President Obama's Impact on Racism

In many ways that picture captures how the presidency of Barack Obama has changed the country. Young black boys growing up in this era have a different perception of what is possible in their lives. And every day children of other races and genders are presented with an alternative to the image of the "angry black man" that has been so embedded in our culture. We should never underestimate the power of that shift.

But what about the rest of us? A lot of pundits suggest that the presidency of Barack Obama has polarized the racial divide in this country. And there's some truth to that. At no point in my adult life has race been more front and center as an issue than its been over the last 6 years. And so the question becomes whether this President has moved us forward or backwards when it comes to the racial divide in this country.

From the 1970's through the early 2000's, most white people could simply ignore the question of racism. There were times it came out of the woodwork and surprised us - like the reaction to the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trail and the Rodney King beating, verdict and riots. But the former was more of a curiosity and the latter didn't really affect our lives. If we were successfully able to segregate ourselves from the every day lives of black/brown people, we could reach the conclusion that the Civil Rights Movement had tackled that problem and it was time to move on. When it came to politics, that included both white conservatives and liberals.

Then we elected our first black president. The reaction to that has led someone like Ezra Klein to write about Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is different. It isn't so much paranoia about President Obama's policies as it is paranoia about the man himself — that he is, in some fundamental way, different, foreign, untrustworthy, even traitorous. What's odd is that it is attached to a president whose presidency has been, in almost every respect, conventionally liberal.

You can almost hear the wheels turning in Klein's head asking, "WTH is going on here?!" He can only come to one conclusion.

But then, that's why Obama Derangement Syndrome is different than Bush Derangement Syndrome: it's not really about Obama's presidency. It's about Obama himself. It's about his blackness, his father's foreignness, his strange name, his radical pastor. Obama's presidency is in many ways ordinary, but the feelings it evokes are not. There is something about seeing Obama in the White House that deeply unsettles his critics. Obama Derangement Syndrome rationalizes those feelings.

Now, I don't know that much about Klein's personal life other than that he's young, smart, liberal and wonky. So I don't want to make this all about him. But for the cohort he represents, it's obviously pretty difficult to continue to ignore the reality of racism in this country as we watch the reaction to this President.

And so I am reminded once again of what Derrick Jensen wrote in The Culture of Make Believe.

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

The presidency of Barack Obama has threatened the normalization of racism that allowed too many white people in this country to ignore it for the last 40 years. It's now out in the open and it's time for us to reckon with it. Aside from any other policies this President has implemented, that is the legacy he offers to us.

What Will Defeat ISIS

I see that Marie Harf, deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, is experiencing quite the backlash from conservatives for suggesting that - when it comes to ISIS - "We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups." Of course, that kind of thinking is anathema to the fear, anger and need for revenge that is invoked so often in this country.

But my question is always - what is the end goal of all the killing that is usually offered as the alternative? Certainly we can interrupt the advancement of a group like ISIS and protect more people from being victims of their barbarism. But as President George W. Bush found out - there will be no "Mission Accomplished" moment when ISIS leaders formally "surrender" and the threat is eliminated.

That's why President Obama said this during his interview with Matt Yglesias:

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.

It strikes me that this is a lesson the United States has had trouble learning over the last 60 years. Its why the President often talks about the need for a new set of tools to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century. During WWII, the American military helped defeat dictators who not only oppressed their own people, but sought to expand their power beyond their own borders.

But following that victory, we became embroiled in conflicts on the side of dictators who were fending off challenges as their own citizens sought to throw off the yoke of tyranny that was often the legacy of colonialism. Those efforts didn't end so well because people who are willing to fight and die for their own emancipation are not likely to "surrender."

In one of the most important speeches of his Presidency, Barack Obama addressed this shift in his remarks to the young people of Europe almost a year ago.

Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve inevitable conflicts between states. And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle -- through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution -- that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding. And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men -- and women -- are created equal.

But those ideals have also been tested -- here in Europe and around the world. Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power. This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.

In his interview with Yglesias, the President noted that the older, most traditional view of power is giving way to the reality that power is derived from the consent of the governed.

I am a firm believer that particularly in this modern internet age, the capacity of the old-style authoritarian government to sustain itself and to thrive just is going to continue to weaken. It's going to continue to crumble that model. My argument to any partner that we have is that you are better off if you've got a strong civil society and you've got democratic legitimacy and you are respectful of human rights.

