There came a point early in Bill Clinton’s presidency when he realized that there was no chance of governing from the center. In other words, there was no chance of reaching a consensus between a majority of Republicans and Democrats in order to shape American society.

There was no clean way to do good.

Long before the 1994 midterm elections robbed him of his Congressional majorities, Clinton had been robbed of his initiatives regarding gays in the military and health care reform. He would spend his entire administration being rebuffed regarding climate change mitigation. In short, almost everything Clinton considered important never came to pass.

And yet, he will certainly go down in history as a better, more effective president than were either of the George Bush’s, and unless he learns the hard lessons of the Clinton era, more effective than Barack Obama.

Tavis Smiley famously said to Skip Gates, “I think America is ready for a black man to be president, I’m just not sure this is the black man.”

What did Mr. Smiley mean? I believe he meant that Obama was too much of an idealist. One thing we learned from the excellent documentary “Stand” was that Rev. Martin Luther King was a realist. He knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and he knew that not only would many resist his message, they would be galvanized into heated rejection of that message. King accepted those terms and forged on.

I think what Tavis meant was, could Obama learn those lessons? I have accused Obama of thinking of himself as the “National Professor”, whose job it is to teach us how to think more rationally and work together toward the best solutions.

Nice try.

How much more does Obama need in order to understand that his blackness did not end political bickering in Washington? The Republican party is not in awe of his blackness. Social conservatives are not in awe of his blackness. Many fellow Democrats and social progressives are surely not in awe of his blackness. In his effort to remain steadfastly himself, Obama is succeeding at pleasing nobody.

His mantra is “We’ll keep telling the truth until it stops working.” Wouldn’t it have to start working first?

I said before that you can tell a lot about a president’s style and his likely prospects for success by what happens in his first 100 days. Obama may be - and needs to be - an exception to that, much as Clinton was before him. Americans have a way of sending to the presidency men who don’t really have much experience at the matters he will be facing. It’s a sign of our deep distrust of those who may have too much inside knowledge. The disadvantage is that these men have a lot of learning to do. Each of the last three presidents had no national experience. Each had to mount an enormous learning curve. Until 9/11 galvanized his presidency, Bush 43 was also flailing aimlessly through his first year.

Obama may be too bright for his own good. He knows what’s right; can he accept what’s possible? Does he know when to fight to the finish and count the bodies later? Does he understand that watered-down health reform that only kicks the can down the street will be seen as a resounding failure? When has a better chance to make real reform come along? When is it likely to again?

As the old saying goes: “If not us, who? If not now. when?”

One must wonder if Obama understands that the promise of his presidency was vested in him by his populism. He asked us to hope and to dream and to trust and to persevere. Now, seven months into his first and perhaps only term, he has yet to spend even a small dose of his political capital on the issues he’s asked others to care so deeply about, when in fact the reason he is in the oval office at all is because he stirred those passions at the ballot box.

In other words, we sent him there to do the things he promised to do. It’s just that simple.

All the time Obama wastes seeking consensus is being utilized by his opponents to build a better steamroller. Does he realize that? Does he understand that he must get his hands dirty? Does he understand that his great triumph in becoming the first black president in the nation’s history did not change how the game is played?

I can tell you this: his opponents have not been wrong so far in concluding that there’s no fight in this dog.

Do you suppose that’s what Tavis was getting at?

I very rarely video blog. Today I was motivated to. I’m not a pro at this and I didn’t prepare beforehand, so I ramble on a bit. I’ve sat through the replay myself, and other than the fact that I constantly switch names and titles, it’s not too drawn out. Yes, it’s about 15 minutes, but as I say in there, this is complicated stuff.

I would hope we’re not being clocked.

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Where is the apology?

Hell of a good question. The Cambridge Police Department, and it’s union, strongly supported their own practices and strongly condemned the president’s assertions.

As much as some want to make this about, as my good friend Morris says, that the police should have just walked away, I want to make it about the actions of Professor Gates, and his blunt repetition of the allegation that Sergeant Crowley was a racist.

