A Case for Hope
Lots of people I know are deeply depressed as they watch the Dow spiral down toward 7000 -- I'm no less gloomy when it comes to the market because we've been been riding it down, too. And I'm no stock market guru (if such a thing exists), so I have no idea when things will turn.
But I'll tell you what gave me supreme hope Monday: watching Obama conduct what amounted to a national teach-in at the end of his Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House. Find the clips on You Tube and watch them. (Start here, here, here, and here.) Obama led a conversation about our fiscal and economic challenges with a hundred or so assembled pols and other community and interest group leaders, and in its seriousness, civility, candor, and humor, it was a thing to behold.
He called on John McCain first, led the conversation through assorted Democratic and Republican leaders, including GOP House leader Eric Cantor (who clearly looks in the mirror each morning and imagines he sees the next Newt Gingrich). Obama's masterful framing of the issues, the respect and deftness with which he treated and integrated all views, his shrewdness in knowing how much coveted national TV airtime he was giving even to those who disagreed with him....all of this amounted to a new model of presidential leadership that I think we're going to see much more of.
Obama is trying to create a climate in which our real long-term challenges can actually be talked about and addressed. These necessarily involve finding ways both parties can work constructively together, in spite of their simultaneous ambition to clobber the other at the polls. This bipartisan gambit - a determination to create a new space in our political culture where real problem-solving can take place across party lines -- is at the core of Obama's real audacity (a point I argue in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday, and which I think many liberals who've bashed Obama's GOP outreach have failed to appreciate).
It gives me real hope even amidst the bad economic news because Obama's eye is plainly on long-term problem solving -- which is what our economy needs -- no matter the day to day fears and rumors that hold so many Wall Street traders in their myopic grip.
> These necessarily involve finding ways both
> parties can work constructively together,
Is that a code phrase for agreeing to Republican demands to dismantle Social Security?
My family and I worked pretty darned hard to get Obama, a Democrat, elected President. We did not do so in order that the hard Radical Right's fantasy of repealing the New Deal and retroactively punishing FDR and Harry Hopkins could be enacted under cover of "bipartisanship". Let us see a dozen or so tough compromises where Republicans give up long-cherished desires of their hard right base, and stand up to Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist in the process, and I'll think about opening a "dialogue".
sPh
February 24, 2009 7:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I sure hope you are right. I am not so sure, though, this mess seems to be getting uglier by the day.
O'Rilley and Limbaugh are still spouting out the mantra: That the market properly rewards those who deserve the rewards. Why don't they just reduce their programs to one sentence? Both programs could save a lot of production costs, just play a recording, over and over: "Let them eat cake!"
I think this economy is spinning out of controll. I sure hope I am wrong. If it does, though, many of those who follow the O'Rilleys and Limbaughs will also be caught up in the turmoil. Then, maybe they will rethink the whole market is god philosophy.
February 24, 2009 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
It won't work so long as the Republicans make sure that every hand that reaches across the aisle is a bloody stump when it's pulled back.
Seriously -- NO Republican support for stimulus? Five governors willing to starve their own states of necessary funds just to score some political points?
Even you likening Cantor to a New Gingrich without the morbid obesity? Idiots on CNN, right now, describing Mark Jindal as important?
We won the election, we have the approval ratings and the Republican are the ones trying the gambit here, one that's worked before -- they'll obstruct, obstruct, obstruct and hope that Obama's approval ratings fall because of it.
February 24, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
As long as Obama continues to be seen as reaching across the aisle while continuing to get his agenda passed pretty much intact, the Republicans will continue to pay for their obstinacy.
Imagine a Rush Limbaugh dittohead losing his job and health care and seeing the Republicans stonewall Obama who seems to be trying to fix things.
February 24, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, especially for this framing:
February 24, 2009 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- oh! and another eight years of depression (1941 anyone?) -- but who's counting.
February 24, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
Bernanke testified today that the recession may end this year.
pssst! if you can believe him.
February 24, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I may climb Mt. Everest today, too. And, you know you can believe me.
February 24, 2009 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernanke testified today that the recession may end this year.
pssst! if you can believe him.
Sure, we can bel... (mmph!)... believe... (heehee) Bernanke... Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
February 24, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Hoppy, May I go with you? We need to keep in mind they are now charging to take the emergency helicopter back down.
February 24, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, sometimes it is difficult to understand which direction you are driving. Are you trying to somehow blame Obama and company for causing a yet future depression? Girl, that is not quite copesetic.
February 24, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nah.
I was just having a bit of fun with Matt Miller's "A Case of Hope" and his assertion that planning to solve "our real long-term challenges" (or at least talking about them) can substitute for solving our immediate problems.
Roosevelt solved "our real long-term challenges" by 1952 or thereabouts. Twenty years is too "long-term" for me.
N.B. As they say, "Hope is not a plan."
February 25, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
JohnW1141 is spot on. The dems will get anything they want in the house--the republicans are powerless. The Senate is more in plan because of the moderates but the bottom line is that Obama will get whatever he wants as long as the people are behind him.
As long as people feel that the government is working for them, they will support the Obama administration. His outreach only supports that notion. People like to create good guy/bad guy scenarios and nothing feeds that better than the good guy president in a crisis situation trying to work with the status quo opposition where that opposition will not play ball.
I've seen this scenario in hundreds of movies, so we all have seen this script. The Republicans obstinance only feeds into this sterotype. What a bunch of losers.
February 24, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I loved watching the presser. Obama just took them and I don't think they knew it. Had each one say their thing - including McCains snideness about the copter that Obama then crushed with a little chuckle - then tells them okay we took notes, will have a full report in days to you then you come back with solutions. Said it on national TV for all to see. So where are these republican whiners now? Supposed to be coming up with solutions right? Just wait a bit. With Steele in the lead the republicans are doing a little bunny hop and all the world sees it. Keep watching the polls. The republicans will get on the bus or get left behind unless they figure out a way to eliminate the names on the unemployment rolls from the voting registers.
February 24, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink