The Ruler Of The Galaxy, Revealed

My previous post made me think to google "Republicans for Palpatine". Along with this OK merchandise, one of the results was also this. The resemblance is uncanny.

Republicans May Live In The Muggle World...

But they don't really want to be a part of it:



I found this sticker here.

Epistemological Modesty, Ctd.

Three for three. George Packer also critiques Brooks along roughly the same lines as Sullivan.

Brooks pits a rigid, abstraction-loving liberalism against a wise, experience-loving conservatism. But recent American history has shown the truth to be closer to the opposite. We are where we are because the ruling conservative ideology of the past few decades refused to face facts, like the effect of private insurance on health-care costs, or the effect of deregulation on investment banking. Facts drove the Republicans out of power.

Obviously, I just like these three guys a lot. For my money, Sullivan, Packer and Brooks together have their collective finger on the pulse of Obama and his relationship with the country and with history.

Epistemological Modesty, Ctd.

Andrew Sullivan has a good post which pulls back on Brooks worry and skepticism. He has more patience than me and makes some good points.

I don't think it's fair to conflate a practical plan to tackle [the financial crisis] in all its aspects with a utopian and rationalist approach to remaking the world. The truth is: the world has already been un-made. Obama has no choice but to think big. Americans understand this, as anyone outside the Washington cable-chatter cocoon would. Although I cannot see through the unknowns any better than David can, it does seem to me that so far, the main criticism of Obama's plans - on foreclosure, the banks, the stimulus - is that they may not be bold enough. And addressing long-term fiscal health at the same time is not an over-confident over-reach. It's a recognition of reality.

Epistemological Modesty

David Brooks in his column from Monday articulates a big fear I have about Obama's agenda: the potentially vast difference between his enormous ambitions and what a complex, top-down organization like the U.S. government is actually able to achieve, the difference between what we would like to do and what we can know and effectively achieve.

The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly. There were big errors like communism, but also lesser ones, like a Vietnam War designed by the best and the brightest, urban renewal efforts that decimated neighborhoods, welfare policies that had the unintended effect of weakening families and development programs that left a string of white elephant projects across the world.

Brooks then talks about some of the 20th century intellectuals that pointed out liberalism's faults:

These writers... had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down.

Though he goes on to point out that Obama's people have a policy humility that the creators of previous social-engineering failures did not, he is still worried by the tremendous scope of Obama's agenda. And, I have to say that I agree a bit. Though I am a liberal and have more faith that we've learned how to do top-down social change, listening to Obama's speech on Tuesday, the scale of the ambition just got to me: millions of jobs created, radical changes in health care, energy and education, new climate change policy, cutting the deficit in half, tax cuts for the middle class, and a promise not to raise them (during what time period, it's not clear). He even hopes for a cure, literally, for cancer. I mean, come on!

I do think Obama can't be timid. Now is the time for bold plans -- the problems we face are simply not problems that can be postponed. The world is already broken. And some of the things he wants to do, like re-vamping health care, might be part of the solution, placing the country on a better long-term path to health (in the case of health care by, I think, dealing with costs that will eventually strangle us if left alone.) Still, I'm a little skeptical -- can we really take seriously the idea that taxes will not have to be raised on the middle class at some point in the next eight years? But, as Brooks notes, the stakes are too high, and we all have to hope that Obama proves the skeptics wrong.

Brooks: The Republicans Response Was "Insane"

I've been watching David Brooks on the Newshour for years and I've never seen him this upset about anything, let alone his own party.

Quote Of The Night

"For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price." - President Barack Hussein Obama.

It Can't be "Empty Words"

Jon Huntsman, Jr., the Republican governor of Utah, seems to not be in the tank with the Limbaughs of the world.



He also said in his Washington Times interview:

"Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years," he said. "For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We've got to come at it a different way. We've got to prove the point. It can't be as the Chinese would say, 'fei hua,' [or] empty words."

The U.S. needs a healthy, innovative opposition party that is disagrees with the party in power, and can counter it with something new and substantive to offer. Huntsman seems to make some general sense and he seems like he could be constructive. Andrew Sullivan feels he is one to watch. He may have a point.

A Good Faith Effort Is What I Want

The media has criticized Obama for the failure of his bipartisan gestures towards Republicans. But I've felt for a while that this gets the essence of bipartisanship wrong. And in this week's profile of Rahm Emanuel in the New Yorker, he gets at the real essence:

[Emanuel's] task has been made no easier by Obama’s desire for bipartisanship, which Emanuel argues the press has misunderstood. “The public wants bipartisanship,” he said. “We just have to try. We don’t have to succeed.”

Yes. What's important here is for Obama to show a good faith effort to work with the other side. If the other side simply wants to be the Party of No, that's their problem. Obama gets this and, as a recent Times poll shows, it's working: he has a job approval rating of 63%. More specifically, people feel that he has been working in a bipartisan fashion, but that he should still stick to his policies. For some reason I get the impression the cable news media has not been able to understand this, but this has never been very complicated to me. For the public, being bipartisan simply means debating constructively in the way that most people hold up as an ideal in their own lives when working through their own issues. It doesn't mean that you can't follow your own individual (i.e. partisan) goals, it just means you have to be reasonable and respectful in how you achieve them.

