A Foreign Policy for the 21st Century

As we have seen so often, it is when President Obama sits down one-on-one with a reporter that we really see the depth of his thinking. That's why I was so interested in his interview with Ezra Klein on domestic affairs/politics and with Matt Yglesias on foreign policy.

In talking to Yglesias, President Obama rejected the binary choice of labeling himself either a realist or an idealist when it comes to foreign policy.


The first thing we must do is to accurately define the challenge we face today.

So the biggest challenge we have right now is disorder. Failed states. Asymmetric threats from terrorist organizations. And what I've been trying to do is to make sure that over the course of the last six years and hopefully the next two, we just have more tools in our toolkit to deal with the actual problems that we have now and that we can project into the future, rather than just constantly relying on the same tools that we used when we were dealing with Germany and Japan in World War II.

Those challenges look very different from what the world faced during World War II, and therefore require a different set of tools.

But this is going to be a generational challenge in the Muslim world and the Middle East that not only the United States but everybody's going to have to deal with. And we're going to have to have some humility in recognizing that we don't have the option of simply invading every country where disorder breaks out. And that to some degree, the people of these countries are going to have to, you know, find their own way. And we can help them but we can't do it for them...

And so, I think the real challenge for the country not just during my presidency but in future presidencies is recognizing that leading does not always mean occupying. That the temptation to think that there's a quick fix to these problems is usually a temptation to be resisted. And that American leadership means wherever possible leveraging other countries, other resources, where we're the lead partner because we have capabilities that other folks don't have. But that way there's some burden-sharing and there's some ownership for outcomes. And many of these problems don't get solved in a year or two years or three years.

The old tools of military domination and occupation haven't worked - and in many ways have probably made the problem of disorder worse. The new tools that are required include empowering people in these failed states to find their own way, engaging countries around the globe in order to create broad ownership for outcomes and having the patience to allow solutions to emerge organically rather than be externally imposed.

When it comes to the goal of these efforts, the President echoes Reinhold Niebuhr's suggestion that we have to be able to embrace both the world as it is while we hold on to the ideal of what we want it to be.

...the goal of any good foreign policy is having a vision and aspirations and ideals, but also recognizing the world as it is, where it is, and figuring out how do you tack to the point where things are better than they were before. That doesn't mean perfect. It just means it's better.

These ideas are embedded in principles that we've consistently seen from President Obama:

• An embrace of both/and instead of either/or
• A commitment to the power of partnership over dominance
• A preference for the pragmatism of the long game rather than a quick fix
• Realistic strategies as steps towards the idealism of our North Star

But make no mistake about it - when it comes to foreign policy - those principles take direct aim at how most Americans have viewed our role in the world. We have grown comfortable with the idea of splitting the world up into good guys/bad guys (U.S. vs USSR, patriots vs terrorists, "you're either with us or against us") and then using the power of our military dominance in an attempt to defeat the bad guys. The authoritarianism of "might makes right" has become part of the fabric of our culture. That is why so many people literally can't "see" the alternative this President is articulating - or find it somehow threatening.

An honest appraisal of the current situation tells us that our old ways of interacting with the world aren't working. If we didn't learn that lesson in Vietnam, we certainly should have in Iraq. Once we can accept that, these principles President Obama espoused have the potential to transform the destructive path we've been following. In other words, they comprise a foreign policy for the 21st century.

Some Progressives Are Confused By the Long Game

President Obama's "pen and phone" strategy (which he announced a year ago) has confused a lot of progressives. The title of this article by Markos Moulitsas pretty well sums it up: "Imagine that: Obama decides he'll fight for people, approvals soar." He's right that President Obama's approval rating has risen over the last couple of months and that the American people seem to like the fact that he is getting things done...despite Congress. Where the confusion shows is in assuming that the President has recently decided to "fight for people."

Moulitsas includes a list of things Obama has announced recently. But as many of us have been pointing out, a lot of them (normalization with Cuba, executive orders on immigration, etc.) have been in the works for at least 1-2 years. It's true that free community college is a new proposal. But it was preceded by a proposal for universal pre-K in his 2013 SOTU. The President has consistently said that he would stand by the process of the State Department's study of the Keystone Pipeline and would veto any effort to preempt it. His working group on police reforms follows a record number of police brutality investigations initiated by the Civil Rights Division of DOJ during this administration.

But Moulitsas isn't the only one confused by what's happening. Simon Johnson is one of the people who objected to the nomination of Antonio Weiss as Undersecretary of Domestic Affairs at the Treasury Department. And so its ironic to read him insist that President Obama needs to swiftly nominate someone to that position now that Weiss has removed himself from consideration. But Johnson shows his own confusion with this:

In the continuing absence of an Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, the administration has recently displayed an inconsistent – or perhaps even incoherent – policy stance on financial sector issues. On the one hand, in mid-December, the White House agreed to rollback a significant part of Dodd-Frank – the so-called “swaps push-out,” which was shamefully attached at the behest of Citigroup to a must-pass government spending bill...

On the other hand, the President has recently issued veto threats to protect financial reform.

It's important to note that both Paul Krugman and Matt Taibbi affirmed that the "swaps push-out" (authored by then-Senator Blanche Lincoln) was not "a significant part of Dodd-Frank."  For example, Krugman actually called it a "sideshow."

Now, this isn’t the death of financial reform. In fact, I’d argue that regulating insured banks is something of a sideshow, since the 2008 crisis was brought on mainly by uninsured institutions like Lehman Brothers and A.I.G. The really important parts of reform involve consumer protection and the enhanced ability of regulators both to police the actions of “systemically important” financial institutions (which needn’t be conventional banks) and to take such institutions into receivership at times of crisis.

With that in mind, President Obama and a lot of Democrats signed on to the cromnibus bill that contained it's elimination in order to remove one of the most powerful hostages Republicans might have used in this Congressional session (a possible government shut-down) to seriously undermine the truly significant portions of Dodd-Frank. That was the long game at play.

Finally, here's William Rivers Pitt writing about his confusion in response to the State of the Union speech.

The President of the United States gave a speech on Tuesday night that would, in parts, have gone over like gangbusters at any Occupy rally in the country, and then he turned on a dime to brag about our massively impressive oil and gas production, i.e. fracking and maybe the Keystone XL pipeline, and then went on further to give an impassioned aria about climate change, at which point my brain crawled out of my ear and slithered into the bathroom, where it wept piteously into the cold porcelain truth of the base of the toilet.

