Barack Obama = Atticus Finch

My class of sixth graders has been reading Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird this month. Today, I am showing them the movie version. I just now saw the scene where Atticus leaves work, comes home, and kills a rabid dog with one shot. It struck me forcefully in that moment how much Barack Obama is like Atticus Finch. Osama bin Laden was his rabid dog—his chance to show the hard edge that exists under all the beliefs about the importance of taking someone else’s perspective. And when he had to, he pulled the trigger.

Like It Or Not

The right wing blogosphere was apoplectic a few weeks ago after President Obama said at the nuclear security summit he hosted in Washington, D.C., "It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

The reactions of the 2008 Republican ticket to President Obama’s comments were interesting. Both Sarah Palin and John McCain spoke out about President Obama’s statement and, not surprisingly, both misinterpreted what President Obama meant. Sarah Palin’s misinterpretation was the more benign of the two, (she being the member of the ticket dangling her very expensive shoes at the high end of the intellectual seesaw). Governor Palin said, "I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower. I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."

Soon-to-be-Ex-Senator McCain’s misinterpretation also demonstrated a lack of understanding of what the President was saying, as well as showing McCain’s belief in the myth of American Exceptionalism. "That's one of the more incredible statements I've ever heard a president of the United States make in modern times," McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, told Fox News. "We are the dominant superpower, and we're the greatest force for good in the history of this country (sic), and I thank God every day that we are a dominant superpower."

I don’t have a direct line to the Oval Office, but when I stopped to think about what President Obama said, it became clear that he was saying, “We are a dominant military superpower and because of this, for better or for worse, we are automatically involved in any conflict anywhere in the world.” His statement was a description of reality, not a regret of American power. For better or for worse, we have to have an opinion. For better or for worse, we have to take sides. For better or for worse, these conflicts often cost American lives and treasure.

President Obama was expressing the truth that being powerful brings with it responsibility. Sarah Palin’s response gives evidence of her inability to see the nuances of life as a superpower. She thinks, “power: good” and that is as far as she takes it. John McCain takes it several steps further. He believes America is the best country in the world and God has had some role in making this true. Therefore, it is our right and duty to exercise our power in pursuit of our goals. This sort of belief in American Exceptionalism had its fullest recent expression in the foreign policy of George Bush. He believed the American version of freedom was the best thing in the world and therefore all countries should have it, too—even if it we had to force it on them.

This belief--that America is God’s instrument for all that is right and good and holy—can, from a slightly different perspective, be seen as arrogant self-interest. Barack Obama is able to walk in the shoes of the people of the other nations of the world. His perspective is not as narrow as that of George Bush, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. Because of this, his mind can hold onto the idea that with power comes responsibility and headaches sometimes.

John McCain seems to think that if America takes an action, that action is automatically good because we are “the greatest force for good” in the world. Barack Obama understands that there is more to it than that. He takes American power seriously and wants to exercise it in a way that makes the world a better place, but he understands that God and exceptionalism have nothing to do with it.

John Calvin preached the “doctrine of election” hundreds of years ago. It stated, in part, that God shows whom he has favored through the accumulation of wealth and power. Those who believe in American Exceptionalism have taken this idea and applied it to countries. To them, America’s wealth and power are obvious signs that we are God’s elect among nations. To me, our wealth and power are an historical accident based on our geographic isolation and surplus of natural resources.

It is simply an extraordinary claim that God has chosen the United States to be His instrument of foreign policy on Earth. I do not believe in God. And the God I do not believe in doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the economic dynamism and military might of various countries. The God I don’t believe in wants people and nations to exercise their power with reluctance, humility, and the utmost deliberation and care.

So, yes, Barack Obama had it just right. Like it or not, one way or another we get pulled into conflicts. I am not happy about this, but I find it far preferable to launching wars of choice in the mistaken belief that we are right simply because we are the United States.

Show Us Your Papers

Arizona’s Governor today signed a law requiring, among other things, that “local police officers question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.”

Right away this forces the question, “Just what would make a person suspect another person of being an illegal immigrant?” I am not a trained law enforcement officer, but even if I were, I doubt I would have special training in how to recognize an illegal immigrant.

