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.

New Depth of Meaning for President Obama's North Star

Regular readers here know that President Obama often refers to the "North Star" that guides him in navigating the challenging waters of American politics. This weekend I referred to one of the times the President talked about his North Star in a post at the Political Animal blog. Commenter West_of_the_Cascades pointed out a part of the history of that term that I was not aware of.

This morning I googled to confirm what s/he said. And it's true.

He [Frederick Douglass] used his oratorical skills in the ensuing years to lecture in the northern states against slavery. He also helped slaves escape to the North while working with the Underground Railroad. He established the abolitionist paper The North Star on December 3, 1847, in Rochester, NY, and developed it into the most influential black antislavery paper published during the antebellum era. It was used to not only denounce slavery, but to fight for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups. Its motto was "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."

The usage of "North Star" has a long historical record. But I'm certain that someone as well-versed in history as our President is aware of this particular usage. Because it aligns so well with his core beliefs, knowing this brings a whole new depth of meaning and symbolism to what he's been saying about his own North Star all these years.

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.

President Obama's search for his North Star

I read Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father just after his speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. At the time a lot of people were suggesting that he could be the country's first African American president. But not many folks thought that would happen in four short years - I certainly didn't.

What seemed important to me about the book at the time was that it was one young Black man's search to find his own identity. While Obama's journey was unique in its particulars, it is a road that most of us have to traverse at some point if we are interested in something more than simply following the herd.

I specifically remember how Obama described his teenage years and his attempts to "try on" various identities to see if they fit. At one point he considered Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. But that was before Malcolm's hajj experience when he was still preaching a rejection of the white race. The young Barack considered what that path meant for his relationship with his white mother and grandparents - not to mention the white half of himself - and rejected it.

I say all of this because not many of us go through such a systematic and conscious journey to find ourselves - especially beginning at such a young age. But I believe that journey is why our 44th President is able to maintain his integrity in a political world that often demands it be abandoned. He eventually found his own North Star and demonstrates a relentless ability to keep that in focus through headwinds that knock an awful lot of other people off course.

And so it was fascinating hearing the President respond to questions at the My Brother's Keeper town hall meeting this week. One young man (in the green shirt and bow tie above) asked him how he copes with other people's judgement of him.

But I do think that as you get older part of what you have to determine is what’s important to you -- who are you, how do you want to live, what are the principles that you abide by, what are the kind of fixed foundations, what’s the North Star that steers you -- so that when things happen that aren't always according to plan, and when you have tough times and when you are struggling, what is it that's going to keep you going and keep your bearings.

And I think through trial and error and mistakes and self-reflection, over time I've sort of figured out who I am and what’s important to me and what I care about. And I try to stay focused on that. And that can come about in a lot of different ways. Some people come at it through their faith and God centers them. And some people come at it through their work and they determine, this is what I think is important in terms of my work. There are different paths to it, but at some point, to be a man or a woman, to be an adult, to be a full-grown person, you have to move beyond just what other people think and you have to make a determination about what do you believe in.

Not just what’s your opinion are any given day -- because folks have opinions about everything, and I change my mind about issues. There are times where I think one way, and then I get more evidence, new information comes in, and I say, oh, maybe I wasn’t right about that, let me rethink this. So there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind. But that's different from losing your sense of who you are and what’s important, or just changing your mind because it's easier or expedient.

And what I try to do is be open-minded to new facts but stay pretty fixed in terms of what I think is important. I think, for example, it is really -- this sounds corny, but I think it's really important to treat other people with kindness. So that's a basic principle that I've got. Now, I've got to translate that sometimes in very abstract ways. All right, well, what does that mean if you’ve got suffering children halfway across the world -- what are my responsibilities to them and how does that translate into policy?

And sometimes I've got tough choices because, on the one hand, I may want to help those children; on the other hand, I've got a bunch of young people I need to help here. And if I want to help those children I may need to, then, deal with bad people who are hurting those kids, but that may involve the United States in the kind of conflicts that ultimately hurt some of our young men and women who I might have to send there. So there are complexities to it. It’s hard. But I don’t lose track of the fact that I think treating somebody with kindness, that’s a core value of mine.

