President Obama commutes the sentences of 8 people. A lesson in outrage vs organizing ensues

Perhaps you've heard by now that this week President Obama commuted the sentences of 8 people convicted of using crack cocaine under the former disparate sentencing guidelines. Here is part of his statement:

Commuting the sentences of these eight Americans is an important step toward restoring fundamental ideals of justice and fairness. But it must not be the last. In the new year, lawmakers should act on the kinds of bipartisan sentencing reform measures already working their way through Congress. Together, we must ensure that our taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, and that our justice system keeps its basic promise of equal treatment for all.

Right on cue come the howls of "THAT IS NOT ENOUGH!" Here's Meteor Blades at Daily Kos:

No president, no attorney general can fix all that is wrong with our sentencing laws, even just our drug-sentencing laws. But in the case the crack-cocaine convicts, the president could wipe the slate clean without waiting for Congress to give him something to sign: Commute the sentences of those 7,000 federal prisoners who wouldn't be incarcerated right now if they had been sentenced under the 2010 law.

Nothing radical in such a move, just an act of justice and fairness. But it would take courage and the willingness suffer the inevitable barrage of media and nutcase attacks that would be delivered to any president who dared take such action.

And along comes the great Al Giordano to take down that nonsense:

To say, "Oh, it's only eight, he should have released all tens of thousands of them" is trademark "Eeyore Activism" (the syndrome in which any one step toward progress is never enough, in which some even express anger at the person who made that step). As one with scar tissue upon scar tissue from the slings and arrows of having fought to end all imprisonment for drug crimes for so long, I see it as a watershed moment. It "normalizes" the concept for public opinion, opening the door for the rest of us to organize to free the rest.

Can you imagine the media shit storm if all tens of thousands were released on the same day before public opinion was ready to embrace it, the media witch hunt sensationalizing any error made by any single one of them after release, the blowback and subsequent retreat setting back our cause another 20 years? Every long march happens one step at a time. A step in the right direction should always be applauded and encouraged. In fact that's the only thing in history that has ever paved the way for the second step to be taken, something the Eeyores would do well to study and understand better…

What Meteor Blades is advocating smacks of the kind of "Daddy save us" patriarchal authoritarianism I was talking about the other day. He is a master of the old liberal guard wallowing in their disappointment that nothing those in authority do is ever enough...sigh. What a perfect name for that - Eeyore Activism!

But as usual, Giordano gets what an important step this is from a President who believes in the power of partnership (ie, democracy) and the long game that can bring about transformational change.

President Obama doesn't want to defeat his opponents, he wants to co-opt them

I've always thought that this interview of President Obama with Jeffrey Goldberg on Israel and Iran contained subtexts that help us understand this president's overall strategy. Particularly revealing is how he talked about his approach with Iran.

I think it's entirely legitimate to say that this is a regime that does not share our worldview or our values. I do think...that as we look at how they operate and the decisions they've made over the past three decades, that they care about the regime's survival. They're sensitive to the opinions of the people and they are troubled by the isolation that they're experiencing. They know, for example, that when these kinds of sanctions are applied, it puts a world of hurt on them. They are able to make decisions based on trying to avoid bad outcomes from their perspective. So if they're presented with options that lead to either a lot of pain from their perspective, or potentially a better path, then there's no guarantee that they can't make a better decision.

I suspect that pretty well sums up President Obama's approach to his opponents in general. His goal is to set up a situation where its in their interests to cooperate with him. This is what drives some folks on the left positively batty...he doesn't want to defeat his opponents, he wants to co-opt them.

We've seen this strategy play out over and over again. Think, for example, about how he approached the issue of ending DADT. Perhaps you'll remember how angry GLBT activists got at him for not simply issuing an executive order. What the President did instead was to co-opt the military brass into pushing for its repeal.

Rather than fight the health insurance industry and the Republicans on healthcare reform (which is what led the Clinton's to defeat), President Obama bargained with the former - using a series of carrots and sticks that provided incentives for them to transform the system.

In taking on Republican obstruction, we've seen how conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy has led to the development of a common sense caucus that is willing to break that cycle and work with the President and Democrats on finding common ground.

In the coming weeks I predict that President Obama will co-opt all the energy the Greenwalds of the world have generated about surveillance into his own platform to reform our national security apparatus.