New York: Back From The Depths!

I'm currently reading "How the Crash Will Reshape America" over at The Atlantic, describing the vast changes that the financial crisis is likely to make across the country. I'm not done yet, but It's opening section has optimistic things to say about my hometown and its future. In these frightening times, that's a good thing to have, so here you go:

...the financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy. The extraordinary income gains of investment bankers, traders, and hedge-fund managers over the past two decades skewed the city’s economy in some unhealthy ways. In 2005, I asked a top-ranking official at a major investment bank whether the city’s rising real-estate prices were affecting his company’s ability to attract global talent. He responded simply: “We are the cause, not the effect, of the real-estate bubble.” (As it turns out, he was only half right.) Stratospheric real-estate prices have made New York less diverse over time, and arguably less stimulating. When I asked [famous urbanist Jane] Jacobs some years ago about the effects of escalating real-estate prices on creativity, she told me, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.” With the hegemony of the investment bankers over, New York now stands a better chance of avoiding that sterile fate.

I'm Back, With Conan

So sorry for the lack of posts recently. Staying late and working on weekends doesn't mix well with consistent blogging. But now I'm rested. While I come up with my next post (hopefully tonight), here's an inspired video from Conan O'Brien. On his final Late Night show he said it was his favorite of all the things he ever did. I remember seeing it years ago and thinking it was pretty great. Enjoy.

I'm going to live in Canada!

Fareed Zakaria on why Canada is getting through the financial crisis in much better shape than the U.S.

Don't Let Me Down, Barack

In his column today, David Brooks picks up the idea that I suggested here, that Obama's greatest impact will be on the process of governing and not policy substance.

Barack Obama is a potentially transformational figure. In political style and intellectual outlook, he is unlike anything that has come before. On matters of policy substance, however, he’s been pretty conventional. The policies he offered during the campaign matched those of just about every other Democrat.

It's a good column. Brooks goes on to notice that the moderates in Congress, that are trying to trim and focus the stimulus, present a real opportunity for Obama:

The big news here is that there are many Democrats who don’t want to move in a conventional liberal direction and there some Republicans willing to work with them to create a functioning center. These moderates — who are not a party, but a gang — seemed willing to seize control of legislation from the party leaders. They separated themselves from both the left and right.

...Obama didn’t plan them. He didn’t create them. He isn’t yet leading them. But the gangs could be the big new fact in domestic politics. If nurtured and used creatively, they can be the lever by which Obama transforms the landscape of government and creates a broad postpartisan coalition.

We’ll see if he seizes this opportunity, or whether it’s just business as usual.

I agree. This is a real test for him.

Jiggle It

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Ahh, JTP. So many laughs. So many tears.

Obama Includes Atheists... Again!

I think my sometimes inordinate support of Obama comes from the fact that he is able to say things like this:

There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all...

Amazing. That's the second time he's acknowledged, with respect, the nonbelievers among us. Read the whole post where I got this. It's good.

Who Is Gary Ackerman?

This is both great and very sad. It's SEC officials being questioned on the Madoff scandal by Rep. Gary Ackerman.

Embarrased

I just re-read my last post and I was suddenly embarrassed when I realized that it's just wrong to pronounce Michael Steele a "token", at least right now. To vote for a black man to take on one of the top jobs of real responsibility in the Republican party speaks more highly of that party than that word. Steele will have real responsibility and that's not nothing. In the end what matters is what he does with that responsibility. Will he -- and the party -- really reach out to minorities? Time will tell. That will determine whether or not he's a token. For now, I think it's commendable that Republicans were able to elect him; at least some people realize they have a perception problem.

It was a bad, stupid post.

Republican Party Suicide Watch

Isn't it nice that in Michael Steele the Republican party picked a face that makes it look all inclusive and forward thinking to head the RNC? Well, if there's anyone that thinks that he's more than a token and empty symbolism, check this evidence out:

First, Steele himself says in an interview with Wolf Blitzer and says that "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job." Hmm... I guess the Federal Highway System, government scientific research, and all government agencys run themselves. This is just one small data point -- a media talking point -- but it's telling: it's simply not an attempt to tackle our economic problems seriously. (YouTube video here.)

Then a new poll shows that the Republican party looks to Sarah Palin as a role model. Nothing more needs to be said about that.

And now (the coup-de-grace!) Joe The Plumber... sigh... is the featured guest at a key weekly strategy meeting of conservative Capitol Hill staffers. I suppose they will plumb (sorry, couldn't help it) his deep, keen political insights, because being a war correspondent is the least of his talents.

When I read stuff like this, it's hard not to think that the Republican party is not just heading for that cliff, they're accelerating towards it.