I've already written about President Obama's long game on climate policy...something Pitt obviously doesn't see.

Way back in December 2010, the President addressed these kinds of critiques and laid out his strategy this way:

And so, my job is to make sure that we have a North Star out there - what is helping the American people live out their lives...And at any given juncture there're gonna be times where my preferred option, what I'm absolutely positive is right, I can't get done. And so then my question is, does it make sense for me to tack a little bit this way, or tack a little bit that way, because I'm keeping my eye on the long term, and the long fight, not my day to day news cycle, but where am I going over the long term?

People like Moulitsas, Johnson and Pitt confused the tacking with the North Star. As more and more people begin to recognize that President Obama's strategy is paying off, we should make no mistake about it...this is where he has been heading all along.

Kudos to Secretary of State John Kerry

The immediacy of our 24/7 news cycle tends to view events in the isolation of the moment rather than reflect on how we got here or where we might be going. I'd like to buck that trend.

Recently we heard about the historic agreement the Obama administration reached with China on global climate change. And then today comes this:

President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Sunday that the two countries will work together to fight global climate change, laying out a set of goals that the two countries hope “will expand policy dialogues and technical work on clean energy and low greenhouse gas emissions technologies.”

While not a concrete emissions reductions agreement like the one Obama reached with China this past November, the deal includes efforts to cooperate on reducing emissions of fluorinated gases, invigorate India’s promotion of clean energy investment, and partner to reduce the debilitating air pollution that has plagued many of India’s cities.

The agreement also emphasized that the countries would “cooperate closely” for a “successful and ambitious” agreement at the Paris climate talks at the end of the year. During that conference, 196 nations are expected to meet and tentatively agree a course of action to respond to climate change. It is widely considered the last chance for a global agreement that could feasibly keep the rise in global average temperatures under 2°C.

I was reminded of something Coral Davenport wrote a year ago that demonstrates how we got here and where this is all going.

...while the public’s attention has been on his diplomacy in the Middle East, behind the scenes at the State Department Mr. Kerry has initiated a systematic, top-down push to create an agencywide focus on global warming.

His goal is to become the lead broker of a global climate treaty in 2015 that will commit the United States and other nations to historic reductions in fossil fuel pollution...

Shortly after Mr. Kerry was sworn in last February, he issued a directive that all meetings between senior American diplomats and top foreign officials include a discussion of climate change. He put top climate policy specialists on his State Department personal staff. And he is pursuing smaller climate deals in forums like the Group of 20, the countries that make up the world’s largest economies.

“He’s approaching this creatively,” said Heather Zichal, who recently stepped down as Mr. Obama’s top climate adviser and worked for Mr. Kerry from 2002 to 2008. “He’s thinking strategically about using other forums.”

That's the kind of behind-the-scenes effort that has gone into these two huge announcements with China and India. If all goes as planned, it is looking more and more possible that the nations of the world will reach a global climate treaty before the end of this year. Talk about a BFD!!!!

So let's give a big shout-out to SoS John Kerry for his vision and work with President Obama to recognize the long game on climate policy.

Prediction

I very rarely make predictions about politics. But today I'm going to give it a go.

I predict that all of these politicians who are already beginning to center their 2016 campaigns around the issue of wage stagnation will find themselves scurrying in about six months or so when wages start to increase and some other issue/event comes along to take center stage.

That's why - almost two years out - it always pays to play the long game.

The Long Game on Climate Policy

From the beginning, President Obama articulated an "all of the above" energy plan - something that angered both environmentalists and the fossil fuel industry. But it was a systemic approach that took into account not only the issue of climate change, but also this country's economic recovery and a foreign policy that was too often influenced by our dependence on foreign oil.

Michael Grunwald was the first to see the seeds of major change on climate policy that were included in President Obama's 2009 stimulus plan (the American Recovery Act).

...the battle over the Recovery Act's short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy. Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama's agenda — and they've got a point.

For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.

The only stimulus energy program that's gotten much attention so far — chiefly because it got off to a slow start — is a $5 billion effort to weatherize homes. But the Recovery Act's line items represent the first steps to a low-carbon economy. "It will leverage a very different energy future," says Kristin Mayes, the Republican chair of Arizona's utility commission. "It really moves us toward a tipping point."

The goal was for the government to ignite investments in clean energy that were seen as too risky for the private sector. And as President Obama said to NPR's Steve Inskeep a few weeks ago, "a lot of the work that we've done is beginning to bear fruit." Jonathan Chait summarized some of that in his article about this President's legacy:

Thanks to public investment in the U.S. and abroad, solar energy has undergone revolutionary growth. Capacity has increased 130-fold since Obama took office, while the price of installing a system has fallen by more than half.

But as he goes on to suggest in that article, this is about more than simply an investment in U.S. energy use.

He [President Obama] reached a major climate agreement with China, which presages the first-ever international agreement by industrialized and developing countries alike to curtail their emissions (an agreement made easier by the revolutionary improvements in green energy, which could allow developing economies to leapfrog straight past the dirty energy stage). The success of this agreement will take decades to measure, but it could well go down in history as Obama’s most significant legacy.

To highlight the importance of that bolded statement, here is a graph of the worlds top fossil fuel emitters.

Not only has President Obama secured a major climate agreement with China, there might be another announcement in a couple of weeks.

There could be progress on US-India civil nuclear cooperation, solar power and climate change when US President Barack Obama visits India in two weeks, US officials said on Sunday.

These are the kinds of changes that are possible when you take a systemic view of global challenges and are willing to play the long game.

President Obama Plays the Long Game

The media is settling on a new narrative about President Obama. It's always interesting watching one after another join in that process. For example, Timothy Egan calls it Obama Unbound.

Perhaps the best thing to happen to him [Obama] was the crushing blow his party took in the midterm elections. Come January, Republicans will have their largest House majority in 84 years — since Herbert Hoover was president. Granted, no politician wants to join Hoover and history in the same sentence. But Obama is not cowering or conceding. He’s been liberated by defeat, becoming the president that many of his supporters hoped he would be.

He promised to be transformative. Instead, especially in the last two years, he’s been listless, passive, a spectator to his own presidency. Rather than setting things in motion, he reacted to events. Even Ebola, the great scare that prompted so much media hysteria it was awarded Lie of the Year by PolitiFact, was somehow his fault. No more. Of late, the president who has nothing to lose has discovered that his best friend is the future.

Glenn Thrush calls it Operation Revenge.

“He needs to run, to compete – or more to the point, he needs someone to run against,” a former top Obama adviser told me.

He’s got that now, in a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill. Obama, a political counterpuncher who often needs a slap in the face to wake up, got a gut-shot in November. The Democrats’ staggering loss in the midterms – like his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 – seems to have jolted him to the realization that he’ll have to act boldly to preserve what he’d assumed was a settled legacy.

The trouble with this kind of analysis is that it is ahistorical. Every one of the things these pundits name as an example of this President's newfound persona - executive actions on immigration, new EPA rules, climate change agreement with China, Russian sanctions, normalization of relationship with Cuba - has been in the works for at least the last 1-2 years (during the time he was supposedly a listless, passive spectator). Back in January of this year, he announced his intention to implement the “pen and phone strategy” we’re all witnessing unfold.

President Barack Obama offered a brief preview Tuesday of his State of the Union address, telling his Cabinet that he won’t wait for Congress to act on key agenda items in 2014.

“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” he said at his first Cabinet meeting of the year. Outlining the strategy, Obama said he plans to use his pen to sign executive actions and his phone to convene outside groups in support of his agenda if Congress proves unable or unwilling to act on his priorities.

It's true that President Obama might have a new lightness in his step. But that could just as well be because he's finally off for a much-needed vacation in Hawaii with his family. Anyone who has really watched this President operate knows that he plays the long game. Here's how Michelle Obama described that back in 2011.

Here's the thing about my husband: even in the toughest moments, when it seems like all is lost, Barack Obama never loses sight of the end goal. He never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise, even if it comes from some of his best supporters. He just keeps moving forward.

And in those moments when we're all sweating it, when we're worried that the bill won't pass or the negotiation will fall through, Barack always reminds me that we're playing a long game here. He reminds me that change is slow — it doesn't happen overnight.

If we keep showing up, if we keep fighting the good fight and doing what we know is right, then eventually we will get there.

We always have. 

Learning to glide

This poem by Rainer Maria Rilke titled The Swan always puts me at ease with myself.

The labouring through what is still undone,

as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,

is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying - to let go, no longer feel

the solid ground we stand on every day

is like his anxious letting himself fall

into the water, which receives him gently

and which, as though with reverence and joy,

draws back past him in streams on either side;

while, infinitely silent and aware,

in his full majesty and ever more

indifferent, he condescends to glide.

I suspect that President Obama has learned to glide. And that's what allows him to - as Michelle describes - play the long game.

Here's the thing about my husband: even in the toughest moments, when it seems like all is lost, Barack Obama never loses sight of the end goal. He never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise, even if it comes from some of his best supporters. He just keeps moving forward.

And in those moments when we're all sweating it, when we're worried that the bill won't pass or the negotiation will fall through, Barack always reminds me that we're playing a long game here. He reminds me that change is slow — it doesn't happen overnight.

If we keep showing up, if we keep fighting the good fight and doing what we know is right, then eventually we will get there.

We always have.

What's not in the news

I'm going to have to give Republicans some props. In the lead-up to these midterm elections, they've had to show an amazing amount of flexibility.

For instance, remember when the main issue in the election was going to be Obama scandal-mania? They were placing their bets on Benghazi, the IRS, the VA and - for some poor souls - even Fast and Furious. And now here we are a few weeks away from the election and Trey Gowdy can't get anyone to pay attention to his hearings (if you don't know who Trey Gowdy is - you just made my point).

Next up was a shift to Obamacare. Following the troubles with the initial online rollout, Republicans were sure this was going to be the ultimate weapon to use against Democrats. That was until the web site was fixed, enrollment surged beyond predictions, the rate of uninsured dropped, and health insurance premiums didn't skyrocket. Oops, time to change the subject again.

Anyone remember the short-lived focus on "President Obama as tyrant" and Boehner's stupid law suit? Nah, that one didn't last long.

This summer's surge in unaccompanied children arriving on our border from Central America was sure to get the nativist's blood boiling and keep it that way through the election. But then President Obama asked for help from Congress in addressing the situation and they bailed. Now the surge is over and its back to business as usual.

So now what? NBC noticed that the NRCC - in a move that invokes the "spirit" of 2002-2004 - is now going for the "Democrats aren't tough enough on terrorists" line. In other words, when fear-mongering about everything else fails, ramping up the idea that the terrorists are at our doorstep is always a great fall-back position.

Given the speed with which Republicans have cycled in and then out of these various issues as "THE ONE" on which the midterm election will hinge, I expect at least one or two more in the coming weeks.

The point is that the GOP is addicted to the hysteria of the moment. As our President tackles one challenge after another, they keep thinking THIS will be the one that does him in. But minus all the drama, he just keeps thoughtfully and systematically taking them on and finding the best resolution possible - usually with zero assistance from Congress.

It would be nice if we had a media that noticed this trend. But the hysteria approach is more lucrative when it comes to link-bait. So it will be up to folks like us to remind the American people that we got exactly what we wanted when we elected President Obama - a no-drama pragmatist that plays the long game.

Dear liberal media: Change doesn't come from Washington

Yesterday Ezra Klein suggested that rather than changing things, President Obama broke American politics even further. After recounting some of the President's most important accomplishments, he said this:

But he didn't do all this by fixing American politics. He did all this by breaking American politics even further. Obama hasn't healed the divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Rather, he's one of the most polarizing presidents since the advent of polling.

To back up that last point, he includes this chart.

I've always thought that Klein should stick to wonking instead of punditry. But on this one, he failed at both. On the wonk side, the problem with that chart is that it failed to take into account what has happened to the Republican Party in the last decade. We all know by now that the party has gotten more and more extreme in their views. And this chart shows the result.

What we see is that, when it comes to party identification, the Democrats have bounced around a bit in response to major events (the impeachment of President Clinton and the election of Barack Obama), but are basically at the same point today they were in 1990 (from 33% to 32%). Republicans on the other hand have lost a lot of ground - going from 31% of the electorate to 24%. Pretty much all of those who abandoned the party have become independents (from 29% to 38%). So it shouldn't come as a surprise to Klein that as the Republican Party is shedding their more moderate members, the remaining hardliners are more opposed to a president from the other party. That isn't about polarization, its about the potential death of the Republican Party.