Frankly, that interchange kind of blows my mind. Can you think of a time a POTUS talked this deeply, candidly and authentically about - not only his own personal experience - but what it means to  mature into adulthood (a place an awful lot of adults never reach)? The fact that President Obama could do this unscripted means its a process he has reflected on quite a bit.

Agree or disagree with the man. He's the real deal.

President Obama's budget and his priorities

In his last weekly address, President Obama talked about his North Star.

Our top priority as a nation, and my top priority as President, must be doing everything we can to reignite the engine of America’s growth: a rising, thriving middle class. That’s our North Star. That must drive every decision we make.

Matt Yglesias noticed how the President's budget addressed the inequality that is plaguing the middle class.

Obama expands Medicaid, increases EITC and Child Tax Credits, makes the Opportunity Tax Credit permanent, and spares the poor from the cuts involved in adoping the chained CPI. How does he do it? Well, he does it in several ways, but one big part of the story is reducing tax deductions for rich people.

Annie Lowrey noticed the same thing.

The Obama budget proposal released Wednesday, like other White House budgets before it, also emphasizes the problem of inequality and the failure of the American economy to promote a thriving middle class...

The budget includes several proposals to tackle inequality and wage stagnation.

• Increasing the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour from its current rate of $7.25, and indexing it to inflation. The White House asserts that this would lift the wages of about 15 million low-wage workers.
• Creating a “Preschool for All” initiative to provide early childhood education to 4-year-olds from low- and middle-income families. The big idea is that this might improve economic mobility in the future.
• Increased taxes on wealthy Americans, including taxing carried interest as ordinary income. Hedge-fund managers and the like use the carried interest loophole to pay preferential rates on their earnings.
• Increased support for manufacturing, which the White House argues might be an important source of middle-class jobs.
• Making permanent the expansion of the earned income tax credit and child credit, which were due to expire in 2017. The proposal also makes permanent the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which helps families with students pay for college.

We all know that Congress is currently making some progress on a couple of President Obama's other priorities - immigration reform and reducing gun violence. His budget addresses those items both directly and indirectly. Here's an important bit about the latter from Ezra Klein.

But the budget — and the way it’s been rolled out — is playing a more subtle purpose, too. It’s meant to help pass gun control and immigration reform.

As Karen Tumulty writes, “For the first time in a while, members of the two parties — at least some of them — appear to be talking about getting things done.” Immigration and gun control really are grinding forward. But as everyone in those negotiations will admit, it’s touch-and-go. The key is to keep members of the two parties talking about getting things done.

The budget could have interrupted that. For the last three years, at least, the annual budget has heralded a period of angry polarization as Republicans mass to assail the president and Democrats counterattack. It’s been a moment for the two parties to recall why they can’t stand each other.

This budget was built to be different.

As I suggested yesterday, the inclusion of chained CPI upset the dysfunctional status quo that had emerged in recent battles over the budget. That opens the door for change.

Remembering the North Star

I have to admit it - I'm bored with a lot of our politics lately. I'm bored with OWS. Bored with obsession about Herman Cain's sexual harassment escapades. Bored with Perry's "Oops" moments and Romney's flip-flopping.

But as I began to think about that this morning, I realized its more than boredom. Its that the central focus of all of those things we've been hearing about endlessly lately is meaningless when it comes to what is really important to me. As I let my mind and heart dwell on all of those things, I feel like I'm sinking into the quick sand rather than reaching for the stars.

I know its important to deal with reality and not get so caught up in dreams that we forget the day to day. But so much of our political chatter these days isn't about reality - its about nonsense. And I'm tired of going there.

I've talked before about President Obama's commitment to a North Star.

So, my job is to make sure that we have a North Star out there...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.

In this environment, I need to remind myself about that North Star. So this morning I decided to take a look at what leaders from our past and present have said about that.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

- Robert F. Kennedy, April 5, 1968

Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...

It’s not easy to stand in somebody else’s shoes. It’s not easy to see past our differences. We’ve all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart – that puts up walls between us.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant...

