Last night, Barack Obama finally put the hurt on the Republicans. Listening to Senator John Kyl’s floundering and blustering at the State of the Union address shows that it clearly hit home. Obama did what he had to do. He diverted blame for the economic shit sandwich firmly to the Bush Administration and told America that he hated the bank bailout in no uncertain terms. His frank, confident tone was a breath of fresh air, a pleasant surprise that left us wondering, where his this guy been for the last year?

It took the shock of the Massachusetts upset to get the President thinking he needed to be speaking the people’s language. And he did just that. It’s a long shot to suggest that a single speech will change the course of events in a significant way, but it could – if it’s the beginning of a full-on, sustained populist campaign. The speech was peppered with great sound bites, but one of the themes I was impressed by (partly because I’ve been touting the idea for 18months) was the idea that the government should be run like the American family. Bringing the business of government down to a human level is always a great idea with voters.

In my last post, I suggested that the President get on the road, work out of Air Force One, and talk to the people in this country that are really hurting. Getting into campaign mode, at the same time as attacking Wall Street,  pushing the “good for business” aspects of Healthcare reform and other stimulus efforts, as well as enacting serious efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis will really help. As for the deficit, the message is a smart one. Let’s cut it! Except that we can’t in any meaningful way – and because economic recovery will do the job far better. People (who’ve wholeheartedly drunk Reaganomic kool-aid) like the idea.  But deep down they know that actually cutting the deficit during the dark times would hurt them so they aren’t really interested in actually doing it.

Keep it up, Mr. President. Don’t make this a one shot lighter.

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Take a listen, study the lyrics.

Tumble outta bed

Dolly in "9 to 5". Her fellow secretaries were played by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, at the time two of the most politically progressive actors in Hollywood.

And stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
Yawnin, stretchin, try to come to life
Jump in the shower
And the blood starts pumpin
Out on the streets
The traffic starts jumpin
And folks like me on the job from 9 to 5
Chorus:

Workin 9 to 5
What a way to make a livin
Barely gettin by
Its all takin
And no givin
They just use your mind
And they never give you credit
Its enough to drive you
Crazy if you let it

9 to 5, for service and devotion
You would think that i
Would deserve a fair promotion
Want to move ahead
But the boss won’t seem to let me in
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me
Mmmmm…

They let your dream
Just to watch ‘em shatter
You’re just a step
On the boss mans ladder
But you got dreams he’ll never take away

On the same boat
With a lot of your friends
Waitin’ for the day
Your ship’ll come in
And the tides gonna turn
An its all gonna roll your way

2nd chorus:

9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
There’s a better life
And you think that I would daunt you
Its a rich mans game
No matter what they call it
And you spend your life
Going funny if you want it

3rd chorus:

9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
Theres a better life
And you dream that I would daunt you
Its a rich mans game
No matter what they call it
And you spend your life
Going funny if you want it

It’s a song about unfounded hope, and unblinkered reality. It’s a song about exploitation, expendability, and redundancy. It’s a song about a system that’s trapped us, a system that as recently proved simply doesn’t work.

The Reagan Revolution didn’t just change our economic priorities. It changed us philosophically and spiritually, Americans, too. We became more shallow, more individualistic, more selfish, more interested in conspicuous consumption and less interested in the communitas and its welfare. We decried the social contract as a burden on our freedom, and saw poverty as weakness.  Now, in these dark times,  we may be suffering from the hubris of our arrogant wilfullness, succumbing as we did to easy credit, and simplistic marketing, and believing that those prettly little kleenex and spit houses we bought with money we didn’t have were actually worth what we were told they were worth.

The movie “9 to 5″ came out in 1980, the year that Ronald Reagan was elected on a promise to bring “morning to America” Nearly thirty years later, that morning has turned into something darker, more determined, more malicious than we ever imagined. Will today’s new reality shift our priorities, and make us realize that the behemoth of growth, progress and wealth was founded on very little, and has perhaps been fundamentally punctured? Will reality change us, will it make us reflect perhaps on how easily we allowed ourselves to be led?

I doubt it. But if we don’t, we may not learn the lesson that may be the only path to recovery. The need to recognize our weaknesses.

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a fresh faced bill clinton in 1993. he came from hope, he ended up nowhere.

In 1993 Clinton arrived on a heady wave of enthusiasm, dedicated to undoing some of the excesses of Reaganism. He made a few stumbles, he announced a sweeping healthcare initiative and he got nowhere. There are many reasons for his failure. The sheer newness of the administration, presentation issues, and this – he got very limited support from a Democratically controlled Congress. That opened the door for Gingrich’s charges of stasis and corruption that led to the Contract for America, and sweeping mid-term victories. That broadly was the end of the Clinton Administration as an effective liberally-driven government. It’s the main reason that the Reagan Revolution was not shattered. Clinton became merely a painful interregnum.

Cut to 15 years later.  Obama is getting it right. The budget is a great document, the bipartisan experiment is over, the decision to leave troops behind in Iraq is correct, and the healthcare, energy, and education agendas are on course. Now it’s up to the Democratically elected Congress to respond. Obama’s charm offensive is wasted on the GOP. Obama appears to have realized that. The true targets of his charm offensive should be members of his own Senate caucus with a more conservative viewpoint.

By making an end run around the Democrats in the Senate by courting Snowe and Collins of Maine, Obama will be able to skewer Blue Dog Democrats with the charge of obstructionism, and privately at least, be able to warn them of what could happen if they let him down. Obama is a student of history, and he knows better than anyone what happened to Clinton.

The GOP is winging it’s way to virtual irrelevance, thankfully, with the exception of the tiny rump of Republican moderates in the Senate. The success of the Obama administration rests on many factors, but the willingness of Democrats in the Senate to hold fast will be a key element. Let’s put the majority whip to work, and hope that Obama makes his displeasure clear, public and effective in dealing with recalcitrants in his own party. They must tow the line – or face the historical legacy that they opened the door to yet another conservative backlash, with all the destruction and injustice that would usher in.

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potus has his brain in gear.

There are an awful lot of liberals breathing easier after the release of President Obama’s first budget. Krugman, who had been as close to castigating the President as any columnist on the left was almost unequivocally supportive. The budget’s focus on healthcare and education as key to our long term economic revival as well as boosting the middle class in a meaningful and intelligent way is a great starting point for recalibrating American economic and social policy. It sets up a battle royal with the Republicans, and will put Obama’s political savvy on the line. Rahm Emmanuel will also get battle-tested for the first time. Convincing Blue Dog Democrats of the need for a fundamental shift away from Reaganomics and its terrible legacy will be tough, but Obama is starting to display the calm under fire that suggests it can be done.

It’s been mentioned before on this blog, but you’ll be hearing an awful lot about The Two Ladies of Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. At least one of them is required to beat the inevitable GOP filibuster.  Maine’s two senators are about to become the most important people in the history of the state. They are sure to drive a hard bargain as they together become the last vestige of Obama’s short dalliance with bipartisanship.

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For a President apparently more politically savvy than most on arrival in the White House, he let himself down badly. He forgot that Bipartisanship BS is only meant to be trotted out for winning elections. After they’re over, you kick the losers when they’re down. But Obama’s flaw is that he hates the idea of being hated. So instead, the President got an earful of whining from the GOP who had ample opportunity to diss the plan, and Obama ends up looking like an unconvincin blowhard, after only a week on the job.

The lesson of the day is pretty simple. The GOP is more right-wing, doctrinaire and disagreeable than ever. They’re MO is very simple. If the President had ignored them they would have bleated on that nobody listens. If the President gives them the time of day, they give him the finger. Neither apporach is without costs, but the former is a far better alternative, considering that right now Republicans are more discredited than at virtually any time since Roosevelt.

Politics is not a pretty business. It never was and it never will be. The sooner Obama realizes that the better, because right now he’s at risk of becoming a victim of his own magnanimity. Most kids learn it in the school yard. There are certain people that are just dangerous to be friends with. Obama apparently missed that memo.

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i want to be loved...

Obama is leading like a President who wants to be loved. In case he hasn’t noticed, he’s about as loved and admired as anyone can be without levitating.

It’s time to try something a little different. Like leading.

This morning the President announced that he’d ordered the EPA to ‘review’ the block on California’s strict emission regulations.

Everybody knows what that review is going to do. It’s going to remove the block on California’s strict emission regulations. By delaying he just gives his enemies a chance to rally their lobbyists.

Last week, Obama met with GOP house leaders and asked for their input on the economic stimulus package.

Everyone knew what was going to happen. The GOP did give Obama their input. It consisted of a single finger. With America on the brink in so many respects, we really don’t have time to chit chat, especially with a Republican party that’s on the verge of marginalizing itself. What they say isn’t important. We need to ignore them. That will make them look even more truculent and outmoded than ever.

