Obama’s Venezuelan Challenge

There is no shortage of foreign policy challenges for Barack Obama as he prepares to take office in a few short weeks.  And over the next few months, you’re likely to read hundreds of thousands of words analyzing a small handful of them, namely those challenges that involve Middle Eastern countries that start with the letter “I.”

But what you will not read much about are the other foreign policy challenges that are equally as important, but not quite as familiar.  So, in an effort to shed some light on the massive, worldwide foreign policy shadow cast by Iraq, Iran and Israel, this piece will be the first in a series of three highlighting the most important “other” foreign policy challenges. While all three of these scenarios will require great diplomatic skill, some are more difficult than others, and we’ll begin with the most manageable in Venezuela and work our way to the most challenging in Pakistan via Cuba.

The Challenge: Keep Venezuelan oil flowing in the short-term before the U.S. can eventually wean itself off of it in the long-term.  At the same time, peace must be kept between Venezuela and its neighbor to the west, Colombia, despite increasing tensions between the two.

The Obstacles: Bad blood has been brewing for the past eight years between George W. Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  President Chavez has accused the Bush Administration of being responsible for the coup that briefly ousted him from power in 2002 and of plotting another coup attempt in 2006.  If Chavez maintains the perception within Venezuela that the leaders in Washington are still out to destroy both Venezuela and his presidency, he has the ability to wreck havoc with the U.S. economy by shutting off approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil a day that Venezuela currently exports to the United States.

With regards to Colombia, it is no surprise that the left-wing Hugo Chavez and the right-wing president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, do not get along.  What is a surprise is that the two men managed to maintain a cordial and somewhat productive relationship as long as they did.  For five years, from Uribe’s election in 2002 until 2007, the only major diplomatic dispute between the two nations was quickly resolved when Chavez and Uribe spoke to one another and agreed that they were both at fault for using the media rather than official diplomatic channels to air their grievances.

But then, in late 2007, the relationship between Venezuela and Colombia took an abrupt turn for the worse when negotiations between the Colombian government and its long-time enemy, FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), broke down. Chavez, who many view as sympathetic to FARC’s cause, was involved in the negotiations, and Uribe felt as though its failure to produce any positive results was partially the Venezuelan president’s fault.  This led to a “freezing” of political relations between the two nations. Then, the situation was made much worse just a few months later, on March 1, 2008,  when Colombian forces went after and killed a FARC commander inside Ecuadorian territory.  Ecuador was not pleased with the Colombian invasion of its sovereignty and cut diplomatic ties with Colombia.  Venezuela immediately followed suit.

To make matters worse, the following day, Chavez condemned Colombia’s actions by saying that if Uribe took similar actions in Venezuela, it would provoke war:

“Don’t even think about doing something like this over here (Colombian) President Uribe, because that would be extremely serious….A military incursion on Venezuelan soil would be a cause for war.”

Of course, this comment served only to fuel the perception that Hugo Chavez was and is more interested in harboring the leftist rebels and furthering their cause than he is in actually bringing about peace in the region.  Conversely, Chavez accused both Uribe and the United States of not actually wanting the war to end.  What began as an effort to bring about a greater dialogue ended in complete lack of trust in this strategically important region.

While the probability of all out war between Colombia and Venezuela is slim, if the situation is allowed to continue to deteriorate, the results could be catastrophic.  Further, if such a string of events would occur, it would most likely occur with little or no warning.  Colombia, whose military is partially supported by billions of dollars from Washington and who is already mobilized militarily from their internal war against the FARC, is prepared for an attack from Venezuela at any time.  Recent history shows that the Colombian military has displayed very little qualms about invading another nation’s territory, and if a worthwhile target were to appear across the Orinoco River in Venezuela, Colombia may decide that such an incursion is worth the risk of retaliation. In Venezuela, President Chavez has aggressively been building up his military over the past decade.  In fact, the buildup has been so quick that some U.S. officials have openly discussed concerns that the rapidly expanding Venezuelan military could trigger an arms race in Latin America.  More than 80,000 Venezuelans serve in the country’s army, navy, air force and national guard, and many of them are eager to test out their new toys.

With as little trust as there is between the two neighbors at the moment, it wouldn’t take much to touch off this Amazonian powder keg.  The Americas have been relatively peaceful since WWII, and it is in everyone’s best interest to keep it that way.  President-elect Obama must find a way to rebuild the trust between not only Chavez and Uribe, but also between the peoples and militaries of Venezuela and Colombia.