Though apparently, such training does exist. Just ask California Republican Representative Brian Bilbray. He says, “trained professionals" can identify undocumented workers just by looking at their clothes. "They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there is different type of attire, there is different type of -- right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Representative Bilbray went on to add in his Palinesque syntax, “It's mostly behavior, just as the law enforcement people here in Washington, D.C. does it based on certain criminal activity," he told Matthews. "There is behavior things that professionals are trained in across the board, and this group shouldn't be exempt from those observations as much as anybody else."

On Bill O’Reilly’s Fox program, Senator John McCain added his two cents. He claimed that illegal immigrants will be recognizable to law enforcement officers by their behavior behind the wheel. McCain said, “It's the drive-by that -- the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.”

So, to catch the illegals, Arizona State Troopers need to look for people dressed in a “different type” of attire and driving in such a way as to cause accidents on purpose. No racial profiling required. Which is good, because Governor Brewer said she “would not tolerate” racial profiling as her troopers identify possible illegal immigrants and ask them for their papers.

Do you carry your passport around with you all the time in the course of your everyday movements around your hometown? Given Governor Brewer’s ridiculous assertion that this law will be enforced without resort to racial profiling, this is exactly what many of the citizens of Arizona may feel forced to do.

Will middle-aged white skinned women driving 2009 Cadillacs be pulled over and asked for their papers? Will 75-year old Caucasian golfers pulling out of the country club be asked to show proof of citizenship? Or is it the dark skinned, black haired second generation Mexican-American driving an older pick-up truck with one headlight out who will be pulled over and asked for his papers? If all are equally likely to be identified as illegal immigrants, then they should all be worried.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe people wishing to come to America should follow all the proper steps. I also believe that people caught here illegally should be subject to all applicable laws. What I don’t believe is that charging Arizona police with the mission of deciding in a race-blind way just who might be here illegally is at all possible.

Of course it is the dark-skinned Latino who will asked for his papers at a rate 10 times greater than Caucasians will be asked for theirs. And yes, some illegals will be caught and deported. But how many Americans will also be “caught”, forced to prove citizenship, and then sent on their way? We have a Constitution that protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures and surely this law will be challenged and, in a fair world, found unconstitutional.

Why not take President Bush’s advice and reform our immigration laws? President Obama is pushing Congress to address the issue of illegal immigration on the national level and this misguided Arizona law makes the need for real reform even more pressing.

In the meantime, all you people in Arizona better straighten up, dress better, and drive a little more carefully if you don’t want the police asking you for your papers.

Things that make you say...

I stayed up late last Sunday to watch the health care reform “debate” in the United States House of Representatives as it streamed over my computer. I was on single-father duty and my daughter had finally fallen asleep, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my MacBook. At first, I watched in my daughter’s room, sitting on the floor, earbuds firmly planted in each ear, as she fell asleep. But as speaker after speaker came to the microphone to bring up a point of order, parliamentary inquiry, or argument for or against the pending bill, I found myself getting more and more angry.

I am not one with an explosive temper, but I soon found myself muttering foul words under my breath and flashing the bird at the computer screen. I grew worried that I was going to wake my daughter with a string of curses she usually only hears when we watch football at our friend Joe’s house, so I got up off the floor and walked down to the living room—away from my blissfully ignorant girl asleep in her bed.

Once I got to the couch, the earbuds came out and I my sense of propriety all but disappeared. The screen on my computer is now a little blistered by the venom spewing from my mouth.

The year-long debate over health care made it all too obvious that the Republicans have lost their way. In retrospect, it has become clear that one of the two major parties that make our laws and control our national priorities (through government spending) cares far more about politics than about the national good.

During the eight years of the George W. Bush Presidency, exactly ZERO health care reform proposals came from the White House. The Medicare Prescription Drug Plan did pass in 2003, but many of the Republicans protesting the “backroom deals” that put today’s health care reform bill together seem to forget how that particular plan passed just seven short years ago.*

Once Barack Obama came to office and started to seriously push health care reform, it was stunning how quickly so many Republicans suddenly experienced a dual change of heart—they became deficit hawks and they began to care about making changes to our health care system. Where were they for years as a Republican President and Republican Congresses ran up enormous debts? Where were they for years as our health care system bled our nation dry AND left us with the 37th ranked system in the world and tens of millions of uninsured? Once Barack Obama came to town they sure did find religion FAST.