On the pundit side of things, Klein swings and misses because he is totally focused on what is going on in Washington DC. He misses what President Obama has been saying all along.

Rev. William Barber takes note of history and the big picture to see the election of Barack Obama as the beginning of  a "Third Reconstruction" fueled by fusion politics.

In order to see movements like that, one has to have a long view of what is happening outside of the DC bubble...something Klein doesn't seem capable of, but people like Rev. Barber and President Obama know very well. 

President Obama plays tortoise to the media's hare. And we know who wins that one!

I've often thought that the best metaphor for the Obama presidency is the fable about the tortoise and the hare. Of course - in the role of the hare is our linkbait-obsessed media that runs from one form of hysteria to another in a constant quest for "Obama's Katrina," only to tire almost immediately before the story's conclusion. The role of the tortoise is played by our President, who is always focused on the long game ("slow and steady wins the race"). As FLOTUS once said:

Here's the thing about my husband: even in the toughest moments, when it seems like all is lost, Barack Obama never loses sight of the end goal. He never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise, even if it comes from some of his best supporters. He just keeps moving forward.

And in those moments when we're all sweating it, when we're worried that the bill won't pass or the negotiation will fall through, Barack always reminds me that we're playing a long game here. He reminds me that change is slow — it doesn't happen overnight.

As we approach the finish line, we can begin to see who is going to reach the tape first. Here are some recent "long game" headlines:

The Economy

June jobs report

All told, over the last 12 months, the U.S. economy has added over 2.49 million jobs overall and 2.43 million in the private sector. What’s more, June was the 52nd consecutive month in which we’ve seen private-sector job growth – the longest on record.

At this point, with the year about half over, 2014 is currently on track to be the best year for U.S. job creation since 1999.

Unemployment

...it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate has now dropped to 6.1%, its lowest point since September 2008, nearly six years ago. The rate has dropped more than a full point since last fall, and is down nearly four full points since its Great Recession high of 10%.

Unemployment claims

The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits in the first week of July fell by 11,000 to 304,000, putting initial claims close to a seven-year bottom again and offering more evidence that U.S. hiring has accelerated while the rate of layoffs remains low.

Healthcare

It seems that even GOP consumers are happy with Obamacare.

The survey, from the Commonwealth Fund, a research group, came to similar conclusions as other surveys about the expansion of health insurance. It found that about 15 percent of adults younger than 65 now lack health insurance, down from 20 percent before the Affordable Care Act rolled out in January.

What was more surprising is that people who got the new coverage were generally happy with the product. Overall, 73 percent of people who bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance. Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their plans. Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before – including members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year – were happy with their new coverage.

Medicare cost control

What this chart shows is how much the Congressional Budget Office expects we'll need to pay for each and every Medicare beneficiary. And over the past four years, the forecasting agency has consistently downgraded the price of covering one senior's health care costs.

Saving $1,000 per patient adds up quickly in a program that covers about 50 million people. More precisely, it adds up to about $50 billion in savings this year. The reduction in expected costs grows to $2,369 in 2019. With an expected 60 million seniors enrolled in Medicare that year, it would work out to more than $120 billion shaved off the total cost of the program.

Foreign policy

No fancy charts for this one. Just quotes from one of the few pundits who seems to understand the Obama Doctrine - Michael Cohen.

On June 23, the last of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile was loaded onto a Danish freighter to be destroyed. The following day, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia asked his Parliament to rescind the permission that it had given him to send troops into Ukraine. Meanwhile, there is still cautious optimism that a nuclear deal with Iran is within reach.

What do these have in common? They were achieved without a single American bomb being dropped and they relied on a combination of diplomacy, economic sanctions and the coercive threat of military force. As policy makers and pundits remain focused on Iraq and the perennial but distracting discussion about the use of force, these modest but significant achievements have, perhaps predictably, been ignored. Yet they hold important lessons for how American power can be most effectively deployed today...

All too often, though, our foreign policy debates are defined by simplistic ideas: that force is a problem-solver, that America can go its own way and that mere application of American leadership brings positive results. But the results with Syria, Russia and Iran remind us that when American foreign policy is led by painstaking diplomacy, seeks multilateral consensus and acts with an understanding of its own limitations, it can produce positive results. More often than not, boring is better.

Note: I encourage you to go read the whole column by Cohen. Its very rare that I agree totally with almost every sentence a pundit writes. This is one of those times.

Conclusion

I think Cohen summed all of this up quite well with that last line: "More often than not, boring is better." President Obama focuses on the long game towards pragmatic policies that work. That is anathema to the hysteria-obsessed hares. Is it any wonder that the Republican's only play is to try to feed that hysteria? But we all know who wins in the end, don't we?

Passing on a clean slate

Yesterday's release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was joyous news to his family, his community and his country.  But in order to understand the broader importance of this news, it needs to be placed in context.

Following 9/11, the Bush/Cheney administration attempted to put this country on a permanent war footing to fight the global war on terror. In doing so, they took actions that go against our basic ideals as a country and called America's leadership in the world into question. That included invading another country based on lies, the use of torture and setting up a prison for indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay. These actions left legal and foreign policy challenges that - while not as imminent as the financial crisis - were necessary to address.

When President Obama assumed office, he began working on cleaning up the mess from day one. His first actions were to stop the use of torture and re-focus the global war on terror into a war on al Qaeda. The latter action provided for the possibility of specific goals that could be met rather than an open-ended engagement. He ended the war in Iraq and attempted to defeat al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan and eventually Yemen.

A little over two years ago, Vice President Biden articulated the diplomatic work this administration had undertaken to ensure that Afghanistan would never again be a safe haven for terrorists.

We were in Afghanistan for two reasons. One is to deal with, curtail, begin to dismantle, and eventually eliminate al Qaeda. Not only from being able to come back into Afghanistan and control Afghanistan but from the region—to decimate al Qaeda...

The second reason for us to be in Afghanistan was to make sure that a country with tens of millions of people and nuclear weapons called Pakistan did not somehow begin to disintegrate or fall apart. That is a hell of a lot tougher job...

That is part of what the reconciliation process is about right now. We are not just deciding that all we are doing is supporting a government and building up their military capability. We’re engaged in a reconciliation process. Whether it will work or not is another question. But we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:

One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.

