The Clapper

So last Wednesday night, as I did before for the last presidential debate, I sat down and took notes in order to more effectively blog about one of the biggest set-pieces of American political pageantry, the State of the Union address. Thankfully CNN was blessedly hands off about ancillary analysis/data during the actual address this time, which made for a refreshingly focused experience. What I got out of it was a sense that the speech generally achieved it’s goals: while it hasn’t singlehandedly saved his presidency (to the extent it really needs to be this early on), but it has probably successfully broken the media narrative of a political tailspin that took hold following the Brown victory and the inevitable speculation on the death of healthcare reform.  In that way it’s bought him some valuable breathing room in which to dig his administration out of a still-deepening rut of public opinion.

Obama vs the GOP: The most obvious target of the president’s carrots and sticks, as he alternately offered to cooperate with them while browbeating them for stonewalling. He actually did throw them several bones:  a willingness to drill baby drill (an effort as useless as it is expensive) and expand the use of nuclear power (which is actually a good idea), and emphasizing his record/plans for tax cuts (to surprisingly mixed results in terms of applause). Meanwhile they raced to get out of their seats at the mention of the jobs bill, and while I know they can’t afford to be seen as so much as being in the same neighborhood as anything that isn’t job creation, I wonder if they realize they’re basically applauding the second stimulus bill.  At the same time they refused to join Obama in some of the more gleefully populist portions of the speech (esp the early bank bashing and Obama’s proposals to stop outsourcing), which begs the question of just how concerned about the perceptual power of applause they really are. Also, I’m not sure attempting to browbeat the GOP in this forum, pleasurable though it is, is how we move past the era of hyperpartisanship. Finally, as much as I join many in wanting to see Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed, I don’t see him being able to work with republicans on the issue since they’re still in the process of being eaten alive by cultural conservatism and reigniting the culture wars hardly makes matters easier.

Obama vs the Democratic Party: Neither were the Democrats spared from a bit of “encouragement”, which has become painfully necessary as their natural reflex to run and hide at the first sign of adversity has unfortunately asserted itself in the wake of the Brown election. It’s especially sad when a party has to be reminded it actually still holds a substantial majority. Several wakeup calls especially resounded: while recognizing the rout, Obama has refused to surrender the day on healthcare (and let’s be honest, its not as if he could afford serving the GOP that huge of a political victory at this point). In creating a budget commission by executive order where the senate already rejected it, he has given congress the bitchslap it has so richly deserved, caught as it is between democratic fecklessness and GOP intransigence. Finally, talk of the spending freeze made Nancy Pelosi almost visibly squirm, and while she’ll be able to placate her constituents somewhat with the Don’t Ask push, rallying the democrats will be nigh impossible in the midst of trying to take away the one power that makes them worth hiring in the first place in the eyes of many voters.

Obama vs The Economy: And of course there’s the other great issue of our time, and probably the thorniest: trying to sell the benefits of the economic recovery even though many of those benefits have yet to materialize. Yes it’s great that the banks didn’t collapse and we’re not in a depression, but that’s cold comfort to a nation still saddled with debt at every level and facing a merciless jobs market. Trying to sell yourself on a platform of  “At least things aren’t WORSE!” isn’t going to woo any but the wonkiest of voters, and people are going to ask the fundamental question: Am I better off now than I was 2-4 years ago? In addition, some of his specific proposals were a tad worrying: vowing to increase exports is great, but what exactly are we going to be producing? Factories can’t just be willed from the earth, as the Midwest knows only too well. Also he proposed using the recovered bailout money to give loans to small businesses, which sounds great except for the part where loosening the credit spigot is what caused this whole mess in the first place. Finally, a bit of disingenuous speech on his part  in saying he’s “not interested in punishing banks.” Yes you are and you’re even banking a polling increase on it (no pun intended).

And now a quick runthrough of the peanut gallery:

Tim Geithner looked constipated, and not without due cause.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden fulfilled the OTHER critical role of the Vice President: Presidential Bobblehead.

