Posts tagged obama
Contain Israel, Compel Iran
From the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion, here is an opinion piece I’ve just written with Nina Tannenwald, a colleague (and former dissertation adviser) at Brown for CNN Opinion. Originally, we had much more on the internal politics in Iran and Israel, but op-ed page editors being who they are, they forced us to get rid of them! Oh well…
Moving forward, the challenge for the Obama administration is to manage Israeli misgivings about the utility of an aggressive diplomatic approach toward Iran while simultaneously offering Iran a face-saving exit out of its defiant posture.
Much like high-stakes diplomatic crises of previous eras involving nuclear weapons, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, averting war depends as much on decisions made in Tel Aviv and Tehran, as it does on the ingenuity of American policymakers. If President Obama plays his hand well, he may be able to succeed at containing Israel’s military threat and compelling Iran to back down on its nuclear program.
“”Having seen a number of presidencies unfold, and some unravel, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to assess them in real time. What I feel I’ve learned about Obama is that he was unready for the presidency and temperamentally unsuited to it in many ways. Yet the conjunction of right-wing hostility to his programs and to his very presence in office, with left-wing disappointment in his economic record and despair about his apparent inability to fight Republicans on their own terms, led to an underappreciation of his skills and accomplishments—an underappreciation that is as pronounced as the overestimation in those heady early days. Unprepared, yes. Cool to the point of chilly, yes. For all his ability to inspire and motivate people en masse, for all his advertised emphasis on surrounding himself with a first-rate “team of rivals,” Obama appears to have been unsavvy in the FDR-like arts of getting the best from his immediate team and continuing to attract the best people to him.
Yet the test for presidents is not where they begin but how fast they learn and where they end up. Not even FDR was FDR at the start. The evidence is that Obama is learning, fast, to use the tools of office. Whether he is learning fast enough to have a chance to apply these skills in a second term—well, we’ll reconvene next year.
James Fallows writing in the current issue of The Atlantic.
This is a pretty excellent read going into the general election. I think Fallows does a great service to one-time ardent supporters of this president who might be at a loss about his metamorphosis into a conventional, uninspiring centrist. Fallows is balanced where others have been partisan, even-tempered at a time of wanton hyperbole.
William Galston: Warning To Democrats: Romney Is A Stronger Candidate Than You Think | The New Republic
If Obama were running against Gingrich this fall, he’d win—barring outright economic or military catastrophe—because the former speaker will never be able to persuade a majority of the people that he has the right temperament and character to occupy the Oval Office. Pitted against Obama in January 2011, Gingrich was supported by 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama. A year later, after introducing himself to a new generation of adults and refreshing the memories of their parents, he enjoys the support of … 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama. Gingrich is a walking illustration of the maxim that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. (He has managed, however, to refute what I had previously regarded as a law of physics—namely, that a soufflé can’t rise twice.)
Against Romney, however, the race becomes much tougher. For example, while 47 percent of the people think that Obama is more competent than Romney, 47 percent think that Romney is more competent than Obama. And Obama’s job approval has not yet reached the level consistent with a general election victory.
Most important, the economic horizon for 2012 has darkened. The Federal Reserve Board, OECD, and the World Bank all predict slowing global growth, which is bound to dampen an export-led recovery in the United States. And the fourth quarter report issued on January 27 wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. GDP rose at an annual rate of 2.8 percent (a bit below expectations), but final demand rose by only 0.9 percent while inventories swelled. Consumer spending outpaced growth in disposable income, meaning that households spent more only by saving less. This can’t continue indefinitely: Over the past year, real actual tax incomes actually fell by 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, business investment grew at the slowest pace in two years. And as the Fed recently noted, the modest growth predicted for 2012 would not be enough to reduce unemployment significantly from current levels.
Obama is Right on Iran (for now)
In a recent column posted on Foreign Affairs’s website, former State Department policy adviser, Suzanne Maloney, offers the following assessment of the Obama administration’s sanctions on Iran’s financial and oil industries:
What needs to be addressed is the disturbing reality that the Obama administration’s approach offers no viable endgame for dealing with Iran’s current leadership. The impression that the sanctions are permanent — indeed, the new law does not specify any conditions that Tehran might satisfy in order to lift the siege on its central bank — conforms to Iranian hard-liners’ darkest delusions about Washington’s intentions. By embracing maximalist measures, the White House has come full circle, abandoning, along the way, its earlier optimistic efforts at engagement. In doing so, it has implicitly relinquished the prospect of negotiating with the Islamic regime: given the ayatollahs’ innate mistrust of the West, they cannot be nudged into a constructive negotiating process by measures that exacerbate their vulnerability.
American policy is now effectively predicated on achieving political change in Tehran. Such an outcome will likely prove even more ellusive than productive talks with the revolutionary regime — something the United States has sought for 33-years.
Leaving aside the logical incoherence of the first paragraph (so even though the ayatollahs “cannot be nudged into a constructive negotiation process” given their “innate mistrust of the West,” the Obama administration is still wrong to have abandoned negotiations after trying it for a fair amount of time? - Wait, what?), one really ought to marvel at the shocking ignorance displayed here of internal political dynamics inside Iran. Not only is Iran mired in an acute political crisis not seen since the founding of the Islamic Republic, it is also rapidly turning into a military dictatorship. The plain fact of the matter is that the regime is threatened by a crisis of legitimacy vis-a-vis not only the majority of the population, but also its hardline base of support. The latter is brought on by the intense level of factionalism among ultra-conservative groups more interested in exacting revenge on their once-upon-a-time feudal lords (metaphorically speaking, of course) and re-imagining the virtues of the republic. The upcoming parliamentary elections in the spring are sure to blow the lid off these now mostly polite disputes in a way that would make the regime even more susceptible to mass domestic revolt.
