President Barack Obama gave a solid speech last night, carefully explaining his policies and proposing new plans for helping the middle class.
The trouble is that nobody will remember it in a month.
Presidential speeches come in two types: those few that are enduring, and those many that do little more than fill a news cycle. The enduring ones have several things in common: they are generally made in a time of crisis, and they outline themes that constitute a hallmark of the presidency. For instance, in March 1947 President Harry Truman summarized the strategy of containment against the Soviet Union, which would guide U.S. policy for decades to come.
State of the Union addresses almost never fit either condition. One exception was in 2002, when President George W. Bush coined the term "Axis of Evil" - which for better or worse came to symbolize his administration's policies. But other than that lone exception, not a single address (out of the hundreds given) has made any impression upon history.
Mr. Obama's speech was not particularly memorable, either. It was not meant to be. The speech focused primarily on domestic issues like jobs and education; stuff like this a great speech does not make. There are probably at least fivespeechesthe presidenthas madewhich overshadow this one (funny how most of them were written by Obama himself). Indeed, I doubt that half the people at my college even knew that there was the State of the Union address yesterday.
Like last year's address, this year's will probably be quickly overshadowed by other news. Its likely that even the most politically passionate can't recall a word of the 2009 quasi-State of the Union. And as for the 2008 address - most people probably don't even remember Mr. Bush making it.
Even a few hours later, President Obama receiving the Peace Prize is still surprising. Leaving aside the aspirational argument for the award, which Adam discussed earlier today, and the important messaging behind the award, which I discussed earlier, here is a quick at the pro and con arguments:
Pro There have been some tangible accomplishments President Obama has made toward a more peaceful world. These include:
Starting the process of removing all American troops from Iraq by December 2011;
Halting the plan for a "missile shield" in Eastern Europe;
Boosting the cause of multilateral diplomacy through responses to the world financial crisis in the G-20, engaging Iran on nuclear power, arriving at a strategic arms reduction agreement with Russia. applying pressure on Israel over expanded settlements, and advancing international climate change talks.
Banning the use of torture by the United States military, and starting the process of closing Guantanamo Bay.
Con Then again...
Increasing the United States troop levels in Afghanistan arguably should have made President Obama ineligible for the Peace Prize. It is very difficult to accept that a prize for peace should go to a world leader who is escalating a war and continuing tactics that have resulted in both civilian deaths and a major refugee crisis.
The ongoing reduction in United States carbon emissions has been caused as much by the economic downturn and local / state laws than anything the Obama administration did. Further, it is far from guaranteed either that the final version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act will actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or that the Copenhagen climate summit will yield a new climate change agreement.
Starting the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is more the doing of the Iraq government than anything else. All the United States is doing is not breaking a security agreement with another government.
It could be argued that the missile shield was cancelled because we didn't have the money for it as much as any other reason.
A new diplomatic approach is great, but has it has not yielded many tangible results yet. We should not emphasize process over accomplishments.
Those who developed the torture policies will not be prosecuted, and Guantanamo Bay has not actually been closed.
It has been an amazing week in Iran, and you are no doubt seeing images that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago.
For most of us, Iran has been a country about which we know very little...which, obviously, makes it tough to put the limited news we're getting into a proper context.
The goal of today's conversation is to give you a bit more of an "insider look" at today's news; and to do that we'll describe some of the risks Iranian bloggers face as they go about their business, we'll meet a blogging Iranian cleric, we'll address the issue of what tools the Iranians use for Internet censorship and the companies that could potentially be helping it along, and then we'll examine Internet traffic patterns into and out of Iran.
Finally, a few words about, of all things, how certain computer games might be useful as tools of revolution.
Obama's speech in Cairo (transcript) was hailed around the world by virtually everyone, except, as Rachel Maddow noted, for the trogdolite right. So why not have a foreign policy that's actually consistent with its main themes and main thrust, rather than one that continues Bush/Cheney policy with a "kinder, gentler" veneer? In his speech, Obama said:
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind.
Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.
Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" - a term that usually means al-Qaeda - but locals also said that three children lost their lives....
Eight people died when missiles hit a compound near Mir Ali, an al-Qaeda hub in Pakistan's North Waziristan region. Seven more died when hours later two missiles hit a house in Wana, in South Waziristan. Local officials said the target in Wana was a guest house owned by a pro-Taleban tribesman. One said that as well as three children, the tribesman's relatives were killed in the blast.
And he has continued doing this ever since. All based on a false premise (from his Cairo speech):
Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no military -- we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.
And it never will be the case, so long as we are over there killing yet more innocents. At some level, Obama has to realize that. And yet he spouts this utter nonsense, in the midst of an otherwise brilliant and inspiring speech. There has to be a better way.
After days of confusion and denial about whether the Obama administration was officially no longer using the term "War on Terror," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that the Obama administration is no longer speaking of a "War on Terror."
"I haven't gotten any directive about using it or not using it. It's just not being used," said Clinton during a briefing with reporters aboard her plane to the Hague to attend an international conference on Afghanistan.
Given the many problems we face as a country, one might ask whether or not it matters if the administration uses the term "war on terror" or not. The answer is that yes, it obviously matters, at least a little bit. While it is not a term either President or Senator Obama used very much at all, candidate Obama told Bill O'Reilly, when asked, that he believed America was in the middle of a war on terror. If President Obama didn't feel like the term mattered at all, then he wouldn't have said that.
Now, a different question is, does it really matter that much? The answer in this case is probably not. Not only had the term become a bit of a bankrupt joke that holds little currency with people either in this country or abroad, but the real question is whether President Obama will continue the various policies associated with the GWOT. Secret prisons, declaring people "enemy combatants," torture, vastly increased defense spending, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, Iraq and Afghanistan troop deployments, etc. Beyond a name, the "war on terror" was a series of horrific policies. To end the "war on terror," you can't just drop the name. The administration must drop the policies, too.
The Apologetics are emerging en force this week, and one worth noting is Phillip Zelikow who published his attempts at self-justification over at the Foreign Policy Magazine's "Shadow Government" blog.
Unfortunately Mr Zelikow's style tends toward the very dry and impenetrable sort that pervades official Government policy presentations, like, say, the 2002 National Security Strategy, which he, along with Condi Rice and Stepehn Hadley authored and which forms the basis for his assessment of Bush's Legacy, so it's very difficult at first to for laymen as such to figure out what the fuck he is trying to say. Much easier to just sort of nod to the awareness that Bush did have a profound impact on foreign policy, point out that most of it sucked but that there is some plausible argument that some points of his policy did OK, maybe, and walk away.
But Zelikow's position is such that, when he says "What Bush Got Right," and then proceeds to frame the analysis around the policy documents he crafted, he's essentially saying, "What I, Phillip Zelikow, Got Right," and so walking away actually entails letting this man win the argument that "The Bush Doctrine"lead to some positive outcomes.
Toward the end of 2005, I wrote the following diary at My Left Wing. I'm reprinting it here without altering the few references that date it. I'm also leaving it with the somewhat too-streamlined presentation of the Powell Doctrine (which has no standard form), leaving out the explicit, separate call for ecaluating risks, costs and concequences, as well as genuinely broad international support. I want to emphasize both how sound the approach expressed is, in my view, and how long it has been not just evident, but clearly supported by evidence and individuals who command mainstream respect. I feel this is particularly necessary, given the overall blurring and lack of resolve being shown by Obama with regard to the military, foreign policy and the war on terror. Rejecting the neocon's disastrous hijacking of US foreign policy, and returning to a focus on America's core ideas and ideals should not be a polarizing, partisan idea. It should be the very definition of bi-partisanship.
Part One: Two Keys To Winning Against Terrorism
There are two keys to winning the war on terrorism. The first is to recognize that it is not a war on terrorism. It is a war of ideas, against people who use terrorism. This gives special meaning and focus to Sun Tzu's maxim from The Art of War, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
The second key is to understand the situations in which terrorism flourishes, and act to change them. We need to understand the grievances--legitimate or not--that terrorists exploit, and do what we can to address them. We must enter into a dialogue with people who feel powerless and abandoned, for terrorism appeals most strongly to those who feel they have no other way.
What had been a truce between Israel and the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip seems to have abruptly come to a halt; with the Israelis blaming Hamas and Hamas blaming Israeli oppression of the displaced Palestinians for the simmering hostilities that are now boiling over into military-scale violence.
Before the recent holidays and an immoderate amount of snow buried me in things that could not be done on the computer we had been having a conversation about the strategic importance of our relationship with Egypt. Within that series of discussions we explored the influence of the political opposition, and we considered the fragility of President Mubarak's hold on power.
We also noted the immediate proximity of Egypt to the Gaza Strip.