The most telling statements in the health care reform saga come like bookends from Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Back in July Jim DeMint said the Republican goal should be to stop Barack Obama on health care. He said, “If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.” His goal was to fight the agenda of a Democratic President, not to correct any of the many flaws on the current delivery of health insurance and care to citizens of the United States. He was saying, “Let’s not give an inch—let’s say ‘no’ to whatever he proposes.” It wasn’t about what is best for America but instead about what is worst for Barack Obama.

Senator DeMint certainly did not have the best interests of the people at heart. He was thinking about what was best for the Republican Party’s electoral interests.

Newt Gingrich, made it even more clear when he said of the Democrats in an interview with the Washington Post: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. To Gingrich it isn’t about making the system better—it is about who’s up and who’s down, who accrues advantage and who loses seats. When John McCain was running for President in 2008 his slogan was “Country First.” The Republicans have pissed me off so much in this health care debate, (and in their reaction to Barack Obama’s Presidency in general), because it is clear that their unspoken motto and guiding principal has become “F*** the Country--Party First.”

It is now clear to me why I was so mad and so full of vinegar and foul language as I watched Republican after Republican come to the microphone and spread their lies about the bill. They have sunk to the self-destructive depths of the kindergartener at the party who would rather pop the balloon he wants than share it with anyone.

Vice President Joe Biden was right when a live mic caught him whispering to Barack Obama as he was about to sign the health care bill into law, “This is a f****** big deal.” Yes, Joe. Indeed it is. The Republicans have gone all in in their efforts to bring down Barack Obama and they have failed. Their obstructionism and self-centeredness have been made clear to all and that is enough to make even a kind-hearted liberal like me say f***. Only, I am not saying it AT the Republicans in Congress who are so stuck on NO.

As I tell my students when we study grammar and parts of speech, you can’t really tell what part of speech a particular word is until you see how it is used. It can be an adjective, (as in the case of Joe Biden’s f-bomb), or a verb, (as in the case of Dick Cheney on the Senate floor a few years ago), or it can be an exclamation, as in the current case.

When I see what Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the most of the Congressional Democrats have done, I can only exclaim “f***!”, shake my head, and thank the Lord John McCain lost back in November of 2008.






(*That particular bill came to a vote at three in the morning. The bill was losing 219-215 when Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert began to take Republican members off the floor to try to get them to change their votes. The House Republican leadership decided to break their own rules and hold the vote open for hours as they tried to arm-twist a few, mind-changes. Representative Nick Smith, a Republican from Michigan, said he was offered campaign funds for his son’s election effort in exchange for his “yea” vote. He later changed his story, but not his vote. At almost six in the morning, the bill finally passed 220-215.)

Yes We Did!

Health Care Reform passed!!

I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, but gosh darn it if Obama and Pelosi didn’t get ‘er done.

Sometimes, good things happen.

They're Not Dead Yet

The Republican Party has a real problem.  Or, more accurately, THREE real problems.  The first is the Teabaggers. The second is the Birthers.  And the third is the response of some GOP Senators to the wise Latina nominated by President Obama to sit on the Supreme Court.  Each of the three is guaranteed to lose the party more of the moderate voters who decide this country’s elections.  Taken together, it becomes clear the Republican Party is headed for a twenty-year decline.

Politics can be very complex sometimes.  There are local issues, national issues, demographic trends, unforeseen crises, personal scandals, and many other factors to take into account.  But in the end, there is one foolproof strategy that will ensure your election 99* times out of 100.  That nearly-unbeatable strategy is to get more votes than the other person.

Often, you can get people to vote for you by being seen as honest, effective, competent, and informed.  If you are not well known, voters will look to your party affiliation for information about what kind of lawmaker or executive you would be.  When these moderate, unaffiliated voters step into the voting booth in November and see a big old “R” next to a candidate’s name, that affiliation is likely to work against that candidate.

The “teabaggers” (has there ever been a more unfortunate name for a political protest group?) are an embarrassingly rabid anti-tax group who don’t seem to understand that taxes pay for things that make life in America as great as it is.  Personally, I am glad there are air traffic controllers, food quality and cleanliness inspectors, the United States Armed Forces, the Internet, roads and bridges, and a million-and-one other services our taxes pay for.  Interestingly, the states with the highest ratio of federal tax dollars coming in also have the most active Teabagging groups.