My attitude is this: “Racist” is the white equivalent of the “N-word”. It is an incredibly powerful word to use and must not be tossed indiscriminately. And in fact we must not tolerate nor excuse those who do. We must condemn those who would be so reckless and so malicious.

Before I can honestly hear what anybody has to say about this, I need to hear them condemn Professor Gates’ behavior. If that person honestly accepts that Gates had no right to call Sgt. Crowley a racist and in fact that he owes the Sergeant a sincere apology, then we can have a meaningful conversation.

Otherwise, I don’t see how. We have to stop here, digest this moment, and get it right.

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There are many, many things which are in the process of going horribly wrong with the Obama presidency, and I am sorting through them in order to write a coherent post on the subject, coming soon.

Meanwhile, we have last night’s news conference in which Obama decided to comment on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, a Harvard professor who was breaking into his own home because the door was jammed. Gates was, as we all know by now, arrested not because he was a suspected burglar but because he created a raucous scene in which he directly and repeatedly accused the police of racism. His disorderly conduct arrest was likely designed to calm him down, and the charges were later dropped “in the interests of justice.” I’ve read the police report; if you have not, I suggest that you do.

And when the President Of The United States decided to comment on a situation about which he admitted he did not “know all the facts”, what did he say? He said: “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.” Not might have; did. Fact. Certain.

Really?

Couple of things: one, I’ve gone over this in my head many times and I honestly don’t know if the police would have asked a white man for his ID in this circumstance. The point is, it was not egregious for them to ask the professor for his ID. After all, they were investigating a possible crime. Confirming that this was, in fact, the resident would wrap this thing up in no time flat and let everybody go on about their day. Gates in fact refused this lawful police request at first and instead turned tables, immediately accusing the officer of being a racist.

As a white person, I take high, high offense to that remark. How does Gates know what is in the officer’s heart? This officer is behaving as he has been trained to behave, and he has to deal with such an accusation? He has to tell reporters “I am not a racist”? Anybody with any sensitivity should feel for this man, who was only doing his job.

But no, not only must he endure Gates’ endless berating and ex-post-facto insistence on an apology, now he must endure the wrath of the PRESIDENT?

I already had a lot of reasons to be disgusted with this president, but this one takes the cake.

At what point is Gates required to answer for his acts, if only as a matter of setting the record straight?

Gates wants an apology from a man he accused of being a racist? It seems to me the officer is the one who is owed the apology.

My other thought is how reckless it was of Obama to make that statement. Why? Because it undermines public confidence in law enforcement. If mistakes were made here, they were clearly made by Gates as well as the officer. Gates was the one who made the baseless accusation, Gates was the one who escalated, Gates was the one who made a public scene and Gates was the one who refused to calm down.

Gates, in other words, got himself arrested. This wasn’t racial profiling, this was an indignant black man who chose to make his blackness the issue. Any profiling that went on came from Gates, who assumed he knew what motivated this officer, and knew that it was not public service.

This is the same officer who, as an EMT in 1993 attempted to save the life of dying Celtic Reggie Lewis. Some racist.

But much more important is that this president has, once again, said something he should not have said. He should have remained unbiased and encouraged all of us not to react until we know all the facts. The police report speaks volumes; the officer commented today on Boston radio station WEEI.

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One day we will know how all of this went down, and I predict that it will not turn out that the police acted stupidly but that Gates did.

All he had to do was comply, like any other citizen would be expected to do. That’s all. Just comply. This thing would have been over in moments and he could have gone about his business.

I know that a lot of black bloggers give Obama crap for not addressing black issues more directly, more often. This is the issue he chose to inject himself into? And this is how he chose to do it?

People, we cannot excuse this behavior. This man supposedly represents all of America, and he called the police “stupid” while admitting he did not “know the facts”.

This man is qualified to lead the most powerful country on the planet?

Just what the hell is going on here?