Today we're going to tie all of that together-and the end result of all that tying is that we better keep a close eye on Egypt, because trouble in Gaza has spilled over into trouble in Cairo....and that's one more Middle Eastern problem we don't need.
I've been holding off on even a tentative verdict regarding the transition from the lame-duck Bush to the incoming hope-duck Obama administration. Partly because I just don't know. Partly because I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. Partly because I feel like I'm cursed and that my cynicism and skepticism, coupled with my hope and pride, if made public, might just jinx everything and ruin Obama's presidency. Okay, I've obviously just been watching way too much Twin Peaks lately.
(And by "watching" I mean obsessively and consecutively beaming the entire series into my skull. And by "lately" I mean in the past three days. And by "too much" I mean not nearly enough because, honestly, Twin Peaks was a watershed moment/phenom in television and American history and in a just world ABC would still be airing new episodes once a week and showcasing the best and most unique in television writing, production, directing and acting. Oh well.)
And, partly because the Sky has been Falling for so many on the left that I just really couldn't get with the chorus of naysayers. Not because those sounding the alarms on the left are Chicken Littles and wrong about Obama being Clinton Redux - I've had the same fear - but just because homogeneity is just not my thing and always induces illustrious yawns. (At least I think they look illustrious.)
But this recent front page diary about Obama's pick for National Security Advisor by Chris just screams for my attention.
It is been but a few hours since Sarah Palin took the stage to have a conversation with Joe Biden, and of course the Nation has a ton of questions.
What will happen now?
How will we view all this in a few days?
How will it affect McCain and Obama?
I don't know...and I'm not even going to try to figure it out right this minute.
Instead, we're going to take a trip halfway across the world to a country that has been essential to understanding the Middle Eastern story, has been at the center of international conflicts time and time again...and has lessons to teach us that, if we learn them well, could make us a much smarter "Foreign Policy Nation" than we are today.
The country? Egypt.
So grab your virtual passport...and after we arrive, there are a few people I want you to meet.
This debate was Obama's whole campaign in miniature: morally ambiguous, a slew of missed opportunities for devastating blows, and a fundamental lack of a well-crafted plan, but a good-enough strategic posture smoothly executed to pull out a tie, which is all he really needed at this point in time.
As for content--coming from both sides--I think political uber-sage Sean Penn nailed it:
The result is another frustrating piece of American media that is at once far too polite, and at the same time, dismissive of an American public's need to know anything beyond jingoistic self-aggrandizement.
Boy howdy!
And Obama's missed opportunities? Descending from the Apollonian highland realm of truth and beauty to the lowlands of mere strategy, here are just a few:
But of course, Fox News and the right wing swung into action. Of course she has foreign policy experience! Alaska borders Canada! And Russia!?!
Most people seem to be laughing this one off or ignoring the charge as beneath reasonable notice. Michael Kinsley pointed out that though her state does include the Aleutians, which were occupied by the Japanese in WW2, there's no evidence that Palin herself was involved in driving Hirohito's troops from American shores.
Still, I think there's an opportunity here. Maybe it can wait a few days (and maybe her candidacy will implode before we get a chance to ask,) but I think we could actually perform some pretty nice aikido here.
We just have to get Palin to talk about her negotiations with Russia. Join me on the flip for my reasoning.
Not since the first utterance of Mission Accomplished has a politician proved himself to be so breathtakingly out of touch with reality.
This is John McCain on "This Week" with George Stephanopolous:
Steph: But there was a fundamental difference regarding the original reason to go to war [in Iraq]. He [Obama] said it would inflame the Muslim world and become a recruitment tool for Al Quaeda. You said and you wrote that it would lessen antipathy in the Muslim world and that we would be greeted as liberators. Wasn't Senator Obama right about that?
McCain: I don't believe so. We were greeted as liberators.
McCain's attacks against Obama have become so regularly contradictory, at this point we should probably hold a contest to determine which is your favorite. Here are three good ones from the last ten days alone:
So hard to choose. I kind of like all the attacks, because they successfully make Obama appear to be all things to all people. Is Obama too elite or too typical? Is he too stubborn or too flexible? Is he too extreme or too moderate? Does he engage the rest of the world too much or too little? Like the McCain campaign, I say, take your pick. Obama can be whoever you want him to be, and so he should appeal to all types.
