The Puzzle Of Power
There's a paradox at the heart of Obama's new presidency. I think it's one he recognizes, but, like most problems, recognizing it alone does not solve it.
The problem is a puzzle of power, and it is not just a technical one.
Much of the discussion of President Obama's rhetoric rightly praises him for finding a way to describe an imaginable, collective public -- a community. In Obama's America a self-conscious community works together to describe and then realize our public good. But that works only if representative government works. I would argue that President Obama, in his language as well as actions, also needs to help recreate Congress as the focal point of political power.
The paradox is that the very idea of Obama's America, instead of Congress's America, is a challenge to the ideal contained within Obama's America.
Whatever the Presidency is -- as Aziz points out, albeit with a different focus -- it is not a representative office. It is not an office in which people can have meaningful power. No amount of internets will change that. Any kind of one-to-three hundred million person relationship involves massive distortions. The efforts to show people they can have power with an online "citizens briefing book" will either work, in which case it will not work (because millions use it), or it will not work, in which case it will not work (because a miniscule fraction of
people use it). The internet can strengthen representative democracy, but it cannot replace it by creating direct channels to a single.
But the more hope and interest there is in President Obama, the less likely representative government will work. If municipal policy, environmental policy, and educational policy are understood in terms of their relationship to Obama and the Obama administration, it puts
the citizen in the position of the relatively powerless supporter/admirer or the powerless opposer/critic.
Giving the citizen a more active, creative, and sustainable role, requires understanding these same policies in terms of Congressional power, or state governmental power.
On a technical and legal level, President Obama plans to dramatically recede from the power-accretion of the Bush era, both by exercising less authority and by exercising his authority more openly and transparently. These concessions may well be his most important legacy. But power does not only exist in technical arenas, as Robert Caro has magnificiently described in his series of books about Lyndon Johnson. The technical allocation of power creates only the barest of scaffolds on which actual power, much of it rhetorical and
experiential, is exercised.
On a non-technical level, the press, and the public, have already given President Obama enormous amounts of autocratic power. Just look at the language with which he and his administration are described--"What will Obama do about the economy?", "What will Obama do about energy?" The very gorgeousness of his language, in its capacity to not simply recreate but relocate hope, will tend to a kind of great man theory of power and the moment. He has so impressively matched his rhetoric to the demands of the time it makes us more likely to concede to him, instead of retaining for ourselves, the right to describe our future.
The media's frequent recall of "the Hundred Days" is an explicit recollection of an era we think of in "great man" terms, instead of in "great democracy" terms. FDR may have been our finest President, or one of them, but it was not necessarily the best moment of self-government. The finest President does not the finest democracy make.
I believe President Obama knows this.
I do not know how President Obama will confront it. It is not clear that Congress wants to confront it. Many of its individual members seem happy, often, not to have the weight on their shoulders. I think the President's dance with power, and with Congress's own inconstant relationship to power, will be one of the most fascinating, and certainly one of the most important, dances of the next four years.
I got an email a few weeks ago from a friend unhappy about lack transparency in the bailout. He wanted to know what to do. He's smart, educated, politically active, and connected. I suggested he write his member of Congress. That hadn't occurred to him. Is that amazing, or
not? Our public conversation puts so much on the Presidency that, assuming impotence there, he assumed impotence everywhere. Even the most powerful citizens do not default to the most basic channel of exercising political rights.
For Obama to succeed in enabling ourselves to experience our own power, and publicly exercise it for the public good, he will need to give up Presidential power, perceived and real. He will also need to recreate Congressional power, the heart of our representative democracy.
He cannot, as he says frequently, do this alone. But he does not want to grovel in front of a craven Congress. And so the task then falls on us, to reassert self-government through engaged supervision of Congress--and partially on him, to reassert a description of
self-government, in which he plays a much smaller role, and our battered Congress, a much bigger one.
OBAMA'S Inauguration: Opportunity he Missed
Farhat maquami
Obama should have told the Nation that we are starting a new era of "Mission to Peace and Prosperity". We declare to the world that the "War on Terror" is over. No more we scare people to death by imaginary terrorists we never found, no more we take you to War by lies and deceits, No more we torture people since after 5 years of killing and torture we do not have one confession to the crime of Century.No more America's interest would be sacrificed for imaginary Muslim terrorist attacking us. Muslims are not terrorists, they believe in the same God and we are sure they would love our "mission for Peace". Therefore, my fellow American from tonight you can sleep in Peace, you can travel in Peace because our misguided War on Terror is over.