On November 2, 2008 in this very space, I wrote the following:

President Obama, you do not get to cry poverty to us, not this time, not after a $750 billion transfer of wealth from the workers of this country to the fat-cat bankers and professional investors. Not this time, when we have a unified progressive Executive and Legislative branch for the first time in over a generation. Not this time, when the world economy is melting down, entire nations are going broke, and many millions of people will be thrust into unemployment through no fault of their own. Not this time, when we need real solutions to the problems of everyday people in this country and in so much of the world. Not this time, Mr. President. Don’t cry poverty to us.

Last Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a House committee:

“Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.”

He also said this:

“We expect that the recovery will only gradually gain momentum and that economic slack will diminish slowly,” he said. “In particular, businesses are likely to be cautious about hiring, and the unemployment rate is likely to rise for a time, even after economic growth resumes.”

Give the man credit for not being shy about it: “There will be more unemployed, but we are done giving out stimulus money. The fat cats got theirs, the working man gets none.”

This, while the U.S. Government consents to the breakdown of GM and the loss of thousands of jobs. This while the unemployment rate continues to rise, now at 9.1 percent of the labor force that hasn’t given up looking for work yet. This while the barely-discussed retail sector continues to take a pounding which will surely get worse when more and more jobs evaporate.

And here’s the real secret: Bernanke really is fine with it. Why?

Because the unemployed are desperate and motivated. They will work cheap, they will do any job, they will suffer most any condition and if they won’t, somebody else will.

In other words, it is the cheap labor provided by the unemployed that fuels what passes in the capitalist world for “economic recovery.”

And for those who get too desperate, there’s always jail.

Here on the Obama watch we are asking this question: Mr. President: What are you going to do in order to break this cycle of punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty?

What, didn’t we vote for enough change?

It has finally become clear why the United States elected Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency. It was not to chart a different course in economics. It was not to alter American foriegn policy toward hot spots of conflict. It was for moments such as yesterday, in Cairo. 

Yesterday in Cairo, the National Professor gave a lecture. He did it with a black face and a Muslim name. He did it in the cradle of Islam. And he said all the things that needed to be said.

What other American president could have ever done the same?

And so, we now understand: we elected Barack Obama to make peace with Islam. It was to put a credible face on a message to the Muslim world: Please stop trying to kill us.

Islam

One thing President Obama’s eloquence cannot do, however, is resolve eternal conflicts. Surely he knows this, and yet he uttered a phrase such as this:

the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

This is at once both unnecessarily apologetic and crudely drawn. If there is one thing we understand about Islam, it is that it’s most fanatical proponents do not consider their way of life “tradition” but the word of Allah. And there is, in the view of these fanatics, an absolute conflict between modern ways and their obedience to Islam. What president Obama needed to say was that the Muslim world needs to resolve these internal conflicts; the Muslim world needs a “Pope”, in other words, a grand eminence, most revered and respected leader, and a method by which to choose such a person, and that person must determine what Islam represents in a changing world, and that person must seek a path by which the world does not feel threatened by Islam, and vice versa.

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Yes, president Obama has a tough job, no doubt, trying to make sense of the senseless, but how can he do so without acknowledging that these extremists represent an interpretation of the Koran which is at least tolerated and at best used strategically by the Muslim world itself? Extremism is a method of political disruption and change within the Muslim world; we expect to end Islamic extremism toward the west without resolving this baseline issue? And we expect to solve it without the expressed condemnation of the Muslim world toward such tactics?

President Obama goes on to acknowledge that his words cannot bring immediate change; what he does not say is that his words cannot bring about any change at all. What he failed to say was “It’s on you. Get this figured out.”

Afghanistan

Perhaps the most disturbing signals president Obama sent in this speech were those regarding the justification for war in Afghanistan.

When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean.