Over the last few years, attempts to bring together Afghanistan and the Taliban to negotiate towards a stable government have been underway, but have moved forward in fits and starts. Over that time, a successful prisoner exchange between the U.S. and the Taliban has been seen as an opening statement of trust for the negotiations to begin in earnest. I believe that is what happened yesterday with the release of Sergeant Bergdahl in exchange for the 5 detainees at Guantanamo. Notice how President Obama's statement yesterday echos what VP Biden said two years ago.

This week the United States renewed its commitment to the Afghan people and made clear that we will continue to support them as they chart their own future. The United States also remains committed to supporting an Afghan-led reconciliation process as the surest way to achieve a stable, secure, sovereign, and unified Afghanistan. While we are mindful of the challenges, it is our hope Sergeant Bergdahl’s recovery could potentially open the door for broader discussions among Afghans about the future of their country by building confidence that it is possible for all sides to find common ground.

So this wasn't just a prisoner exchange. It was perhaps the opening step in the reconciliation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban. As such, it was also one more step in this President's efforts to fix the mess that was left to him by his predecessor and take us "off a permanent war footing."

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you listen to/read President Obama's interview with NPR just after his speech at West Point. Here's how he summarized all this:

...I want to make sure that when I turn the keys over to the next president, that they have the ability, that he or she has the capacity to — to make some decisions with a relatively clean slate...

You know, these are all parts of what I consider a — a major piece of business during my presidency, which is recognizing we've got very real threats out there and we can't be naive about protecting ourselves from those threats. At times we're going to have to take very tough actions to make sure that our people, our children are protected, but that there's a way of doing it that comports with our laws, our values, our ideals, that gains legitimacy around the world and that is therefore sustainable...

And, you know, we're not done yet, but we've made enormous progress...I'm confident that by the time I'm leaving the presidency, the next president will still have some tough choices to make, but I think they'll have a basis for making them that is consistent with our best traditions.

The President has often talked about the slow but steady progress of righting this huge ship of state. He's determined to have it back on course by the time he's done.

Wall Street and Main Street: Our inescapable network of mutuality

I believe that one of the problems with a lot of liberals is that they focus too much on the enemy. Looking at the treatment of our financial system and the 1%ers by them is often instructive. The rhetoric is all tied up in calls for retribution and defeat of the enemy.

In saying that, I am in no way attempting to excuse the injustices. They are very real. But if we are going to address them, we must maintain our North Star - a focus on who we are fighting FOR.

I am often struck by the approach of leaders from the past that we revere...people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both of those men led movements against oppression far beyond what we experience today. I believe that much of what guided them can be summed up in these words Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

It is the same grounding that President Obama acknowledged as the basis for what made Mandela such a powerful leader.

There is a word in South Africa- Ubuntu – that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us...It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailor as well; to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion, generosity and truth.

Mutuality and Ubuntu are not merely statements of sentimentality. We now know that they are well-grounded in the science of everything from biology to economics. A simple focus on retribution against our enemies ultimately affects all of us. Whether or not we are willing to heed King's call to "love our enemies," we have to at least take that into account.

While I might not agree with every action taken by President Obama and his administration in the midst of the Great Recession, it is clear that they were guided by an awareness of the economic mutuality between Wall Street and Main Street. They knew that "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." That is exactly what is meant by the idea of "too big to fail." Even as we are justified in decrying how we got there, no one can deny that a "failure" would have had catastrophic effects on everyone - not just Wall Street.

And so here we are six years later and the immediate crisis is over. We're back to dealing with the growing income inequality that has been building for over 30 years. Liberals whose primary focus is on defeating the enemy seem more resentful of money being made on Wall Street than they are in figuring out what to do for Main Street.  I suspect that what drives that is an assumption that if Wall Street suffers Main Street will prosper. To me, that is just another example of assuming that the master's tools will be able to dismantle the master's house. It is the master's way to pit one group against another...divide and conquer...survival of the fittest.

Ultimately what will dismantle the master's house of income inequality is a recognition of the fact that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." That means that we demonize neither the poor or the rich, nor do we call for their defeat. Instead, we begin to imagine how we can "free not just the prisoner, but the jailor as well."

When obstruction meets pragmatism

Those posters highlight just a few facts about the success of Obamacare. You can find a lot more here.

All of that creates a pretty big dilemma for Republicans who - from day one of the debate about health care reform - have chosen to simply obstruct anything President Obama and the Democrats tried to do. As David Frum told them 4 years ago, by refusing to even participate in the discussion, they were buying into creating their own Waterloo.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Of course it was that kind of pragmatic talk that got Frum kicked out of the Republican tribe.

After Obamacare passed, the Republican mantra became "Repeal and Replace." The trouble is, they never got around to the "Replace" part. And now that its working for millions of Americans, they have a problem. As one Republican aid told Sahil Kapur:

As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act. ... To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA.

Yesterday President Obama said, "This thing is working." That's what happens when you build a policy on pragmatism. Where does that leave the Republicans? Brian Beutler points out that The Republican Position on Obamacare Makes No Sense Anymore. Because nobody believes there is any GOP alternative to Obamacare.

It all reminds me of something Mark Schmitt wrote about President Obama's approach to creating change way back in 2007.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Being pragmatic doesn't tend to get you the soundbite or linkbait that so often fuels our hysteria-driven media. But if you're willing to play the long game, it not only works...it is an excellent strategy for boxing in the obstructionists.

Not buying the hysteria or the cynicism

During his speech on voting rights a few days ago, President Obama said something that we should all take a minute to absorb.

If your strategy depends on having fewer people show up to vote, that’s not a sign of strength, that’s a sign of weakness.

Wait a minute! Did he just suggest that the Republican Party is weak? Yes mam, he sure did. But, you might ask, how can he say that when they've managed to obstruct almost everything he's tried to do for the last four years and the pundits are predicting bad news for Democrats in the 2014 midterms?

I'd suggest two reasons for it. First of all, you have to be someone who sees the long game in order to understand what he's saying. If you are addicted to the 24 hour hysteria-inducing media, you might miss it.