The Solutions: If there is any hope for the Obama Administration to help rebuild the trust between Venezuela and its neighbor to the west, it must first work with Hugo Chavez to build a stable and more trusting relationship between the United States and Venezuela.

For his part, the Venezuelan President has already shown some signs that he may be willing to make this relationship work.  Since the November 4 election of Barack Obama, President Chavez has made some initial efforts to ease tensions with the United States.  In early November, when the Bush Administration made a slightly provocative move by “inviting” the Venezuelan consul in Houston to leave the country, Chavez, surprisingly, did not take the bait.  Instead, he accepted Washington’s decision and admitted that the Venezuelans had been in the wrong. Additionally, days before the U.S. Election, the Venezuelan President acknowledged that relations between the U.S. and Venezuela were at an all time low, but an Obama victory could go a long way to change that.  Further, Chavez has stated publically that he is willing to talk with the Obama Administration, something neither side has been willing to do during the Bush Administration.

While making a small concession and a non-binding promise to talk may not seem like much to work with for President-elect Obama, it is a move in the right direction and a far cry from the belligerent name-calling that has gone on between the two nations over the past eight years. The Bush Administration’s approach to Venezuela and Hugo Chavez has been to deem Chavez an evil dictator (not quite the axis of evil, but close) and to play off of the American public’s misperceptions about Chavez (which they helped create) in order to score cheap political points at home. This practice needs to come to an immediate end when Obama is sworn in.  One step in this direction would be for President-elect Obama to ensure that no one in his new administration, especially his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, publically refers to Chavez as a dictator, tyrant, or anything other than the President of Venezuela.

This, however, may be easier said than done.  Given the American public’s perception that Chavez is a dictator and enemy of the United States, it may be tempting for the Obama Administration to try to score some of the same political points that Bush did, particularly if some sort of diplomatic hitch arises. If and when Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez do sit down for a face-to-face talk, Obama should make it clear that his overarching philosophy of cooperation will be applied to everyone, not just to Americans, and despite the differences between Venezuela and the United States, he will sit down and figure out where there is common ground between the two countries.

Finding that common ground will be key to building a better, more trusting relationship with Chavez, and it will provide the U.S. with a slightly more secure source of oil, but more importantly, it will provide an opportunity to influence Colombian-Venezuelan relations. War may not be imminent between these two Latin American nations, but such a war would be a nightmare situation that U.S. must do everything to prevent.  Such a war would most likely draw U.S. troops and lead to the loss of its fourth largest supplier of oil in Venezuela.  As such, the incoming Obama Administration must work very hard to prevent such a worst-case scenario from developing.

The Bottom Line: In general, any solution regarding Venezuela is going to be tricky.  President-elect Obama and Secretary of State Clinton will have to walk a diplomatic tightrope, mending a broken relationship with a recent adversary in Venezuela while being careful not to offend long-time ally Colombia. The good news is that because of recent statements by Hugo Chavez, there appears to be a small window of opportunity for the United States and Obama and Clinton to successfully walk such a tightrope. However, faced with many competing international priorities right out of the gate, especially in the Middle East, the Obama administration may be tempted to devote most of their attention elsewhere. They would be wise not to ignore Latin America for long. If they do, the current window of opportunity in Venezuela may be slammed shut. The geopolitical consequences of this could be dire.

What’s to Be Done with the Burris Boy?

Roland Burris appears to be the one to fill Barack Obama’s sexy, well-toned shoes. Maybe. With Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich daring the Senate to do anything about it, what is the Senate to do?

The authors of Slate’s “Jurisprudence” column, Akhil Reed Amar and Josh Chafetz, believe that the Senate can stop Burris from taking office. For those of you following along at home, your relevant citations are Article I, § 5 and Amend. XVII. Oh, and don’t forget Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969). You’ll need that one later.

Prior to 1913, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures. Constitutionally, senators were seen as a liaison between the state government and the federal government; their election was too important to be left up to the people, who had their own representation in the House of Representatives, anyway. As might be expected, there was a lot of party wheeling and dealing that went on as potential senators exchanged favors in order to get the job. To sidestep the sleaze, many states enacted laws requiring their legislatures to appoint to the U.S. Senate the winner of a popular vote, effectively permitting direct election of senators.