Going back to his speech in Brussels, President Obama pointed out how this has played out recently around the globe.

Indeed, the ideals that came to define our alliance also inspired movements across the globe among those very people, ironically, who had too often been denied their full rights by Western powers. After the Second World War, people from Africa to India threw off the yoke of colonialism to secure their independence. In the United States, citizens took freedom rides and endured beatings to put an end to segregation and to secure their civil rights. As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies, and Asian nations showed that development and democracy could go hand in hand.

It is exactly the same kind of movement that was unleashed by the Arab Spring. What we are witnessing is an attempt to exploit that movement by sectarian extremists. That is why Harf is exactly right in saying that the answer ultimately will come from addressing the root causes. The disorder caused by throwing off the shackles of dictators needs to be met with the development of strong civil societies with democratic legitimacy and respect for human rights. That is ultimately what will defeat ISIS.

Here's how the President ended his remarks in Brussels:

I believe that if we hold firm to our principles, and are willing to back our beliefs with courage and resolve, then hope will ultimately overcome fear, and freedom will continue to triumph over tyranny -- because that is what forever stirs in the human heart.

P.S. These are the same lessons that Putin will need to learn in the Ukraine and Netanyahu will need to learn in the Middle East (especially with regards to the occupation of Palestinian territories).

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.

The Fundamental Difference

President Obama certainly stirred up an interesting conversation about religion and faith at this week's National Prayer Breakfast. I think its an important discussion to have - given the way that the separation of church and state has been called into question over these last few years.

Some of the controversy has focused on his remarks about the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery in the United States and Jim Crow. But those who challenge what he said are merely trying to whitewash (literally) history. The fact that some Christians used their faith to justify horrible deeds is simply a matter of fact.

In declaring President Obama "not a Christian in any meaningful way," Erick Erickson gets to the fundamental difference that ignites the controversy. He quotes this part of the President's remarks.

I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt -- not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth...

And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion -- any religion -- for their own nihilistic ends.

I was immediately struck by Erickson's response:

Christ said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." (John 14:6) Christ himself is truth. When we possess Christ, we possess truth.

What stood out to me is his use of the word "possess." It not only implies a kind of ownership (similar to Sen. Rand Paul's suggestion that parents own their children), it also suggests that - as human beings - we can thoroughly know (and posses) the mind and heart of the Son of God. One has to wonder what folks like Erickson do with Paul's warning against this kind of hubris in I Corinthians 13: 11-12.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

It is when acts of dominance, intolerance and - ultimately - violence are fed by that kind of hubris that President Obama was warning us about.

Over the years, Barack Obama has expressed the same sentiments several times. For example, back in 2004 Cathleen Falsani interviewed him about his faith. At the time, he said this:

I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up, a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.

I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it’s best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

I think that, particularly as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.

And in his commencement address at Notre Dame in 2009 (a speech I have suggested is one of the most important of his presidency), he talked about it this way.

And in this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. In other words, stand as a lighthouse.

But remember, too, that you can be a crossroads. Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen...

And this doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to continue the spiritual and moral debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works and charity and kindness and service that moves hearts and minds.

What it all comes down to is a question of humility over the temptation of hubris and certainty. I doubt that its a coincidence that Paul's warning against the latter came at the end of one of his most powerful statements about the supremacy of love (charity) over faith and hope. As President Obama said, that is what "moves hearts and minds."

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today

Hat tip to @TheObamaDiary for this reminder:

25 Years Ago Today: The first African American is elected President of the Harvard Law Review pic.twitter.com/3lKCzgYHoV
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) February 5, 2015

To commemorate, I'd invite you to revisit something I wrote back in Nov. 2008 titled: Obama's Previous Gig as President. If pundits had taken a look at this information, they might have been better at their jobs these last six years. The man has been breathtakingly consistent.

But my favorite quote comes from an interview Tammerlin Drummond conducted with Barack Obama in 1990, not long after he was first elected to be the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

The post, considered the highest honor a student can attain at Harvard Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with the U.S. Supreme Court after graduation and a lucrative offer from the law firm of one's choice.

Yet Obama, who has gone deep into debt to meet the $25,000-a-year cost of a Harvard Law School education, has left many in disbelief by asserting that he wants neither.