Michelle Obama continues to be the most stainless woman in Washington, which makes her a trump card if she’s played in the cause of a healthcare PR offensive.

Sorry Guys

I know I wanted to get a full workup on the SotU up by today, but just had a very severe brush with career doom. After a reassuring chat with my boss I’m still in the process of coming down off the adrenaline rush of fear. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume monday.

The Pregame

As anyone with a cable or internet connection should know, the State of the Union speech is tonight amidst much political turmoil for the Obama administration. I’ll leave the substantive analysis for later as I plan to blog the speech itself, but for now we can expect that while the president is going to have to tack right in a few areas to regain credibility among independents and open some kind of bipartisan door to the GOP, David Axelrod has informed CNN that the liberals can expect to be soothed with some candy of their own.

The Inglorious Revolution

The Washington Post today has an article up that cheerfully makes the case that Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is nearing collapse within and without Venezuela.

Outside the country, Chavez’s influence is quickly dissolving. With the Honduran presidential crisis quietly resolved with Chavez acolyte Manuel Zelaya in exile and barred from holding office, Chavez’s campaign to export his brand of socialist revolution has been effectively blocked, leaving Cuba,  Bolivia, and Nicaragua as his only real allies in Latin America. And whereas the rest of the region has been willing to at least tolerate him, two things have now shifted against Chavez: the victory of the first conservative president in Chile since Pinochet, who is the first leader in the region willing to speak out forcefully against, freeing up the US to follow suit as doing so alone would have led to accusations of the paternalism that characterized US policy south of the Rio Grande. And while Presdient Da Silva of regional Heavyweight Brazil has been pulling his punches on criticizing Chavez, he’s retiring at the end of the year and his party’s candidate is trailing another conservative challenger. This leaves him isolated internationally aside from the usual peanut gallery, and even they can’t be relied upon of late: Russia will likely find it easier to antagonize the US in other, closer arenas, North Korea’s in the trust building phase of its often bifurcated foreign policy, and Iran currently has no functional foreign policy to speak of outside the nuclear issue.

Even if it becomes isolated, there’s still the possibility that Chavez could survive within Venezuela just as the Castros have turned Cuba into a socialist fortress. Alas, here the cards are mightily stack against him as well: as I noted earlier the recent currency devaluation was hardly popular, the population at large remains poor despite promises of spreading the oil wealth, which itself is impossible given that the economy continues to shrink even as Venezuela’s neighbors and oil prices recover. All of that would be enough to imperil him on their own, but the real kicker is the fact that, due to drought the dam that provides 70% of venezuela’s power is about to fail and lack of further energy investment means there’s no backups.

What this adds up to is that Chavez is in very real danger of being overthrown, one way or another. While he had been fairly successful in building up his power, recently getting voters to abolish term limits for him, he had yet to enshrine himself as a true president for life. Thus he’s left vulnerable to electoral defeat having failed to provide either at home or abroad, and even in the event of falsified results the public will likely have little patience for shenanigans, the US even less in its own back yard. As its unlikely he has the money to buy the military’s continued loyalty, the end of Chavez may finally be near. What comes next is anyone’s best guess.

McCain’s Fine Gold…

…is, much like his running mate, apparently now worthless. As a moderate liberal I’m disappointed to see the ability of corporations, or large advocacy groups in general, to influence politics expanded. However, I’m also not seeing this as a huge blow for democracy for several reasons.

While republicans and special interests can joyously toast to their newly regained freedom to spend as much as they want buying supporting candidates, in a society as open as ours money alone is no guarantor of success. Laws still require any ads created by anyone not the campaign to identify their funding source (ex: thisadpaidforbytheamericancivillibertiesunion) so unless you’re an idiot you can still make a rational choice for yourself over whether to believe the contents of a given ad.  This is putting aside the fact that, this being the age of internet and the information revolution having long ago taken root, you can find out pretty much anything you want about  a given candidate anywhere you want. Finally, this still being the realm of American politics any candidate, no matter how well groomed, is never more than a well-placed scandal away from utter destruction.