Unfortunately he missed the opportunity and with people who have been indoctrinated with Bush's Propaganda he would never make an inroad.
Obama’s inauguration expense of more than $170 million dollars, in the middle of recession, produced less than Johnson Inaugural of 1.2 million crowd, with less expense!. Yet the mountain of fan fair, and money, Hollywood celebrities and publicity produced a disappointing mouse! Rick Warren gave more hope to the religious right and Neo-Cons than Obama’s disappointing and colorless speech.
Obama has the makings of a great tele-prompter reader-orator, but his inaugural speech was not a great speech, unlike his stump speeches. It was well-delivered, but it consisted of no new themes, rhetoric, refurbished conservative ideas of self-help, and no solid economic plans to address directly our economic, social and Global crisis. No economic plans for the country, and to end to Bush’s War on Terror. More troops to fight Bush’s Mythical Enemy in Afghanistan.
Obama’s Mountain of hope produced a disappointing and fearful mouse! Wall Street dropped more than 300 points because they saw no hope for real Change! Even after Obama got his wall Street 350 750 billions of “giveaway” Bail-out money, more in TARP money, and promised them 1. 3 trillion dollars of extra expenditure for road, bridges, infrastructures and Green Jobs to nowhere.
As he was speaking instead of hope they saw despair and dumped their stocks because any one with economic 101 knows that borrowing from China to buy Chinese and Mexican industrial products and filling Wal-Mart with cheap goods at the expense of American jobs would lead to 13 trillion Dollars National Debt by the end of 2009, that in combination of budget deficit, Balance of Trade deficit would bring this great nation to its knees.
We need factory Jobs, technological jobs and export goods jobs. What we don’t need a superficial service jobs. Did he say anything about this no.
Instead of declaring that Bush’s Policies, which has brought disrepute to the ideal’s of this nation would be abandoned, he complemented Bush.
Instead of declaring to the world that Never again he would permit the leaders of this nation take us to the wrong war by lies and deceits and declaring to the world that we follow Human Rights and respect supremacy of truth in our conducts, he sat down Collin Powell in front row and defended militarism.
Instead of declaring , never again America would torture innocent human beings, and he has ordered his Justice department to prosecute anyone who has violated the international laws, he praised Bush. Instead of declaring to the world that never again America would keep silent while its military arsenals are being used to destroy 22000 houses in Gaza and murdering more that 1200 women and children and more than 6000 seriously wounded, in the Biggest Concentration Camp in history, he could have said he would try to bring peace to Palestinians and end their carnage!
No, for 24 days he kept silent and still is waving his Israeli flag, not thinking what is good for the United States must take preference over the interest of another nation.. We need markets for our products and 1.5 Billion Muslims would be our customers, only if we show the olive branch. The president must be the greatest salesman for America and he failed to get their attention.
He Brought Rick Warren to give him credence among other neo-Christian rights and letting him to make a sale’s pitch for his Neo-Con’s agenda that has taken us to the road to economic devastation; but did not make a sale’s pitch for the American blacks and impoverished.
Yes, made conservative happy now that they know one of their own is the White House and under the “Black Skins there is White Mask” ; they are happy to see that all old Civil Rights leaders are going to the “quite house”, where he sent Reverent Wright. But the question is not about individual achievement via Charter Schools and parental guidance; but via a society that give all black Americans and other minorities a chance, the same chance we give to all new immigrants, like Barak Obama!.
He is a great Achiever and he knows Black Americans psychology, so he wants to keep them happy by his rhetorical lesson of success; but his lesson as a son of Kenyan, has nothing to do with black history and how the American society should uplift them. Afro-American psychological happiness with him actually is counterproductive. That is why many Neo-cons are celebrating the end of Al Sharpton, jessie Jackson and others old Civil Right leaders; but, Civil Rights movement would not die and must regroup and do not permit individual achievement of blacks cloud their group oppression.