"One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you can take risks in your life," Obama said recently. "You can try to do things to improve society and still land on your feet. That's what a Harvard education should buy-enough confidence and security to pursue your dreams and give something back."

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.

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.

Obama and Clinton: Strategies For Change

It is going to pain me to say this (a lot!), but I think Ron Fournier is actually right about something.

Friends and associates of the former secretary of State, including some who are preparing her for a likely presidential bid, say Clinton obviously will embrace Obama's progressive economic agenda. Middle-class tax cuts, judicial reform, paid sick leave, and free community-college tuition are the sort of policies that Clinton has previously supported—and would certainly push in the future.

Clinton is not worried about being associated with Obama's policies, associates say. Her challenge is to convince voters that, unlike Obama, she can deliver on her promises...

The Clinton team is discussing how to draw a contrast between Obama's leadership skills and hers—without overtly insulting the president.

The assumption behind this kind of strategy is that Clinton will lose if she simply runs on a "third Obama term." I'll leave that one aside for now because Fournier has tapped into the argument she'll likely make.

Way back during the 2008 primary (when the contest was still between Obama, Clinton and Edwards), Mark Schmitt wrote a masterful piece on their different "theories of change." While the GOP strategy of total obstruction was not in view at the time, he did define the status quo as Republican intractability. And then he examined the candidates' approach to overcoming the stalemate that would produce. Here's how he summed it up:

Hillary Clinton's stump speech is built around the speechwriter's rule of three, applied to theories of change: one candidate believes you achieve change by "demanding" it [Edwards], another thinks you "hope for it" [Obama], while she alone knows that you have to "work for it" [Clinton].

That's accurate as a rendering of the candidates' language: Her message of experience and hard work, Obama's language of hope and common purpose, Edwards' insistence that those with power will never give it up willingly.

Schmitt goes on to suggest that simply relying on "hard work" might not be enough.

Any of the three "theories of change" has to be tested not just as a description of the current political situation, but as a tactic for breaking it. Even the non-naive Edwards believes that the structure of power can be broken -- by a large, engaged social movement. Clinton's theory in a sense takes the status quo for granted more than the others, but it's appropriate in certain situations: I imagine her negotiating the fine points of a health care bill, having mastered every lesson from 1993 and every detail, and getting Senators McConnell and Grassley in the room, and them walking out having agreed to something they barely understand. Superior knowledge and diligence can be a tool of power...And while hard work and mastery of details is also indispensable in a president, work alone does not overcome unyielding political opposition. As Karl Rove would say, it's not a "gamechanger."

That description of how Clinton might have handled health care reform negotiations totally reminds me of the deal President Obama made during the attempt to avert a government shutdown over the FY 2011 budget. Initially conservatives went into celebration mode and liberals were incensed that "Obama caved." Eventually Republicans figured out they'd been taken.

So the budget deal is supposed to deliver $38 billion in spending cuts, including $20 billion in cuts to domestic discretionary spending...Based on news accounts, quite a lot of that $20 billion could be phony: $6.2 billion in unspent money for the Census; $2.5 billion of highway funds that couldn’t be spent; $3.5 billion of unused spending authority in a children’s health-care program. Is it possible that Republicans have gone from $61 billion in domestic discretionary savings all the way down to $8 billion?

As for the Edwards theory that the status quo can be broken "by a large, engaged social movement"... President Obama has been there, done that too.

Schmitt outlines what it is that President Obama added to the mix. Something I've called "conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy."

...perhaps we are being too literal in believing that "hope" and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved... puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk...

What I find fascinating about his language about unity and cross-partisanship is that it is not premised on finding Republicans who agree with him, but on taking in good faith the language and positions of actual conservatism -- people who don't agree with him....

The reason the conservative power structure has been so dangerous, and is especially dangerous in opposition, is that it can operate almost entirely on bad faith. It thrives on protest, complaint, fear...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.

President Obama has engaged all three theories - hard work, building a social movement, and conciliatory rhetoric - in an attempt to break through Republican obstructionism. For a while, he also tried to build a "common sense caucus." Now he's added his "pen and phone" strategy. In other words, when it comes to change, the President has employed an "all of the above" strategy. None of these things have been unquestionably successful - but they've all had their moments. And in the end, he's managed to accomplish quite a lot.