The 17th Amendment finally permitted direct election of senators but with a twist: the “executive authority” of a state must call for a special election to fill a senator’s vacancy, but in the meantime, the state legislature must give that executive the power to name a temporary senator to the office in the meantime.

Amar and Chafetz argue that the use of the word “returns” in Art. I, § 5 is the key to this issue: “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members,” meaning each house of Congress can decide not to seat someone for one of those reasons. “Returns” in the 18th-century sense “involved a report of an appointment made by a sheriff or other official.” So, argue Amar and Chafetz, the Senate can just as readily exclude a member based on a corrupt appointment as it would based on a corrupt election.

Our friend Adam Clayton Powell, who had been duly elected to the House of Representatives in 1966, had been charged with misappropriating public funds. The House voted to deny him his seat based on these charges. Powell sued, alleging that the House couldn’t stop him from taking office, since he met all the “Qualifications” required of a House member (at least 25 years old, a U.S. citizen for seven years, and an inhabitant of the state he’s representing). The case is a little convoluted, since Powell was never seated in the 90th Congress to which he was elected. That Congress ended, but Powell was elected to the 91st Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court devoted about 90% of its ink to the question of whether or not it even had jurisdiction to adjudicate the issue. Lower courts concluded that they themselves did not have such jurisdiction, for a variety of reasons.

On the issue of whether or not the House had the power to exclude a duly-elected member, the court said it did not. It would be extremely dangerous, the Court said, to allow Congress to use the “Qualifications” clause to mean something other than merely raw qualifications, in this case a red herring to seat someone whom they felt was unseemly due to corruption charges. That would allow Congress to refuse to seat members who were chosen by the people. Appropriate relief, wrote Chief Justice Warren, would be for the House to initiate expulsion proceedings against Powell once the Congress convened.

The opinion, say Amar and Chafetz, emphasizes upholding the people’s choice, which doesn’t apply in the current Burris situation. But it does! Constitutionally, the governor acts in the people’s stead, for good or evil. What really should have happened is that the Illinois state legislature should have passed a bill stripping the governor of the authority to make the interim appointment. The legislature did not do that, however, partially due to Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats not wanting to risk losing the seat to a Republican in a special election. The U.S. Senate cannot make up for the lack of will of the Illinois legislature.

Certainly Senate Democrats are within their rights to refuse to let Burris caucus with them (although, Roland Burris can’t caucus with the Democrats because the person who appointed him initially demanded a bribe for the seat; Joe Lieberman can caucus with the Democrats, even though he actively campaigned against the Democratic presidential candidate to the point where he was stripped of his status as a Democratic superdelegate?). But I cannot see how excluding him from the Senate is possible. Sorry, Dems, you’ll just have to vote to expel him. You missed your opportunity.

Obama’s Progressive Street Cred

The selection of Rick Warren for the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration is troubling, to say the least. Many progressives are rightly outraged at the selection of a man who is virulently anti-choice and homophobic. Yet, this is only the latest in a series of Obama decisions that has left many progressives wondering who it was, exactly, they voted for. Apparently, “change” looks a lot like the Clinton administration. Rahm Emanuel is back. So is Eric Holder, formerly Deputy Attorney General. Most conspicuous of all, Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State. A bevy of liberal-but-not-quite-progressive apologists have tried to explain away all of Obama’s decisions. Here is a list of some of their justifications:

• Obama is pursuing Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” approach. Authors of this justification also cite Lyndon Johnson’s phrase: it’s better to keep one’s enemies “on the inside, pissing out” rather than “on the outside, pissing in.” By keeping his enemies in the White House, those enemies are not in Congress or on K Street trying to defeat his plans.
• Remember how we all said for six months that Obama’s qualifications don’t matter? Not so much. As such, he’s surrounding himself with a group of people who have experience working in a presidential administration, and the last Democratic presidency was Bill Clinton’s, so it only makes sense that he would choose people from there.
• Obama is sneakier than he seems (think I, Claudius, I suppose). He’s putting a lot of center-left (and, in some cases, center-right) Washington establishment politicians in key positions to pay lip service to that establishment. Don’t worry, it’s only a front. The real reforms are going to happen, but from behind a veil of mainstream non-reform. That’s the only way he can get things done down there.
• Obama does not want to continue the divisive politics of George W. Bush. Even though it might anger those on the hard left, Obama would rather heal and reconcile than punish.  Turn that cheek!