.In Contrast to vividness of Obama, the speech was unusually dull, abstract and lacked any reference to people or situations in the present. The concepts, and the argument on which the speech hung was lifeless. They were neither original nor compelling.
Nothing in the speech rings true!. From America's success in the past was based on people who "struggled and sacrificed and worked." he concludes that “ What we need now is a "new era of responsibility." What does it mean? It means Bush and Co. did nothing wrong; but we the people, as powerless as we were, are the reason for our troubling economy. Our generation is at fault. Now we have to start changing our behavior. Nothing about FISA , that he voted for , nothing about the fabricated War on Terror, that has scared us from our own shadows; nothing about extra-ordinary renditions; nothing about lies to get us into the War; nothing about the cost of war that he voted for it every time Bush asked; nothing about stopping the war now to stop bleeding, but we are in trouble now is because the present generation has acted irresponsibly. Is that really at the heart of America's difficulties at home or in the world? It has the ring of Neo-Cons Biblical prophecies, but not of grain of truth.
There were subsidiary themes that seemed ill-suited to the occasion. Obama declared we need to end "the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." Yes, fine, but again: Does that get at the problem now? Is Obama facing partisan warfare? Is Washington deeply divided? It may become so, but nothing suggest that this is a critical problem. Unless he wants to take the party to the right and he feel that he might see opposition from Congress and Civil Rights leader.
Obama did not say anything about the nature of challenges facing us. Or he said is:" Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,"! This is nonsense! Our nation is at war with people who love us but hate their own oppressive government. There is no danger from Al Quaeda or Hamas , even after 5 years of torture in variety of torture chambers the CIA, Bush administration, Justice department , FBI investigation, Military Kangaroo courts have not produced one legally acceptable confession or a real culprit for 911 attack on us! It seems the danger posed by Al Qaeda is reminiscent of George W. Bush and his fabricated “war on terror”. Obama and the country clearly face grave problems overseas; but they can't be reduced to a "far-reaching network." So what on hell he is talking about!
The economic crisis? "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." Greed? Yes, but greed condoned and encouraged by government. Hard choices? What does these refer to? Few people getting sub-prime loan!? Auto companies making the wrong cars? Obama doesn't say anything of substance!
He could have declared the reality that our economy is wrong because of greedy Bankers who invested and lost their investment. Of Israeli and Wall street commodity brokers who in collusion with media , artificially increased the price of oil 5 times its worth pocketed the difference and transferred their money into foreign places. If the whole world has lost these trillions of dollars one would ask were did all these money that they scammed go, into the black hole , as Obama wants us to believe or in the pocket of the Wall street bankers and brokers that Obama wants to “Bail-out”!
The shallowness of his diagnosis is obvious, that is why he had lost his Mojo. His diagnosis dooms his supposed treatment of our economic problems. He is trying to shift the burden to the powerless people not the leaders who led them to the economic suicide. It was our leaders not the led who took us to this economic suicide mission, called depression. Why did he cover-up facts and blend them with fantasy? It is up to us to unmask him and force him to follow the “Change we Can Believe in” and move towards a progressive direction!
January 22, 2009 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Wall Street dropped more than 300 points because they saw no hope for real Change!"
Your logic is fascinating, but might be way off the mark.
Maybe the oversight that inevitably comes from that Change is what has the book-cookers scared on Wall Street?
And therefore lots of overvalued companies are getting revalued at their real value? And so the book-cookers, with OUR bailout money, assure themselves their golden parachutes, before they move to Dubai? And instead of using it to help the markets, they help themselves at our expense, so the bailout bails out nothing?
Zephyr, I agree with you that we need to bring democracy to another level, we have the technology to do so. I like to call it "Virtual Democracy" for more than one definition.
How about a virtual Congress? Get them out of DC, back to their constituents, and let them debate and vote online, while WE WATCH.
Get them out of that tarpit we call DC, so the K-Street vultures can't pick their bones clean when they get mired in the muck.
Washington DC and our Democratic Republic are both museum pieces, from the horse-and-buggy era. It is time for our governance to catch up with our culture. It is time to govern ourselves by our own hand, and not give that precious duty to anyone else.
January 23, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
"And so the task then falls on us, to reassert self-government through engaged supervision of Congress--and partially on him, to reassert a description of self-government,..."