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scapegoating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

- Barack Obama, January 20, 2008

Armed with that reminder - I hope to stay focused on what's really important. And to enjoin the battle knowing where it is I want to go.

Michelle Obama talks about "the long game"

If there's been a theme to my blogging about President Obama, its that he embraces the the long game guided by a North Star. My favorite allegory for this administration is the story of the Tortoise and the Hare.

And now First Lady Michelle Obama reinforces that.

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.

There's so much wisdom in those few words, isn't there?

First of all, you have to be grounded in your goal - your North Star. Without that, the chatter and noise will get to you because its such a powerful call-out to grab your attention. Pretty soon you're zigging here and zagging there. And its very easy to lose site of your North Star with some pretty shinny object that appears on the scene.

In my work as the director of a small non-profit, I find myself regularly presented with crises to tackle or opportunities to pursue. Its the mission statement of the organization that grounds me at those times.

In the case of the tortoise - he might have been slow - but he always knew where the finish line was and never veered from putting one foot in front of the other to get there.

I think that our fast-paced culture has caused us to lose site of the fact that real change is slow - especially when you're talking about a representative democracy of 300 million people. Quick change is often not sustainable. But more importantly, anyone who has read The Audacity of Hope recognizes that Obama is very well aware of the backlash that erupts after quick change. In the long run, it can do more damage to your efforts to substantially reach the finish line.

While dazzling promises can win over a lot of people during an election campaign, the mark of a truly historical leader is to not make the ones you don't feel confident you can keep. This is what instils the kind of confidence many of us are developing in President Obama.

Has your confidence ever been shaken by someone who talks big but doesn't follow through in the long run? Mine has. But as Obama's presidency continues, I'm finding that more and more I'm prepared to dismiss the fears and distractions and move forward in the confidence that we have a leader who knows where he's going and is prepared to slowly but surely do what it takes to get to the finish line.

Obama's North Star

This kind of critique of Obama is nothing new. We've been hearing it almost since day one of his Presidency.

It seems to me that the outcome of the process isn't something he has a vested interest in ensuring. He says, often in fact, that "all options are on the table" or "I'm willing to listen to anybody." ... He doesn't see himself as an advocate, but an arbitrator. The worst thing for President Obama to deal with is not a bad outcome, but a bad process. It is a mistake to believe that the president doesn't have a preferred outcome and that it isn't often progressive. He does, but he isn't willing to disrupt the process over it with political fights. He believes that whatever a calm, orderly process produces is what is best, even if he disagrees with the results. Even if it occurs in backrooms. Perhaps this is why so many Democrats are scratching their heads trying to figure out what the president believes. What his motives are. What his politics are.

While this writer begins his article stating that he doesn't think this makes Obama naive or weak, that is the conclusion of many who see things this way.

What I hear is people trying very hard to understand Obama. And yet they continue to apply their own frames and patterns rather than make an effort to see things through fresh eyes. I'd like to suggest that these folks read James Kloppenberg.

Throughout his career, Obama has refused to demonize his opponents. Instead, he has sought them out and listened to them. He has tried to understand how they think and why they see the world as they do. His mother encouraged this sense of empathy, and it’s a lesson Obama learned well. Since January 2009, Obama has watched his efforts at reconciliation, experimentation, and -consensus--building bounce off the hard surfaces of political self-interest and entrenched partisanship, but there is no reason to think he will abandon that strategy now. He knows that disagreement is a vital part of the American fabric, and that our differences are neither shallow nor trivial.

And perhaps, even listen to Obama himself on what he has to say about outcomes.

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.

While I do believe that Obama values a process where all sides are brought to the table and heard (in other words - democracy), he has a North Star...:"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."

That North Star is not dependent on a particular ideology - much to the confusion of extremists on both sides of the equation. By nature, a North Star is off in the distance (ie, long-term) and is used to guide our journey in the here and now...to ensure that we stay the course, even as we have to "tack a little bit this way or that." If your vision is too short-sighted, this is probably something you're likely to miss.