These groups—comprised mostly of Republicans—do not put the most intelligent face on the party of Lincoln.

The “Birthers”, by comparison, make the “Teabaggers” look brilliant.  They believe that Barack Obama was born somewhere other than the United States and that he is Constitutionally ineligible to be the President.  They have begun to show up at events held by Republican politicians and shout out questions about President Obama’s birth certificate.   Again, the party comes across as less-than-rational when these vocal crazies grab the microphone.

Personally, I do not like the direction the Republican Party would like to lead America, so I give a cheer each time the Teabaggers and the Birthers spout off and make the news.  They serve to put an extreme face on a party that is pretty much leaderless.  In the wake of John McCain’s loss to Barack Obama, the Republican Party really has no identity.  Its members have nearly knocked themselves out running away from George W. Bush and his legacy.  (Sometimes I am reminded of cockroaches scrambling for cover when a light turns on.)  But they have not yet reformed under the banner of one obvious leader.

Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michael Steele, and Rush Limbaugh all claim the loyalty of one small faction of the party.  And it seems unlikely they will get their collective act together and offer much in the way of a unified, constructive party philosophy in time for the 2010 midterm elections or the 2012 Presidential contest.  So, in the meantime, the Republicans have become the Party of No.  They don’t yet know what they stand for, so they simply stand against anything President Obama and the Democrats propose.  Teabaggers?—against any taxes.  Birthers?—against Barack Obama himself.

Rich white male Republican Senators (like Tom Coburn, Jeff Sessions, Jon Kyle, and John Cornyn) made it clear in their questioning of Sonya Sotomayor that they are against the idea that a person’s experiences affect their judgment.  They are horrified by the thought of someone other than a white male passing judgment on the Constitution.  Do they really think that Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Antonin Scalia don’t bring their own personal biases and experiences to their decisions on the Court? 

These Senators, with their confrontational tone and clear ignorance of human psychology, have hurt Republican efforts to court women and Hispanics.  If your base is shrinking and you have no plan, it doesn’t make much sense to antagonize potential voters, especially when the possibility of blocking Judge Sotomayor is nil.  Clearly those Republican Senators who scoffed at her impartiality care more about throwing red meat to their own conservative base back home in Texas, Arizona, Alabama, and Oklahoma than they do about expanding the appeal of their party.

Yes, the Republican Party has some problems.  And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they wander the political wilderness for sixteen or twenty more years before they manage to pull their act together and capture both houses of Congress.  In the absence of real leadership, the most vocal wing takes the spotlight and the individual members care more about their own political survival than about strengthening the party.  The Republican Party is not dead, but it is certainly in for a long, slow convalescence.  I, for one, think they should take all the time they need--no need to hurry.

 

(*  see Gore v. Bush, 2000)

The Assassination of Barack Obama

President Barack Obama delivered his long-awaited speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University in Egypt today. As has become his pattern, Obama did not shy away from the stickier points of the relationship between Muslims and the United States. Law students who had Barack Obama as a lecturer at the University of Chicago have commented on his ability to lay out the facts of a situation or a case in a thorough, impartial way that gives a full airing of the grievances felt by all sides in a dispute. The same was true of his speech in Cairo today.




He talked about America’s “unbreakable bond” with Israel, but also spoke of the “daily humiliations” suffered by Palestinians living under occupation. He said that to deny the holocaust is “baseless, ignorant, and hateful,” but he also spoke of “Palestine” instead of the usual American Presidential equivocation of “a future Palestinian state.”

When Obama gave his “A More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia last spring, I knew right away that he was something special—a politician willing to treat people like they are capable of hearing hard truths about complex, nuanced issues. He knows that we can hear the truths because we all live the truths every day. He knows that to deny the truths, while easy, will never lead to real progress.

Blacks and whites in America KNOW race relations are often not good. Catholics at Notre Dame KNOW that good-hearted people of faith can disagree about abortion. Arabs, Israelis, and Americans KNOW the truth about the conflict in the Middle East
is somewhere in the middle of their many deeply held myths, legends, histories, and explanations.