Beyond being a pragmatic approach to change, this kind of strategy is what leads to actual transformation rather than the backlash that most often accompanies attempts to defeat your opponent. Its also an approach that goes against the grain of our western patriarchal attachment to competition and dominance as the only way to deal with an opponent. As I've talked about before, President Obama's strategy tends to align itself more with the Aikido Way.

...every technique we study in Aikido involves practicing the art of creating a change in the situation...

Creating this change requires four things from us:

1] We must maintain our own balance while taking theirs
2] We must react fearlessly
3] We must enter into the very center of the conflict
4] We must understand our opponent's intentions in order to achieve resolution

When we follow these four steps for creating change, we don't just change the situation, we change our opponents.

There are no guarantees that this kind of strategy will always be executed perfectly or that it will succeed in the short run. We saw President Obama take a huge risk on coming up with a Grand Bargain in the 2011 fight over the debt ceiling and he came up short. But if what ails our system is a march towards increasing partisan polarization leading to endless rounds of backlash, its the long game that could bring about real and lasting change.

The cultural lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama

Part 1: The patriarchal lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama
Part 2: The racial lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama

I'm not a reporter and I don't play one on the internet. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the media in this country is in trouble. Print media is dying, cable TV is losing subscribers and no one has figured out the formula for making money off of internet journalism. Then along comes Fox News, conservative talk radio and right wing web sites demonstrating that one way to survive is to cater to a niche market and we're off to the races.

In his seminal piece that got him kicked out of the conservative intelligentsia, David Frum wrote about the effects this was having on the Republican Party. But I'd suggest that it fits pretty well as an overall critique of our current professional media.

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

I'll leave it for you to decide when it was that the overall mission of the media went from informing the public to the bottom line of profit on the balance sheet, but the truth is that the latter is what drives an awful lot of what we see - moreso than the endless accusations about the media being either liberal or conservative.

And so in this environment, linkbait is the name of the game. On the extremes, that leads to the approach of everyone from Ann Coulter to Glenn Greenwald. The more sensational you can make your claims, the better. But it also tells you why CNN has gone back to their once-derided format of Crossfire. Even better than hysterical accusations is two sides yelling them at one another.

Now contrast that with what then-Senator Barack Obama said back in 2005 should be our goal.

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. This is more than just a matter of "framing," although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It's a matter of actually having faith in the American people's ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

So what I would suggest is that the cultural lens of the media is directly in line with the goals of the Republican Party ("to chip away at the very idea of government") and at odds with President Obama's. Add to that what Jon Favreau said about the President not doing schtick well, and you begin to understand why the media so often assumes that he is remote, aloof and professorial.

I think that the remoteness thing comes from...he doesn't do artifice well. He doesn't do schtick well, right? It goes back to that authenticity thing. He knows who he is, he believes who he is and he's not going to put on some facade just because he's supposed to glad-handle someone. He would rather actually get to know that person...talk to them, have a real conversation - not recite talking points - and enjoy that person's company.

Nowhere was this dynamic more in evidence than back in 2009 when Ed Henry expressed his outrage at President Obama's slowness to outrage over Wall Street bonuses.


President Obama's insistence on knowing what he's talking about BEFORE he speaks literally does not compute with people whose only interest is in hyperbolic linkbait. As we all know by now, we're talking about "no drama Obama." It is the ultimate clash of cultures.

Of course this President's commitment to the long game is also directly at odds with the need for linkbait 24/7. What Michelle Obama said about her husband is exactly what angers so many in the media.

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

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

But there is yet another cultural lens that distorts the media's perception of this President. Perhaps it is the legacy of Watergate, but its hard to ignore the overall 'gottcha" nature of today's media. It has been ingrained into the whole system that every reporter/pundit must assume a cynical attitude towards presidential power. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as long as it leaves the door open for the possibility of authenticity. But in making the assumption that all politicians are liars or con artists and our job is only to point out how, the media excludes the possibility of an authentic leader.

I would posit that we have just such a leader in President Obama. Of course that doesn't mean that I think he's perfect. The fact that I even have to write that demonstrates how our culture has absorbed the either/or binary of hero/villain. What it actually means is that he's made mistakes. But I've watched him long enough to see that his words match his deeds. So I believe what he says. I know that doesn't happen very often in politics. But the fact that so many in the media think it never happens is part of the cultural lens that distorts their perceptions.

The racial lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama

This is part 2 to: The patriarchal lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama.

We've all witnessed the racial backlash to the election of this country's first African American president. What I want to talk about is not the obvious racism of the teapublicans with their birther conspiracies about the Kenyan socialist. There's something more insidiously racial in how the mainstream press covers this President and the effect their analysis has on our conscious as well as unconscious biases.

So what I want to talk about is all the subtle (and not so subtle) ways the media portrays President Obama as incompetent. Right on cue comes pearl-clutcher-in-chief Peggy Noonan's latest column which she so aptly titles Incompetence. Of course all she's really got to work with is the botched roll-out of healthcare.gov. But boy, does she run with it.

...in recent weeks I have begun to worry about the basic competency of the administration, its ability to perform the most fundamental duties of executive management...

It all looks so lax, so loosey-goosey. In the place of the energy and focus that would go into the running of things, the administering and managing of them, we have the preoccupation with spin, with how things look as opposed to how they are.

You'd be right if you suggested that it is pretty much Peggy Noonan's job to criticize and distort what a Democratic administration is doing. But why focus on the trope of incompetence? Its because that way of looking at a black man already has resonance with herself and her readers. As Jonathan Chait so eloquently wrote recently, our legacy is a racial system "in which the most unforgivable crime was for an African-American to presume himself an equal to — or, heaven forbid, better than — a white person." And so if you are a Republican wanting to discredit this administration among white people who have been programmed their whole lives to see black people as incompetent, the platform is ready-made for you to exploit.

Unfortunately, its not just the Peggy Noonan's of the world who peddle this meme. Those who aren't in the business of promoting Republicans often pick it up as well...just more subtly. Yesterday xpostfactoid pointed out one of the ways that happens with an article titled: If only Obama would say what he's never stopped saying. If only he would do what he's done. In it he chronicles how pundits (usually on the left side of the political spectrum) so often give President Obama "advice" about how to say/do things without ever really acknowledging his record. That's another way of dismissing the President's competence.

Perhaps the most insidious way the media reinforces this meme is by suggesting that President Obama is lucky whenever he has successes. This one runs through almost every achievement of his in the last 5+ years. You might remember that it all started when - in the most obviously racial example of all - Geraldine Ferraro suggested that Barack Obama was beating Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries because he was lucky enough to be black. Here are a few examples of how its played out since then:

Tim Dickinson on the Obamacare contraception controversy:

If this were a political mistake, Barack Obama seems impossibly lucky to have stumbled into it. Every repercussion is redounding to his favor.

Dana Milbank on the economy:

In politics, it’s better to be lucky than good, and Obama has come into an unexpectedly large quantity of luck. Five straight monthly drops in the unemployment rate have boosted consumer confidence and stock markets.

 Gary Younge on his opponents:

Barack Obama has often been lucky with his enemies...

Now, as he heads for reelection, he must be saying a prayer every day in thanks for Mitt Romney...

The principal beneficiary would be Obama. The president should be fighting for his life. Instead, he's living on his luck.

Kevin Drum on the Obama/Romney townhall debate:

He [Obama] let Romney dig himself into an ever deeper hole, and just smiled when Romney tried to get him to directly deny it. This turned out to be either lucky or smart, because it gave Candy Crowley a chance to fact check Romney and confirm that she was there and she heard Obama refer to Benghazi as an act of terror on the very next day.

 p.m. carpenter on Romney's choice of Paul Ryan:

The choice of Ryan would seem to confirm two perpetual truths about Gov. Romney and President Obama: the latter is the luckiest politician since Reagan, and the former is the worst presidential candidate since Dukakis.

 Megan McArdle on Syria (this one was repeated by an awful lot of pundits):

But if it does turn out “well,” this will be because the president was lucky, not brilliant.

And finally, Chris Cilizza simply opines on how President Obama is generally lucky:

In politics — as in life — it’s better to be lucky than good.

And, as the last week of the presidential campaign has made clear, President Obama is both — benefitting from a series of political advantageous moments that few could have predicted even a month ago.

Of course that list is not exhaustive, but is meant to give you an idea of the breadth of people making this claim as well as the number of issues to which it has been applied. Its impossible to escape the overall message: this President isn't competent in his accomplishments, he's just lucky.

Without the racial lens of incompetence, the media might have noticed that this President has had to traverse all kinds of racist minefields that are simply ignored by this kind of analysis. After we've taken that into account, how about recognizing that he took office when we were involved in two wars and suffering from the worst recession since the 1940's? Upon taking office, he faced the most partisan obstructionism we've seen in our lifetimes.

To do that would be to recognize that this black man is one of the most competent people to have ever held the office of President. And that would be to presume that he is equal to - or, heaven forbid, better than - a whole host of white guys.

When real progressives took on the national security apparatus

"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything...There would be no place to hide.

"...I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

Want to know who said that? No, it wasn't Glenn Greenwald or any other Snowdenista. It was Senator Frank Church in August 1975. In one of the most progressive victories against the national security state in this country's history, Senator Church chaired a committee that investigated illegal activities by the CIA, NSA and FBI.

The revelations that prompted the investigations of the Church Committee included not only the fact that the government was spying on American citizens, but also things like this:

Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles's plan, approved by the President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Compare that to the kinds of things we're hearing from Snowden and you might understand why many of us who lived through those years are greeting these current revelations with a certain amount of "ho-hum."

As a result of the Church Committee's reports, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to stop these abuses, including the formation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). To hear many folks talk about FISC today, you'd assume its the root of all evil instead of one of the most important progressive victories in our history.

So now we have a federal judge appointed by President Bush who issued a ruling in favor of the guy who recently said that conservatives should demand that this president put the Quran down, get up off his knees, and figuratively come out with his hands up. And this one is being celebrated by so-called progressives even though it directly contradicts one recently declassified by FISC.

All I'll say is that a little history on the work of progressives in this area would go a long way towards some common sense on the issues at hand.

The hardest part of following President Obama's example

Many of us have watched President Obama's brilliance over the last 5+ years. We appreciate his pragmatism, intelligence, compassion and commitment to the long game. But there's one part of his message that remains difficult for many of us. That would be his refusal to demonize his opponents.

When it comes to political debate in this country, that tendency to demonize the opposition is almost a knee-jerk reaction. If someone disagrees with us, it MUST be because they are evil - or at least have evil intentions. This is why political debate - whether its Democrats vs Republicans, Obamarox vs Obamasux, or any other variation - becomes so personal and toxic. It is assumed that we not only disagree, but that our opponent exhibits moral failings that must be called into question.

Once that kind of discussion gets going, our job is to find as much evidence as possible to caricature our opponent's moral failings and put as much distance as possible between them and us. Our ultimate goal becomes to defeat them by any means necessary. We are justified in doing so because our cause is righteous.

Almost as much as teapublicans, the folks that ignite this kind of reaction from me are the ones I sometimes call the "dudebros"....Glenn Greenwald as exhibit A. Of course Greenwald's stock-in-trade is the demonization of his opponents, so its almost impossible to not respond in kind. But take a look at how President Obama responded in his interview with Charlie Rose at the height of the controversy over the Snowden/Greenwald revelations.

I've got to tell you though Charlie, I think this is a healthy thing because its a sign of maturity that this debate would not have been taking place 5 years ago. And I welcome it. I really do because - contrary to what some people think - the longer I'm in this job the more I believe on the one hand, that most folks in government are trying to do the right thing. They work really hard, they're really dedicated...On the other hand, what I also believe is its useful to have a bunch of critics out there who are checking government power and who are making sure we are doing things right so that if we've triple-checked how we're operating any one of these programs, lets go quadruple-check it. I'm comfortable with that and I'm glad to see that we are starting to do that.

To those of us who not only disagree with Greenwald but fantasize about him going up in flames, this is pretty maddening. It reminds me of how Ta-Nehisi Coates talked about his feelings about Martin Luther King, Jr. during his younger days.

King believed in white people, and when I was a younger, more callow man, that belief made me suck my teeth. I saw it as weakness and cowardice, a lack of faith in his own. But it was the opposite. King's belief in white people was the ultimate show of strength: He was willing to give his life on a bet that they were no different from the people who lived next door.

We all know that MLK's belief in white people NEVER meant that he accepted their racism. What we're talking about here is not appeasement or simply giving in to their arguments. I'd suggest that its all about that "bet that they are no different" from us that is the point. And no matter how much we disagree, we all share this in common.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

And so, what President Obama (and MLK and Mandela) know is that no matter how strong our disagreements are with one another, we not only share the capacity for evil deeds, but for good as well. Here's how James Kloppenberg described what President Obama does with that awareness.

Although Obama’s reform agenda echoes aspects of those advanced by many Democrats over the last century, he has admitted—and this is the decisive point in understanding his outlook—that his opponents hold principles rooted as deeply in American history as his own. “I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him,” he wrote in Audacity. “That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal … We are all shaken out of our complacency.” Obama rejects dogma, embraces uncertainty, and dismisses the fables that often pass for history among partisans on both sides who need heroes and villains, and who resist more-nuanced understandings of the past and the present.

Just as demonizing an opponent puts more distance between them and us, empathy looks for common ground. In one of my favorite speeches that President Obama has ever given, he laid out the challenge to an audience of primarily black people at a celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday.

But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes – a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

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

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do...

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 scape-goating, 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.

Yeah, all that sounds nice and pretty...until you ask me to apply it to someone like John Boehner or Glenn Greenwald, then it makes me "suck my teeth." It's so damn hard. But its also what made people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela such great leaders. And I suspect its also at the heart of what makes President Barack Obama one as well.

The patriarchal lens that distorts the media's perception of President Obama

Years ago the world of media and pundits landed on a frame for understanding the difference between our two national parties...Republicans are the "Daddy party" and Democrats are the "Mommy party." While that framework bore some resemblance to the truth (Daddies are associated with structure and Mommies with nurture), it places the same kinds of limits on the lens through which we view politics that patriarchy places on men and women. Its an either/or frame that distorts our perceptions.

Over the last few years we've seen that frame applied to President Obama as various pundits try to understand him. How that mostly plays out is that they come off as children in search of a Daddy. No one does this better than Maureen Dowd. But other pundits from across the spectrum have told him he needs to "man up," gone in search of his leadership defects for failing to dominate the Republicans, and labelled him as weak in negotiations that sought compromise on both sides. Those are all Daddy frames.

Of course the reality is that we're dealing with a President who focused like a laser beam on getting Osama bin Laden and who has been excoriated by many on the left for his prosecution of the war on al Qaeda. These folks want to cast President Obama as the ultimate Daddy by suggesting that he's a warmonger...at the same time that they yearn for a Daddy to lead us in battle against the Republicans.

Perhaps you're beginning to see how our concepts of Daddy/Mommy - which mirror patriarchal views of men and women - have infected much of the way our media attempts to understand this President. More than anything else, our patriarchal legacy tells us that to be strong and wield power is to dominate. While we pay lip service to the nurturing of Mommies, we tend to see that as weak and something to be exploited.

All of those frames are completely useless when it comes to understanding President Obama. The only way anyone will be successful in capturing how he operates is to do their best to throw it all out.

This is a man who is strong enough to take on Osama bin Laden, but also strong enough to cry when 20 beautiful children are brutally gunned down in their classroom. He's the counter-puncher who will do everything he can to find common ground, but crush you if you try to take advantage of that. He's secure enough in himself to let Putin take credit for a win on the international stage if it means that Syria gets rid of its chemical weapons.  He's savvy enough to play the long game of using Republican obstruction to so marginalize their positions that even Speaker Boehner breaks away in anger. He's grounded enough to say to Mitt Romney, "Please proceed, Governor" - knowing he'll get the last word.  He's confident enough in his own positions that he can reach out in empathy to try and understand someone like George W. Bush.

But perhaps most importantly, President Obama knows that dominance is not the means by which to achieve the power that is necessary for change. Whether its reaching out to the rest of the world to work together in pressuring Iran to the negotiating table on nuclear weapons, or reminding us that "nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change," this is a President who believes in the power of partnership. As Rianne Eisler (author of The Chalice and the Blade) said:

Underneath all the complex and seemingly random currents and crosscurrents, is the struggle between two very different ways of relating, of viewing our world and living in it. It is the struggle between two underlying possibilities for relations: the partnership model and the domination model.

Our current-day expert on community organizing, Marshall Ganz, relates that to leadership:

Another important distinction is that between leadership and domination. Effective leaders facilitate the interdependence or collaboration that can create more "power to" -- based on the interests of all parties. Domination is the exercise of "power over" --a relationship that meets interests of the "power wielder" at the expense of everyone else.

Here's President Obama talking about the importance of partnership on the international level:

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.

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.

And here he is applying that same concept to our domestic politics:

We, the people — recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That's what we believe.

The reason most media analysis of this President falls short is that they continue to cling to patriarchal notions of strength as a Daddy issue and dominance as the only form of power. Its not surprising because that's how we've all been taught to understand the world. Meanwhile President Obama is at work transforming what leadership will mean going forward in the 21st century. Its going to take a while for the media to catch up.