Why the Shinseki resignation was the pragmatic thing to do; and why that pisses off this pragmatist

When the story about the problems at the Phoenix VA gained national attention, the media could have launched journalistic investigations into what created the problem. And Congress could have held hearings to educate both themselves and the public about what went wrong.

But that's not what they did. Both groups determined that it was in their self-interests to engage in finger-pointing and scapegoating. And so the discussion centered around whether or not General Shinseki should resign. That fed the media's need for the hysteria that generates good linkbait and it gave politicians running for re-election a 5-second sound bite to assure voters they cared about the issue.

Once that frenzi got going, even people like Rep. Tammy Duckworth - who had originally focused on fixing the real problems - decided to join in the call for Shinseki's resignation because nothing was going to get done until/unless that was taken off the table. That's what pragmatists who actually care about veterans have to do once this kind of thing gets going. I suspect that was also what the conversation between General Shinseki and President Obama was all about earlier today.

What pisses me off about that is not the pragmatism demonstrated by that response. Its that it all makes the challenge of solving this problem even harder. Here's what Catherine Burke - an expert in public administration - wrote just prior to the announcement about Shinseki's resignation.

Given the general’s history and capability, he has actually made many things much better at the VA during his term of office. Forcing him out now is likely to make the situation at the VA worse — not better — as there will be no one in place for some time to actually take charge to fix the problem. A new secretary, even after the staggeringly long time it would take for nomination and confirmation, will take months more to learn who is who in the department: who is trustworthy, who is or is not competent, and which systems are the root cause of the problems. No one gets four stars without being extraordinarily capable; thus Shinseki may actually be the best person to identify the sources of the problems and to get them fixed.

As long as the media and politicians find it in their self-interests to engage in hysterical linkbait and 5-second soundbites, we'll continue to find ourselves caught up in this kind of frenzi rather than engaged in pragmatic problem-solving. Our power to change things lies in not following the linkbait, not engaging in the hysteria, and not buying the sound bites. That's something President Obama has been asking us to do for a very long time now.

I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate...

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will.

Nancy's "New Rules"

Democrats don't need to be more like Republicans.

Women don't need to be more like men.

People of color don't need to be more like white people.

But then, those aren't really "new" rules. Audre Lorde put it this way quite a while ago:

What states like Mississippi are doing that progressives should be applauding

As I noted recently, not only is crime going down in this country, but prison admissions are actually dropping after over 30 years of exponential growth. Hello! Is anyone paying attention?!

One of the few people talking about the big picture of this trend is Dr. Keith Humphreys, who writes at The Reality-Based Community (a blog you should be following). Today he notes that part of the reason for this trend is that conservatives in states like Mississippi and South Carolina are getting on board and reforming their criminal justice systems. Take a look at the specifics of the bill recently signed into law in Mississippi:

These reforms enact in policy something we have known to be true for a long time: namely, what helps the offender get back on his feet, hold down a job, secure stable housing and stay clear of trouble is good for all Mississippians. HB585 expands and strengthens alternatives to prison, such as drug court, and builds a re-entry infrastructure so that offenders leaving prison will not only have a bus ticket but a plan to get their lives back on track.

HB585 also ushers in long overdue reform to our drug and property sentences. The legislation narrows many of the broad sentence ranges that have bred disparity across our state for years and reduces the ceilings on low-level drug possession, drug sale and property crimes...

Instead, HB585 ensures we do not waste our most expensive public safety resource — prison beds — on offenders that can be safely and far more cost effectively supervised in the community or with shorter sentences followed by intensive parole supervision.

A lot of these changes are being spurred by conservative groups like Right on Crime. What's fascinating about this movement is that - while anti-science seems to be on the rise amongst conservatives - that site stresses the importance of best practice solutions and accountability for outcomes. Its a fascinating example of how pragmatism can reign when the solutions aren't dictated by ideology.

I am as frustrated as anyone by the lunacy that seems to have gripped the Republican Party these days. Knowing this doesn't change any of that. But the truth is that even in the harshest environment, something beautiful can grow. Its always good to notice.

"Without us firing a shot"

In his speech at West Point yesterday, one of the points President Obama made was about the need for the United States to demonstrate leadership by strengthening institutions that provide for international order. As he did in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he referred to President Kennedy's call for a peace based upon "a gradual evolution in human institutions." As I've been saying all along, those human institutions are based on the power of partnership rather than the dominance of unilateralism.