President Obama seems to truly want the nation and the world to make progress on some of the problems we have been stuck with for generations. He also seems to understand that no progress can be made without recognition of the truth, no matter how complex and unflattering it can sometimes be.

So, he went to Philadelphia and spoke the truth about race relations in America. He went to Notre Dame and he spoke the truth about abortion. And now he has gone to Cairo and spoken the truth about the relationship between Muslims and the United States.

When his speech was over, my first thought was, “He is not long for this world.” If a seeming-crazy person speaks a hard truth that challenges the status quo, that is easy to ignore. But when the President of the United States starts to upset the apple cart, many people firmly entrenched on all sides of these issues can feel threatened. If a politician pisses off one group of the fringe element, it is easy enough to protect against. But when a President takes on as many sacred cows as Barack Obama seems intent on doing, I worry that too many extremists will be coming at him from too many angles and he will be killed. I hope that I am wrong, but as the Greek philosopher Bias of Priene said over 2000 years ago, “Truth breeds hatred.”

Early Review

My name is Chris and I am a political junkie.

I can’t help it. I always have been. I know that “experts” still debate whether someone is BORN a political junkie, if they CHOOSE junkiehood, or if there is some mysterious interaction between genes and upbringing that “activates” an unhealthy obsession with politics.

Whatever the case, I clearly remember being six years old in the summer of 1972 as the Democrats held their National Convention in Miami Beach. The night George McGovern was nominated I was in the back seat of my friend Timmy MacAteer’s car, returning to the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware from a night at Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia. Timmy’s dad was listening to the news in the front seat, as was I, (intently), in the back seat.

When I heard that George McGovern had gotten the nomination I was thrilled to the very core of my six-year old being. I knew that McGovern was anti-war and I wanted him to be our next president. When I got home, I crowed to my parents about the good news. My dad, without batting an eye or missing a beat, said “Nixon’s gonna kill him in November.”

So here it is almost forty years later and I am still left-of-liberal and I am still addicted to politics.

Because of this lifelong fixation on all things political, I feel qualified at this early juncture in his first term to comment on the Presidency of Barack Obama. These last few months have seen the near-collapse of America’s banking and automobile-manufacturing sectors. They have also seen enormous bailout packages cobbled hastily together and passed just as hastily by Congress.

We have been made privy to the tortuous legal “reasoning” employed by advisors of the Bush Administration to simultaneously justify and excuse torture. And we have heard the chorus of boos from both sides of the spectrum as liberals call for investigations and prosecutions and conservatives call for less transparency and greater immunity for those who administered the “enhanced techniques.”

We have witnessed a new Administration tackling issue after issue as critics (mainly from the Right) accuse them of trying to “do too much,” and other critics (mainly from the Left) accuse them of “not going far enough.”


I know that Barack Obama has not yet been in office for 100 days, but based on the reaction from both the Left and the Right and upon my many, many years as a political obsessive I feel absolutely confident in my judgment that President Obama will be remembered as one of our most effective Presidents ever.

He is leading exactly as he said he would—from the middle. He promised an end to blind partisanship and he is delivering. What more evidence could anyone need than the anger being hurled at the President from both sides? The Right, without a leader or a coherent philosophy, has become the Party of NO. The Far Left, with dreams of revenge governance, has become the Party of Let’s Do To Them What They Did To Us. Barack Obama, in the meantime, has become the President of What Needs To Be Done.

Being a proud member of the Far Left of course I want Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, et al to be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity. Of course I want the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to be changed so that all willing Americans can serve with pride in the Armed Forces. Of course I want banks partially nationalized. Of course I want even more funding for education.

Being a lifelong student of politics I know that Barack Obama has chosen his path as President. It is a path leading through the middle. It eschews polarization for efficacy. And it is exactly what we need as a nation to bring us out of the frightening straits we find ourselves in and to bring us together (eventually). I know it is early, but what I have seen so far from President Obama makes it clear that he is one for the ages. I look forward to seven more years of disappointment that he has not been “liberal enough.”

