joe’s message — it sure beats “You Lie!” (which, if you’ll recall, was NOT during a SOTU), although in his hurry, he sort of flubbed a couple of the lines. And the overall message is rather thin and lacking in substance. But these things always tend to be that way. There’s a formula: 1.) Due respect to the president (no name-calling); 2) A brief reference to something that was in the president’s speech, a cursory effort to give the impression that the responder actually read or heard it and thought about it before responding; 3) A rather trite and general statement of ideological difference with the president that may or may not bear relevance to the president’s points; 4) Some sort of statement of civic piety such as asking the deity to bless the troops, or America, or the taxpayers, or whatever.

So much for Joe and his message. Now to the larger issue: This nonsense of opposition-party “responses” to the State of the Union, which I have always found offensive. I thought this writer put it well: “The very idea of a rebuttal is asinine.”

Or at least, the idea of some sort of formal response with an “official” status is asinine. Of course, we’re all entitled and encouraged in this free country to share what we think of the president’s speech. But over the years, something really weird and insidious has happened, and like so many other media/political phenomena in the modern age, it has done much to solidify in the average voter’s mind the nasty notion that there is something good and right and natural about everything in our politics being couched in partisan terms.

First, just to give the broadest possible perspective, the State of the Union is a constitutional responsibility of the president of the United States — not of a party, or of an individual, but of the chief executive. It’s right there in black and white in Article II, Section 3:

He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

Note that it doesn’t say he has to do it every year, much less in January just before the Super Bowl. Nor is he even required to give a speech of any kind: Before Woodrow Wilson, presidents took care of this requirement in writing.

So, no one has to give a speech. But the president is required to make a report (including recommendations, if he judges such to be necessary and expedient, which you know he always will). It’s his job. It’s not a campaign speech (even though no politician yet born would pass up such an intro once it’s handed to him). It’s not something that he does on behalf of his execrable party. It’s something he is required to do.

In other words, the “equal time” requirement placed on purely political TV face time doesn’t apply. No member of the opposite party is in any way obliged to offer a “response,” and no broadcast outlet is obliged to run it — not by law, and not by any sense of journalistic obligation. Sure, you might cover it — you ought to cover it, and any other politically relevant response. (Just as you ought to cover the SOTU itself, if you know what’s news.) But the idea of a formal, ritualistic response is completely unnecessary.

And harmful. Because it instills in the public’s mind the notion that this is just some guy giving a political speech, rather than the president of the United States fulfilling the requirements of his job. And it inflates the ceremonial, institutional importance of parties to our system of government, putting the prerogatives of a party on the same level as the most fundamental requirements of our Constitution.

My reaction to the GOP response last night — that is to say, my reaction to the idea of a GOP response, because as usual, I didn’t watch it (when the pres was done, I ran upstairs to plug in my laptop because the battery was nearly dead and giving me warning messages) — was exactly the same as to Democratic responses to a Republican president: You want to give a free-media speech to the whole nation on this particular night, you go out and get elected president. We don’t have a president of one party and a “shadow” president as in a parliamentary system — we have one person elected to that position, and in delivering the SOTU (whether aloud or in writing), he’s fulfilling a specific responsibility that we elected HIM (and not some eager up-and-comer in the opposition party) to perform.

So share your thoughts all you want, folks. But spare me the “official” responses.

Live-blogging the State of the Union

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Getting ready to watch the State of the Union on ETV (less hoopla than on the commercial stations, I find), and it occurs to me that maybe I should share some observations as we go along. Y’all join in if you’re so inclined…

Good news for Obama in 2012 poll

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Politico brought this to my attention this morning:

Washington (CNN) – Two new polls, but as of now the same old story: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin remain the leaders of the pack in hypothetical 2012 GOP presidential nomination matchups.

According to an ABC News-Washington Post survey, 21 percent of Republican or independent leading Republicans say that as of now, Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, is their choice for their party’s presidential nomination, with 19 percent supporting Palin, the former Alaska governor and Sen. John McCain’s runningmate in the last presidential election, and 17 percent backing Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who also ran for the White House in 2008.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a distant fourth, at nine percent, followed at eight percent by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has repeatedly said he is not going to make a bid for the White House in 2012. Everyone else was in the low single digits.

That’s very good news for Barack Obama. I like Huckabee, but his viability remains to be seen. Romney SHOULD be viable, but the GOP has embraced, as though it were gospel, the idiotic doctrine that insurance mandates are bad, so bye-bye, Mitt. Sarah Palin is severely hampered by the fact that she is Sarah Palin.

Of course, these early polls mean little, they just show how little people have thought about whom they will actually vote for. The contest is not yet engaged. As Spencer Whetstone wrote on Facebook this morning when I mentioned this poll, “Of course at this point in the last cycle the punditry were telling us that a Giuliani – Clinton match-up was inevitable.”

Yep.

The president’s speech in Arizona

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Something else I hadn’t been keeping up with the last few days… I was still out of the country when the Arizona shootings happened, and the couple of days I was stuck at home because of the snow, my newspapers either didn’t come or came after I had quit looking for them.