Some of these justifications are disturbing. The last one, that Obama should be conciliatory instead of punitive, is put forth by people who believe that the crimes of the George W. Bush administration should not be investigated. The country needs to heal, they say. It’s time to get on with the business of the United States, where “business” is defined so as to exclude investigations of the previous administration. Of course, this logic ignores the fact that the law has been broken. As Glenn Greenwald has observed, politicians are more than ready to throw the full force of the law at marijuana dealers, but when it comes to prosecuting their own, politicians are equally ready to be lenient, even though the marijuana dealer harmed no one and the politician may have, oh, I don’t know, been responsible for torture, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless wiretapping at the least. When crimes are committed, they should be investigated and prosecuted – not just for poor people, but for everyone, including politicians. For Barack Obama to suggest that Bush administration criminals should go free is to suggest that politicians live in a special class above the reach of the law. It also encourages more illegal activity in the future, once it is known that the government won’t prosecute those activities.

Furthermore, it’s not even up to Barack Obama to decide what is or is not investigated. The cult of personality surrounding him is great (in fact, it contributed to getting him elected), but even though we like him we must not forget that, as the president, he has constitutional limitations. It was irresponsible for the media to even ask what Barack Obama thought about Joe Lieberman being kicked out of the Democratic caucus. On November 5, Obama’s life as a senator ended, even though he didn’t officially resign the position until three weeks later. The president has absolutely no say – none! – in the operation of Congress. It would be different if Obama were acting in his capacity as a senator, but after winning the presidential election, especially in a nation eager for a new leader, any notion of Obama acting solely in his capacity as a senator would be extremely naïve. Obama must repudiate the unconstitutional powers that George W. Bush has claimed for himself, either through complete fabrication or malicious misreading of constitutional law.

Given his opinion of things like same-sex marriage (he tactfully says that same-sex couples should not be allowed to “marry” as such, but then says that they should have the same rights as heterosexual couples), NAFTA/CAFTA, and Israel, no one could confuse him for a true progressive. Obama’s apologists rationalize his decisions by pointing out that Obama never claimed to be a progressive at all!

Or could they? George W. Bush’s method of saying-without-saying is well-documented. While he never explicitly said that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks, there is definitely a reason why, in 2001, virtually no Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible, but in 2003, one third of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible.

Could it be that Barack Obama, whose campaign P.R. was spectacular, performed the same saying-but-not-saying function? Yes, it is entirely possible that Obama clothed himself in the cloak of progressivism while still wearing the mainstream Democrat’s clothes underneath. He has suggested massive new spending on entitlement programs, but he wants to increase the size of the military. He wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire, but he voted in favor of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the administration in warrantless wiretapping. His foreign policy goals consist of using real diplomacy instead of threats, but he voted in favor of NAFTA. He wants to provide government health care for people who have no health care, but he stops short of suggesting a universal-payer system like Canada’s or Great Britain’s. Obama’s positions are a wash: for every progressive-sounding idea, there is another conservative-sounding one to balance it out.

Or, on the other hand, it could be that Obama never suggested anything, but that he was forthcoming about his non-progressive credentials. It could be that we, the progressive Americans, were so thirsty for a change that we latched onto the only candidate (outside of Dennis Kucinich) who even brought up the issue of health care reform (at those early Republican primary debates, not a single candidate brought up the issue of health care), social reform, and getting out of Iraq (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards failed on at least one of these). We projected onto him the candidate we wanted him to be, ignoring the fact that he was not that candidate. Did we set ourselves up for disappointment? Yes, that is possible, too.

And then there’s the argument that all this complaining is pointless, that Obama isn’t even the president yet, and we should all just wait and see what happens on Jan. 20. Well, Rick Warren will happen Jan. 20, and that gives me even less optimism that, at noon on that day, Obama will suddenly throw aside his centrist mask and shout, “You fools! You thought I was just like Bill Clinton! But you were wrong! Free health care for everybody!” Agreeing to take part in Warren’s Saddleback (which sounds dangerously like “bareback”) debate with John McCain, Obama could conceivably have been seen as paying lip service to evangelical Protestantism, just like every president since Nixon has had to do. But putting Warren on the bill for Inauguration Day? Imagine if George W. Bush had hired Hillary Clinton to give a speech at his second inauguration. Yeah, it’s like.