To point to the effectiveness of such an approach, the President gave two examples. The first is the global response to Russian incursion into the Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe. But this isn’t the Cold War. Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away. Because of American leadership, the world immediately condemned Russian actions; Europe and the G7 joined us to impose sanctions; NATO reinforced our commitment to Eastern European allies; the IMF is helping to stabilize Ukraine’s economy; OSCE monitors brought the eyes of the world to unstable parts of Ukraine. And this mobilization of world opinion and international institutions served as a counterweight to Russian propaganda and Russian troops on the border and armed militias in ski masks.

This weekend, Ukrainians voted by the millions. Yesterday, I spoke to their next President. We don’t know how the situation will play out and there will remain grave challenges ahead, but standing with our allies on behalf of international order working with international institutions, has given a chance for the Ukrainian people to choose their future without us firing a shot.

The second was the work that is currently underway to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Similarly, despite frequent warnings from the United States and Israel and others, the Iranian nuclear program steadily advanced for years. But at the beginning of my presidency, we built a coalition that imposed sanctions on the Iranian economy, while extending the hand of diplomacy to the Iranian government. And now we have an opportunity to resolve our differences peacefully.

The odds of success are still long, and we reserve all options to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But for the first time in a decade, we have a very real chance of achieving a breakthrough agreement -- one that is more effective and durable than what we could have achieved through the use of force. And throughout these negotiations, it has been our willingness to work through multilateral channels that kept the world on our side.

Neither situation is completely resolved. But its interesting to note this recent news on the Iranian negotiations.

Iran has neutralized most of its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium that could be turned quickly into the core of a nuclear weapon, the U.N. nuclear agency said Friday, leaving the country with only about a fifth of what it would need for such a purpose.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a quarterly report that Iran now has less than 90 pounds of the material.

The report also said Tehran was meeting all other obligations under an agreement reached four months ago in Geneva that serves as a prelude to a comprehensive deal now being negotiated.

Both of these situations are demonstrations of how the Obama Doctrine has been successfully implemented:

1. Articulation of international norms
2. Development of a global partnership to reinforce those norms via economic pressure
3. The use of diplomacy to identify a "way out" of that pressure via an appeal to the self-interests of the offending country

Prior to this presidency, our country's foreign policy was mostly limited in these kinds of situations to a response that either ignored the challenge (isolationism) or responded with military intervention. The one big exception to that would be President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis - when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.

Demonstrating the power of partnership as an effective tool for U.S. leadership in the world will truly be one of President Obama's most enduring legacies.

Reporters: Please do just a bit of homework before you write a story

I'm thinking about starting a regular series that perhaps I'll title "Dumb things reporters write." You'll be able to recognize an entry because this will be my motto:

Here's yesterday's installment that focused on the importance of actually listening to what someone said before reporting on it. 

Today's entry comes from Dara Lind at Vox and the moral is about the importance of taking at least a moment to do some background work before writing a story. Lind's title gives you a pretty big clue about her agenda: Did Obama just get played by Republicans on immigration? 

She enters the story midway through its development and focuses on the fact that President Obama has asked his Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to delay an announcement on recommendations for changes to deportations priorities until the end of summer. Lind sees this as some kind of fig leaf (or preemptive compromise - OH MY!!!) President Obama is holding out to entice House Republicans into working on comprehensive immigration reform. And of course that will never work!

No House Republican has made any specific demands of the Obama administration on immigration, or said publicly that he or she would push for an immigration bill if the president made a gesture of goodwill. So it's not clear whether President Obama's announcement changes anyone's mind.

But if Lind had done just a bit of background work on this story, she might have noticed the following chain of events:

March 14, 2014 - President Obama meets with the Hispanic Caucus and promises a review of deportation practices.

In an evening meeting with Latino lawmakers, Obama said he still wanted to push a comprehensive immigration reform package but that, in the meantime, he had asked the head of the Department of Homeland Security to run an “inventory” of the agency’s practices.

April 2, 2014 - In a strategy that was likely discussed at the above meeting, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) says that if Republicans don't pass immigration reform by the July 4th recess, President Obama will take executive action on deportations.

If you don’t act in the next 34 days – if you refuse to give the President a bill he can sign... he will act without you. He has alternatives under existing law. There are concrete ways within existing law to help keep families together and spare U.S. citizens from losing their wives and their husbands and their children to deportation. In spite of your lack of action!