In Ankara, I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

And therein lies the true issue: permanent war is justifiable as long as one person lives with the stated intention of committing violence against the United States. Does this president believe that we can continue to be fooled into believing that there is no other way to disrupt terrorism? Does this president believe that Americans expect terrorism to be eradicated from the face of the planet? Does this president forget that, prior to 9/11, the most devastating act of a terrorist to ” the killing of innocent men, women, and children” in America was committed by an American?

And does this president believe that we want our troops hacking thought the mountains in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, looking for “bad guys”? Trying to figure out who to shoot and who not to shoot, while trying not to get shot themselves?

President Obama then goes on to mention, in a single paragraph, that “none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths – more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam.” He also said “The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.” What he failed to address is the simple fact that these extremists believe that they are the ones who correctly interpret the Koran, and that they alone carry forward the true destiny of their faith.

Violence

This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end.

President Obama was speaking of extremists with that line, but he might as well have been speaking of American foreign policy, a long list of efforts to disrupt the internal politics of sovereign nations by any means necessary, including and especially violence.

Long before the overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. provided weapons and support to elements within those countries who were doing our dirty work for us. By now, the rest of the world knows clearly what many in this country simply deny: this country spreads violence, and does so in order to achieve political goals. Did President Obama denounce these tactics? He did not.

I’m trying to make a conscious effort to keep my posts shorter; I will comment on the other topics in the speech: Israel/Palestine, Nuclear Weapons, Democracy and others; in a future post.

Are you still basking in the glow of the wondrous event? Are you still giddy with delight? Are you still stunned in amazement that the United States of America managed, in the year 2008, to elect a black man to the presidency?

If so, then perhaps you have not noticed what a mess he is making.

First and foremost, President Obama has utterly failed to establish coherence and clarity in the national government. Are we closing Guantanamo or aren’t we? Are we going to release men who have spent seven years in harsh confinement on non-existent evidence or aren’t we? Will these men be given human rights or won’t they? Are we done fighting fruitless wars or aren’t we? Are we going after American officials who lied to and misled other Americans or aren’t we?

Are we investing in industries that work and will lead us forward, or in industries that are dead and dying and represent an era which nearly killed the planet? Are we interested in rational climate change policy or in balancing right-wing nonsense with left-wing nonsense, and thereby sentencing future generations to a world which was wholly unprepared for the coming changes?

Today’s young men and women being sent into the villages and mountains of Afghanistan and being told, “figure out who to shoot, and don’t dare be wrong.”

Tomorrow’s young men and women being told, “You will have to be the ones to figure out what damage we did to the environment and what to do about it.”

I still shake my head at Tavis Smiley, an earnest and well-intentioned man, asking for some sort of verdict on this presidency at the 100 day mark, and pleading in the end for a shred of optimism.

This administration could correctly be accused of committing a comedy of errors, except none of it is the least bit funny.

And now Nancy Pelosi has gone rogue. The Speaker Of The House, first woman ever to hold that post, has accused the CIA of lying to Congress, of giving “misleading briefings.”

The specific issue to which Pelosi refers is the use of waterboarding as as an interrogation technique, but the ghosts she is really waking up are the ghosts of Bush Administration policy, especially during the first term, when the administration ran amok and assigned itself absolute powers to decide which laws it would and would not follow, and which information it would and would not share.

Pelosi may be entirely correct, but now that she has put the accusation on the front pages of the nation’ newspapers, they must be addressed. And so countless news cycles will now be laced with this issue at a time when it is vital that President Obama focus on the issues which confront this country and the world today and tomorrow.

I was skeptical of Obama’s mantra of “change” from the time of his primary campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. I saw a man who had found certain buzz words but who was scarily evasive on substance. But by January and the Atlanta debate, I knew he would be the nominee, because by then he had found a way to make Hillary Clinton look like a female version of John McCain, and he had found the right arguments (really, one: “Are you ashamed of your vote to authorize the Iraq War?”) and bludgeoned her with them.

It wasn’t hard to run against the Iraq War, which was winding down during the campaign anyway, ensuring that President Obama would not have to actually make any tough calls on that front. But who else was available to vote for, who might have been promising real change in American military policy?