Interestingly enough, one person who has recently shown that he gets it is Markos at Daily Kos. His latest is titled: Liberalism has won, which is why conservatives do what they do. In it he points out that Republicans have basically lost their "culture wars" and that the rise of economic populism has the billionaires so scared they've taken to calling us Nazis. If you think of it in terms of the stages of grief, the current battles inside the Republican Party are between those who are in the denial stage (Sarah Palin), those in the anger stage (Ted Cruz) and those who are ready to bargain (Chamber of Commerce).

But Markos nails it when he points out that we've still got work to do.

We certainly have won the battle of ideas. But power isn't just about ideas. It's about wrestling the institutional levers of government from the retrogrades. Those entrenched economic and conservative interests wield power via the Supreme Court, through gross gerrymandering, through voter suppression efforts. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

That brings us to the second reason why President Obama defines the Republican Party as weak...he still believes in the democratic process.

James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it. The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power.

The cynics among us are suggesting the end of democracy - especially since the latest Supreme Court ruling on campaign financing. I have to admit that there have been times in my past that I've gone there. But that all changed for me on November 4, 2008. As President-Elect Barack Obama said that night:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

The old cynic in me says that's corny. But the realist says that I had just watched a grassroots small donor-funded campaign beat both the establishment Democrats (in the primary) and Republicans (in the general election). Now we've seen it happen twice. The second time around, all the big money Karl Rove could put his hands on after Citizens United opened the floodgates couldn't defeat the will of the Obama coalition in the voting booth.

So as we watch the white male patriarchy lash out in its death throes and speculate about what that means for the future of the Republican Party, I'm not going to take my eyes off the prize by getting caught up in either hysteria or cynicism. That's because I can see the long game and I still believe in the democratic process. Here's what that looks like:

For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

The fierce urgency of now and the long game

I think a lot of what prompts conversations like the one going on between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jonathan Chait comes down to whether or not we prioritize the fierce urgency of now or the long game of systemic change.

I thought it might be interesting to listen to the voices of a couple of other black men who articulate each of these approaches. On the former, here's Daniel Beaty.


Back in the 1980's we abandoned the War on Poverty and beefed up the War on Drugs. As a result, we are now seeing the 3rd and 4th generation of too many black boys growing up waiting for that "knock, knock"... struggling with whether or not prison is simply written into their destiny as well. Unfortunately, they face that question in the fierce urgency of now and don't have the privilege of waiting until we implement the long game of systemic change. And so Beaty talks about the power to change this world one little boy and girl at a time.

But...you might say...Daniel made it. Ah, yes. But listen to what Geoffrey Canada says about that.


The resilience of the exceptional (or those who - like President Obama - grew up in a "more forgiving environment") is not enough. As Canada says, at some point we have to change the conditions these children face on a regular basis. 
Anytime someone suggests that President Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative is not enough, I agree. That's why his administration is also working on things like ending the school-to-prison pipeline and the war on drugs.
Its not about choosing between the fierce urgency of now and the long game. We need to do both.  

The really big picture: A Re-balancing

Watching the white male patriarchy lash out in its death throes and the chaos we're seeing as people around the globe stand up for their independence, I can't help but think that we're living through an epochal era of change when the yin is finally emerging to re-balance the yang.

This is not one of those things that concludes over a news cycle, an election or perhaps even a generation. But the tectonic plates are shifting and the struggle is underway. We don't know the outcome, but I suggest that its important to see what's happening and seize the moment.

"The single best US analyst of Middle Eastern politics is Barack Obama"

As regular readers here know, I've been pretty hard on the failure of our media lately. But the truth is, there are exceptions. Given that my focus over the last few years has been to try to understand President Obama, there are a few reporters who have ignored the "inside the bubble" conventional wisdom and eschewed partisan spin to simply listen/observe in an effort to provide us with insight into his approach.

Two of the people who have done that are Michael Lewis and David Remnick. In addition, two years ago Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed President Obama on the topic of Israel/Iran and provided us with some fascinating insights that I recently suggested go beyond that topic. And then yesterday, Goldberg published another lengthy interview he had with the President last week that provides the same kind of insight. While the interview took place prior to the most recent events in Ukraine, it provides us with some grounding that counters much of the spin we're currently being subjected to about his approach. So if you are reeling a bit from all of that, I highly recommend you follow the link and read this one.

What we see from this interview is confirmation once again of President Obama's long view, his pragmatism and his efforts to use his opponents objectives to accomplish his own (an affirmation of the Aikido Way).

The Long View

In reference to his communication with Netanyahu:

What I’ve said to him privately is the same thing that I say publicly, which is the situation will not improve or resolve itself. This is not a situation where you wait and the problem goes away. There are going to be more Palestinians, not fewer Palestinians, as time goes on. There are going to be more Arab-Israelis, not fewer Arab-Israelis, as time goes on...

And my assessment, which is shared by a number of Israeli observers, I think, is there comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices. Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?...

...one of the things my mom always used to tell me and I didn’t always observe, but as I get older I agree with -- is if there’s something you know you have to do, even if it's difficult or unpleasant, you might as well just go ahead and do it, because waiting isn’t going to help. When I have a conversation with Bibi, that’s the essence of my conversation: If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who? How does this get resolved?

Gotta love the combination of mom advice with the Rabbi Hillel quote, don't you? But basically what President Obama is suggesting is that - if we take the long view - the status quo means things get worse for Israel. Demographics alone make that the case. As challenging as the situation is now, it will only get worse in the future for Israel. That is the perspective a long view provides.

Pragmatism

President Obama makes it clear that the focus must be on solutions.

I have not yet heard, however, a persuasive vision of how Israel survives as a democracy and a Jewish state at peace with its neighbors in the absence of a peace deal with the Palestinians and a two-state solution. Nobody has presented me a credible scenario.

The only thing that I’ve heard is, "We’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing, and deal with problems as they arise. And we'll build settlements where we can. And where there are problems in the West Bank, we will deal with them forcefully. We’ll cooperate or co-opt the Palestinian Authority." And yet, at no point do you ever see an actual resolution to the problem.

I think its safe to assume that what the President describes in that second paragraph is what he's hearing from Netanyahu. However, the long view suggests that the status quo is not sustainable. So the focus needs to be on pragmatic solutions that work for both Israel and Palestine.

What we can take from all of this is that while President Obama has been unwavering in his support of Israel, he is also placing tremendous pressure on Netanyahu to abandon the status quo and work with the Palestinians.