But I know that others among you were paying rapt attention. I know Samuel Tenenbaum was. I saw him at breakfast this morning, and asked him how he did. Well, he said, he had been in mourning Saturday night, but after the president’s speech last night, he felt a lot better. (When I wondered why the shootings — once I realized that was what he was talking about — affected him so deeply, he explained that he knew “Gabby” Giffords. He said he met her at one of the Laders’ Renaissance Weekends, and that she and Inez had been on a panel together.)

Since that encounter, a couple of other folks have mentioned how awesome the president’s speech was last night. So now, as I type this, I’m listening to it. I’m going to pause now and listen to the rest of it… In the meantime, y’all can start leaving comments…

… the part I’m listening to right now, when he’s just finished his well-researched eulogy for the dead and is applauding the heroes of the day, demonstrates a superb job of connecting emotionally with his audience, with the nation. That’s impressive, and appropriate. But here’s the bit I’m waiting for:

The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”

It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”…

That, of course, is a topic near and deal to me, and few speak more eloquently about the need for civility than Barack Obama. (It’s one of the reasons we enthusiastically endorsed him in the primary in 2008.)

I’m listening to that part now… as I hear it, I’m a bit lost because I missed the back-and-forth of the last few days that prompted the president to feel like he had to urge us not to claw at each other over this. But I’ve caught snatches of it, and I can extrapolate the rest. I know how the 24/7 spin cycle, and the parties, and Twitter, and all of that work. So without fully knowing the background, I fully appreciate the message…

I particularly like his urging the nation “to rise above ugly political debates and see civic life ‘through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol” of adults,” and his exhortation that any debate engendered by this horror be worthy of the victims. Of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, he said:

“I want us to live up to her expectations… I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”

He urged us to make sure “that our nation lives up to our children’s expectations.” Amen to that, Mr. President. Amen to that.

Actually, Obama just thinks the U.S. is “special”

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When Twitter brought this question to my attention — “Poll: Does Obama think U.S. is exceptional?” — I thought it odd: Here’s more:

Washington (CNN) – The vast majority of Americans see the United States as exceptional, according to a new national poll. But a Gallup poll released Wednesday also indicates that nearly four in ten say they believe President Barack Obama doesn’t hold this same view.

Eight out of ten people questioned in the survey say that based on the country’s history and constitution, the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world. The poll suggests there’s no partisan divide on the question, with 73 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 91 percent of Republicans in agreement.

According to the poll, 58 percent say Obama believes that the U.S. is exceptional, with 37 percent saying they disagree. But the survey indicates Americans are less likely to believe Obama holds this view than they are to think the same about Ronald Reagan (86 percent), Bill Clinton (77 percent), and George W. Bush (74 percent).

The poll does suggest Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye, with 83 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans questioned saying Obama believes the country is exceptional….

First of all, why do a poll? If you want to know what Barack Obama thinks about America, ask Obama. He’ll tell you.

But of course, that’s not what this is about. This is about how the American people feel about how Obama feels about America. And you know how I feel about how Gallup feels about how voters feel about how, etc.? Well, I’ll tell ya — I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all politics in America, from the Beltway to the SC election for governor down to county council, being about how people feel about Obama.

This is beyond ridiculous.

Of course, it may be true: Maybe the president doesn’t think we’re exceptional. Maybe he just thinks we’re “special.” And who could blame him?

The Congress that wasn’t going to get anything done (until Obama made them do it)

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Seems like everything I read over the last few months, before and after the election, was that this lame-duck Congress wouldn’t accomplish squat before its well-deserved demise. And when it DID talk about getting anything done, its sense of priorities was bizarre. For instance, just the other day on the radio I heard some Democratic leader (and I’m totally drawing a blank on who it was, which disappoints me, because it means I don’t get to castigate him or her by name) talking about how the Congress had Two Big Things to act on before quitting — the Obama/GOP tax cut deal, and DADT. Really. I’m serious. A bill with huge, systemic impact on our economy at a moment when we’re desperately trying to climb out of the hole the Great Recession put us in was mentioned in the same breath, and as being equally important to, a Kulturkampf wish list item. Really. This is the way these people think.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, they weren’t going to get anything done.

Well, today they passed this:

Congress passes extension of Bush-era tax cuts

By Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2010; 12:40 AMCongress approved the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade late Thursday, overcoming liberal resistance to continue for two more years tax breaks enacted under president George W. Bush and to provide a fresh boost of federal support to the tepid economic recovery….

How about that?

Of course, it wasn’t actually the Congress that made this happen. President Obama did, by very astutely making a deal with Republicans for something they wanted in order to get something he wanted while he still could.

Which is interesting. I mean, set aside the rather obvious reasons to worry about this bill. This actual effective action by the POTUS could have implications in all sorts of areas. This may be the clearest, most overt case since entering office in which Barack Obama has clearly stepped out and led, without deferring to the ditherers in his own party (as he so wrongly did on health care) or anyone else.

He showed, you know, leadership. The thing we elect presidents to show. This is important. It is perhaps even promising. Basically, what I’m saying here is that what Obama pulled off is quite the opposite of conventional wisdom among some on the left and the right, summarized in this cartoon by my buddy Robert.

Oh, by the way, no word on DADT. At least, I don’t think so. Maybe you’d better check with someone who is actually into following that…

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