Maybe that isn't what the McCain campaign is arguing, but it is so hard to tell that it is anyone's guess. The biggest flip-flops in this campaign are the attacks that McCain makes.
During Obama's speech in Berlin, MSNBC's political insider blog First Read put up three posts.
First, at 1:26 p.m. eastern, Jim Popkin posted an article about how conservatives are hunting for Obama's senior thesis from college.
Next, at 1:32 p.m. eastern, Bethany Thomas put up the shortest post on First Read in a couple of months, with a ten word article on McCain announcing a visit with the Dalai Lama.
Third, at 2:37 p.m., Domenico Montanaro posted an article about Obama canceling a meeting with troops in Germany, and about how the Der Speigel LiveBlog was bad for Obama.
Now, it isn't as though MSNBC as a whole is hovering between ignoring and being dismissive of the story, as Obama's speech is on the front page of their main website. However, it is illuminating that First Read, which is a main nexus of conventional wisdom punditry, is not only ignoring it, but is actually publishing stories about the conservative quest for Obama's senior thesis instead.
I take this as a sign that while the speech will be treated as a major news event, we should expect the Village to be dismissive. Further, expect them to justify this by claiming that the average voter is so utterly xenophobic, that the average voter would rather be hated by the world than embraced by it. What they won't say publicly is that they are starting to adjust their coverage in order to accommodate the attacks the McCain campaign that the Republican Noise Machine are making on their objectivity in this campaign. Let the kowtowing being.
Anyway, full text of Obama's speech in the extended entry.
I have seen some frustrated grumbling online about the negative bounce that Obama appears to be having from his overseas trip, despite the fantastic coverage and reception he has received. Pollster.com confirms this negative bounce, indicating that Obama's national lead has dropped to 2.4% from a consistent advantage of 4.4%-4.9% from mid-June through mid-July:
This trend is frustrating and worrying, but I actually think the answer is both simple and reassuring. Obama is not receiving a negative bounce from his overseas trip. Instead, McCain is closing the gap because he is heavily outspending Obama in paid advertising right now:
Rick Davis, the titular head of the McCain campaign, said on a conference call with reporters that the campaign and the RNC combined have just less than $95 million cash on hand at the end of June, and that they have been outspending Obama in advertising by almost a 3-to-1 margin since April.
"I think Obama probably made a strategic mistake by not matching our buy in June," Davis said.
The 6-8%of the electorate that can justifiably be termed "swing voters" tend not to be very high information voters. As such, it seems more likely that they would be swayed by television commercials than by television news. This is not because these voters are rubes who are easily suckered by campaign ads, but rather that they probably don't watch the news very much, and they certainly don't watch the news much during July.
Right now, McCain's advantage in paid advertising is more useful than Obama's advantage in free media. The good news is that while McCain currently has an advantage in paid media, Obama has wiped out McCain's cash advantage and will soon be able to take the paid media lead himself. When that happens, I expect the above trendline to reverse, or at least flatten out.
I am traveling to Austin today for Netroots Nation today, so I won't have much time to post until tonight. I did, however, receive a few excerpts of Obama's "major speech" on foreign policy, that he is scheduled to give today, starting at 10:45 a.m. eastern. For a quick preview, check the extended entry. To watch it live, you can probably tune into any of the news networks.
A quick review seems to indicate that it focuses on Afghanistan, which is suddenly chic in a way that Iraq apparently is not. As part of the Obama campaign's foreign policy messaging push, like Obama's New York Times op-ed yesterday, it seems to mainly be a clear, solid repetition of his Afghanistan and Pakistan policies with which any close campaign observer was already familiar. One thing that will be interesting about this speech is that, given how slow news has been over the last couple of days, it should actually result in a--gasp--policy discussion in the media. That should ultimately help Obama, since he will be viewed as providing specifics and focusing on issues.
Excerpts in the extended entry. This is an open thread for Obama's foreign policy speech.
To say that Matthew Yglesias's new book, Heads in the Sand will single-bookedly save the Democratic party is a slight overstatement. It does, however, provide what may be one the most important tools democrats can use to win in 2008 and govern in the years to come: a coherent, intelligent and aggressive liberal policy on National Security.
HITS is a book that, for starters, takes the issue of National Security seriously. Unlike many liberal thinkers and politicians of the past decade, Yglesias argues that National Security is an issue of prime importance to the Democratic Party and to America. It cannot be sidestepped in favor of domestic issues, that democrats are traditionally more comfortable with. The few democrats who do address National Security, Yglesias's "Liberal Hawks," only do so in a way that reinforces the failed Bush doctrine of militaristic nationalism, even if they disagree with his specific policies.