We were led to believe that man was Obama. He was the man to take a fresh look at American strategy and tactics, to recognize the need to reclaim American prestige and honor abroad. And he did have a very successful whirlwind trip across Europe and the Middle East in the early weeks of his presidency, and he may one day demonstrate that the outpouring of good will he received throughout that trip can and will lead to brighter days for American honor abroad.

Please don’t accuse me of writing some sort of obituary of this presidency so early on. However, there are some very disturbing signs, even at this early stage. There is not a single decision this president has yet made which could be declared “bold” or even “daring”. Nothing, not one thing. And he has made a steady series of decisions which could, in contrast, have predictably been made by either a President McCain or a President Mrs. Clinton.

In other words, was that mirage I saw in Iowa and New Hampshire a “good call” by my gut? Was Obama willing to say anything to get elected? Was his lack of a Washington track record the exact asset he needed to attack a government gone awry? Was he permitted to run a stealth campaign, and are we all now supposed to be so enraptured by the history making precedent that one of his parents was black (the absentee parent, in point of fact; Obama was raised by white women) that we don’t allow ourselves to ask him: “Change? What change? Specifics, please.”

Or does change mean: “Bush spent stimulus money on THAT; I”m spending it on THIS.”

“Bush chose to bail out THOSE industries. I choose to bail out THESE industries.”

“Bush chose to fight THAT senseless foreign war. I choose to fight THIS senseless foreign war.”

In discussing this with my daughter last night, I said that I don’t see Obama so much as a transformative figure but more as a transitional figure. There were candidates in this past presidential election season who did promise real change; Kucinich and Paul come to mind. But they had no chance to win even their party’s nomination, let alone the actual presidency, because they lacked access to money.

Obama showed that a candidate can raise millions of dollars on short notice if he has a well established internet fund-raising mechanism. Obama can rightly be described as the first person to figure out how to use the internet to win the presidency.

We can only hope that this discovery opens the way for exciting, engaging new voices to emerge and generate a degree of momentum which might propel them into the thick of a presidential election. We can only hope that these voices are well enough supported so that they cannot be ignored, so that either President Obama gets about the business of bringing actual, badly needed change to this country and by extension the world, or we can get busy finding somebody who will.

Thanks to my impeccable connections and significant social status (OK, because I know Morris O’Kelly, who works for him), I was invited to re-appear on the Tavis Smiley radio program this past weekend, to discuss the first 100 days of the Obama administration. Here is the audio from that segment:

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I didn’t get to say all I had on my mind; hell, I was lucky to remember half of what I intended to say, and they had to cut some of that for the sake of brevity. Brevity is not my strength…

Basically, as those who followed many of my earlier posts are aware, I am skeptical that President Obama can make a significant difference in the arc of human history, and I am highly skeptical that he can win a second term. ‘Tis true that the Republicans do not currently have their act together, but they remain a formidable force, as evidenced by Arlen Specter’s realization that he, a three term Senate incumbent, could not win the Republican primary next year, and so he switched to the Democratic party. We’ll see how much of a Democrat he turns out to be.

And for certain, the Republican party will not stay down indefinitely. They will find their voice and they will find compelling figures to speak in that voice, but more than anything else, they will wait for their chance to pounce when events do not turn out the way President Obama wants them to.

In the Tavis Smiley interview I commented that the U.S. government is the only thing standing between U.S. Auto and bankruptcy, which is a clear attempt to interfere with the marketplace, which has for years been steadily choosing more and more foreign made autos, which are uniformly better made and in many cases, cheaper; i.e., a better value than American made autos.

Why? Well, U.S. Auto became complacent, for sure, but the real underlying reason is that the cost of making an auto in the U.S. is much higher than it is in other countries, primarily because of the health care and pension burdens borne by U.S. Auto.

It is quite correct to point out that the union movement won those benefits, at a time when the industry was flush with cash. These obligations prevent these companies from becoming more “lean and mean” when economic circumstances change, and herein lies the conundrum: these benefits were won fair and square, and standards of living for hundreds of thousands of workers are based on those benefits. Should workers be forced to give them up? Funny you should ask: even as President Obama drags these companies through the wringer, he insists that pension and health care benefits will be preserved, especially for retirees.

In other words, the structural reforms needed to allow these companies to compete on a level playing field are not only not coming, they are being specifically ruled out.

Now, don’t read this as me saying that the unions should be blown up. My feelings run strongly in the direction of protecting workers and their hard won standards of living. No, this is to point out the incredible difficulty President Obama faces as he tries to interfere with the market. This is to point out that there are degrees of complexity beyond the grasp of any man or woman who attempts to unravel them. This is to point out that this is an entrenched problem with no clear solutions.

As I pointed out to Tavis, the only thing we know for sure is that President Obama is using the peoples’ money to keep these companies afloat, and it is not clear how we get that money back.

I also commented on the war in Afghanistan, a war which President Obama has committed to fight for at least another five years, a war which he intends to intensify in the near future. What I don’t understand is why. Does President Obama believe we can win in Afghnanistan? We had the Taliban completely on the run several years ago, and now they are perhaps stronger than ever and are making dangerous inroads in neighboring Pakistan. The actual enemy, Al Quaeda, has clearly been severely weakened and marginalized; they were never more than a scraggly bunch of haters in the first place, with one spectacular success to their name: 9/11. That single victory had enormous repercussions, especially with regard to American prestige. President Bush chose to take the bait and treat this band of terrorists as a state-level enemy, and now American might has been committed, for five years and counting, to tracking them down in the mountains of southern Asia, as if it would be possible to find and kill them all, as if there would be a point at which we could declare “victory”.

I thought we had elected Obama to bring fresh ideas in this regard, to perhaps counsel us that it is time to treat these terrorists as criminals and bring them before courts of law; to disrupt their ability to conduct finance and to travel; to work with other nations to see to it that the organization can no longer control a population through force and terror. In other words, to treat them like the gnats that they are.

Evidently not.

So, 100 days in, and doesn’t it seem as though President Obama is on TV every other day?, the jury is most definitely still out, as I said to Tavis. Perhaps in a year we will know if President Obama truly does have new, bold ideas, and if so, how those ideas are playing out.

As of today, his ideas seem not so bold and not so likely to succeed and, if truth be told, not so different than a President McCain or a President Mrs. Clinton might have come up with.

I, for one, am still waiting for evidence of the great new leader we were promised.

President-elect Obama made it clear early on: “The country has only one president at a time.”

The public mood could not be more clear: “Can we change that?”

Yesterday, Obama announced the formation of an economic advisory group for the express purpose of having an economic recovery plan ready to go “on day 1.”

One can only wonder if Obama grasps the folly of any such plan.

One of the key contradictions of capitalism in its imperialist form is this: companies and the broader economy are squarely multi-national and indeed, in many ways borderless. And yet, populations are still governed within national borders. President-elect Obama is making plans to defeat an international economic crisis by making changes within the borders of one country, the United States. And the solutions he is proposing amount to “stimulus”: flooding the existing markets with dollars in the hope that the money will find its way into the hands of “consumers.”

In other words, he is attempting to re-float the sinking ship.

He has no intention of letting it sink. As I mentioned recently, the bailout of Citibank sent a clear signal: we will not let major institutions fail, because the risk of a complete system failure is too great.

Nevermind that nobody has the slightest idea how to prevent such a thing, other than to buy the bad debt, flood these financial institutions with cash and hope that they don’t make the same mistakes again.

Two immediate problems with that theory (and the long term is even scarier): 1: the bottom has not been found yet, and cannot be found until the government gets out of the way and allows the market to establish prices; 2: the economic growth which provides value to investments has been shown to have been not a bubble but a balloon. An even more apt description, one which I’ve used more than once, is of a pyramid scheme.