And the President is going to do it. I saw it in his eyes when I met with him...He is heartbroken by the pain deportations cause. Do you think he will sit by and do nothing just because you are doing nothing?

May 9, 2014 - Republican Representative Diaz Balart says the deadline for the House to pass immigration reform is prior to the August break.

“If Congress doesn’t act by the August break, the president is going to do something. And once that happens, two things happen,” said Diaz-Balart. “No. 1 is that the possibility of any further negotiations — of any — disintegrate.”

The Florida Republican added that if there is executive action on immigration, the president “will also then create a narrative of his choosing and again creating a situation where no further negotiations are possible.”

May 22, 2014 - Senate Democrats affirmed that House Republicans have until the end of July to act on immigration reform.

Senate Democratic leaders have set a hard deadline for the Republican-controlled House to move on comprehensive immigration reform: July 31, that last day the House is in session before August recess.

"They have about a six-week window, from June 10 after the last Republican primary till the August recess," the Senate's No. 3 Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said Thursday at a press conference. "If they don't pass immigration reform then, the president will have no choice but to act on his own."

I don't see how the message could be more consistent or clear. The President and Democrats are united and the ball is squarely in Speaker Boehner's court right now. Whether or not DHS Secretary Johnson releases his recommendations now or at the end of the summer has absolutely no bearing on anything.

The idea that President Obama is getting played here is laughable. The only way you can possibly spin it that way is to be completely clueless about what has been going on for the last 3 months.

I can't believe I have to write this, but my advice to those in the media who would like to regain the public trust would be that you do just a bit of homework on an issue before you write the story. Thank you.

"The world as it is and the world as it should be"

Once again today President Obama summoned the paradox that undergirds the work of his favorite philosopher - Reinhold Niebuhr.

Now, ultimately, global leadership requires us to see the world as it is, with all its danger and uncertainty. We have to be prepared for the worst, prepared for every contingency, but American leadership also requires us to see the world as it should be -- a place where the aspirations of individual human beings really matters, where hopes and not just fears govern; where the truths written into our founding documents can steer the currents of history in the direction of justice.

As I read various pundits react to the President's speech on foreign policy at West Point's commencement, I am struck by how difficult it is for many Americans to deal with the reality of "the world as it is." There persists in our imagination a myth that if we simply summoned the right formula for our foreign policy approach, we could control the outcome and create "the world as it should be." And so, when President Obama fails to make grand sweeping promises about how his approach will get us there, he is seen as somehow equivocating.

That kind of thinking seems to me to go right to the heart of our problems with exceptionalism. Since I find tremendous overlap between American exceptionalism and white privilege, I thought immediately of something Tim Wise wrote years about about the difference between an emphasis on efficacy vs the struggle.

Invariably, it seems it is we in the white community who obsess over our own efficacy, and fail to recognize the value of commitment, irrespective of outcome. People of color, on the other hand, never having been burdened with the illusion that the world was their oyster, and thus, anything they touched could and should turn to gold, usually take a more reserved, and I would say healthier view of the world and the prospects for change. They know (as indeed they must) that the thing being fought for, at least if it's worth having, will require more than a part-time effort, and will not likely come in the lifetimes of those presently fighting for it. And it is that knowledge which allows a strength and resolve few members of the dominant majority will ever, can ever, know.

And so perhaps its no great coincidence that our first African American President is the one who suggests that we must live with the tension of the world as it is while continuing to struggle for the world as it should be. Apparently that is big news to some pundits.

It's relatively easy to not order a cruise-missile strike or troop redeployment. Replacing that hard military power with soft power, and making it work, is a lot harder. Obama's got two years to prove to the world that he can do it. If he wants to see his superdove foreign policy doctrine survive beyond his time in office, he'll have to do a lot more with this doctrine than make speeches about it.

On whether or not this "superdove foreign policy doctrine" survives, I can't help but ask, "Or what?" We go back to our "success" in military adventurism in countries like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? Ordering cruise-missile strikes and/or troop redeployment might be easy. But please, can we dispense with the notion that they have been proven effective? The fact that so many people haven't learned that lesson in over 60 years of failure speaks to enduring myth of exceptionalism. Or as Nezua put it... privilege.

The voice of privilege thinks no seat is unavailable, no land unconquerable, no food untasteable, no right deniable, no experience out of reach. 

And Still I Rise

I don't have much to say through the tears at the passing of this phenomenal woman. All I know is that I want to wallow in her words of wisdom and mourn the loss of a great soul on this earth.