Oval Office Dress Code

Ex-President George W. Bush’s former Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, was on Michael Medved’s radio show recently and he had this to say about the new, more relaxed, dress code in the Oval Office:

"...I found that Ronald Reagan and both President Bushes treated the Oval Office with tremendous respect. They treated the Office of the Presidency with tremendous respect. And some of that respect was reflected in how they expected people to behave, how they expected them to dress when they walked into the symbol of freedom for the world, the Oval Office. And yes, I'm disappointed to see the casual, laissez faire, short sleeves, no shirt and tie, no jacket, kind of locker room experience that seems to be taking place in this White House and the Oval Office."



I nearly spit out my coffee as I read Mr. Card’s words this morning.

Now, I am no psychologist, but allow me a moment of long-distance diagnosis here. President Obama seems to me to be a man who is supremely confident. He is not cocky. He is not obnoxious. He is not a braggart. He simply knows that he has what it takes to lead the United States, (and, by extension, the World), through these perilous economic times.

He has no need to hide behind the trappings of the office. He doesn’t need to place 220 years of tradition and history between himself and everyone else in order to command respect. He will be respected, (if indeed he IS respected,) for what he says and, more importantly, for what he DOES.

Mr. Card claims the Oval Office is “the symbol of freedom for the world.” This is the line that practically had me needing a new keyboard and screen—under President Bush the Oval Office has been seen as a symbol of closed-door meetings, abuse of Presidential authority, DISrespect for the actual symbol of freedom—the United States Constitution—and general ineptitude. President George W. Bush had a different kind of confidence than President Obama. President Bush’s confidence seems to be that of the man who is constantly out to prove himself. At his core, I think he knows that he was out of his depth and therefore he had to adopt his swagger and his outsize cockiness. Deep down, he had more doubts about himself then we did.

Just as some would make desecration of the flag a crime because they elevate the symbol itself (the flag) over the ideals it stands for (freedom of expression), Andrew Card and President Bush have mistaken the symbol for the thing itself. This mistake gives evidence of their inability to see much below the surface and points out some of the possible reasons for their eight years of ineptitude.

I for one am glad we have a President who can see through the surface and get to the heart of the matter. There is some especially hard work required at this moment in our history and to get it done, President Obama and his advisors will need to take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I have been running on the Farmington Canal trail through Hamden a lot recently. Isabel has gymnastics class several times a week and the trail is a short drive from her gym. This gives me two or three excellent opportunities in the midst of an often-busy workweek to get out and run four or five miles without feeling like I should be somewhere else, doing something else.

Since the New Year, I have seen the same hawk, perched in the same tree, each time I have run the trail. The time of day is always the same, the tree is always the same, and the bird is always the same. I am not really sure how I even saw it the first time. It sits so still and its mottled feathers match the bark of the trunk it tucks up against so perfectly that it is sometimes hard to spot, even though I now know exactly where to look.

I have gotten to the point that I now stop and say hi to the bird. (My daughter thinks this is slightly crazy.)

Each time I have run the trail these past three weeks, it has been cold and often it has been snowy. There have been very few other humans out there in that oddly beautiful little valley running through some fairly developed neighborhoods near some heavily trafficked roads. I have had a lot of time and space and quiet to let my mind wander the way it will during a good run.

Where my mind has wandered lately is to the idea of “change.” New Year’s resolutions are all about making changes. Barack Obama ran hard on the notion of making necessary changes. My wife and I have been contemplating what sorts of changes to make in our lives.

Yet, the status quo has such power and things can feel so frozen.

As I run through that valley and hear the stream gurgling through the snow-covered rocks, it feels like winter will not end. Actually, that doesn’t quite explain the feeling. Rather than winter not ever ending, it feels as if the changes the Earth and Sun need to go through to make winter turn to spring will never happen. It is not a feeling of hopelessness, but rather one of powerlessness. Spring absolutely WILL happen. There is just nothing I can do to make it happen any sooner. And as a result, winter feels like the permanent state of affairs.

A few days ago I thought about getting the hawk’s opinion on this idea but when I stopped to try, one look at him told me he would not understand. One look at him told me that he is patience personified, (or should I say “avified?) That hawk would not want to make spring come any sooner. That hawk is waiting. It is what he does. He waits. Spring comes.

How Is A President Like a Window?