In other words, the value was only there as long as new investors could be found to pump up the prices. Once the well dried up, the air came rushing out of the balloon and the pyramid came crashing to the ground. Except, the pyramid is not done collapsing. Not by a long, long shot.

Over two million workers lost their jobs and filed for unemployment benefits in the last four weeks. As predicted here, Obama’s plan to create or salvage 2.5 million jobs will soon seem paltry, and indeed will equate to perhaps one third of the jobs lost in the time between his announcement and his inauguration. Nobody wants to float real numbers because there is no historical precedent for this growth in the number of unemployed at such a rapid pace. Analysts keep trying to compare this situation to past slowdowns, but the comparisons fail because the comparisons are being made to recessions which were near their bottom. This one has only just begun.

And so President Bush has essentially stepped aside and is not interfering with Obama’s shadow government. Obama’s economic advisers are working directly with Congress to fashion the shape and depth of the policies which Obama considers most urgent, particularly his $500 billion job rejuvenation plan.

It is a very good idea to invest in infrastructure, especially when private sector jobs are scarce. Obama has no choice but to ignore the budget deficit, and he will do exactly that. But what does he plan to do about the other 15 million or more who will still be unemployed after his job package ramps up?

His intention is to wait.

If the economy rebounds, the private sector will create more jobs. Obama will wait and hope that the government stimulus is enough to breathe life into that engine, and he will attempt to manage the interim pain.

As I said on Tavis Smiley back before the election, Obama is destined to be an agent of change he cannot even fathom. The issues he must tackle, right away, will bear little resemblance to the priorities he staked out during the campaign. If he is deft, he will attempt to fold the former into the latter.

But this is no time for idealism.

The Washington Redskins football team holds an annual giveaway of turkeys, food and gifts at their stadium. Yesterday, people were lined up as far as the eye could see to receive this meager assortment.

It was better than they could do for themselves.

This is the second in a series of articles focusing on the term of President Barack Obama.

The word is out now, that Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State. What makes this most interesting is the issue which became an early, central theme in the Democratic Primary Race: talking to our enemies “without preconditions.”

When Barack Obama uttered those words in a debate, Clinton pounced. Her immediate response was to label such comments “naive” and “dangerous”. She insisted that handing this sort of prestige to an enemy of the United States, or even the mere suggestion of it, revealed Obama’s lack of fitness for office. It became a strong early wedge issue, the first time Obama was really on his heels a little bit.

He responded by asserting that he had meant what he said, but that this did not mean he would meet without low level talks to set the agenda and so forth. In other words, he wasn’t hopping on a plane to Damascus any time soon.

What makes this so interesting is the message coming from al Quaeda this week, in the wake of Obama’s election from Ayman al-Zawahiri, as reported by Fox News:

The second of these messages is to the new president of the United States. I tell him: you have reached the position of president, and a heavy legacy of failure and crimes awaits you. A failure in Iraq to which you have admitted, and a failure in Afghanistan to which the commanders of your army have admitted.

The other thing to which I want to bring your attention is that what you’ve announced about how you’re going to reach an understanding with Iran and pull your troops out of Iraq to send them to Afghanistan is a policy which was destined for failure before it was born.

It appears that you don’t know anything about the Muslim Ummah and its history, and the fate of the traitors who cooperated with the invaders against it, and don’t know anything about the history of Afghanistan and its free and defiant Muslim people. And if you still want to be stubborn about America’s failure in Afghanistan, then remember the fate of Bush and Pervez Musharraf, and the fate of the Soviets and British before them.

And be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them.

As for the crimes of America which await you, it appears that you continue to be captive to the same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims. The Muslim Ummah received with extreme bitterness your hypocritical statements to and stances towards Israel, which confirmed to the Ummah that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and Muslims.

There was much more, including some distinctly personal and racial attacks. al-Zawahiri is not a fool, nor strictly a jihadist. He is a cleric and an intellectual, and he represents a clear line of thinking in the Muslim world.

