Entering the very center of the conflict

I always find it interesting when pundits admit that they don't understand President Obama. Today that honor goes to Brendan Nyhan. He doesn't get why the President would make sweeping changes to our immigration policy prior to the midterm election. Nyhan sees this as risking a backlash from the more conservative older white voters who tend to show up to the polls.

Of course one of the main reasons President Obama would do this is because its exactly what he promised Speaker Boehner he would do back in April if the House failed to pass immigration reform. The President is a man of his word.

But I think what trips up folks like Nyhan is the narrative that has developed about how President Obama is cautious and restrained. It clouds their judgement. Its true that the President is thoughtful and tends to avoid being reactive. But that doesn't make him risk averse. One only has to look at a few examples to disabuse that notion.

For example, there was the time he went against the advice of most of his National Security Team and sent a Seal Team into the compound at Abbattobad to get Osama bin Laden. Or the time he went against the advice of most of his staff to continue to work on getting comprehensive health care reform after Scott Brown was elected to Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Or that wonderful moment in 2010 when he went to the House Republican Caucus meeting to talk directly to his opponents. But perhaps my favorite was the time he gave the commencement address at Notre Dame after fierce protests from some students over his position on stem cell research and abortion...and focused his remarks on stem cell research and abortion.

Those are all examples of President Obama following the Aikido Way:

1] We must maintain our own balance while taking theirs
2] We must react fearlessly
3] We must enter into the very center of the conflict
4] We must understand our opponent's intentions in order to achieve resolution

As Republicans ramp up their accusations of dictatorial tyranny and fear-mongering about immigrants, it should surprise no one that the President would react fearlessly and enter into the very center of that conflict.

President Obama: "I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes"

Yes, President Obama wrote those words. Not only did he write them, he did it in 2006 - during the Bush administration. If you are a Democrat/liberal/progressive, they are jarring, aren't they? Here's a little more context to what he said:

I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal … We are all shaken out of our complacency. 

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

I've often thought that one of the most powerful - and least known - speeches of this President is the one he gave at the 2009 Notre Dame graduation (that link is to the transcript, the video is here). In case you've forgotten, his invitation to do so sparked a pretty big controversy over the issues of abortion and stem cell research.  And yet, as the Aikido Way requires, he used the opportunity to "enter into the very center of the conflict" by using the divide in this country over these issues to make the same point he did in the quote above.

In this speech, President Obama scrambled the order of storytelling outlined by Marshall Ganz. He began with the "story of now" and the urgency of the tension we face.

For the major threats we face in the 21st century -- whether it’s global recession or violent extremism; the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease -- these things do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.

Moreover, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and greater understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history. Unfortunately, finding that common ground -- recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" -- is not easy...

The question, then -- the question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without, as Father John said, demonetizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

And of course, nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.

President Obama then went on to tell the "story of self" about a time when a constituent called him on his lack of open-mindedness about abortion.

And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that -- when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

Throughout the speech the President reminded the graduates of the "story of us" as it has been demonstrated at Notre Dame. But then he connected that story to one that tied the "us" to a larger one.

I stand here today, as President and as an African American, on the 55th anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Now, Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the "separate but equal" doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God’s children. There were freedom rides and lunch counters and Billy clubs, and there was also a Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower. It was the 12 resolutions recommended by this commission that would ultimately become law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

There were six members of this commission. It included five whites and one African American; Democrats and Republicans; two Southern governors, the dean of a Southern law school, a Midwestern university president, and your own Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. So they worked for two years, and at times, President Eisenhower had to intervene personally since no hotel or restaurant in the South would serve the black and white members of the commission together. And finally, when they reached an impasse in Louisiana, Father Ted flew them all to Notre Dame’s retreat in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin where they eventually overcame their differences and hammered out a final deal.

And years later, President Eisenhower asked Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs. And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered they were all fishermen. And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake. They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.

Finally, he called us to the kind of empathy that he talked about in that first quote up above:

Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen.

What he's telling us is that the challenges that encompass the fierce urgency of now will only be faced when we can "try to see the world through George Bush's eyes." That is a high calling for any of us to accept. But it is one this President has answered in the affirmative.

How the Organizer-in-Chief got Obamacare done

As we are celebrating the initial success of the Obamacare exchanges, I thought it might be interesting to go back and look at how the greatest expansion of healthcare in half a century got done.

If you remember, back in the 90's the Clintons were making some progress with their health care reform plan until the insurance companies took them head on with their Harry and Louise ads. That's what killed reform for almost 20 years.