Our house in Trumansburg had stupid windows. There is really no other way to put it. The windows were too high up the wall and they were hinged at the top, so that they swung out and away from the house. Only thing was, there was a screen on the interior that had to swing inward a fair amount before you could even get at the outer window to push it out. The interior screens were not attached well, so they would sometimes fall in on your head (or shoulder or neck or back) as you struggled to reach the outer window and pull it shut. As I said—stupid windows.

So when we moved to Connecticut we were very focused on the windows of each house we looked at. We knew we would NOT put up with windows as dumb as the ones in Trumansburg. After much looking, we ended up buying a house in East Haven. The house was 100 years old, but it had been stripped down and re-done entirely, including new double-paned, insulated windows. They were amazing. They slid up and down. They locked easily without risk of concussion or death. They even tilted in for easier cleaning of the outer glass. Entirely NOT stupid.

We LOVED our new house, simply because it was NOT our old house. Just one problem—the neighborhood was, as they say, not the best. Our immediate neighbors were a court-ordered GPS-ankle-braceleted, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking eighth-grader and her heroin-addicted mom. The park on the corner where we went to use the swing set and monkey bars had used syringes and tiny ziplock baggies preferred by drug dealers lying in the sand all around the play structures. My three-year-old, Isabel, called it the “broken glass playground” to differentiate it from the “giant playground” that was a mile away and much cleaner.

After two years in that great house, we said goodbye to our perfect windows and moved again. By the time we made this second move in Connecticut, we were less focused on windows and much more focused on location, location, location. So now our house has drafty old inefficient windows, but it is in the perfect spot for us. The neighbors are friendly, there is a great park nearby, and we are both very close to work. None of our immediate neighbors is on probation.

We love our new neighborhood, simply because it is NOT our old neighborhood.

*************************

America is about to discover the joys of a new President. In the long run, Barack Obama may prove to be a great President. Time will tell. But in the short run, he is sure to benefit from the same dynamic that Erica and I experienced with our windows and our neighborhood. At first his approval ratings will be high simply because he is NOT George Bush.

Has ever a president been so unloved by so many for so long? All Barack Obama has to do is speak in full sentences, pronounce the word “nuclear” as it is spelled, listen to advisors who are willing to tell him the many sides and shades of an issue, and show some fiscal prudence. If he does these things, he will be wildly popular for a while.


Of course, at some point our collective memory of George Bush will fade away and we will begin evaluate Obama on his own, without the lame Bush yardstick as the measure of the man. But until then, it will be pretty easy for Barack Obama to look good. Again, all he has to do is NOT be George Bush. And he has been doing that for at least 47 years already.

Some in the moderate, thoughtful Right —Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell—are already on board. Barack Obama has their respect and their wary enthusiasm on his side.

Those on the rabid radical right are already guarding against the coming confiscation of their guns and the (continued) nationalization of the banking and energy industries, (beyond what George Bush, Henry Paulson, and Sarah Palin have already done in Washington and Alaska). When, on January 21st, 2009, the fringe right still have their guns and capitalism still exists in America, Barack Obama will have proven himself to be a better President than these people feared. Slowly, they will drift in his direction as they are surprised again and again by his moderation and bipartisanship.

When the inevitable drop in approval ratings does happen, I predict that rather than those who didn’t vote for President Obama being the most disappointed, it will instead be the far left who will start to be dissatisfied first. Many in the far left have come to see Barack Obama as some kind of savior. Carrying their huge expectations, he can’t fail to disappoint. He will not institute national health care in the first three months. He will not do away with the military’s Don’t Ask—Don’t Tell policy in his first year. He will not push for the arrest of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld on war crimes charges. He will not vocally back the fight for the right to gay marriage.

It is the fire-breathing, bomb-throwing true believers who will be most disapproving of President Obama. They have projected onto him all of their wildest hopes and dreams of “revenge governance” and he is just not that sort of man. When Senator Obama gave his speech on race in Philadelphia back in March, I became convinced that he was the man for the job. His speech showed that he is clear-eyed and sees not through the distorting lenses of fierce partisanship but instead through the sharpening lens of pragmatism.

After eight years of inept leadership, America has many problems for President Obama to address. And rather than using his first term to settle partisan scores and yank the country far to the left, President Obama will govern from just-left-of-middle and simply get a LOT done. Maybe he doesn’t have an MBA from Harvard, but the man knows how to manage. He is just what we need right now—a leader who is NOT George Bush.