The Aikido Way

The end of the interview shifts from a focus on the Israel/Palestinian issue to the topic of Iran. A pragmatic assessment provides the President with this insight.

What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives. And that’s the reason why they came to the table on sanctions.

Based on that, President Obama has made the calculation that we can negotiate an end to Iran's quest for nuclear weapons in exchange for their involvement in the Middle East as a "competitor" rather than "enemy."

If...they are capable of changing; if, in fact, as a consequence of a deal on their nuclear program those voices and trends inside of Iran are strengthened, and their economy becomes more integrated into the international community, and there’s more travel and greater openness, even if that takes a decade or 15 years or 20 years, then that’s very much an outcome we should desire.

Throughout the article, President Obama demonstrates a deep understanding of history, the nature of the Sunni/Shia conflict in the Middle East and the balancing act of diplomacy vs military intervention. And so perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that at least one journalist responded to the article with this:

I'm increasingly of the view that the single best US analyst of Middle Eastern politics is Barack Obama: http://t.co/HPx6RPqV7W
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) March 2, 2014

"North Carolina is ground zero" (updated w/ video of #MoralMarch)

The national media has collectively decided that the next wave of a liberal movement for Democrats will come in the form of populism fueled by income inequality. Occupy Wall Streeters take the credit for igniting this movement while liberal bloggers promote politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren as its leaders.

Meanwhile, only a few are paying attention to the actual movement underway in North Carolina...the one being led by Rev. Dr. William Barber and the NC NAACP called "Moral Mondays." Yesterday that movement drew 80,000 to 100,000 for the Moral March in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ari Berman is one of those few journalists who is paying attention.

The Moral Monday protests transformed North Carolina politics in 2013, building a multiracial, multi-issue movement centered around social justice such as the South hadn’t seen since the 1960s. “We have come to say to the extremists, who ignore the common good and have chosen the low road, your actions have worked in reverse,” said Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and the leader of the Moral Monday movement, in his boisterous keynote speech. “You may have thought you were going to discourage us, but instead you have encouraged us. The more you push us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to oppress us, the more you will inspire us.”

I am personally struck by how well Rev. Barber learned the lessons taught to us by movement leaders like Martin Luther King. He is building a coalition of citizens who are committed to clear principles that speak to the very real concerns of the people. Here are their five demands:

• Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
• Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
• Stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;
• Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
• Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

Notice that there's no railing against the 1%ers in that platform. They are not this movement's concern. The focus is on justice and equality for the rest of us. Added to a national call for immigration reform, these are the policies that have attracted a diverse coalition that covers the gamut of race, creed, gender and sexual orientation...exactly the kind of coalition that will be needed to secure victories in the future. 

But right now Rev. Barber is focusing all his energy on changing things in the relatively small swing state of North Carolina. That reminds me of what Pete Seeger once said that he learned from Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

When you face an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim at the opponent's strong points. You aim for something a little off to the side. But you win it. And having won that bus boycott...13 months it took him to do it...then he moved on to other things.

Rev. Barber has been at this in North Carolina for 10 months now. And as we speak, Moral Monday movements are being planned in places like Georgia and Alabama. As the Reverend says, "We know we're in the South - the crucible of change - where hope has always had to be chiseled from the stone of despair. We understand that North Carolina is ground zero and the nation is looking at us."

The other lesson Rev. Barber learned well is that successful movements are built on hope, not cynicism.

So we're not confused, we're not schizophrenic, we are quite clear, we're clothed in our right minds, WE KNOW WHO WE ARE, we believe we've been born for this moment. Anybody that thought difficulties would depress us better look again. Resurrection always wins. Justice always wins. Love always wins. Courage always wins.

As we've learned, cynicism is the refuge of the privileged while hope is often the only thing available to the oppressed.

For someone sitting on the very edge of survival, hope is extremely important. Often it is only hope, sometimes even false hope, that allows him to make it to the next day... Cynicism is deadly for someone on the edge of survival. Even in the darkest night, he cannot afford to be cynical. That cynicism just might push him over the edge.

If you're in need of an infusion of hope, I suggest you go to Rev. Barber's youtube channel and listen to more of what he has to say. Here's one of my favorites.

And so I expect that when the history books are written, it will be movements like the one being built in North Carolina that will actually "bend the arc of history towards justice." That's why I'm going to be keeping my eye on this one.

P.S. My friend Denise Oliver-Velez was in Raleigh yesterday for the Moral March. She promises pictures that I'll share here when I get them :-)

UPDATE: Here's video of the Moral March with Rev. Barber calling us all to "higher ground."

An excerpt:

You don't have enough political power to vote us away. You don't have enough insults to taunt us away. And you don't have enough money to buy us away.

We will not give up, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

We will never abdicate our birth right and sell it for a bowl of porridge.

Understanding President Obama

I've spent a lot of time over the last six years observing President Obama and trying to understand him. From a personal standpoint, that's because I find him to be a fascinating human being. But from a political standpoint, I also think that he is a unique figure in our history. We have the benefit of living that history in the present moment rather than reading about it in books. It has been my passion to take it all in and try to understand what is happening.

Many people have commented that Barack Obama became a blank screen onto which people projected their own desires and fears. In watching the coverage of his presidency, I find that to be true. It has been frustrating to watch people simply put him into a pre-fabricated box of their own making rather than listen to what he says and watch what he does. On the extreme right, he has become the socialist demon and on the extreme left the corporate tool. That's what they expected and that's what they see. Every word uttered and every action taken is twisted in order to fit the mold. But those caricatures rarely bear any resemblance to the actual man who is our President. And so, whether you agree with him or not, disabusing ourselves of those projections and being open to who he actually is allows us to see the reality at play in this historical moment.

On a couple of occasions, journalists have attempted to approach President Obama with that kind of openness and given us a glimpse into the man they see. Such was the case when Michael Lewis was given extraordinary access and produced the article titled Obama's Way. Recently, David Remnick (author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama - which I recommend that everyone read) gave us another look. I'd like to take a few minutes to cull what I see as significant insights from that article.