President Obama learned from that failure. He negotiated buy-in from the health insurance companies by keeping the current system of private insurance intact and offering them the chance to compete for new customers in exchange for:

1. No denials for pre-existing conditions
2. No lifetime caps
3. Community ratings
4. A guaranteed set of benefits (including free prevention services)
5. Medical loss ratios that limited administration and profit to 15-20% of premiums

Some might call that a faustian bargain. But it is one of the main reasons we have health care reform today.

If you recall, in his days as a community organizer, President Obama learned about the concept of meeting people's self interest.

The other fundamental lesson Obama was taught is Alinsky's maxim that self-interest is the only principle around which to organize people... Obama was a fan of Alinsky's realistic streak. "The key to creating successful organizations was making sure people's self-interest was met," he told me, "and not just basing it on pie-in-the-sky idealism. So there were some basic principles that remained powerful then, and in fact I still believe in."

I've demonstrated before how that comes into play in the President's dealings with foreign opponents like Iran and Russia. Its exactly the same principle that he applied to the health insurance industry. His goal is not to defeat his opponents - but to co-opt them. That is the Aikido Way.

In a world where power is regularly conflated with dominance, its not surprising that a lot of people see that as weakness and/or inferior negotiating. That is...until it gets the job done.

President Obama and the Aikido Way on Surveillance (updated)

President Obama has prepared a proposal about changes to the bulk telephone data collection program currently operated by the NSA.

The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency’s once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress — would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials.

Under the proposal, they said, N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The records would be stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order.

You'll likely hear some folks respond by saying this isn't a big deal. In a way, they're right. One way to understand that is to remember how Mark Ambinder described the program months ago.

One official likened the NSA's collection authority to a van full of sealed boxes that are delivered to the agency. A court order...permits the transfer of custody of the "boxes." But the NSA needs something else, a specific purpose or investigation, in order to open a particular box.

The basics of the President's proposal will be that the NSA leave that van full of sealed boxes with the phone companies and get a warrant (currently the FISA court has to approve the searches) to obtain specific call content.

But this move is classic Obama. He set the tone for this early on in his interview with Charlie Rose about the surveillance programs.

I've got to tell you though Charlie, I think this is a healthy thing because its a sign of maturity that this debate would not have been taking place 5 years ago. And I welcome it...its useful to have a bunch of critics out there who are checking government power and who are making sure we are doing things right so that if we've triple-checked how we're operating any one of these programs, lets go quadruple-check it. I'm comfortable with that and I'm glad to see that we are starting to do that.

I'm sure there will be some who will respond to the President's proposal by suggesting that Snowden/Greenwald attacked this administration and "won." That's because they've invested their personal ego in a win/lose game. That is not how President Obama approaches things. His ego is not involved. That allows him to follow the Aikido Way:

There are no kicks and no punches within Aikido itself...Instead, there is an emphasis on blending with a partner's attack and the use of techniques to lead that attack safely to a conclusion that is good for everyone.

Well done, Mr. President.

Now, about that whole "if approved by Congress" thing. Paging Senator Paul...Senator Rand Paul to the white courtesy phone, please."

;-)

UPDATE: This morning we get Glenn Greenwald's response to the President's proposal. Given that it neutralizes Greenwald's line of attack on the metadata program, other than some nonsense about whether or not President Obama really means it, he decides to forgo his Obama Derangement Syndrome and go after Democratic partisans with: Obama's new NSA proposal and Democratic partisan hackery.

That puts hard-core Obama loyalists and pro-NSA Democrats – the ones that populate MSNBC – in an extremely difficult position. They have spent the last 10 months defending the NSA (i.e., defending Obama) by insisting that the NSA metadata program is both reasonable and necessary to Keep Us Safe™. But now Obama claims he wants to end that very same program. So what will they do?

If they had even an iota of integrity or intellectual honesty, they would instantly and aggressively condemn Obama. After all, he’s now claiming to want to end a program that they have been arguing for months is vital in Keeping Us Safe™. Wouldn’t every rational person, by definition, criticize a political leader who wants to abolish a program that they believe is necessary to stop terrorism and preserve national security?

But that’s not what will happen.

LOL! I can't speak for the other "hacks," but my response to the Snowden revelations about the metadata program were never about it being necessary to keep us safe. For me it has always been about the lies and spin Snowden/Greenwald perpetuated about it - like the time Snowden said this:

I, sitting at my desk could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.

That was NEVER true. As the President told Charlie Rose, these programs were triple-checked and now he's proposing a quadruple-check.

But I'm fine with Greenwald going after "partisans" like me. I've been watching the Aikido master take these kinds of things on for 6 years now. Time for me to demonstrate that I've learned a thing or two. So I'll just point out where Greenwald is 100% right and some in his "fan club" are needing correction:

Ending NSA's bulk collection program doesn't "put it in the telecoms' hands"- they *already have their customers' calling records, obviously
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 25, 2014

Yes, obviously.