A Place Called Hope

I am a teacher and a firm rationalist. I work hard to get my students to go beyond their initial reactions to things in order to examine WHY they feel the way they do. I admit that this can sometimes be a fool’s errand, since humans are notoriously opaque—especially to ourselves. But our opacity is no reason to settle for the surface.

Which is why I find myself admitting somewhat sheepishly that my bottom line reason for supporting Barack Obama is that he makes me feel hopeful.

There. I have said it out loud. I like the way Barack Obama makes me feel. I always have, from the first time I saw him speak. If I am fully honest with myself, I have to admit that it wasn’t WHAT he even said so much as how I felt as he was speaking. Later, as his campaign picked up steam, I started paying closer attention to his policy positions and was happy to find that I agreed with him on many issues.

But even if I hadn’t, I get the feeling I might have convinced myself that I did.

My reaction to Senator Obama tells me a lot about my state of mind over the past four years. I am an optimist who still believes firmly in the innate goodness of people when they are led by a leader who appeals to our finer natures instead of one who plays upon our fears.

Ever since September 11, 2001 I have felt that our President is simply scared poopless. He is way out of his depth and his reaction to the slaughter of innocent Americans on 9/11 has been one of endless fear. He is afraid of another attack. He is afraid of appearing weak. He is afraid of asking anyone for help. He is afraid he will be shown for the shallow party boy he is.

And he has found that his fear is useful. He has found that spreading his fear—amplifying what we already felt and even turning his fear into OUR fear--keeps him in office. Well, I don’t want to be afraid. In fact, I refuse to be afraid. And I certainly don’t want a President who makes all of his decisions in fear.

Barack Obama is not afraid. In this long campaign for the Presidency—first against Hillary Clinton and now against John McCain and the vaunted right wing electoral apparatus—Barack Obama has been poised and steady. He is not afraid of anything they throw at him. And he would not be afraid of anything circumstances, (or the Iranians), would throw at him as President.

I agree with Barack Obama’s health care proposals, his plan for removing combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, his tax reductions for 95% of U.S. Taxpayers. I agree with most of his positions. But honestly, I will vote for Barack Obama in three weeks because he makes me feel hopeful. I get the sense that many, if not most, Americans are tired of living in fear.

We want to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and face the future knowing that it won’t be easy. There are a lot of problems that we have been avoiding for too long. It is time to stop avoiding the future and to start shaping it in a way that is good for our citizens, the country, and the world.

I trust Barack Obama to have the guts to do that. I don’t think that the John McCain of the past three months has it in him to get down to business and do what is needed.

Idealism vs. Realism

I have been reading many different writers’ laments about Barack Obama and his charge to the center lately. The writers question Senator Obama’s stances on capital punishment for sex offenders, amnesty for telecommunication companies that helped the government eavesdrop illegally on American citizens, and the Supreme Court’s recent second amendment decision, to name just a few of the bones of contention.
I understand the disappointment these writers are giving vent to; I can even commiserate with them on some of his shifts. But I refuse to share in their disapproval of the Senator from Illinois.
The past eight years have been an unmitigated national disaster. President Bush has set the bar to a new low for presidential performance. But we need to remember that George Bush was already four years into his catastrophic tenure when he was re-elected in 2004. He managed to defeat John Kerry not because of the strength of his record, the force of his intellect, or the power of his personality on the campaign trail. He managed to defeat John Kerry because John Kerry ran a god-awful campaign.
Barack Obama is a smart man and a skilled campaigner. He used his organizational strength and his eloquence to defeat a heavily favored Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. He knows what he is doing. It is not the Democratic base that is going to win the general election for Senator Obama. It is the large, increasingly nervous and frustrated center that will give him the landslide he will most surely earn in November.
To reach that large group of voters in the middle, Barack Obama must spend some time emphasizing those positions of his that are more moderate. To complain about his tack to the middle is to place ideological purity above electoral success. There will be time for idealism when President Obama is sworn in on January 20, 2009. First, he needs to win the election, and the way he will do that is not by preaching to the choir but instead by proselytizing the unconverted.