Add a coherent political message, banners, leaflets, a dance tune that resonates with the message, and such to a dancing musical flash mob like these and you have the seeds of a new, more effective, kind of protest than the tired old marching around in circles of the last century that has ceased to win any cause for anyone.Yesterday the young people of Generation Progress took it to Central Park with Donte Stallworth to encourage young people to "Get Covered."
Despite Pete's somewhat benign grandfatherly appearance, he's a creature of stubborn, defiant and nasty optimism. Inside him he carries a steely toughness that belies that grandfatherly facade and it won't let him take a step back from the things he believes in. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger to the heart of our country's illusions about itself...He reminds us of our immense failures as well as shinning a light towards our better angels on the horizon where the country we've imagined and hold dear we hope awaits us.Rest in peace, Pete. Your stubborn, defiant and nasty optimism made us believe...we shall overcome.
I do think that part of effective diplomacy, part of America maintaining its influence in a world in which we remain the one indispensable power, but in which you’ve got a much more multipolar environment, is for other people to know that we understand their stories as well, and that we can see how they have come to certain conclusions or understandings about their history, their economies, the conflicts they’ve suffered. Because, if they think we understand their frame of reference, then they’re more likely to listen to us and to work with us.What struck me was his reference to a more multipolar environment in the world. I first heard that word back when the neocon's dream of US dominance on the world stage was taking a beating because of the inept way Bush/Cheney had handled the invasion/occupation of Iraq. I found the discussion of multipolarity going on around the globe to be a fascinating alternative to either the bi-polar nature of the cold war or the unipolar dreams of the neocons for US domination.
It is a game of every power for itself, in which each regional power center cooperates with others when it shares common interests with them and opposes them when interests conflict. The result is the absence of a single paradigm of world order or even of a coherent pattern of alliances. In their place are coalitions of convenience that -- taken together -- have no consistent direction.Notice how that language mirrors David Simon's prediction about the end of hegemony in domestic affairs after the 2012 election.
America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions.President Obama wisely uses the word multipolar in a way that indicates his recognition that a balancing of power is inevitable, and that the US is going to have to do a better job of empathizing with the perspectives of people in other parts of the world in order to be effective diplomatically. It all reminds me of what he said a little more than 6 years ago in Cairo.
For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.One gets the feeling that perhaps we are in the midst of finally recognizing our "inescapable network of mutuality" - the garment of destiny MLK referred to over 50 years ago. And that President Obama is preparing us for that reality.
And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes -- and, yes, religions -- subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared.
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.Thus began what some might call the Obama administration's stealth campaign on combating climate change. I've chronicled before that a big part of that stealth campaign has been the ongoing efforts of the Department of Defense to go green. As the largest energy consumer in the world, those efforts go beyond being beneficial to the military and have huge implications in the private sector.
Military investment in renewable energy and related technologies, in many cases, holds the potential to bridge the “valley of death” that lies between research & development and full commercialization of these technologies. As such, the myriad of DOD initiatives focused on fostering cleantech is anticipated to have a substantial impact on the development and growth of the industry as a whole.We've also seen how President Obama has infused his second term administration with people who are committed to addressing climate change. We knew that Dennis McDonough, his chief of staff, has a history on this issue as well as his new Secretary of State John Kerry. But recently, Kerry has publicly made this a central focus of his work.
...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.Given Republican opposition, political observers have pretty much abandoned the possibility that Congress will engage on addressing climate change. And so it is clear that any additional movement on the domestic side of things will have to come from executive action. Right on cue for that one comes the appointment of John Podesta as the new White House counselor.
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.
The deal-sealer for Podesta, who has vowed to stay for only a year, was Obama’s assurance that he would be given broad oversight of the administration’s climate change agenda...And here is where the template for Podesta in action might first become apparent: With chances of major legislation on climate change all but dead given congressional opposition, Podesta will push for aggressive executive action, in addition to backstopping new Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy on controversial new emissions guidelines for power plants.While many liberals are focusing on the Keystone Pipeline and/or the negotiations underway on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the real battles on environmental policy in the coming year are going to be the EPA rules governing carbon emissions from power plants. This month they released the rules for new power plants which will set the stage for the coming rules on existing plants.