So true. For any meaninful change, President Obamaa might have to guide Americans to more closely manage the men and women we have sent to represent us in Congress.
I suspect President Obama will direct more voter attention to Congress, especially if Congress stands in the way of change and makes it necessary for him to do so. President Obama was elected on a platform of change and revitalizing our democracy. After so much deception, and in this time of crisis, all eyes are on him and the expectations are especially high. So if his campaign promises hit the status quo wall in Congress, I can't imagine he'll sit back and take all the heat for a Congress that is unwilling to step up on behalf of the American people.
How likely is it that Obama would passively sit back risk forfeiting a second term due to an unresponsive Congress? How likely is it that he would forgo his unique opportunity to go down as one of the greatest leaders? What seems more likely, is that if he commits to work with Americans toward the promises that made him so popular, intractable leaders will eventually come out of the woodwork to support him as it will be to their own disadvantage to do otherwise.
Also, our reps in Congress have greater worries about job security now that hell has broken loose on all fronts. In the past, we have allowed members of Congress to blame the "other party" or the president, and we've allowed them to strategically spread the risk among themselves of unpopular votes that accomplish nothing and just maintain the status quo. But we can no longer afford excuses, the Dems are in control in a big way, and it seems Americans are more aware that there are creative ways to get around economic and other challenges to make positive change. ("yes we can!")
It will be interesting; I also agree on that.
January 22, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of all of the discussions of this subject I have read this week, and admittedly I have ignored a great deal, the above comment of yours is the most cogent. And to distill your message further, if I may presume, it is "And so the task then falls on us".
It takes an informed, engaged citizenry to ride herd on Congress. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the citizenry is now neither; and, generally, throughout the history of our republic the citizenry has been neither.
So long, it seems, as we are economically comfortable, we citizens just don't care, and Congress is left to representing the interests of the class from which they, generally, derive.
FDR came to the presidency at a time when tens of millions of citizens were economically dislocated, to put it politely, struggling to survive, to put it more accurately. Thus, tens of millions of citizens were in the streets breaking things, so to speak.
It seems that significant change comes about in the USA only when folks are in the streets breaking things.
The elements of FDR's "New Deal" were intended to "insure domestic tranquility" (to get folks off the street and stop them from breaking things), one of the six Constitutional purposes of our government.
Obama, to his credit, has said from the beginning, as you point out, that he cannot change a thing without the engagement of of the citizenry in the governmental process (i.e. to lean on Congress) to advance his agenda.
It remains to be seen if "Obama 2.0" blossoms. Here's hoping.
January 22, 2009 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
And it came to pass when Samuel (the last Judge) was old his sons turned out to be rapscallion knaves and the elders said to Samuel, "Give us a king to judge us."
And God said give the fools what they want -- or words to that effect -- because "they have rejected me."
Samuel did his best to point out that kings have a nasty habit of starting wars, taking daughters to be confectioners, cooks and bakers, robbing folks of their fields and flocks, conscripting workers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But the people said we still want a king -- and here's why. We want him to "go out before us, and fight our battles."
I Samuel 8
The Imperial Presidency ain't nothing new and it ain't goin' nowhere as long as sheep reign.
January 22, 2009 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mean the sheep who needlessly drive SUVs, drink bottled water subject to less regulations than is their tap water, and who crash the J Crew website because the day before they saw the Obama children wearing J Crew clothing?
As someone who kept sheep for fifteen years I can observe that sheep placidly graze until threatened by a neighborhood dog, in which case they take flight until they are so exhausted they lay down and allow the dogs to maul them.
Unfortunately sheep have not been imbued with the understanding that if they stood their ground together the neighborhood dog would soon lose interest and pursue some other diversion.
January 23, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, I have always pondered that democracy may well have had a start in the era of Judges, before the era kings, when the Israelites "did what was right in their own eyes" without needing a governing body to impose restrictions and laws. When there was a dispute, a local "Judge" would decide the outcome, not some royal authority.
With a strong moral code and honest citizens and friendly neighbors, who needs central government?
But as they saw the kingdoms around them build up royalty as their only form of leadership, they grew both jealous and fearful.
And in their weakness, they demanded a king.
Few priests, preachers or politicians want the public to understand the universal story in this scripture. When we give our public authority over to ambitious and greedy people who fight among themselve for that throne, we face division (Judah's split from Israel) and destruction (the final captivity and destruction by the Romans.)
