11D

Will the Real Obama Please Stand Up?

"We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect."

David Brooks's column on the two image of Barack Obama was very good. He writes that the left and the right have constructed their own two-dimensional cartoons of the president and neither conforms to reality. The right describes him as big-government liberal who uses slimy Chicago-style methods to rule. The left describes him as an intellectual too willing to compromise and dither.

Neither image is correct, says Brooks. "The fact is, Obama is as he always has been, a center-left pragmatic reformer."

Brooks praises the president for his achievements, including in education. 

Take education. Obama has taken on a Democratic constituency, the teachers’ unions, with a courage not seen since George W. Bush took on the anti-immigration forces in his own party. In a remarkable speech on March 1, he went straight at the guardians of the status quo by calling for the removal of failing teachers in failing schools. Obama has been the most determined education reformer in the modern presidency.

Brooks was enamored with Obama since the early days of his campaign. It's good to see the love hasn't died. It's also good to read critiques of the information cocoons that we live in.

The Coffee Party

The Washington Post article.

You Found Out I Was a Bad Governor. Who Tipped You Off? Everybody?

Congress on Twitter

More than a third of Congress appears to be on Twitter.

Let's send Ashton Kutcher to Congress. He couldn't make more of a mess of things, but at least there would be entertaining tweets.

Why Change Is Difficult

Written for the student textbook blog, Everyday Politics.

In 1964, voters sent a new, young generation of Democrats into Congress. Lyndon Johnson won a landslide election against Barry Goldwater. With Democratic control over both Congress and the White House, Johnson and Congress passes a series of major legislation, including The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, and Medicaid. Another group of laws were passed aimed at reducing poverty, improving education, and improving life in inner cities.

Regardless of your opinion of the outcome of these laws, there is no question that major change happened in 1964, and it happened quickly. These laws marked a sharp departure from the past. Government bureaucracy, as well as the federal budget, ballooned in size. Lives changed.

When Obama came to office last year with a Democratic majority in both houses of government, many thought it was 1964 all over again. He promised major legislation in health care, education, and infrastructure.

One year later, Congress still has made no progress on health care. Their Democratic majority is slowly eroding, and the public has grown cynical.

Why was Johnson so successful in 1964, and Obama has not yet passed health care reform?

There are many possible answers to this question. Instead of giving you one definitive answer, I'll propose three possible answers to that question and let you debate this matter in class. 

1) Some might point to intervening variables, including the failing economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1964, the economy was booming, and Americans were wealthier than ever before. They were more willing to part with the tax money than Americans are today.

2) Stephen Skowronek, in addition to coming up with this nifty model for classifying presidents, wrote that it has grown increasingly difficult for presidents to make change in the United States, because of the thick layers of bureaucracy that have formed and the customs that have arisen. In the past, when a Reconstruction President came to office, it was easier for him to act as a "battering ram" and create new orders. Now, even strong, talented presidents can only make small, incremental changes.

Skowronek might say that bureaucracies and powerful interest groups have arisen in the past several decades, and they have a strong interest in perpetuating the status quo around health care policy. They drag down the system and prevent change.

3) Others might argue that Obama is having trouble today, because all change is difficult in the United States. 1964 was the outlier or an anomaly. What made 1964 significant wasn't the party composition of Congress, but the mood within the country, which was unusually optimistic and in agreement that change needed to happen. That broad agreement and optimism from within the public was a freakish blip in our nation's history.

That unusual public spirit is the only way that radical change can happen in our country, because our governmental system was designed by James Madison, the master worrier. Madison was terrified of rapid change. He worried that with the increasing the franchise, the unwashed masses might make unreasonable and unwise demands of their government, so he put in all sorts of fail safes into the constitution. There are checks upon checks and a million ways for bill to go off course. Just look at how difficult it has been for the conference committee to find compromise between the Senate and the House versions of the Health Care bill.

Which explanation seems most plausible to you? Do you have a better answer to the question?

Identify The Civil Rights Activist

by Jeremy

My local NPR affiliate is doing some sort of thing this evening on Malcolm X and his relevance for the 21st century. I just so happened to be thinking about his "Ballot or the Bullet" speech from 1964 this week because I assigned it as reading alongside King's more famous letter. To kick off the conversation in class, I planned to throw both texts into the always-fun Wordle machine and visually demonstrate the different emphases. Expecting contrast, I was surprised at how little there was. It may take you more than a moment to distinguish the two than you think.

This similarity got me thinking that two speeches from different camps on the same subject probably would make about the same word usage patterns, with some rhetorically loaded differences of jargon few in number. 

What other political contrasts might engender similar word usage patterns? Democratic and Republican nomination speeches from the same year? Debate transcripts? Party platforms?  Try Wordling and find out.

Click on the image to enlarge. PS- I removed the word "Birmingham" for obvious reasons.

 

Obama's State of the Union

I'll go back to house pictures tomorrow, people. Must clean before I take pictures of the house today.

In the meantime, let's talk about Obama. Last night, I gave him a B-. After some sleep, I might bump him up to a B.

The bumbling over health care reform has really killed him. We don't have a bill and nobody knows what's in the non-existent bill. These are serious problems. I would have liked for him to clearly state last night what the key parts of the bill were for him. The line-in-the-sand issues. I wanted him to say that we must have X number of people covered by health insurance by X date or that we need to bring down costs by X amount. He never did that. 

His line that he would take proposals for reform from anybody didn't sound like he was looking for compromise. It sounded like he had no viable program of his own.

The bash-the-bankers thing was silly. He didn't mean it, and it was a diversion. Even the liberal tweeters were rolling their eyes over that stuff. 

Jobs is a bipartisan issue, and I'm glad that he brought it up. However, his reform proposals sounded weak. There is no way that clean energy is going to create enough jobs to employ the 10-17% of the unemployed.

On the other hand, he did get a bit of his mojo back. He sounded determined. It will boost his rating for a little while.

Massachusetts

On Saturday, my folks came by to watch Jonah's basketball game. (Two baskets for the boy of the flailing limbs. woot. woot.) They brought along my nieces and then everyone came back to my house for pork. (Here's the recipe.) We're big fans of the pig around here.

At the end of dinner, the kids ran off to play with the wii, and dad and I got into our customary fight about politics. Two glasses of wine, and it all comes out.

The topic at hand that evening was the Massachusetts election. Dad said that the Brown win was all about Obama. The election results could be seen as a referendum on Obama's healthcare policy. The country is basically center-right and isn't ready for a national health care program, he said.

Steve hollered in from the other room that it was all about the individuals in the election. Coakley ran a bad election, while Brown did a good job. Steve then retreated to play the wii with the kids to avoid the conflict. Coward!

I said it was all about divided government. Americans can't stand to have Congress and president from the same party and always do their best to keep one party from dominating DC government.

Question of the Day: Referendum on Obama, individuals, or divided government?

American Political Culture and Philanthropy

I wrote this yesterday for the student textbook blog, Everyday Politics.

On January 12th, a massive 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. Most of you watched the devastation on TV or read about the news on the Internet. We saw dead bodies on the street. We heard heart-wrenching tales of children trapped under the rubble crying for help. We saw people lying on stretchers with hacksaw amputations of their limbs.

And we responded. Fueled by social media, including Twitter, people called the Red Cross at 90999 and texted "haiti." To date, the Red Cross was able to bring in $8 million dollars through that effort. Overall, individual Americans donated $150 million in four days. That number marks a record for individual donations responding to a particular crisis, and social media no doubt played a large role in gathering funds.

With the ease of online donation forms and text donations, people are able to give easier than in the past with a checkbook, letter and stamp. Also, traditional donors are able to reach out to their less eager donor friends on Facebook and Twitter and urge them to give. 

While we have set new records for philanthropy, philanthropy is not that unusual for Americans. In fact, giving to others has long been considered a facet of American political culture.

Political culture is a set of widespread beliefs or values that are shared by a community. These values are passed down from parent to child and are taken on by immigrants as they assimilate.

American political culture is often defined as a commitment to individualism, capitalism, and freedom. Some have said that America's political culture is unique or exceptional, due to the common belief in Lockean liberalism among America's founders. Some scholars believe that American's exceptional political culture helps to explain why we have never had a strong Marxist or socialist party in our country. It may also explain why the United States has been so reluctant to establish a national health care system, while European nations have one for years.

Others have pointed to our roots as a Puritan nation and noted how that early religiosity helped shape our nation's history.

Another aspect of American political culture is our historic commitment to philanthropy. Alexis de Tocqueville noted the large number of charitable organizations in our country in the 1820s. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, 86 percent of American give to various charities and the average annual contribution was $1,620.

In a time where public morale may be at a low point, due to well publicized indiscretions of public figures, a flagging economy, and protracted wars abroad, Americans should take great pride in our willingness to open our pockets to help out a people on an island to our south.

Off the Pedestal

Tim Burke tells us that we have to stop believing the narratives of politicians and public figures. We have to stop believing the lies about their politics and personal lies. Let's support the politicians with flawed personal lives and push away politicians who fail to live up to their promise. We have to see past the marketing package and evaluate the actual product.

For our own velvet revolution, for at least a possibility of moving the ball forward past this stagnant, curdled moment in American life, I think what we’ll all have to do is take the risk of authenticity, to develop a grown-up taste for the rough edges and honest imperfections of lives as they are lived. In our politicians, in our public figures, in ourselves. To stop carrying water for liars or telling simplified fabulisms because we think that will serve some end that we deem necessary. To drop our deflector shields. Living and speaking within a world of acknowledged ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection is an end in and of itself.

Otherwise, 21st Century American life is going to amount to just us, the online comments threads, and those wonderful people out there in the dark…a long slow fading as we dreamily revisit over and over again our old glories, waiting endlessly for our close-up.