First up, President Obama talks about race - both in the context of himself as well as its role in politics. On so many issues, we see the President make a both/and (rather than either/or) argument. But never more so than when it comes to this topic.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”

To my recollection, that is the first time I've heard President Obama acknowledge that race is a factor for some of his critics...a BFD! But notice that he immediately balances that with the idea that race also plays a role for some of his admirers. I imagine that this tendency of his to do the both/and is maddening to those who feel the very real anger of racism. But this is quintessential Obama, isn't it? He has been so steeped in the value of empathy that he rarely comes down on one side of an argument in righteous rage. His natural instinct seems to be to immediately place himself in the opposition's shoes in order to understand their perspective. Like it or not, if you're going to understand President Obama, this is one of the most important things to notice. Its the very thing that made his speech on race during the 2008 primaries so unique...he wanted white people to understand what racism looked like from the perspective of African Americans. But he also wanted African Americans to understand what it looked like from a white working class perspective.

In reflecting on the office of the presidency, Obama talked about his reaction to watching the movie Lincoln:

“The real politics resonated with me, because I have yet to see something that we’ve done, or any President has done, that was really important and good, that did not involve some mess and some strong-arming and some shading of how it was initially talked about to a particular member of the legislature who you needed a vote from. Because, if you’re doing big, hard things, then there is going to be some hair on it—there’s going to be some aspects of it that aren’t clean and neat and immediately elicit applause from everybody. And so the nature of not only politics but, I think, social change of any sort is that it doesn’t move in a straight line, and that those who are most successful typically are tacking like a sailor toward a particular direction but have to take into account winds and currents and occasionally the lack of any wind, so that you’re just sitting there for a while, and sometimes you’re being blown all over the place.”

That reminded me of how President Obama talked about his North Star early on in his presidency.

So, my job is to make sure that we have a North Star out there, what is helping people live out their lives; what is giving them more opportunity; what is growing the economy; what is making us more competitive. At any given juncture there are going to be times that my preferred option, what I am absolutely, positively sure is right, I can’t get done. And so then, my question is, does it make sense for me to tack a little bit this way or that way because I am keeping my eye on the long-term and the long fight. Not my day-to-day news cycle, but where am I going over the long-term.

As an example of how he keeps his focus on that North Star, Reminck relates this episode:

Last summer, he received a letter from a single mother struggling to support herself and her daughter on a minimal income. She was drowning: “I need help. I can’t imagine being out in the streets with my daughter and if I don’t get some type of relief soon, I’m afraid that’s what may happen.” “Copy to Senior Advisers,” Obama wrote at the bottom of the letter. “This is the person we are working for.”

Oh my! So much for the corporate tool argument. One can make the claim that President Obama's policies might not do enough to help this mother - that he's tacking too much - but he has consistently held to this priority. And in the end,  he says that this is how he wants his presidency to be judged.

“I think we are fortunate at the moment that we do not face a crisis of the scale and scope that Lincoln or F.D.R. faced. So I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that I can narrow my focus the way those two Presidents did. But I can tell you that I will measure myself at the end of my Presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class, and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.”

There is a lot of discussion in Remnick's article about foreign policy - specifically in the Middle east. On the topic of terrorism, he asks the President about the fact that Al Qaeda now appears to be in control of Falluja. Obama uses the opportunity to talk about how we need to alter the way we view terrorism post 9/11.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, resorting to an uncharacteristically flip analogy. “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.

“Let’s just keep in mind, Falluja is a profoundly conservative Sunni city in a country that, independent of anything we do, is deeply divided along sectarian lines. And how we think about terrorism has to be defined and specific enough that it doesn’t lead us to think that any horrible actions that take place around the world that are motivated in part by an extremist Islamic ideology are a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”

This kind of nuanced thinking about the complexities involved in our response to terrorism is totally missed by those who claim that this administration is continuing the fear-mongering we were subjected to by Bush/Cheney. That distinction and nuance is carried on as the President talks about the use of drones.

“I think any President should be troubled by any war or any kinetic action that leads to death,” Obama told me when I brought up Yousafzai’s remarks. “The way I’ve thought about this issue is, I have a solemn duty and responsibility to keep the American people safe. That’s my most important obligation as President and Commander-in-Chief. And there are individuals and groups out there that are intent on killing Americans—killing American civilians, killing American children, blowing up American planes. That’s not speculation. It’s their explicit agenda.”

Obama said that, if terrorists can be captured and prosecuted, “that’s always my preference. If we can’t, I cannot stand by and do nothing. They operate in places where oftentimes we cannot reach them, or the countries are either unwilling or unable to capture them in partnership with us. And that then narrows my options: we can simply be on defense and try to harden our defense. But in this day and age that’s of limited—well, that’s insufficient. We can say to those countries, as my predecessor did, if you are harboring terrorists, we will hold you accountable—in which case, we could be fighting a lot of wars around the world. And, statistically, it is indisputable that the costs in terms of not only our men and women in uniform but also innocent civilians would be much higher. Or, where possible, we can take targeted strikes, understanding that anytime you take a military strike there are risks involved. What I’ve tried to do is to tighten the process so much and limit the risks of civilian casualties so much that we have the least fallout from those actions. But it’s not perfect.”

I find the statement I bolded most fascinating. It is often ignored when the President's critics accuse him of being just like (or worse than) Bush. President Obama acknowledges that his actions aren't perfect. But he wants us to think about the alternatives. Rather than invading whole countries because they harbor terrorists, he has chosen a different path. This is obviously something he has struggled with. And later on in this article, he sounds positively Niebuhrian in how he talks about it.

“I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every person,” Obama said. “I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity, and I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can do and the bad that we can prevent, and that there’s going to be tragedy out there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things will be better rather than worse.”

President Obama knows that even the leader of the free world has to keep his place in the scheme of things in perspective.

“One of the things that I’ve learned to appreciate more as President is you are essentially a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids, and that river is history,” he later told me. “You don’t start with a clean slate, and the things you start may not come to full fruition on your timetable. But you can move things forward. And sometimes the things that start small may turn out to be fairly significant...

“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” he said. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have.” The long view again. “But I think our decisions matter,” he went on. “And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that at the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”

Some people are suggesting that this represents a kind of resignation from President Obama that is in contrast to where he started six years ago. But I am reminded of how his wife Michelle described his foray into politics way back in 2005.

Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.

President Obama's response upon hearing that description was to see it as a compliment. Certainly he's learned a thing or two about "the viability of politics to make change" in the last six years. But I'm also reminded of what he said exactly one year ago today.

We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

This is a President who has always believed in the long game. Anyone who wants to understand him needs to at least get that one.