The trend here is simple. Obama wants his enemies to be his friends. That’s very sweet, but it’s going to get frustrating real fast.

I’ve been hearing an awful lot of talk these days about how Obama is using bipartisanship as a Trojan horse to get good policies through the quagmire.

Not going to work. There isn’t a quagmire. We run the show. With the help of Senators Spector, Collins, and Snowe, and a strong whip in the Senate, we have total filibuster-proof control. The days when preventing the tyranny of the majority are gone. Bipartisanship is only good when the other side agree to what you want to do your way.

Now is not the time for offering compromises. We won. They lost. It’s our turn to lead. And if the people don’t like it. They can vote us out next time.

It’s called democracy.

I once directed a feature film. The experience taught me more about leadership than anything I’ve ever done. These are the rules; 1. Keep your mouth shut unless it matters. 2. Be decisive. 3. Keep it brief. 4. Never ask for advice. Keep your game face on. 5. Forget about being liked.

Great film directors are not nice people on set.

Presidents are always on set.

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aren't they sweet together. not

Rick Warren is a more agreeable and far smarter version of Focus on the Family’s repugnant James Dobson. If you’re going to try and turn the country into some kind of boring Christian nation, you don’t harangue people to do it, like Dobson. You have to jolly them towards the Rapture, with a Starbucks latte and a good time.

Warren is, sadly, a very influential man in certain quarters. He will look upon his appearance at Obama’s inauguration as a huge victory for his roly-poly propaganda approach. He’ll stir up his troops in favor of the new President, he’ll be able to show nice pix of him blessing the new Prez, and he’ll be able to say, look what kind of influence I have. It’s a huge ego trip for him.

Oh, and he’s being used by Obama quite brilliantly.

Progressives whine about the distasteful quality of Warren blessing the new boss, but to use a phrase from Obama’s playbook, “they just don’t get it”. If ever there was a sign that Obama might just be talking bipartisan BS, rather than believing in it, this may be it. He chose to have Warren at the Inauguration, not because he likes the guy, but because he wants to get the support of the millions of people in Republican congressional districts and states for his agenda. Sure, he  uses the political cover of “disagreeing without being disagreeable” as political cover, but this is effective GOP busting politics. Just imagine, the President runs up a policy that the GOP in Congress just hates. They vow to crush the initiative, filibuster, you name it. Then the emails start coming in. “Obama is a great Christian, and he’s a friend of Rick”. “If it’s good enough for Rick, it’s good enough for us, and on and on.” Suddenly, the ground under the average GOP footsoldier in the house is gone, and he’s softening his line on that progressive initiative.

Voila.

And what about Rick? Having been duped, does he backslide and look thoroughly un-Christian about the President, or does he accept the fact that he’s been out-maneuvered. My guess is that Warren’s ego is too important to the guy for him to risk even looking remotely bad, so he’ll probably go along with the gag to look good.

Politics is not a pretty business. Obama’s already told us he’s happy talking to the enemy. Most people think he means Ahmadinajad, but Rick Warren qualifies too. Progressives need to get a sense of the real world, rather than hanging their hats on issues the whole time.

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i speak with forked tongue

Before Mitch McConnell uttered the phrase above, he made sure to try to separate the bailout of the auto industry from the bailout of the financial industry. The financial bailout he said, was to shore up the entire economy. The auto bailout would support a single industry.

But McConnell’s cries of selectivism should fall on deaf ears. The US Auto Industry is no ordinary industry. It represents a big chunk of our albeit shrinking manufacturing output. It’s not as if the aluminum siding, or the garden furniture industries were looking for federal handouts. We’re talking about cars here. You can’t walk five yards in this country without seeing fifty. If the US car industry were to fail it would impact millions of Americans, would crush a thousand companies that rely on the Big Three, would severely impact the world auto industry, and would dig us deeper into recession.The truth is that sometimes principles have to suffer. But it’s not as if McConnell and his fellow Republicans can make any claim on ideological purity when it comes to subsidies.

America has been hedging againt failure with subsidies for years with handouts to the weak and the strong. In McConnell’s home state of Kentucky, the state coffers shelled out six figures per job to become home to Toyota, and for many years received the largesse of the Feds for the Tobacco industry. Without agricultural subsidies, US agro-business would have to compete on the world markets without handouts. We’ve been shelling out cash to the Oil companies too. And more recently, Hank Paulson and his Goldman lackeys hijacked the public coffers to save Fannie and Freddie, AIG, and biggest and best of all Citigroup. Without the public dollar, Citi would have been recession roadkill weeks ago. So it’s hard to see where the GOP Senate Caucus get off suggesting that the US taxpayer shouldn’t be asked to subsidize failure.