Considering this climate, only an unqualified guarantee in the shape of a nuclear bomb can calm the nerves of the minority fat-cats at the very top. Khamenei and his acolytes are not under any illusions when it comes to what will ultimately deliver their survival, and so far as I can tell, nor is the Obama administration. I think Obama is rightly testing the shock absorbers of the regime, looking for cracks as they appear. Far from forcing himself into a corner as regards regime change, he seems quite aware of the fact that it is Khamenei & Co. who are the desperate ones looking for a way out of the dead-end alley they entered in 2009. Better to apprehend them now, while their compatriots wish the same, than dither and watch them take a whole nation hostage.
The belligerent impulse of Iranian officials to keep up appearances (Naval maneuvers, blustery talk, etc.) notwithstanding, the sanctions have thus far been far more effective in reversing the advance of truly egregious, criminal enterprises of the Islamic Republic operating in every corner of the world than anything tried before. The main question going forward is for how much longer the regime is able to keep its base happy through propaganda and forced submission. With multiple nationwide elections on the horizon, we’re about to get a good sense.
“We cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.”
Also, this: JPMorgan Quarterly Profit Rises 67%
So, yes, apt.
“”JIM LEHRER: The word — the word to describe the leadership of Mubarak and Egypt and also in Tunisia before was dictator. Should Mubarak be seen as a dictator?
JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel. And I think that it would be — I would not refer to him as a dictator.
TRANSLATION: As long as you serve our “geopolitical interests in the region,” you’re not a dictator to us. Take that people of Egypt! Torture away, Mr. Mubarak!
Of all people, of all US administrations, and of all times, it has to be Joe Biden and the Obama administration to shit on a rejuvenated Arab public like this. Shameful.
‘Iraq’s Cost’ by Hendrik Hertzberg
To dismiss Saddam Hussein as a “bad guy,” as some of the war’s opponents acquired a habit of doing, was to trivialize the sadistic evil of his regime. Considered in isolation, his removal was a boon. But more than a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed. More than four million have been forced from their homes or have fled the country as refugees. A generation of Iraqi children have been deeply traumatized. Daily violence, though much lower than it was at the height of the war, remains at a level that almost any other country would consider a crisis. No one can say whether the suffering of the Iraqi people would have been greater or lesser if Washington had not made its choice for war. But their suffering has been horrific.
America’s “combat mission” in Iraq may be over, but the combat is not. Neither is the mission, which now amounts to little more than holding on until the end of next year, when, by agreement with the Iraqi government, such as it is, the last of the remaining fifty thousand American troops will be gone. The President, so far, is keeping his promise to extract us from this war. And he is keeping his promise to prosecute another war more vigorously—the one that might have been over by now if his predecessor had not robbed it of resources and attention. The prospects of that war are unknowable, but there is a sense of foreboding. Obama must feel a little like the narrator of “Moby-Dick,” who, at the beginning of the story, describes what is to come as
part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
For Ishmael, read Barack.
Obama's Right-Wing School Reform
Diane Ravitch
Recently, I wrote a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which I took issue with a number of currently popular education strategies that I had once supported, and now, seeing their questionable outcomes, challenge. Since then, I have been traveling across the country and have made three dozen speeches. What started out as a conventional book tour—with stops only in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—turned into something else: a whistle-stop campaign to warn against some of the education “reforms” currently in vogue.
I cannot recommend Diane Ravitch’s new book highly enough. As an educator (albeit at the college level) myself, I know firsthand the negative impact of arbitrary standards and incentive-based designs on our education system. The problem with our school systems today, alas, has little to do with test scores and teacher performance metrics. Rather, it is the free market approach to all our once-great public institutions that is fast draining America of all its creative and intellectual energy. Education is an end in itself, not a means to getting a job or making money. Of all the blunders committed by this administration in its first two years, losing sight of this fact may well end up being its costliest mistake. To understand what I mean by this just read Ravitch’s articles and her important book.
“”Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan — of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a “pragmatic agenda.” But pragmatism is about process, not principle. Pragmatism is hardly a rallying cry for a nation in this much distress, and it’s not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable. Yes, the Bush administration was incompetent, but we need more than a brilliant mediator, manager or technocrat to move us beyond the wreckage it left behind. To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that’s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.
That he hasn’t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk “liberal.” That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America’s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. His domestic policies, whether on climate change or health care or regulatory reform, are reduced to items on a standard liberal wish list. If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo “nonideological” enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president.
Refreshing Cheer
Robert Dreyfuss makes a good point about last night’s SOTU speech:
“Make no mistake — to use one of President Obama’s favorite phrases — the United States faces a difficult and daunting foreign policy challenge over the next three years of Obama’s first term.
Still, it was a pleasure to listen to a State of the Union address, especially after eight years of his predecessor’s alarmist warnings and warlike thundering, in which war, terrorism, and “rogue states” went almost unmentioned.”