Next, the EPA must draw up standards for the thousands of existing power plants — some 6,500 — which to date have been completely free to pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Those power plants are responsible for about 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. The rule on new power plants sets the legal foundation for this much bigger move.When you hear Republicans accusing the Obama administration of waging a "war on coal," this is what they are reacting to. It is assumed that eventually these new rules will be challenged in court - which is one of the reasons why ending the filibuster on judicial nominees became so urgent, especially on the DC circuit.
“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”To my recollection, that is the first time I've heard President Obama acknowledge that race is a factor for some of his critics...a BFD! But notice that he immediately balances that with the idea that race also plays a role for some of his admirers. I imagine that this tendency of his to do the both/and is maddening to those who feel the very real anger of racism. But this is quintessential Obama, isn't it? He has been so steeped in the value of empathy that he rarely comes down on one side of an argument in righteous rage. His natural instinct seems to be to immediately place himself in the opposition's shoes in order to understand their perspective. Like it or not, if you're going to understand President Obama, this is one of the most important things to notice. Its the very thing that made his speech on race during the 2008 primaries so unique...he wanted white people to understand what racism looked like from the perspective of African Americans. But he also wanted African Americans to understand what it looked like from a white working class perspective.
“The real politics resonated with me, because I have yet to see something that we’ve done, or any President has done, that was really important and good, that did not involve some mess and some strong-arming and some shading of how it was initially talked about to a particular member of the legislature who you needed a vote from. Because, if you’re doing big, hard things, then there is going to be some hair on it—there’s going to be some aspects of it that aren’t clean and neat and immediately elicit applause from everybody. And so the nature of not only politics but, I think, social change of any sort is that it doesn’t move in a straight line, and that those who are most successful typically are tacking like a sailor toward a particular direction but have to take into account winds and currents and occasionally the lack of any wind, so that you’re just sitting there for a while, and sometimes you’re being blown all over the place.”That reminded me of how President Obama talked about his North Star early on in his presidency.
So, my job is to make sure that we have a North Star out there, what is helping people live out their lives; what is giving them more opportunity; what is growing the economy; what is making us more competitive. At any given juncture there are going to be times that my preferred option, what I am absolutely, positively sure is right, I can’t get done. And so then, my question is, does it make sense for me to tack a little bit this way or that way because I am keeping my eye on the long-term and the long fight. Not my day-to-day news cycle, but where am I going over the long-term.As an example of how he keeps his focus on that North Star, Reminck relates this episode:
Last summer, he received a letter from a single mother struggling to support herself and her daughter on a minimal income. She was drowning: “I need help. I can’t imagine being out in the streets with my daughter and if I don’t get some type of relief soon, I’m afraid that’s what may happen.” “Copy to Senior Advisers,” Obama wrote at the bottom of the letter. “This is the person we are working for.”Oh my! So much for the corporate tool argument. One can make the claim that President Obama's policies might not do enough to help this mother - that he's tacking too much - but he has consistently held to this priority. And in the end, he says that this is how he wants his presidency to be judged.
“I think we are fortunate at the moment that we do not face a crisis of the scale and scope that Lincoln or F.D.R. faced. So I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that I can narrow my focus the way those two Presidents did. But I can tell you that I will measure myself at the end of my Presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class, and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.”There is a lot of discussion in Remnick's article about foreign policy - specifically in the Middle east. On the topic of terrorism, he asks the President about the fact that Al Qaeda now appears to be in control of Falluja. Obama uses the opportunity to talk about how we need to alter the way we view terrorism post 9/11.
“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, resorting to an uncharacteristically flip analogy. “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.This kind of nuanced thinking about the complexities involved in our response to terrorism is totally missed by those who claim that this administration is continuing the fear-mongering we were subjected to by Bush/Cheney. That distinction and nuance is carried on as the President talks about the use of drones.