The GOP’s grasp on logic has always been tenuous at best, but their weasel-words in this case are simply craven. They make no attempt to look at the big picture. They just see this as an opportunity to break the UAW, which while it shares the blame is not the problem right now. This is a management issue. They make no attempt to see that the pitiful amount the Auto Industry is seeking is nothing next to the vast sea of cash that’s been made available for Vikram Pandit and the other Wall Street losers. And they don’t see that the structure of the deal is hardly a bailout – it’s  rather onerous loan at best. Worst of all is the White House announcement that they’ll consider using some of the TARP funds to help the Auto Industry, end running McConnell and his good-ol-boys (If the Auto Industry isn’t the definition of a “troubled asset”, I don’t know what is).  Perhaps McConnell’s “strategy”, if indeed it can be graced with the term, is to try and scupper the ‘bailout’ now, before January 20 rolls around and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are pushing an Obama supported bridge loan for the Auto Industry over the Senate filibuster line. Either way, McConnell and his knuckle-draggers are the personification of why the GOP are utterly bankrupt.

Hopefully GM won’t suffer a similar fate.

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i'm better now

God gave us free will. But he also has a plan. So goes the tautology at the heart of Evangelical Christianity. It’s a religious belief based on the fact that everyone can be saved and forgiven, no matter what your position in life or transgression.

That is particularly convenient if you happen to be a disgraced evangelical preacher trying to make a comeback. In fact, it makes the repentance all the sweeter. If some nobody who’s done not that much repents, it’s nice but it’s not news.

If the guy who ran your mega-church and is a big Evangelical honcho gets tangled up with allegations of meth and male prostitutes, now that right there is big news. Forgiving a guy who’s done an awful lot of forgiving is just the kind of challenge that Evangelicals like, you know, to show the unwashed what fabulous, selfless people they are.

The evangelical moral code is indeed a tad twisted. Their double standards are legion. They castigate the moral failings of people outside their world ( the guys who are getting left behind when the rapture drops), but when it comes to their own, “it’s time to forgive”. Perhaps that explains why so many shady egocentrics with a gift for public speaking are drawn to the Evangelical church. The more you transgress, the more it loves you. The further you fall, the more it wants to nurture you back to spiritual, and ahem, financial health.

The cycle of destruction and rebirth is a dramatic ritual in the Evangelical community. Moral failure is fundamentalist. In fact, it can’t do without it. The Bible Belt is all about saving people from abortion and being gay, as well as being divorce and teen pregnancy central. But it’s a shame that it has to foist its Freudian mess on the rest of the country, as if it has something to teach us about forgiveness.

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will it fly?

You got to love the press. When they get a word or phrase in their heads they just can’t stop using it. Just after Obama won, the word was “transformative”, as in way transformative election. This week, as Obama starts to put together his cabinet and prepare for government, the word is “trial balloon”.

Here’s a great example of an Obama trial balloon. Yesterday, before Obama confirmed that Eric Holder was to be the new Attorney General, the information about Holder was leaked along with a caveat. That Obama wanted to see whether the black mark against Holder’s name ( that he had signed off on the pardon of Marc Rich on the last day of the Clinton presidency ), would be held against him by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he wanted to make sure his Attorney General nominee had broad bipartisan support. The answer came through that the GOP Senators on the committee didn’t have a problem with Holder, so the trial balloon was turned into a big red, white and blue balloon that everyone can be proud of. Sounds smart, right? Maybe not.

Trial balloons are not the kind of thing that a bold fellow would worry about. The truth is that Obama could nominate Eric Holder and know that he’s going to be confirmed by the Democratic Majority, even if every GOP Senator just hates the guy. He’s an experienced, highly able guy, who seems to have the chops necessary to mend the broken reputation of the Justice Department. But for some reason, with the wind at his back, handsome majorities in both houses, Obama still wanted to make sure that the GOP was happy.

This does not bode well. For two reasons. Firstly, now is not the time to be allowing your judgment to be colored by the party you roundly defeated only a few weeks ago, and secondly, if Obama thinks that the GOP won’t try and undermine him the first time that something they don’t like comes to the floor, he’s got another thing coming. Being nice in politics is a ticket to disappointment.

So far Obama’s been one big trial balloon. He hasn’t done much without sniffing the air first. We have to hope that this is not a sign of things to come.

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