Barack Obama on Social Darwinism and Collective Salvation circa 2005/06

After some people reacted to President Obama's speech on income inequality by suggesting he was a newcomer to the topic, I went back through some of his earlier speeches as President to demonstrate the consistency with which he has approached the topic. And then I saw this tweet from David Axelrod:

Anyone who thinks-or writes-POTUS focus on economic polarization & plight of middle class is new ought to go back and read '04,'05 speeches.
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) December 13, 2013

That got me curious. So I dug back a little further. An example of what I found is the speech then-Senator Barack Obama gave at Knox College in 2005. Because the Great Recession hadn't happened yet, he talked about it a little differently back then. But overall, the message was pretty much the same.

Here in Galesburg, you know what this new challenge is. You've seen it. You see it when you drive by the old Maytag plant around lunchtime and no one walks out anymore. I saw it during the campaign when I met the union guys who use to work at the plant and now wonder what they're gonna do at 55-years-old without a pension or health care; when I met the man who's son needs a new liver but doesn't know if he can afford when the kid gets to the top of the transplant list.

It's as if someone changed the rules in the middle of the game and no one bothered to tell these people. And, in reality, the rules have changed. It started with technology and automation that rendered entire occupations obsolete...Then companies like Maytag being able to pick up and move their factories to some Third World country where workers are a lot cheaper than they are in the U.S...

So what do we do about this? How does America find our way in this new, global economy? What will our place in history be?

Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn't much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government - divvy it up into individual portions, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, education, and so forth.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it - Social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford - tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job - life isn't fair. It let's us say to the child born into poverty - pull yourself up by your bootstraps...

But there a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it has been government research and investment that made the railways and the internet possible. It has been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools - that has allowed all of us to prosper. Our economic dominance has depended on individual initiative and belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity - that has produced our unrivaled political stability.

What you don't hear from President Obama back then or more recently is an excoriation of Wall Street greed. I'd suggest that's because he thinks that is a problem that goes beyond the confines of the financial industry. When I was looking around at his speeches, I found this one at Northwestern University back in 2006 that hits a theme he comes back to regularly.

There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There's no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You'll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what's going in your own little circle.

Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of.

I hope you don't listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential - and become full-grown.

As a matter of fact, you might want to listen to this whole speech. It hits on themes we've heard often from this President and is a good reminder of who he is behind the never-ending policy battles.

The stories he holds in his heart

Today as President and Michelle Obama paid homage to the victims who were killed in Newtown a year ago today, I'm thinking of the stories he holds in his heart. Here's Joshua DuBois' recounting of the President's time with families prior to the memorial service last year.

Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son… . Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter. For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.

And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss…We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer...

And the funny thing is—President Obama has never spoken about these meetings. Yes, he addressed the shooting in Newtown and gun violence in general in a subsequent speech, but he did not speak of those private gatherings. In fact, he was nearly silent on Air Force One as we rode back to Washington, and has said very little about his time with these families since. It must have been one of the defining moments of his presidency, quiet hours in solemn classrooms, extending as much healing as was in his power to extend. But he kept it to himself—never seeking to teach a lesson based on those mournful conversations, or opening them up to public view.

Jesus teaches us that some things—the holiest things, the most painful and important and cherished things—we are to do in secret. Not for public consumption and display, but as acts of service to others, and worship to God.

Recently when he was interviewed by Chris Matthews, President Obama said that the most important characteristic of any effective president is the extent to which he stays connected to the people he is elected to serve. At times like this I imagine that connection breaks your heart.

My hope is for support and healing to all the hearts that are broken today.

The political lessons we can learn from the battle over immigration reform

Yesterday I wrote about the major shift in the Republican strategy of obstruction and hostage-taking in budget negotiations. But while that signals a significant change in the tactics that will be used by the Republican leadership, it doesn't alter the fact that the policy differences between the parties are deep and significant. In a sense, President Obama's long-term approach has now defanged reactionary gridlock. But the question still remains, how do we convince enough Republicans to be pro-active in actually getting some things done?

I believe that the issue of comprehensive immigration reform can help us answer that question. As we've been hearing, it looks like Speaker Boehner is going to move on that one early next year. So ask yourself, why would he do so? What motivates the Speaker to move proactively on an issue that is so divisive in his party?

The answer is that it is now in his party's self-interest to do so. Republicans know that they have no viable future on the national stage if Democrats continue to get over 70% of the Latino vote (President Obama got 71% in the 2012 election). And via groups like Fast 4 Families and the United We Dream, the Latino community is making it clear that they are united behind this issue. Republicans know that they will lose the Latino vote for a generation if they don't move on this one pretty soon. That's why President Obama recently said this: "it is not a question of whether immigration reform will pass, but how soon."

That's how things work in a democracy and its exactly why the nativists are so scared. Everyone knows how this one ends. There's a lesson for us all in that if we care to learn it. It's what President Obama has been saying for years now..."nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change." YES WE CAN!

The ground has shifted and the long game is paying off (updated)

Yesterday the ground shifted in our political debate. Did you notice? It all started with Speaker Boehner's weekly press conference.


He not only said the teapublicans had "lost all credibility," he talked about the need for finding "common ground" - something that was repeated by Representatives Ryan and Cantor on the floor of the House later. If you remember, Boehner is the same guy who literally couldn't say the word "compromise" a few years ago.

So its clear that Republican leadership in the House has changed their tune - big time! I'd like to take a few minutes to think about how/why that happened. And rather than do what so many in the media tend to do, lets look at the long game on how we got here rather than simply focus on the recent past.

All of this started in January 2009 when a group of Republicans met to discuss strategy on the evening of Barack Obama's inauguration. Their plan, as we watched it unfold over these last 5 years, was to attempt to discredit the President and the Democrats by simply opposing anything they wanted to do. And so they became the "party of no," operating in a post policy fashion with a stated goal of making Obama a one-term President.

When the Democrats passed the Recovery Act and Obamacare basically without any support from Republicans, they ramped up the fear and paranoia of their base voters with thinly disguised racist dog whistles and fear mongering about Obamacare. Set in a backdrop of the Great Recession, this spurred the birth of the teapublicans and gave them a majority in the House as a result of the midterms. With the filibuster-proof majority in the Senate also gone, the strategy of total obstruction was possible to implement and, minus the ability to actually govern, the Republicans proceeded to regularly hold the country hostage over budget deals in an attempt to force their draconian policies on the country.

In the midst of all this, progressives and pundits had lots of advice for how President Obama should handle the obstruction. Many of the DC village press corp played the false equivalency game and critiqued the President for being aloof - failing to reach out enough to Republicans. What that suggestion failed to take into account is that obstruction was the Republican strategy. No amount of effort from the President was going to change that.

Progressives got angry and wanted the President to do so as well. There were calls for him to "man up" and give the teapublicans a dose of their own medicine. If Obama had followed this advice, it would have entrenched the battle. The American public, observing such a scene would have been justified in blaming both sides, saying "a pox on both your houses" and disengaging even further.

Anyone who has watched Barack Obama or read what he's written over the years knows that he would not take either form of advice. Here's James Kloppenberg making that point back in 2010.

...Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do. Perhaps the critics should read—or reread—the president’s own books...

Almost everything you need to know about Obama is there on the printed page. In contrast to the charges coming now from right and left, Obama is neither a rigid ideologue nor a spineless wimp. The Obama who wrote Dreams and Audacity stands in a long tradition of American reform, wary of absolutes and universals, and committed to a Christian tradition that prizes humility and social service over dogmatic statements of unbending principle. A child of the philosophical pragmatists William James and John Dewey, Obama distrusts pat formulas and prefers experimentation.

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

So, what course did President Obama take to deal with Republican obstruction? As is typical, he played the long game. First of all, he reached out to Republicans...repeatedly...in an attempt to find that common ground. As his efforts were rebuffed, the Republicans had no choice but to become more and more extremist in their response, fueling their angry, fearful, racist base to compensate. This is what I've often called conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

Finally, as some Republicans began to wake up to how much this extremism was hurting them, President Obama switched gears and started working on building a common sense caucus to invite a minority of Republicans to work with him in finding that common ground.

Yesterday, even Speaker Boehner demonstrated that he's had enough with the extremists. The end result is that last night, the House passed a bi-partisan budget bill with 169 Republican votes and 164 Democratic votes - no hostage-taking required. The teapublicans were limited to 62.

We'll have to wait and see how this plays out with Boehner in the future. But for once, I hope the teapublican cheerleader Erick Erickson is right. He's predicting this is all a set-up for Boehner to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And...we're off to the races!

Let me end by saying that none of this means that we're moving into some kind of utopia where Republicans sign on to a liberal agenda. The battles ahead will be fierce. What it does mean is two things: first of all, the strategy of total obstruction has been compromised and secondly, Charles Krauthammer's worst nightmare is in the process of coming true.

He’s [Obama's] been using this, and I must say with great skill–-and ruthless skill and success–to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition… His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he’s done that.

Way to go, Mr. President!

UPDATE: To be clear, I think Brian Beutler is right in downplaying the policy implications of this change.

Boehner’s always done what the professional right wants except when the right’s strategic and self-serving objectives would prove substantively and politically calamitous.

That's why I said that the political battles ahead would continue to be fierce. But what's important to note is that those calamitous strategic objectives (ie, total obstruction and hostage-taking) have not just been the purview of the "professional right" (read: teapublicans) over the last 5 years. They have been the adopted strategy of the Republican Party from top to bottom. So what's important to note is the strategy (rather than the policy) break. It means the battles will be played on a different terrain going forward and the Republican civil war that has been engaged will be a big part of that terrain.

What the world needs

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.  

- Howard Thurman

 Artwork by Helena Nelson Reed

Understanding why some people can't "see" Ubuntu

In describing President Obama as an integral leader, Jim Stuart recently wrote this:

On balance, most of us in the US and elsewhere have a binary view of conflict: if you win, I lose, and vice versa. And we are completely immersed in the consciousness of scarcity, resource conflict, and fear of the other. Clearly, Gandhi, Mandela and King operated from a different level of consciousness, where abundance, peacemaking, and trust were the qualities seen first, and were part of each leader's basic operating system. Developmental psychologists call this level of consciousness integral, and tell us that less than 5% of the world has attained this consciousness level. Obama, I believe, is part of this small percentage of people who see things whole...

...none of this makes sense to our pundits - that operational mode doesn't compute - power is everything; the powerful are always the winners; never let your guard down; he who has the gold rules, etc, - so folks just cannot see it when something like what has just happened, occurs.

I want to credit Jim with helping me understand that some people literally cannot "see" what is happening. Yesterday I ran across a perfect example of this in commentary about the life of Nelson Mandela. It came from something written by Ted Rall, the cartoonist that was accused at Daily Kos of depicting President Obama as a gorilla/monkey. I'll warn you...its probably going to make you angry. Go ahead and let yourself react. But then take a moment to think about what he literally can't see.

Many black South Africans are disillusioned by Mandela and his ANC government. Residents of the townships are suffering horribly, yet this “black” “democratic” government hasn’t done much more for them than the old apartheid regime. This was due to two terrible decisions by Mandela in 1994. First, he decided against seeking justice against the apartheid-era criminal whites. Obviously this was the result of pressure from the USA and the West. The ANC called it “reconciliation.” Others called it a sellout. These horrible murderers got away with murder. The lesson to the murderers of the future is, don’t worry, you won’t pay for your crimes.

Second, Mandela and the ANC decided not to implement the communist programme of their socialist and communist allies. Income and wealth redistribution were left on the table. The result is a South Africa that looks the same as before: rich whites, poor blacks. Heckuva job, Nelson.

You have to wonder if Rall even saw the outpouring of love for Madiba from black South Africans over the last few days when he suggests that they are "disillusioned" by him. For an entirely different take on all that, please go read how Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses these same arguments when they come from conservatives. But I'll let that one go for now.

It is clear that Rall has absolutely ZERO ability to understand Ubuntu...the African concept that President Obama described this way:

...his [Mandela's] 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.

It got me to thinking about Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Here's how I'd break it down:

Ted Rall : Stage Four - "A central ideal or ideals often prescribe what is right and wrong, such as in the case of fundamentalism. If one person violates a law, perhaps everyone would—thus there is an obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules. When someone does violate a law, it is morally wrong; culpability is thus a significant factor in this stage as it separates the bad domains from the good ones."

Nelson Mandela: Stage Six - "moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles. Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws...This involves an individual imagining what they would do in another’s shoes, if they believed what that other person imagines to be true. The resulting consensus is the action taken. In this way action is never a means but always an end in itself; the individual acts because it is right, and not because it avoids punishment, is in their best interest, expected, legal, or previously agreed upon."

Al Giordano made a similar argument when discussing how liberals who are entrenched in stage four moral development made the argument that President Obama MUST prosecute Bush/Cheney for torture.

There are times when “The Law” is dressed up in liberal language in a way that masquerades the bloodlust behind witch hunts and impulses to scapegoat individuals for crimes or taboos that, in a democracy, we’re all responsible for having enabled.

The same tendencies that have always placed me squarely against McCarthyism and Red Scares put me on the opposite side of some liberal and progressive colleagues today when they demand the prosecution of Bush, or of Cheney, or of some of their underlings...

In the end, preventing torture is a political struggle and also a power struggle, so much more than a matter of "The Law." It’s about changing society and its presumptions, and changing institutions, like the military and police agencies, where the culture is so prone to that kind of abuse.

Giordano makes the case that ultimately it is in the spirit of Ubuntu that we will effectively dismantle the structures that support atrocities like torture. And that is exactly the approach Madiba took when seeking reconciliation with those who committed similar atrocities under the apartheid regime.

What I've come to see from all this is that there is a reason we come to loggerheads when trying to discuss these issues. Gawd knows that I have tried and failed more times than I'd like to remember. I'm thinking that it sounds patronizing to posit that those who don't understand are operating from a lower stage of moral development. It goes against the grain of humility that I've been talking about lately.

But the truth is, those stages of moral development - while not a perfect theory (no system that attempts to capture human behavior is perfect) - are based on tested scientific observation. In other words, they at least begin to describe the human condition. There doesn't have to be prejudice in applying them to human behavior. So as long as we come to a conversation like this with a good dose of humility in our own limitations, understanding the conflicts in this way actually releases us from the attachment to win/lose, either/or and allows us to understand. That's what I'm working on "seeing"... in the spirit of Ubuntu.

Who knows President Obama? Part II

The other day I provided two contrasting looks at President Obama from a couple of pundits. But when it comes to answering the question "Who is this man that is our President," I suspect that this story told by a volunteer answering phones at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago the day after the 2012 election pretty much sums it up.

I take a call from a woman on the South Side of Chicago...She says she knew Barack Obama almost 30 years ago, back when he was doing work for ACORN and their fight to end the destructive industrial pollution going on in the area, pollution that was potentially harming those residents. Barack, as she called him, was concerned about the children, and whether this would give them cancer. He was quite passionate about the work he was doing....

She continued to tell me how back then Barack didn't have a lot of money and didn't own a car. He would walk miles and miles to participate in these activities and campaigns. Sometimes, she would see him walking, and she would pull over and ask him if he'd like a ride. He always said yes, and always expressed his gratitude. She was always impressed with his passion for doing the right thing, and his compassion for those who may be suffering. But more than that, she was struck by his shoes. For his shoes had holes in them. And he was always wearing the same khaki pants he wore whenever she saw him. But Barack Obama was a determined man, and would simply do whatever he needed to do for others, regardless of his own needs.

Now, this woman continued, did she ever think this man would be President of the United States one day, No. But is she surprised? No - because she said that man, sitting next to her in that car, so humble and so determined, is STILL THAT MAN today. I told her that was a wonderful story and thanked her for sharing it with me.

Now, two hours later, this man, President Barack Obama is standing before me, and of course, several hundred others who all worked so hard to get him re-elected. This man, so proud, so smart, so patriotic, and so incredibly humble, thanks all of us for our incredible hard work. Tears run down his face as he speaks, and you look around and we're all choked up right along with him. This man, our President, is still THAT MAN, and I, at that moment, had a feeling of validation, like I have never felt in my life.

So, when it comes to understanding the man Barack Obama, who are you going to believe? The pundits who view him from afar and project their own issues onto him, or the people he's worked with up close and personal over the years?

Oh, and we all got to witness that powerful moment this woman wrote about in her last paragraph.