And for liberals crying into their drinks, there are still more reasons to take heart. The Obama campaign if nothing else showed the utility, if not outright godlike power, of using the internet to glean hundreds of millions in microdonations. Whether this was due simply to Obama’s force of personality, or is even feasible on a smaller scale than a presidential campaign, remain open questions. What is clear is that, despite recent GOP gains, this is of much greater benefit to the Democrats, proportional to their relative mastery of internet technology. Thus there’s little reason for liberals to fear that the GOP, traditionally allied to big business, will suddenly be able to buy their way out of the political depths.

Then again riding the wave of populist backlash against Obama seems to be doing that well enough on its own.

MY Seat!

Taking a moment to avert my gaze from the unrelenting horror unfolding in Haiti, and putting it back on the unrelenting horror of domestic politics, I find myself practically insulted by the language being used to describe the race for the special election to fill the vacant senate seat in Massachusetts. I’d like to see it stay in democratic hands myself, but the stench of entitlement coming off of the democrats is nigh-overpowering: “It’s Ted Kennedy’s seat! We have to keep it!” Ted Kennedy is dead, and strictly speaking the seat belongs to whoever the people of Massachusetts SAY it belongs to. I realize they like having a 60 seat supermajority (for all the good its done them), but talking about filling the seat in terms of hereditary succession isn’t exactly helping the case that the democrats are the new champions of change in Washington.

Then again they can hardly be blamed for panicking. The fact that the GOP (or rather the Tea Party mad hatters that now possess them) have been able to smell blood in the water in a state as blue as Massachusetts is a most evil omen, and losing the supermajority basically kills health care reform dead unless one or both of the Ladies from Maine can be seduced. This of course even assumes that the House can stomach the loss of the public option, and Pelosi’s got too much invested in her liberal base to give it up. With GOP candidate Brown favored to win nearly 3 to 1, and no republican likely being able to support the healthcare bill without having to leave the party entirely, barring divine intervention this is looking like a serious knee to the groin for Obama’s legislative agenda going into the State of the Union and will likely inflame liberals as much as the debate has so far inflamed conservatives.

Hour of Need

Someone has it out for Haiti. I’m not sure if they’re a person or a deity but whoever it is has both extreme power and an extreme hatred for the western third of Hispaniola. The sun has finally risen, allowing people to take stock of the full scale of the damage dealt to the capital of Port Au Prince following last night’s massive earthquake, and according to Haiti’s first lady large parts of the city are simply gone. Haiti has just managed the seemingly impossible and snatched the title of most unfortunate nation on earth from Afghanistan. This earthquake already follows the Hurricane conga line of 2008 when the country was his by literally FOUR major storms in a row. And of course let us not forget the extent to which it was wracked with severe political instability for a decade following several more of horrible mismanagement under a dictator who’s philosophy of governance can be accurately summed up as “voodoo”.

Rather than dwelling on misfortune, and as I’ve outline there’s certainly plenty to dwell on, now’s the time for action. President Obama’s already promising American help is on the way, and NPR has posted a handy list of ways you can make donations to aid organizations who really really need it. And I don’t even mean the television infomercial kind of need; reports are saying the UN compound has been flattened, a large portion of the peacekeeping mission’s forces are missing, and Doctors without Borders has basically been left crippled. If there was a time you were thinking about giving to charity, and in this economy I can’t entirely blame you for having second thoughts, now is the time to do so. Failing that, I urge everyone reading this to hope/pray for the people of Haiti.

-We’re All In This Together

Price War

Oh how I wish that were still just a figure of speech.

Godfather

Apparently the adage that the only bad publicity is no publicity is not universally true. Despite the crowd fighting a messy and photogenic war for control of the GOP, Politico reports that a recent Harris poll has John McCain, who’s been keeping a relatively low profile since the election, regarded as the most influential leader of the GOP by not unimpressive margins.