If Ron Fournier is right and Hillary Clinton wants to show that she can "deliver" in a way that President Obama has not, she's going to have to dig a lot deeper in search of something new. Otherwise it's just empty rhetoric that would come back to haunt her once she's in office.

Everybody Matters

I want our actions to tell every child in every neighborhood, your life matters, and we are  committed to improving your life chances - as committed as we are to working on behalf of our own kids. I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we’re a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen -- man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino, Asian, immigrant, Native American, gay, straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability. Everybody matters. I want them to grow up in a country that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are the United States of America.

President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 20, 2015

Talk...meet walk.

A Better Politics

After President Obama's speech ended last night, I spent a few minutes listening to TV pundits react. The basic line was: "The President talked about a better politics. But he didn't offer any conciliation to Republican ideas."

I had to turn the TV off after just a couple of minutes because I was so frustrated that none of them seemed to even remotely grasp what the President said. The assumption was that the only way to achieve a better politics was for him to agree with Republicans.

Here's some of what the President actually said:

So the question for those of us here tonight is how we, all of us, can better reflect America’s hopes...

Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different. Understand, a better politics isn’t one where Democrats abandon their agenda or Republicans simply embrace mine. A better politics is one where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears. A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other; where we talk issues and values, and principles and facts, rather than “gotcha” moments, or trivial gaffes, or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people’s daily lives...

If we’re going to have arguments, let’s have arguments, but let’s make them debates worthy of this body and worthy of this country.

Too many pundits (and Americans in general) assume there are only two options: agree or demonize your opponent. That's the kind of politics we've been living with for far too long. It's what President Obama calls our "empathy deficit." He is saying that we can disagree strongly with each other AND still address the heart of the matter.

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...

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.

This is truly President Obama's unique contribution to our politics today. Unless/until we can begin to grasp what he's saying...the poison will continue to infect our system.

Back to Why He Ran

The White House referred to last night's State of the Union speech as "Turning the Page." And no, I didn't know that was going to happen when I posted this yesterday morning. But even as I wrote that, I didn't realize the import of that title. Here's how President Obama described it in the introduction to his remarks.

Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before. More of our people are insured than ever before. And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain. And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 Generation who has served to keep us safe. We are humbled and grateful for your service.

America, for all that we have endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

But it wasn't until he got to the end of the speech that I realized why the President has a spring in his step lately and more determination that ever to push his own agenda. No, its not simply because he doesn't have to face another election. And no, its not simply because he wants to set the agenda for the 2016 election. And no, its not because he's finally learned how to be combative with Republicans.

Listening to the President last night I got more of a sense of how burdened he's been by the near-collapse of our economy and the seemingly endless wars in which we were engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. For almost six years he has had to focus almost exclusively on fixing the messes he was handed by previous administrations. As he has said a lot lately, 2014 was finally a "break-through year" on all those fronts. And now he is free to get back to the issues that motivated him to run in the first place.

I can hear it now: "But, but, but...income inequality!!!!" My response would be to say that addressing that issue is EXACTLY why Barack Obama ran for president. It's not a new challenge that exists because of the Great Recession. It has been building for the last 30-40 years (or more). President Obama's assessment of our situation is that the fundamentals of our economy are now strong enough that we can begin to tackle the structural issues that create inequality.

It was when President Obama recalled his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention that I recognized the transformation that has happened in him over the last few months. He's finally able to let go of an incredibly difficult crisis that was not of his making and get on with the work he felt passionate enough about that he was able to take on the risk of running for president against all odds...and won...twice :-)

He's only got two years left to go. But I predict that over that time we'll see the president Barack Obama dreamed of being. So hang on for a VERY interesting fourth quarter!

The Hallmark of an Effective Leader

Ever since Michael Grunwald ignored all the wailing on both the left and right about the American Recovery Act, I've been a big fan of his. And before I get to his more recent contribution, let me take a detour to point out that six years ago today, we celebrated President Obama's first inauguration. Twenty-eight days later (on February 17, 2009), he signed the ARA. Think about that for a moment...28 days to pass and sign the biggest stimulus package in this country's history!

Anyway, back to Grunwald. Just yesterday I was reflecting on how our media fueled the fear and hysteria about Ebola last fall, but has done almost nothing to tell us why there has been such success in containing an epidemic. And then along comes Grunwald to remedy that. He did it by interviewing Ron Klain - the man President Obama appointed to be the "Ebola Czar."

