Archive for the ‘Washington’ tag
Time to Mothball the White House and Go On The Road, Mr. President
Make some travel plans, Mr. Obama
People are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.
Which is about as close to coherence as the populist groundswell is likely to get. The President’s failure to get ahead of the tidal wave has really hurt him. His Spock-like reasonableness has not served him well. His soaring rhetoric is falling on deaf ears. Worse still, after the debacle in Massachusetts, tomorrow’s State of the Union address and the administration’s worrying signs of rightward retrenchment are unlikely to improve the President’s standing.
There are a ton of bold solutions out there in opinion-land. Many of them make great sense, but as our politics rushes headlong into an ephemeral haze, symbolism might be as – if not more – important than substance.
My interest is in stopping the rot that seems to be invading the psyche of this young adminsistration, which seems like a hot-shot rookie that’s just hit his first batting slump and just can’t seem to find a way out.
To continue the baseball metaphor, it’s often ideas out of left field that end the slump. A bunt single that you leg out, a goattee grown or shaved, the blessing of your favorite bat by your favorite zen master.
So in the spirit of strange, I suggest the President give the following a shot.
Mothball the White House. What? I hear you say. Yup. Leave it behind, and go on a “Main Street” road trip. Run your office out of Air Force One as you tour the country for six months. Go to the diners, gas stations and big box stores. Talk to the people, and hear what life’s really like in this recession. Find out what they want, ask their advice, and conduct the people’s business on the road.
What would this “Main Street Tour” achieve? A huge amount. It would put the President back in campaign mode where he’s at his best. It would represent the ‘change’ in the way politics is done. It would enable a dispassionate president to find his passion and connect with the people. And it would enable him to recapture some of the populist wind that’s been owned – absurdly – by Scott Brown and his truck, “Independent Conservatives”, the rest of GOP and of course Tea Party Loons.
And what’s the message that he’s got to take along with him? Tax incentives to create jobs. Oh, and sticking it Wall Street with regulation that will protect America from any future rapaciousness by the “fat cats”.
Israel’s Future is in America’s Hands
how can we help them? by being bold and brave.
“I don’t accept the term “Jewish Lobby”, tweeted William Daroff, Vice President for Public Policy at the United Jewish Communties. The American Jewish community is incredibly powerful, economically, and politically, but wisely doesn’t want that power to be categorized in easily pejorative terms.
At the heart of the mission of Jewish organizations that have a political presence in Washington is strengthening US-Israel relations, but as Mr. Daroff makes clear that mission remains limited for the most part to what happens Stateside. The American Jewish Community doesn’t have favorites between the left, center or right of Israeli politics. “It’s up to the Israeli electorate. It’s not my role in the Diaspora to tell them who their leaders should be”, says Mr. Daroff.
There has always been a sharp cultural divide between Jews who live in Israel, and those who live in the rest of the world, (known as the “diaspora”), and Mr. Daroff makes clear that Diaspora Jews shouldn’t have a say in how Israel is run. “We don’t interfere in the elections of others, just as I don’t want them interfering in American elections.”
But in many respects American Jews already do have an undue influence. Home to more Jews than in Israel itself, about six and a half million, American Jews care deeply about defending the State of Israel and their votes, and financial contributions, in Presidential and Congressional elections increasingly reflect that concern. Nobody denies that representatives from the US Jewish community watch the White House and Congress very carefully and try to maintain firm US support for Israel. That support comes in the form of an aid package worth $2.5 billion in 2007, mostly in the form of a military grant, and cements the single most important strategic alliance in the Middle East.
Despite White House concerns over the years that Israel is not doing its part to push forward the Middle East peace process, the idea of removing or substantially reducing the aid package is a third rail. Doing so would unleash an uproar against the incumbent President and would never be sanctioned by Congress. Which is unfortunate, because it’s the only bargaining chip the US has that Israel really cares about.
The idea that American Jewish groups would support or not oppose a US move to remove aid from Israel seems laughable now, but there may be more to the idea than meets the eye. And here’s why.
Israel is at a historical crossroads. It has three choices. Read the rest of this entry »
Time For A Change – China Policy
has china really changed that much?
Sometimes it takes an aging rock band to make a great point. Take Guns n’ Roses new album, its first for seventeen years. The band’s insightful leader created a fabulous oxymoron, bringing together the words “Chinese” and “Democracy” for it’s title. Now that’s comedy.
The Chinese authorities did what they always do in these situations and censored everything about the album they could get away with at the same time as lashing out at the band for its insulting stance on the People’s Republic. How dare some old rock stars attack China’s non-democracy?
But does the vast plastic toy police state protesteth just a little too much? The irony seems completely lost on most of the world’s leaders, who are busy toadying to the Chinese to keep them buying the mountain of freshly issued Western debt. The British have backtracked on their decades-long fudge about Chinese control of Tibet to appease Beijing, and America, which has been pushing democracy like Avon pushes makeup is simply too scared to issue any kind of statement about censorship or human rights abuses in China. We allowed them into the World Trade Organization even though they brazenly broke its rules before and after they joined. Slowly but surely, we seem to be handing China superpower status on a plate. Another word for it is appeasement. And just like back in Munich in 1938, it strikes me as a very bad idea. Read the rest of this entry »