Sounds like the same story every great nation has suffered in it's rise and fall, our own nation not excluded.
January 23, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Zephyr:
I think your diagnosis is right on—the tools for engagement provided by the Obama team are imperfect, and now is not the time for genuflecting to a Great Man but rather to gather ourselves as a Great People—but...write a letter to your representative is your solution? That's overly glib, I know, but what I'm getting at is that Congress as an institution isn't interested in making itself more transparent. The kinds of tools it will take for individual citizens to "reassert self-government through engaged supervision of Congress," at the level of detail and in the timely manner required, cannot be imposed from the outside. I think one path is for the kinds of initiatives the Obama Administration is undertaking to take hold and provide a model and expectation that Congress will be forced to follow.
January 23, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
"write a letter to your representative is your solution? That's overly glib, I know, but what I'm getting at is that Congress as an institution isn't interested in making itself more transparent."
I think Zephyr is suggesting a flood of letters from a whole lot of us; a tsunami, if you will, of public opinion.
Unless I remember wrong, Zephyr was a leader on Joe Trippi's Dean Team back when they first lassoed the web and changed the way elections are managed. So she knows intimately that a populist uprising can completely overwhelm the status quo, if it is big enough and loud enough.
Public Opinion and it's influence is the enigma we are really speaking of here, and how much that opinion might motivate the public to express itself. In the wake of the Bush/Cheney junta, it is not hard to find people who are mad as hell and won't take any more, so it might be the best time to channel that irresistable power, now, before we grow complacent with our new leader(s).
We have won a great cultural battle that history will look back on with wonder. But the smoke of that struggle still lingers, and clouds the victory with desperate attempts by the wingnuts to deny the public it's whole voice.
None of us will get everything we want from this new government, but we already have some proper evidence that much of what we agree on will be rectified and replaced with better policy.
Seriously, it hasn't been three days, lets see how the battlefield looks when the smoke clears. Wwe already have seen some major changes like closing Gitmo and ending any association wioth legitimized torture.
If it only took a day to accomplish such far-reaching policy change, one can only imagine what the next couple months promise.
January 23, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
And may I also add, admittedly gratuitously, that through the thousands of words written by Jed and Tomasky, neither came close.
They both sliced up and drew stereotypes, often admittedly, of the citizenry into different "generations" of different motivations. They also spoke in generalities of their generation, the actions and motivations of those of the "'30s, '40s, and '50s", and the actions of past presidents. I was particularly taken aback by Jed's suggestion that we of the sixties somehow reject adultism. What absolute rubbish.
Slicing and dicing the population into different groups, of different motivations is what the Karl Roves and Mark Penns of the country do. The fact is every citizen has a responsibility to govern, regardless of whichever group Jed or Tomasky choose to place us; it is only a matter of whether we accept and exercise our responsibility.
To be crude about it, I took their renderings as intellectual masturbation, which, in the end, left me completely unsatisfied.
You have, much more rhetorically economically, left me satisfied. It is not about generations. It is about each of us, and all of us together.
January 23, 2009 12:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here Here!
I call for a great Congressional and Senate Panopticon where we the people are the eye of tower ever watching over those who work for us.
We have the technology.
The break-down in any system of control occurs because we all have our lives to live and we will always allow/delegate/abandon the dirty work of watching to be carried out by a designated observer(s). Subsequently interpretation becomes the layer upon which we depend for analysis.
Which only skims the surface of individual interpretations of history, present, and future.
So regardless, it is a matter of time before we are all f#cked over again.
January 23, 2009 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this post. I agree with a lot of it. And you have placed your finger on an important problem, in my view, which I too have seen, but barely addressed till now. The President who tries to undo the imperial presidency through executive order, which is what he's doing, risks the very imperialism he seeks to undo.
Congress needs to assume its role. As does the Judiciary. As do We.
WE the People. I wish we had an oath of citizenship. Some way of marking our assumption of an important role. We are watchdogs. The Declaration of Independence specifically recognizes that watchdog role.
January 23, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
"We are watchdogs."
And The Blogs are our teeth...
January 23, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen, JEP! Amen.
January 23, 2009 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink