Solutions, solutions, solutions absence of "idealoguery"
I am half way through reading Jonathan Alter's book, "The Defining Moment, FDR's First 100 Days and the Triumph of Hope" upon finished Kearns-Goodwin's book, "Team of Rivals", all in the context of watching the both Bush and Obama go through this period transition of governance. This historic crossing is stark as Bush remains cemented, actually unrepentant and resentful in what has been described as his "adopted or infused 'neo-con ideology that failed him and his Administration so miserably, against Obama's stated and pronounced mantra to seek real solutions regardless of wherest it comes from. In many respects Stephen Corbert invented the term 'truthiness' to describe the political spindoctoring of our time and I am inventing the term 'idealoguery' to describe failure of ideology to solve real problems.
This week Obama exhibited this pragmatic ideology when he held a press conference on his $825B Economic Stimulus Package. Asked about the push back where even Democratic legislators and high profile liberal economists were critical of his plan he responded: "Democrats or Republicans we who have good ideas are welcome. I want this to work, this is not an intellectual exercise or pride of authorship, if Congress has good ideas, if Paul Krugman has good ideas, that we are going to do it." Reading Alter's description of FDR's Brain Trust and evolution to creating the New Deal at a time when America was in the depths of economic despair is almost eeiry.
Contrast this philosophy to Bush's when on the following day the 'thankfully' out-going president met the White House Press corps for the final time. In response to mistakes of his administration he said: "not finding weapons of mass destruction and Abu Ghraib were disappointments" Or that having "Misson Accomplished" as a back drop was a mistake for it sent the "wrong message". Was this both truthiness and idealoguery rolled up in one presser? Whatever it seemed to sum up Bush and his neo-con's failed worldview, disappointments. In short waging war in a conquests of indigenous Arab or Muslim countries, subsequently attempting to install a process of a western-style government with its election process that supposedly is believed to magically moderate a nation holding to an intellectual ideology that elections and democracy somehow lead to moderation where previously the masses are radical theocratic people remains wholly a ludicrous proposition.
Cheney attempted to describe his 'truthiness and idealoguery' that the problem a different way when asked about Iraq's protracted war. He blamed Saddam, who in his eyes had knocked down his people so much that it "took longer for them to recover than he had anticipated", cavalierly waving off the cost of the human carnage; 100,000 Iraqi's killed (conservative estimate), along with 4500 American military with over 40,000 wounded.
Bush was disappointed and Cheney's anticipatory judgment was off where both failed to acknowledge that essentially it was and remains a failed strategy or worldview. One thing appears certain in the Middle East, the Arab/Muslim regular population is a radicalized wholly opposed to all things Israel, the West and towards their own autocratic leaders. How could any rational study be considered pragmatic where the magic of Western democracy can be installed in such an environment unless the Bush/Cheney Co. delusional viewed the world and not looking at the world as it is.
Reading Kearns-Goodwin's book as well, Lincoln maintained the basis that he needed the best and most committed minds in his cabinet regardless of the political or petty rivalries at hand---unless it interfered with the good faith governance. Emancipation was not practical until it was proposed, and not politically pragmatic outside the Rebel States. In both cases reading the details of these two giant of American Presidents, both were less concerned with the concept of "authorship" and fixated on the results. Eventually results is what naturally gravitated Lincoln to a scrabble of a General in U.S. Grant who won and knew what it took to win. The same for Sherman who was able to break the back of the Rebels by cutting a swath through Georgia and in effect slicing the South and Confederacy in half.
This is why I can see Obama dismissing Guenther's personal oversights and misdemeanor misdeeds while or if he is able to produce the necessary results in the Treasury. Having Holder admit minor mistakes under Clinton but make certain that the Justice Department does its job and is above the reproach of politicization when undoubtedly it will have serious work ahead ferreting through the high roller corruption of bankrupt Wall Street and corporate finance and legacies left over from GITMO and Gonzalez. The biggest issues will be reestablishing that jobs creation and new technology and innovation from it be the economic engine to propel America into the 21st Century. In the simplest math Obama's legacy domestically must result in creation of 27 million or more jobs to make up for Bush's Depression and incorporate the population growth of the U.S. economy in the next eight years.
Comparably speaking FDR faced a deeper chasm in 1933 when he was inaugurated. At the time the bank runs were on full throttle morphing over from the rural markets and into urban sectors. Unemployment had risen to at least 33% but understand then employment was for the head of the household. In 1932 16 million (25%) of the workforce had lost their jobs since 1929, many with three or more dependents, of the remaining three-quarters of the workforce over a third were working only part-time leaving less than a half of the workforce employed full-time. Since woman rarely worked owning to simple second-grade math one can establish that less than one-quarter of all able-bodied adults were fully employed---and most were on reduced wages due to systemic deflation. We are not there yet, but after losing 2,650,000 or more jobs in 2008, 1,500,000 in the 4th quarter with unemployment and underemployment rate now estimated at 14%, with current projections that 2009 will see a job loss of 3,000,000 things will get much worse.