If you remember what happened at the time, a lot of people critiqued and/or laughed at this appointment because Klain was not a medical expert. Here's what he had to say about that:

I think people maybe had a misperception of what was needed. We had great medical advisers; the president was getting great advice from Dr. Fauci, from Dr. Frieden, who runs the CDC, from a panoply of other medical experts. I think the White House was looking for someone to come in and do the very unglamorous, bureaucratic coordination it takes to produce a response of this size. I think folks here knew I had done that with the Recovery Act and saw this as a very similar kind of project. It was taking a 14-or-15-agency response, a lot of great people, and making it all work together, figuring out where the seams were, figuring out what policy decisions needed to get made...

The medical science of what it takes to treat and stop the Ebola epidemic really isn’t that complicated. You just have to figure out who has the disease, isolate them from other people and get them some pretty basic treatments.

We needed some policy work on domestic response, how to figure out which hospitals to get ready to deal with this, how to put the right procedures in place to screen people who come in to the country and identify them in case one of them got sick and get them to the right place. The other thing we’ve had to do is make sure the science was informing our policy decision and not letting misperceptions or anxiety shape the policy decisions. But the science was clear.

One of the hallmarks of an effective leader is the ability to accurately diagnose a problem and bring in the people who have the skills to solve it. That's exactly what President Obama did in appointing Klain. The fact that almost no one is talking about Ebola these days speaks volumes about the outcome.

State of the Union: Turning the Page

As we prepare for tonight's State of the Union speech, we already know most of the ideas/proposals President Obama will talk about. And so much of the pundit chatter has moved away from what he will say to why he will say it. This is always a fascinating inquiry to watch. That's because a lot of the responses tell us more about the pundit than they do about the President.

The conventional wisdom accepted by almost everyone is that what Obama will propose tonight is a break from what he's done in the past. The centerpiece for that assumption is that he will talk about an increase in taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for programs that assist the poor and middle class.

But is this really something new for President Obama? Let me give you three examples of where he's done it before:

1. Obamacare takes revenue mostly from the wealthy to pay for assistance for the poor and middle class - in other words, it is redistributive.
2. The reason Republicans walked away from a Grand Bargain with President Obama is that he insisted on additional federal revenue (mostly from ending tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy) in order to agree to their spending cuts.
3. In the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal of 2012, President Obama insisted on continuing the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and elimination of them for the wealthy.

So what the President will propose tonight aligns very well with his approach in the past.

For those who buy into the conventional wisdom however, their rationales for why are fascinating. The Republican response is - of course - predictable.

Republicans cast Mr. Obama’s slow-motion rollout of his State of the Union agenda in recent weeks as the desperate flailing of a lame-duck president who has not come to grips with the electorate’s decision in November or the fact that the opposition now controls the Senate as well as the House. In defying reality, they said, he simply wants to return to the tax-and-spending ways of the past.

“I see this as the president returning to the theme of class warfare,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. “It may have been effective in 2012, but I don’t find it to be effective anymore. I think, frankly, he’s out of ideas if he is unwilling to work with Republicans, and I think he is unwilling to work with Republicans.”

But when it comes to the President's overall response to the 2014 midterms, I find myself in the odd position of agreeing with conservative pundit Byron York.

"The reason he is being aggressive is that he knows he can generate a response," says a well-connected Republican strategist. "When he does an executive order, what he is trying to do is generate a response so that the entire conversation is about what he did — so that he has defined the agenda."

Likewise, when Obama, facing a newly-empowered conservative Congress, uses his State of the Union speech to propose a tax plan the liberal columnist E.J. Dionne calls "genuinely redistributive," he is trying to dictate the terms of the debate with a powerful adversary. Of course Obama knows his plan is anathema to Republicans, but if they debate the president on his terms, he makes progress.

On the other side of the political spectrum, progressives are announcing for the 157th time (just kidding, I made that number up - but it has happened a lot in the last 6 years) that President Obama has FINALLY come to his senses. Tim Mak captures that one with a quote from David Greenberg.

And in previous State of the Union addresses, argued Greenberg, President Obama has laid out points of potential compromise — only to find the negotiating window shifting to the right when Republicans made stronger demands.

“Obama has made the mistake a lot over his initial years by opening with a compromise bid, and Republicans would counter with their maximum bid,” he said. “Obama may have finally figured out that it's better to open with your maximum bid.”

Spare me...please!

Here is how Jared Bernstein sees it:

For years, he [Obama] had to worry about getting growth back in place following the Great Recession, and getting major legislation—health reform, Dodd-Frank—through Congress. Those measures are in place and must be defended. The recovery, while not complete, is solidly underway.

But the inequalities of wealth, income, and even opportunity are as embedded as ever in our economy, and the goal now must be not merely to sustain the growth we have, but to craft the policy agenda that will give the middle class, and the aspiring middle class, the chance to claim their fair share of that growth.

Bingo gringo!!! Because that's exactly what the man himself said. Remember what he told Steve Inskeep a few weeks ago?

...I have spent six years now in this office. We have dealt with the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. We have dealt with international turmoil that we haven't seen in a lot of years.

And I said at the beginning of this year that 2014 would be a breakthrough year, and it was a bumpy path.

But at the end of 2014, I could look back and say we are as well-positioned today as we have been in quite some time economically, that American leadership is more needed around the world than ever before — and that is liberating in the sense that a lot of the work that we've done is now beginning to bear fruit. And it gives me an opportunity then to start focusing on some of the other hard challenges that I didn't always have the time or the capacity to get to earlier in my presidency...

But what is true is that I'm in a position now where, with the economy relatively strong, with us having lowered the deficit, with us having strong growth and job growth, for the first time us starting to see wages ticking up, with inflation low, with energy production high — now I have the ability to focus on some long-term projects, including making sure that everybody is benefiting from this growth and not just some.

And here's how he said it in his video discussion about the upcoming SOTU speech:

Over the last six years, we have been weighed down by the legacy of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And because of the incredible grit and resilience of the American people, America is now in a position to really turn the page. Now that we have fought our way through the crisis, how do we make sure that everybody in this country, how do we make sure that they’re sharing in this growing economy? How do we make sure that they have the tools to succeed?

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's Legacy in Historical Context

Frankly, if I were a historian and New York Magazine asked me to weigh in on predicting what President Obama's legacy will be in the future (especially with 2 years left in his second term), my response would be to ask, "What part of the word 'history' do you not understand?"

But it did give Thomas Powers an opportunity to actually put the question in proper historical context.

With the caveat that his administration is not yet finished, and two years is a long time, how will history judge Obama?

One theme dominates American history from its origins to this morning’s news—the consequences, and how to deal with them, of the importation into the United States of Africans as slaves. President Barack Obama is not a descendant of slaves but he is black and that fact has unloosed or perhaps only illuminated a renewed white political resistance to racial equality that future historians will record as the third phase of the struggle by white Americans to retain political and social control.

The first phase, centering on the question of slavery, extended from the counting of black slaves as three-fifths of a man in the Constitution of 1787 through ratification of the 13th Amendment banning slavery in 1865. The second phase, triggered by white shock at the social revolution implicit in the end of slavery, centered on white use of vigilante terror and control of the courts to deny political and civil rights for black Americans. Soon after the civil-rights acts of the 1960s ended the second phase, a third emerged, triggered by white shock at the fact of black legal and political equality.

The first line of white defense in each phase has been denial—denial in the first phase that slavery was cruel, exploitive, and wrong, and denial in the second phase that lynching, Jim Crow laws, and whites-only primaries were intended to control African-Americans. In the third phase, it is denied that implacable Republican hostility to Obama has anything to do with race; that the all-Republican South, like the all-Democratic South which preceded it, is primarily an instrument of white control; that voter-ID laws are aimed at blocking votes by blacks and Hispanics; and that the predominance of white men voting Republican (64 percent in the midterm elections) is explained by race. History suggests that it takes roughly 50 years for denial to run its course; after that, everybody will know what the struggle is about, and no historian will blame it on Obama.

 Hmmm...sounds just like what Rev. William Barber said.

Lighthouse and Crossroads

In order to dispel any notion that by promoting unity/empathy/Ubuntu, the great leaders I mentioned previously are simply calling for the accommodation of our most profound beliefs/principles, I'd invite to to listen to or read President Obama's remarks at the 2009 Notre Dame Commencement.

For some context, when it was announced that the President would be the commencement speaker, anti-abortion activists on campus engaged in protests. But rather than dismissing them, President Obama went right to the heart of the matter and addressed the topic head on. It was a profound exhibition of strength, courage and empathy.


Here's how he concluded his speech.

And in this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. In other words, stand as a lighthouse.

But remember, too, that you can be a crossroads. Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen...

And this doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to continue the spiritual and moral debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works and charity and kindness and service that moves hearts and minds.

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It’s no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule -- the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth...

I will not pretend that the challenges we face will be easy, or that the answers will come quickly, or that all our differences and divisions will fade happily away -- because life is not that simple. It never has been.

But as you leave here today, remember the lessons of Cardinal Bernardin, of Father Hesburgh, of movements for change both large and small. Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived...

If nothing else, that knowledge should give us faith that through our collective labor, and God’s providence, and our willingness to shoulder each other’s burdens, America will continue on its precious journey towards that more perfect union.

The Heart of the Matter

When most people talk about globalization and income inequality, the talk about policies to alleviate the problem. That is an important part of the equation. But Pope Francis recently addressed the heart of the matter.

I recognize that globalization has helped many people to rise from poverty, but it has condemned many others to hunger. It's true that in absolute terms it grows world wealth, but it also increased the disparity and the new kinds of poverty.

What I notice is that this system is maintained with the culture of waste, of which I have already spoken several times. There is a politics, sociology, and also an attitude of rejection.

When at the center of the system there is not anymore man but money, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced and simply instruments of a social system and an economy characterized, indeed dominated by deep imbalances.

That reminded me of something David Simon said a few years ago when he talked about why he created the HBO series The Wire.

We are in the postindustrial age. We do not need as many of us as we once did. We don’t need us to generate capital, to secure wealth. We are in a transitive period where human beings have lost some of their value. Now, whether or not we can figure out a way to validate the humanity of the individual, I have great doubts...

The Wire is certainly an angry show. It’s about the idea that we are worth less. And that is an unreasonable thing to contemplate for all of us. It is unacceptable. And none of us wants to be part of a world that is going to do that to human beings. If we don’t exert on behalf of human dignity at the expense of profit and capitalism and greed, which are inevitabilities, and if we can’t modulate them in some way that is a framework for an intelligent society, we are doomed. It is going to happen sooner than we think. I don’t know what form it will take. But I know that every year America is going to be a more brutish and cynical and divided place.

And finally, I was reminded of what Derrick Jensen wrote in The Culture of Make Believe when he talked about the similarities between hate groups and corporations.

He said, "They're cousins."

I just listened.

"Nobody talks about this," he said, "but they're branches from the same tree, different forms of the same cultural imperative..."

"Which is?"

"To rob the world of its subjectivity."

"Wait - " I said.

"Or to put this another way," he continued, "to turn everyone and everything into objects."

Robbing the world of its subjectivity means removing empathy and our feelings of mutuality. It means creating distance between "us" and "them." It is also what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was addressing when he said this:

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

When people accuse President Obama of being too accommodating with his opponents (liberals accuse him of being too accommodating with Republicans and conservatives accuse him of the same thing with global opponents), they fail to see that this is exactly the challenge he is attempting to address.

Here's how candidate Obama talked about it back in 2008 on Martin Luther King Day.

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...

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...

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media...

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.

Here's how he talked about it on a global scale during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that's the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share.

The President reminded us of this when he memorialized Nelson Mandela.

Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. 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...He not only embodied Ubuntu; he taught millions to find that truth within themselves. 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. He changed laws, but also hearts.

There are those that say Ubuntu is impossibly naive and unrealistic. To them, I simply respond:

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us (John Lennon, Pope Francis, David Simon, Derrick Jensen, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, President Obama)
And the world will live as one.

President Obama's Wage Initiative

It has become conventional wisdom among liberal politicians and pundits that Democrats running in 2016 should embrace a "new populism" centered on combating income inequality and middle class wage stagnation. There are likely some Democrats who need to be persuaded, but President Obama isn't one of them.

As I've written before, Barack Obama started talking about this issue before Elizabeth Warren ran for her current Senate seat. As a matter of fact, he regularly calls it "the defining issue of our time." Way back when he first announced his candidacy for president (more than six months before the Great Recession hit), he said that it was one of the reasons why he decided to run.

What we've heard less about from politicians and pundits are specifics of what can be done to combat income inequality. Basically most all Democrats support raising the minimum wage. But beyond that - what are the policies/proposals that can lead to change?