Far be it from me to attempt to read the stars from a single poll, but this does bode well for what remains of the party’s moderate wing after months of the newscycle being focused squarely on the trevails of the tea party movement and it’s assorted straw men.

On that topic, something puzzles me: is anyone else as confused by the idea that a movement that claims to be as concerned about fiscal issues as the teabaggers would be willing to shell out $350 a pop to see palin (herself paid an even hundred grand) speak at the first-ever tea party convention?

Forward the Revolution?

As I noted in my last entry on the matter, a broad spectrum of observers is beginning to seriously consider the possibility that the Green Movement signals the beginning of the end of the revolutionary regime in Iran. As intoxicating as it is to get caught up in the excitement that surrounds the Green Movement, to which the world has attached its hopes for seeing the fall of the clerical regime, it’s a good idea to take a moment and keep things in perspective. Media outlets are already beginning the backlash, with Foreign Policy magazine, StratFor, and even the Gray Lady leading the skeptical charge. While the movement’s longevity is certainly remarkable, their aims may not be as far reaching as we all might want, to the extent they’ve been articulated at all.

Which brings us to the greens’ first shortcoming: a lack of a clear agenda. The massive uprisings in June and the actions since have been driven by 30 years of simmering resentment towards an Islamic nanny state finally boiling over. But so far that’s all that’s been articulated by the opposition: just repeated accusations of corruption, electoral malfeasance, and brutality. While these accusations may be (and let’s be honest pretty much are) true, they have yet to present an alternative plan. Do they just want a reelection? Resignation of high officials? Reform of the system? Revolution? Given the broad ideological base the greens are now attracting you’re likely to get different answers based on who you ask, and while the broad support is good it’s also something of a thorn. The number of voices now in the movement makes articulating a single, coherent agenda all the more difficult as illustrated by how many ways the simple question “Who’s running this show?” can be answered.

Realizing this vulnerability the movement appears to be attempting to make its goals clear post-Ashura, which is especially important as the outbreak of violence makes it necessary to counter government charges that the protesters are merely anarchists. However while green leaders inside Iran such as Mousavi and University Professors are simply making generalized calls for reform, the most comprehensive statement seems to have come from several Iranian exiles, and this is itself a problem. Exile communities are hardly the best barometers of opinion inside their home countries, and aren’t nearly as powerful or influential there as they generally like to think they are (hence why they left in the first place). This is why thousands of Cubans in Miami and New Jersey, despite their well-earned wealth in their adopted country, have been utterly powerless to present anything more than an annoyance to Castro. And let us not forget the role elements of the Iraqi exile community (namely one Ahmed Chalabi) played in building up george bush’s hopes of replacing saddam’s statues with his own. It also runs the very severe risk of playing into the government’s hands by lending credence to the regime narrative of discontent being driven by foreign agents seeking to subjugate Iran once more.

And this leads to another problem, although this is more a problem of perception.The green movement neither wants nor needs foreign support, despite numerous claims in the media to the contrary. This is immensely frustrating to Americans, as we are both an action-oriented people and see ourselves as the vanguard of freedom. In this way Obama’s taken a good tack of offering light moral support to the opposition and precious little else. Anything more could easily be spun by the regime and the resulting wave of nationalist fervor would be just what the doctor ordered to restore their legitimacy. Ditto the recent game of brinkmanship on the nuclear issue: goading Israel into an attack that would universally enrage the populace is probably the regime’s only solution to its ills that they can see, but once again I digress.

In short, the Green Movement carries within it the promise of bringing great change to Iran, and the mere fact of its continued existence has already irrevocably altered the political landscape in Tehran. A full scale revolution may not be in the offing, but even a few reforms of the current system would prove a breath of fresh air in a nation that’s been stagnating politically for decades. All we outside the country can (and should) do is continue to watch, and wait, and hope.

-We’re All In This Together