“Let’s just keep in mind, Falluja is a profoundly conservative Sunni city in a country that, independent of anything we do, is deeply divided along sectarian lines. And how we think about terrorism has to be defined and specific enough that it doesn’t lead us to think that any horrible actions that take place around the world that are motivated in part by an extremist Islamic ideology are a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”
“I think any President should be troubled by any war or any kinetic action that leads to death,” Obama told me when I brought up Yousafzai’s remarks. “The way I’ve thought about this issue is, I have a solemn duty and responsibility to keep the American people safe. That’s my most important obligation as President and Commander-in-Chief. And there are individuals and groups out there that are intent on killing Americans—killing American civilians, killing American children, blowing up American planes. That’s not speculation. It’s their explicit agenda.”I find the statement I bolded most fascinating. It is often ignored when the President's critics accuse him of being just like (or worse than) Bush. President Obama acknowledges that his actions aren't perfect. But he wants us to think about the alternatives. Rather than invading whole countries because they harbor terrorists, he has chosen a different path. This is obviously something he has struggled with. And later on in this article, he sounds positively Niebuhrian in how he talks about it.
Obama said that, if terrorists can be captured and prosecuted, “that’s always my preference. If we can’t, I cannot stand by and do nothing. They operate in places where oftentimes we cannot reach them, or the countries are either unwilling or unable to capture them in partnership with us. And that then narrows my options: we can simply be on defense and try to harden our defense. But in this day and age that’s of limited—well, that’s insufficient. We can say to those countries, as my predecessor did, if you are harboring terrorists, we will hold you accountable—in which case, we could be fighting a lot of wars around the world. And, statistically, it is indisputable that the costs in terms of not only our men and women in uniform but also innocent civilians would be much higher. Or, where possible, we can take targeted strikes, understanding that anytime you take a military strike there are risks involved. What I’ve tried to do is to tighten the process so much and limit the risks of civilian casualties so much that we have the least fallout from those actions. But it’s not perfect.”
“I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every person,” Obama said. “I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity, and I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can do and the bad that we can prevent, and that there’s going to be tragedy out there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things will be better rather than worse.”President Obama knows that even the leader of the free world has to keep his place in the scheme of things in perspective.
“One of the things that I’ve learned to appreciate more as President is you are essentially a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids, and that river is history,” he later told me. “You don’t start with a clean slate, and the things you start may not come to full fruition on your timetable. But you can move things forward. And sometimes the things that start small may turn out to be fairly significant...Some people are suggesting that this represents a kind of resignation from President Obama that is in contrast to where he started six years ago. But I am reminded of how his wife Michelle described his foray into politics way back in 2005.
“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” he said. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have.” The long view again. “But I think our decisions matter,” he went on. “And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that at the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”
Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.President Obama's response upon hearing that description was to see it as a compliment. Certainly he's learned a thing or two about "the viability of politics to make change" in the last six years. But I'm also reminded of what he said exactly one year ago today.
We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.This is a President who has always believed in the long game. Anyone who wants to understand him needs to at least get that one.
...after an extended review of our use of drones in the fight against terrorist networks, I believed a fresh examination of our surveillance programs was a necessary next step in our effort to get off the open-ended war footing that we’ve maintained since 9/11.In other words, his overriding goal in all this is "to get off the open-ended war footing that we've maintained since 9/11." Just as with this administration's position on the use of drones, what too many of the people who are concerned with civil liberties often miss is the impact our "open-ended war footing" has on these policies - both psychologically on the American public as well as legally.
Now, make no mistake, our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. But we have to recognize that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11. With a decade of experience now to draw from, this is the moment to ask ourselves hard questions -- about the nature of today’s threats and how we should confront them.Those are the questions he is asking us to grapple with now. In this fascinating article by David Remnick, President Obama talks about his openness to that conversation.
And those who have questioned our drone policy are doing exactly what should be done in a democracy—asking some tough questions. The only time I get frustrated is when folks act like it’s not complicated and there aren’t some real tough decisions, and are sanctimonious, as if somehow these aren’t complicated questions.What remains to be seen is whether or not we're prepared to have an adult conversation to tackle those tough questions.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how MAGA influencers are trying to convince their base that - despite Trump's growing disapproval rates -...