Will Obama meet with him? Will Obama negotiate with him? Will Obama seek peace through diplomatic means with him?

Will he be sending Secretary of State Clinton to the middle east to meet with al-Zawahiri and other “enemies”?

Just exactly how will this New Diplomacy work?
(more…)

This is the first in a series of articles focusing on the term of President Barack Obama.

It is widely understood that there has been an enormous economic contraction in the last year, much of which has occurred in recent months. It has become clear that investor overconfidence has turned to paralytic fear. Investment firms, banks, traders, manufacturers, even entire governments, all teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

The wave of closings has only just begun, and will in the next several years mount into a tsunami of job loss. This will be a world-wide recession, perhaps an actual depression, perhaps lasting a decade or longer. The world of 2008 is significantly different than the world of 1929, when the stock market crashed, and than the world of 1933, when unemployment reached 25%. The world of today is more integrated, more interconnected than that world. Jobs flow much more easily around the globe than they did then.

And in capitalism, capital will always flow in the direction of the cheapest labor.

American workers will soon be pitted against workers living in other, cheaper economies, and therefore against each other. American workers will soon be faced with a choice between a job with far less pay and fewer, if any, benefits than the job they lost to the meltdown, or no job at all.

Here are some numbers, which will be updated by the end of the week when the October figures are published:

2,399,000 workers have lost jobs in the first three quarters of 2008. Annualized, that number is 3,200,000. That’s not the total number of unemployed; that’s the number of additional unemployed in the first nine months of 2008; a number which is larger than the population of 21 U.S. states. Looked at another way, the number of jobs lost this year are equivalent to the combined populations of North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont. More than the entire population of states such as Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas.

The current number of unemployed is 9,477,000. Looked at yet another way, The State of Unemployment is currently the tenth largest state.

That number could be over 10 million workers by the end of the year. It might reach 12 million, 13 million or more by the end of 2009. The fifth largest state in the union would be the State Of Unemployment.

Keep another number in mind: there are nearly 5 million more who say they want a job but have become too discouraged to look for a job. Based on that number the current unemployment rate is not 6.1% but 9%. The combined number could reach 18 million by the end of 2009, and might overtake Florida as the fourth largest state.

In his recent stump speeches, president-elect Obama promised to create 7 million new jobs in public works and technology projects. In the last year, the labor force grew by 100,000, but the number of people of working age who are not in the labor force grew by 800,000. How quickly the promised jobs become available will go a long way toward defining the length and depth of this meltdown, and will go a long way toward determining whether or not the Obama presidency will be transformative.

In order to fund the many projects which need doing in this country, which will also put many people to work in good paying jobs, two things need to happen: 1) President Obama must, through the tax code, confiscate significant amounts of wealth from those who have the most to give, and use these seizures to fund the projects. He can use emergency powers if necessary. 2) He must make sure that these projects do not enrich the very same power brokers. The money must flow primarily to workers, entrepreneurs and small businesses.

If President-elect Obama is serious about job creation, he has to remove the real barriers to job creation: the hoarding of cash by the richest few. The old economic theory that this cash would somehow trickle back down to the working class has been shown to be a complete lie. Quite the opposite, in fact. The recent Wall Street bailout is a prime example of trickle-up economics. When the power brokers made bad bets, we paid them off, so the fat cats could stay fat.

Senator Obama voted for that bailout, and so it is clear that his philosophy is to preserve the free enterprise system. In his acceptance speech tonight, he reminded his audience that this is not his victory, but theirs, ours.

There are large problems affecting all people of the world. Many of these problems will afflict this country in the near future. Many millions of people will be cast into unemployment, poverty and dereliction. A true economic revival can only happen when the 10 million people who want work can get work; when those who want training can get training; when those who want education can get education.

As the term of President Obama unfolds, one measure of his success or failure will be how soon these workers can reclaim their place in the workforce, in meaningful, good paying jobs.

We’ll be watching.