Scholars will say that Hoover and his policies in that period deepened a severely wounded economy to the depths known as the Great Depression. Ironically the term Depression was coined by Hoover in the attempt to spin away from the common term of 'Panic' and subsequently economists have deadpanned the term Recession. We might be on the brink of calling this the "Great Recession" owning to a future term like market meltdown but the fact remains America is broke and Obama must find solutions wherest ever they come from no different than how FDR or Lincoln did.
FDR inherented a belief ideology that handcuffed America in its response to societal disaster brought on by an economic ideology known as 'Laissez Faire' fixated in most leadership minds of the time of what government's purpose was and exhibited in President Calvin Coolidge's quote: "the business of America is business". FDR changed the terms of governance debate where he held it owed a "definite obligation to prevent the starvation or dire want of its citizens." This evolved where the Federal Government was vested in directly helping the unemployed and a duty to fight poverty and in a sense fulfill the obligation to the 'forgotten man/woman', where helping the ordinary citizen was part of the president's mission.
Obama inherent's a different ideology where it appears government was there to protect 'America's Interests', again the interests of corporate business interests internationally and domestically but not that of the ordinary citizen. How else can you explain Bush's exclamation that he protected America from another attack on our soil as his chief success at the cost of our moral standing globally, engaging in two wars of conquests, systemic human rights violations, alleged and self-admitted war crimes, wide scale domestic spying and surveillance. In essence what in reality did Bush protect but the corporate assets of business seemingly following Coolidge's cornerstone philosophy. Why else did he mistakenly use his political capital in the attempt to abolish Social Security through a privatization scheme and a standing monument to FDR's New Deal.
Not understanding what the real mission of the president was to help ordinary citizens was the real reason Katrina was such a disaster and turning point of his political standing. And finally merely sitting back like Hoover and allowing the Great Recession to take hold and propel the U.S. and global economy into a death spiral is the final evidence of his failings as a leader and blind holder of a 'idealoguery'.
Ultimately it is this common man empathy and connection that allows our presidents to be great and what makes them marginal to failures. Lincoln was tortured when he couldn't find ways to commute dissenter's death sentences above the objections of his Generals and Stinson and yet this is just part why he was so endeared and able to lead. Obama gets it and let us hope he maintains this vision and compass through his time.
This week Obama exhibited this pragmatic ideology when he held a press conference on his $825B Economic Stimulus Package. Asked about the push back where even Democratic legislators and high profile liberal economists were critical of his plan he responded: "Democrats or Republicans we who have good ideas are welcome. I want this to work, this is not an intellectual exercise or pride of authorship, if Congress has good ideas, if Paul Krugman has good ideas, that we are going to do it." Reading Alter's description of FDR's Brain Trust and evolution to creating the New Deal at a time when America was in the depths of economic despair is almost eeiry.
FDR in his speech before the DNC in 1932 that outlined his 'New Deal' said:
" 'The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.' It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.' "
Alter continued: "For a politician with a reputation to being unprincipled, this was a masterstroke: flexibility as a principle! But it was a principle that, in the right hands, might change the world. In the years ahead, Roosevelt could not 'admit failure frankly'---no president does. But he did come to embody the long standing American spirit of innovation and pragmatism...But the idea of trying one thing, trying another---above all, trying something---was central to Roosevelt's success for the rest of his life"
Contrast this philosophy to Bush's when on the following day the 'thankfully' out-going president met the White House Press corps for the final time. In response to mistakes of his administration he said: "not finding weapons of mass destruction and Abu Ghraib were disappointments" Or that having "Misson Accomplished" as a back drop was a mistake for it sent the "wrong message". Was this both truthiness and idealoguery rolled up in one presser? Whatever it seemed to sum up Bush and his neo-con's failed worldview, disappointments. In short waging war in a conquests of indigenous Arab or Muslim countries, subsequently attempting to install a process of a western-style government with its election process that supposedly is believed to magically moderate a nation holding to an intellectual ideology that elections and democracy somehow lead to moderation where previously the masses are radical theocratic people remains wholly a ludicrous proposition.
Cheney attempted to describe his 'truthiness and idealoguery' that the problem a different way when asked about Iraq's protracted war. He blamed Saddam, who in his eyes had knocked down his people so much that it "took longer for them to recover than he had anticipated", cavalierly waving off the cost of the human carnage; 100,000 Iraqi's killed (conservative estimate), along with 4500 American military with over 40,000 wounded.
Bush was disappointed and Cheney's anticipatory judgment was off where both failed to acknowledge that essentially it was and remains a failed strategy or worldview. One thing appears certain in the Middle East, the Arab/Muslim regular population is a radicalized wholly opposed to all things Israel, the West and towards their own autocratic leaders. How could any rational study be considered pragmatic where the magic of Western democracy can be installed in such an environment unless the Bush/Cheney Co. delusional viewed the world and not looking at the world as it is.
Reading Kearns-Goodwin's book as well, Lincoln maintained the basis that he needed the best and most committed minds in his cabinet regardless of the political or petty rivalries at hand---unless it interfered with the good faith governance. Emancipation was not practical until it was proposed, and not politically pragmatic outside the Rebel States. In both cases reading the details of these two giant of American Presidents, both were less concerned with the concept of "authorship" and fixated on the results. Eventually results is what naturally gravitated Lincoln to a scrabble of a General in U.S. Grant who won and knew what it took to win. The same for Sherman who was able to break the back of the Rebels by cutting a swath through Georgia and in effect slicing the South and Confederacy in half.
This is why I can see Obama dismissing Guenther's personal oversights and misdemeanor misdeeds while or if he is able to produce the necessary results in the Treasury. Having Holder admit minor mistakes under Clinton but make certain that the Justice Department does its job and is above the reproach of politicization when undoubtedly it will have serious work ahead ferreting through the high roller corruption of bankrupt Wall Street and corporate finance and legacies left over from GITMO and Gonzalez. The biggest issues will be reestablishing that jobs creation and new technology and innovation from it be the economic engine to propel America into the 21st Century. In the simplest math Obama's legacy domestically must result in creation of 27 million or more jobs to make up for Bush's Depression and incorporate the population growth of the U.S. economy in the next eight years.
Comparably speaking FDR faced a deeper chasm in 1933 when he was inaugurated. At the time the bank runs were on full throttle morphing over from the rural markets and into urban sectors. Unemployment had risen to at least 33% but understand then employment was for the head of the household. In 1932 16 million (25%) of the workforce had lost their jobs since 1929, many with three or more dependents, of the remaining three-quarters of the workforce over a third were working only part-time leaving less than a half of the workforce employed full-time. Since woman rarely worked owning to simple second-grade math one can establish that less than one-quarter of all able-bodied adults were fully employed---and most were on reduced wages due to systemic deflation. We are not there yet, but after losing 2,650,000 or more jobs in 2008, 1,500,000 in the 4th quarter with unemployment and underemployment rate now estimated at 14%, with current projections that 2009 will see a job loss of 3,000,000 things will get much worse.
Scholars will say that Hoover and his policies in that period deepened a severely wounded economy to the depths known as the Great Depression. Ironically the term Depression was coined by Hoover in the attempt to spin away from the common term of 'Panic' and subsequently economists have deadpanned the term Recession. We might be on the brink of calling this the "Great Recession" owning to a future term like market meltdown but the fact remains America is broke and Obama must find solutions wherest ever they come from no different than how FDR or Lincoln did.
FDR inherented a belief ideology that handcuffed America in its response to societal disaster brought on by an economic ideology known as 'Laissez Faire' fixated in most leadership minds of the time of what government's purpose was and exhibited in President Calvin Coolidge's quote: "the business of America is business". FDR changed the terms of governance debate where he held it owed a "definite obligation to prevent the starvation or dire want of its citizens." This evolved where the Federal Government was vested in directly helping the unemployed and a duty to fight poverty and in a sense fulfill the obligation to the 'forgotten man/woman', where helping the ordinary citizen was part of the president's mission.
Obama inherent's a different ideology where it appears government was there to protect 'America's Interests', again the interests of corporate business interests internationally and domestically but not that of the ordinary citizen. How else can you explain Bush's exclamation that he protected America from another attack on our soil as his chief success at the cost of our moral standing globally, engaging in two wars of conquests, systemic human rights violations, alleged and self-admitted war crimes, wide scale domestic spying and surveillance. In essence what in reality did Bush protect but the corporate assets of business seemingly following Coolidge's cornerstone philosophy. Why else did he mistakenly use his political capital in the attempt to abolish Social Security through a privatization scheme and a standing monument to FDR's New Deal.
Not understanding what the real mission of the president was to help ordinary citizens was the real reason Katrina was such a disaster and turning point of his political standing. And finally merely sitting back like Hoover and allowing the Great Recession to take hold and propel the U.S. and global economy into a death spiral is the final evidence of his failings as a leader and blind holder of a 'idealoguery'.
Ultimately it is this common man empathy and connection that allows our presidents to be great and what makes them marginal to failures. Lincoln was tortured when he couldn't find ways to commute dissenter's death sentences above the objections of his Generals and Stinson and yet this is just part why he was so endeared and able to lead. Obama gets it and let us hope he maintains this vision and compass through his time.
