Adrift With Two Captains

By Eugene Robinson
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
President Bush spent the weekend in Lima, Peru, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, conferring with Pacific Rim leaders who had no reason to pay attention to anything he said. Bush did, however, cut a dashing figure in a traditional Peruvian poncho. Yesterday morning, minus the poncho, he was back home lending his imprimatur to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's latest diving catch to save the global economy from utter ruin -- this time, the massive bailout of Citigroup.
A couple of hours later, the other president, Barack Obama, presented his new, high-powered economic team. Obama made a point of saying that the prospective officials -- led by Timothy Geithner, his pick to head Treasury -- would start working immediately. Obama also made clear that there's very little they can do except monitor the situation, study possible solutions and develop a plan to be enacted after Jan. 20. We can't afford another month or more of drift, Obama said. But I'm afraid that's just what we're going to get.
The problem, and it's becoming serious, is that no one is prepared to orchestrate a comprehensive program to stabilize the financial system, put a floor under housing prices and keep the economy from sinking into a long, punishing recession.
Bush could and should do it -- he is still president, and preventing economic collapse is part of the job description. But he won't. It's ironic that after being so aggressive and proactive in other areas, the Decider is so indecisive and passive about the economy. He has limited his role to signing off on whatever Paulson says is necessary -- most recently, $20 billion in cash and $306 billion in guarantees for Citigroup, a move that Bush apparently approved during his flight home from Peru.
In part, Bush's inaction stems from ideology. If the free market is always right, it ought to correct itself and get back on course. All the government really needs to do is take care of a few emergencies such as Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, IndyMac, AIG, Wachovia, Citigroup . . . and, of course, whatever comes next. Not the auto companies, however: In Bush-world, the firms that created the toxic mortgage-backed securities that threaten to bring down the global financial system are somehow morally superior to the companies that created the Mustang, the Malibu and the minivan.
I don't think ideology explains it all, though. Even if he wanted to make a real run at righting the economy, at this point Bush has neither the energy nor the credibility to make it happen. Frankly, he comes off as less a lame duck than a cooked goose.
That leaves the other president, who has plenty of energy and credibility -- but no authority. Bush said he called Obama to inform him of the Citigroup bailout, but informing isn't the same as consulting. Obama said his new economic team will be monitoring the situation and giving him daily reports on where things stand. He could save them the trouble and just watch CNBC or Bloomberg all day.
Obama said he believes a huge economic stimulus is needed "right away." But he knows that won't happen -- it's unlikely that anything big enough could get through the outgoing Congress, and, in any event, a big stimulus is not something that Bush is willing to support. Obama said that "we cannot hesitate and we cannot delay," but he knows full well that hesitation and delay are all but inevitable. And he knows full well that by the time he gets the power to shape events, the economic situation might be much worse than it is now.
James Baker, the former secretary of state and current Republican eminence grise, made an amazing suggestion on "Meet the Press" Sunday -- that Bush and Obama develop and announce a joint economic rescue program. It was a stunning acknowledgment of how weak the Bush presidency has become and how dangerous it would be to spend the next two months meandering from crisis to crisis.
But that's the road we're on. When I get frustrated with Paulson's zigzags and reversals, with his overnight decisions to buy huge companies or write hundred-billion-dollar checks, I remind myself that he doesn't really have a president to work for. The poor man may stumble here and there, but he's dancing as fast as he can.

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Will the auto industry become left out?

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Rachel Maddow: The Big Build

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Does Obama Really Plan To Govern from the Center-Right?

Robert Creamer
Posted November 24, 2008
Should progressives beware? Has Barack Obama suckered them into supporting a President who will really govern from the "center-right"? The short answer is no.

Since November 4th there has been growing protestation from right wing intellectuals that America is really a "center-right" nation and that Obama's victory does not indicate that the electorate has rejected the "center-right" value frame that has defined American politics for the last thirty years.

This line of argument has now extended to the contention that while Obama may have won the nomination and election with the strong support from the left of the Democratic Party, he really intends to govern from the "center-right." Even the New York Times ran a front page analysis last Saturday concluding that Obama's recent cabinet choices, "suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues."

Both of these arguments are complete baloney.

* Right wing pundits can comfort themselves with the fantasy that America is a "center-right" nation but it just ain't so. In fact, all of the polls show that the November election represented a complete repudiation of right wing Bush-Cheney top-down economics and their Neo-Con foreign policy. Over 80% of voters indicated they wanted fundamental change. The polling shows massive majorities in favor of policies that would guarantee health care for all. It shows overwhelming support for policies that give tax relief to middle income Americans and increase taxes on the wealthy. Polls show complete rejection of Neo-Con notions about "preemptive" war and unilateralism. And Americans strongly favor bold government action to stimulate the economy - not the failed laissez faire economics that have lead to the current economic meltdown.

* The fact is that normal people have supported policies like health care for all and bottom up economics for decades. They've known for years that economic policies that have lowered their incomes and siphoned off all of our growth to the top 2% were not in their interest. Now the market collapse, potential bankruptcy of the country's biggest firms, and obvious failure of Neo-Con foreign policy have finally forced even the country's punditry and intellectual opinion leadership to wake up and smell the coffee.

* Not only have "center-right" policies proven themselves a complete failure, their intellectual and moral basis has collapsed. How many more bail outs does someone need before he stops believing that the unfettered "free market" will always lead the "private sector" (meaning those who control giant corporations and Wall Street Bankers) to act in the public interest. How many times can corporate CEO's emerge from their private jets with tin cups in Washington before people begin to question the "center-right's" claim that the private sector is inherently more efficient that the public sector. Let's face it, it's getting pretty tough to justify why Wall Street's "masters of the universe" deserve to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars while middle class incomes tank; or why a CEO should make more money before lunch on the first day of the year than his minimum wage worker makes all year long.

* Obama ran a campaign that clearly and unequivocally described priorities that will turn American in a fundamentally progressive direction. His cabinet picks indicate that he will surround himself with people who have experience and can competently manage the government. They also indicate his absolute commitment to unifying the country to make change. But they do not in any way diminish the fact that America is demanding -- and Obama intends to enact -- a sweeping progressive program the likes of which we have not seen since the New Deal.

* Political consultant, activist and author Mike Lux will publish a book early next year that surveys the history of progressive change in American history. He concludes that progressive changes happen in big batches. Change doesn't happen incrementally. I think of it as the "Drain-O" theory of history. At key points in history the pressure for democratizing, progressive change overwhelms the forces of the status quo. Then, as the pipes are suddenly cleaned out, massive numbers of progressive changes can finally flow. America is about to experience one of those periods. How much we can accomplish, and how long this period lasts will depend on many factors that we don't yet know -- and one that we do. It will depend heavily on our success in continuing to mobilize the millions of Americans who elected Barack Obama into a movement to enact his program.

* Finally, writers and pundits who focus on Obama's Cabinet picks to show he will govern from the "center right" need to have a look at history. Like Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln all installed people in their cabinets who they believed to be effective managers who could deliver. They all had their share of outsiders and progressives, but many were old Washington hands. Yet all of these Presidents faced historic challenges that demanded and enabled them to make fundamental change. And all of them were guided by progressive values that were sharply different from those of Bush, Cheney, and Delay. Obama shares and articulates those values more than any political leader since Robert Kennedy died forty years ago.

Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are. It once again resides in the traditional progressive center that has defined America's promise since Thomas Jefferson penned its founding document over 200 years ago.

A new kind of politics?

To succeed at modern diplomacy, it helps to take the long view. As word trickled out that President-elect Barack Obama was considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, Clinton was on the phone with the President of Pakistan. Asif Ali Zardari was calling with a long-overdue thank-you. Back in 1998, when Zardari's late wife Benazir Bhutto was powerless and out of favor with the United States, the then First Lady had received her at the White House, over the objections of both the State Department and the National Security Council. Bhutto eventually regained her influence, and before her assassination last December, became an important U.S. ally. But she had never forgotten that act of graciousness, Zardari told Clinton on Nov. 14. "To be treated with such respect was very important."
As he wrapped up his second week as President-elect, it was clear that Obama was taking the long view in both diplomacy and politics. How else to explain the fact that he had all but offered the most prestigious job in his Cabinet to a woman whose foreign policy experience he once dismissed as consisting of having tea with ambassadors? Or that Clinton might accept an offer from a man whose national-security credentials, she once said, began and ended with "a speech he made in 2002"? Nowhere did Obama and Clinton attack each other more brutally last spring than on the question of who was best equipped to handle international relations in a dangerous world. That they could be on the brink of becoming partners in that endeavor is the most remarkable evidence yet that Obama is serious about his declared intention to follow another Illinois President's model in assembling a "team of rivals" to run his government, in what could be a sharp contrast with the past 40 years of American Presidents. "I've been spending a lot of time reading Lincoln," Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. "There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was President, that I just find very helpful."
And a shrewdness as well. The surprising proffer to Clinton came the same week that Obama sat down with John McCain in Chicago and helped engineer a commutation for Senator Joe Lieberman, who had backed McCain in the election and faced possibly being stripped of his committee chairmanship. The general amnesty campaign, part of a promise to change the way Washington works, impressed some longtime partisans. "It's brilliant," says a senior Republican Party official. "My hat is totally off to the guy." Viewed more cynically, bringing Clinton into the tent could co-opt a potential adversary in 2012 and put a leash on her globetrotting husband, who has a propensity for foreign policy freelancing. Which raises a question: Would this move, if it happens, be just the first manifestation of that new kind of politics that Obama was promising in his presidential campaign? Or proof that he understands the oldest kind all too well?

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Obama's Cabinet taking shape

CNN's John King, along with his panel, discuss Obama's possible choices for his Cabinet.

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Barack Obama outlines job-creation plan.

President-elect Barack Obama offered an outline of his economic recovery plan Saturday, and jobs were the top priority. American workers will rebuild the nation's roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy, Obama said in the weekly Democratic address, posted on his Web site.

"The plan will mean 2.5 million more jobs" by 2011, Obama said. His Web site clarified that the plan would "save or create" that many jobs.
"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," he said. "These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long."

Details of the plan are still being worked out by his economic team, Obama said, but he hopes to implement the plan shortly after taking office January 20.
He referred to figures out this week showing that new home purchases in October were the lowest in 50 years and that 540,000 new unemployment claims had been filed, the most in 16 years.

"We must do more to put people back to work and get our economy moving again," he said. More than a million jobs have been lost this year, he said, and "if we don't act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year."

The plan will be aimed at jump-starting job creation, Obama said, and laying the foundation for a stronger economy.

"We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges; modernizing schools that are failing our children; and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technology that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years head," he said.

He noted that he will need support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass such a plan and said he welcomes suggestions from both sides of the aisle.

"But what is not negotiable is the need for immediate action," he said. "Right now, there are millions of mothers and fathers who are lying awake at night wondering if next week's paycheck will cover next month's bills.
"There are Americans showing up to work in the morning, only to have cleared out their desks by the afternoon. Retirees are watching their life savings disappear, and students are seeing their college dreams deferred. These Americans need help, and they need it now."
Throughout history, Americans have been able to rise above their divisions to work together, he said.
"That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come," Obama said. "It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will."