To answer that question, Danny Vinik interviewed Lawrence Mishel and Ross Eisenbrey, the president and vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) respectively, and uncovered what they call the "Obama wage initiative."

We believe that the Obama administration has pursued and is pursuing a series of initiatives that could be categorized as an Obama wage initiative, although the administration doesn’t package it as that, which is something that which we think is a mistake.

They go on to list five things President Obama has done as part of this initiative:

1. DACA and his more recent immigration executive actions
2. Executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contractors
3. Fair pay and safe workplaces initiative
4. Directing the Secretary of Labor to update the white-collar salary threshold for overtime pay
5. Asked Congress for 300 more investigators for the wage and hour division

Given that the President told Steve Inskeep that he will now be focusing on long-term projects like "making sure that everybody is benefiting from this growth and not just some," I expect we'll be seeing more of this kind of thing in his forth quarter.

So here's a heads up to those promoting a "new populism:" identifying the problem with strong words and fancy graphs won't cut it. Its time to put your solutions on the table.

An Update on President Obama's Clemency Initiative

Eight months ago, the Department of Justice announced the Obama administration's clemency initiative. The goal of this effort was to reform the Office of the Pardon Attorney - which is the department that serves as the liaison between DOJ and the President on recommending individuals for clemency. As was reported at the time:

The president complained that the pardon attorney's office favored petitions from wealthy and connected people, who had good lawyers and knew how to game the system. The typical felon recommended for clemency by the pardon attorney was a hunter who wanted a pardon so that he could apply for a hunting license.

And so the person in charge of the Office of the Pardon Attorney was replaced by Deborah Leff and a new initiative was launched to commute the sentences of nonviolent drug offenders who were caught up in the disparities in laws governing crack and powder cocaine.

Along with many others, I was a bit disappointed that in December, all of this led to commutations for only 8 people currently in prison. But I've been keeping my eyes open for any reporting on how the process is going. The first comprehensive look at that came yesterday from Josh Gerstein. Of course he has to feed the cynicism beast by calling the whole thing a "quagmire" and searching desperately for reasons why its an absolute failure. But sifting out the wheat from the chaff, there are some helpful nuggets of information included.

The first thing that literally jumps off the page is that 25,000 prisoners have come forward since the initiative was announced. Since the President had previously criticized the process as favoring "wealthy and connected people," AG Holder set a different goal for this initiative.

"We have to have a process that I think works better, we need to come up with ways in which we identify people who are worthy of clemency, commutations, and not in the way I think we have traditionally done," Holder said.

Working with state bar associations, independent outside groups, U.S. Attorneys and the Bureau of Prisons, DOJ attempted to get the word out to all potential applicants about the process and the availability of pro bono attorneys to assist them in applying. I'd suggest that 25,000 people showing interest means they were successful in reaching the goal Holder identified as a first step.

The next stage is for eligible prisoners to fill out a clemency petition. Assisting in that process is a group of organizations called the Clemency Project. Given the volume of applicants they are dealing with, it should come as no surprise that in October 2014 the ABA (one of the participating organizations) put out a call for more volunteers.

Gerstein points out one of the biggest reasons (other than the sheer numbers involved) for delays.

In addition, attorneys inside and outside the project say it has been hamstrung by a fairly mundane problem: protracted delays in getting basic paperwork from courts such as probation reports and judges’ detailed explanations for why prisoners received particular sentences — documents readily available only to government lawyers or the defense attorneys assigned to a case.

“That’s sort of the sticky wicket in the process,” Clemency Project manager Cynthia Roseberry acknowledged in an interview. “The clog in the system is waiting for that data to come back.”

Finally, clemency petitions are reviewed by staff in the Office of the Pardon Attorney for possible recommendations to the President. Here Gerstein reports that - even in the era of sequestration - that office has managed to double the amount of attorneys and staff working on this project. Of course, that means going from six attorneys to twelve - which is probably woefully too few.

Given all that, this is an initiative that will likely require a long term view in order to see it come to fruition. I would expect additional results as President Obama goes all in on initiatives like this in his "fourth quarter." But it will also behoove us to look for presidential candidates in the future who will commit to appointing an Attorney General that is likely to continue Eric Holder's efforts to reform our criminal justice system - especially projects like this.