Yglesias asserts that since Bush took office, a National Security/ Foreign Policy ideal of using American military force to unilaterally rid the world of its evils had . Since 9/11, the face of this evil has been terrorism. Bush's War on Terror operates on the wrong assumption that you can combat a transnational villain, such as Al-Qaeda, by attacking national entities, like Iraq, and can do so through the pure might of American power. Bush's view was also faulty because it saw terrorism as an expression of "Freedom-Haters," who abhorred the American way of life, instead of as a specific reaction to specific actions taken by the United States and other countries, an idea espoused by many well-established intelligence and military organizations.
Democrats, Yglesias adds, have recently been holding more consistently anti-war positions, but have yet to attack the flawed ideological underpinnings of the Bush foreign policy nor have the provided an affirmative alternative policy. Matthew Yglesias to the rescue!
The key thesis of HITS is that instead of treating organizations like the UN as a shackle that confines and restricts American interests, the United States should focus on aggressively strengthening these kinds of organizations to create a "liberal world order", governed by laws, that could in part act as an international police force, more able to effectively confront transnational criminals than a single national army could. Thus, instead of America being the world's police department, America would become the Commissioner of a larger international police force, that would protect human lives and human rights.
Senator McCain’s general election campaign depends even more on his national security and foreign policy experience, his claim that he’s ready to be commander in chief. McCain has traveled the world, he knows the leaders.
When Bhutto was assassinated, McCain said he knew Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf personally, and could get him on the telephone. The United States picks up the tab for more than a quarter of Pakistan’s total military spending. The president of Pakistan is probably going to take our president’s call.
Barack Obama has long argued that he has shown better foreign policy judgment than his remaining presidential rivals, specifically in opposing the Iraq war.
But at a fund-raiser in San Francisco over the weekend, he reportedly made the case that he has more foreign policy knowledge and understanding as well -- a claim getting a lot of blowback from presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.
According to an account posted online on The Huffington Post, Obama was answering a question about what he would look for in a running mate if he wins the nomination. "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," he replied. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some kind of military thing to make me look more commander-in-chief-like. Ironically, this is an area -- foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."
Clinton took exception when asked about the comment while making the rounds of the morning TV shows in advance of the long-awaited testimony today by General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top US diplomat.
She laughed, actually, before responding on Fox News. "Well I'm somewhat shocked by that since I don't see any evidence of it," she said. "This is kind of hard to square with his failure to ever have a single policy hearing on the only responsibility he was given, chairing the European and NATO subcommittee the foreign relations committee.
"I don't know," she continued. "I'm speechless. Making an assertion like that belies the facts and the record."
I won't engage this debate on its merits, because quite frankly I don't think it has any merits. Democrats should not engage in value-neutral and non-ideological arguments over qualifications to be President, including foreign policy experience, foreign policy knowledge, and the number of times someone has held a committee hearing. Obama in particular needs to avoid this line of argumentation, because for a long time he had it right when he emphasized foreign policy judgment. This is because the amount of time someone has spent dealing with or studying foreign policy does not, in and of itself, make someone better at foreign policy.
During the two Supreme Court nomination fights under Bush, Roberts and Alito, the Republican / conservative strategy was the same: emphasize how the extensive experience of Roberts and Alito made them qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, in and of itself, rather than any views they might actually hold on interpreting the Constitution. They put forth non-ideological arguments over Supreme Court qualifications, and two conservative judges breezed through the nomination process as a result.
If Democrats openly engage in the same sort of non-ideological arguments over qualifications to become President, then we could see another conservative, John McCain, breeze through an election to become President no matter what extreme foreign policy positions he may hold. The point of Presidential "qualifications" should not be how long someone has spent on a topic such as foreign policy, but rather the views that candidate holds on foreign policy. If experience was the criterion, then people like Dick Cheney should be considered eminently "qualified" to be President, no matter how bad he would continue to screw up the country.
In a political environment that strongly favors progressive and center-left viewpoints, when Democrats make arguments about who would be a better President, those arguments should be based in terms of policy and ideology, not the number of lines on a resume. Otherwise, we will fail to capitalize on the highly favorable electoral situation we face, as we fail to draw clear distinctions between ourselves and our Republican opponents.