Most troubling in my opinion, though, is Obama’s own insistence, ever since March of 2007, when he announced his candidacy, that he is not an ordinary politician. His grassroots, fifty-state strategy was unparalleled in its success. His speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was intelligent and it treated the American people as though they, too, could understand long speeches that contained nuanced thoughts, as opposed to the Manichean sound bites of George W. Bush. His political maturity happened after the Vietnam War era, and, as Andrew Sullivan has suggested, the very core of his being is not instilled with a reflexive fear of Republicans and conservatism.

Conservatism demands the acknowledgment of a false dualism in every aspect of life, with the promise that conservatism will lead people to the correct side of this duality. Democrats buy into this framework and then try to argue the opposite side. The true progressive would never let the Republicans frame the debate and then proceed to work within their ill-conceived framework. To the progressive, there is no debate about whether or not health care should be free, or if there should be a premium for minimum services, or if the government should control it. The answer is: the current system of privatized health care doesn’t work and it should not be repaired, it must be rebuilt from the ground up. Obama appeared unafraid to work outside the existing framework and create a new framework that works in the interests of everyone. “Should it be a public solution or a private solution?” is not the correct question. “What solution is best for the country?” Now that’s the right question. It’s a question that Obama appeared to be asking during the campaign, but one that is being substituted by justifications for increasingly conservative behavior.

A Former First Lady & A Guy Named Tim

With his announcement of the national security team yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama materially completed his cabinet and White House staff. There are of course more appointments to be made, and some of those are promised to be Republicans, but the major positions of the new Administration are now mostly known. You’ve seen it written in many other places already, but it bears repeating that this is a demonstrably pragmatic-looking Administration, at least in terms of its top personnel, though the “centrist” label is far better-deserved for the cabinet secretaries (whose independent power has gotten out of whack under Bush-II anyway), than for the actual White House staff, from whom the policy initiatives are supposed to flow. A run-down of exactly what we know and what we may expect is in order at this point:

By far the biggest appointments announced so far are on the domestic policy side Timothy Geithner for Secretary of the Treasury, and, on the foreign policy side, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. The Clinton appointment has of course roadblocked the recent coverage of the transition–dripping as it is with Shakespearean pathos and the veiled prospects of poor message discipline, in-fighting, leaks, and even the chance of fresh new scandals.

With this selection, Mr. Obama demonstrates once again that he is willing to take calculated risks on the political side of the ledger if the end result is to channel the productive energy of a one-time rival in his favor. And if you hesitate to agree that this can be a very, very favorable strategy indeed, just go back and look at some of the things that were being written in late July about Joe Biden. Indeed the best part of the decision, from Obama’s standpoint, is that whatever drama emerges from this move will redound to Clinton’s detriment rather than his own. Obama’s credential as a disciplined manager who evokes strong loyalty and all but leak-proof message control is permanently punched–while the reputation brought to the situation on the same scores by the Clintons is…well…not quite as distinguished. If Mr. Obama finds himself in the worst-case scenario of having to fire Mrs. Clinton, few will remember back to these past days and weeks as an invitation to question his judgment in picking for the job.

But if the Clinton appointment is the one garnering all the news, the Geithner appointment is surely the one that tells us considerably more about just what sort of Administration the new team promises to be. Geithner is neither a liberal firebrand nor a Chicago-style political crony (the two things we were promised by the radical right to expect from Obama’s inner circle). What he is, instead, is a uniquely qualified individual with a full resume aimed specifically at the job. As President of the New York branch of the United States Federal Reserve, Mr. Geithner’s current position straddles the fence between the regulatory function of the Fed (all district banks regulate the banking activity in their districts) and the monetary policy side (since the New York bank, in particular, enjoys permanent standing on the Federal Open Market Committee, where the money supply is raised or lowered by simple majority vote).

The most visible of the Treasury Secretary’s jobs in the next Administration will be to account for the bailout money that has been shoveled willy-nilly at the financial sector over the past few weeks and to more prudently spend whatever of that money is left (which won’t be much). But the ongoing job of the Treasury Secretary–to raise the necessary bond revenue from deficit spending–is likely to become a significant challenge in the next four years, as both the Social Security Trust and the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China find it increasingly difficult to purchase new bonds at the daily Treasury auction. Once this simmering crisis erupts onto the scene, perhaps within the first two years of the incoming government, Geithner’s track-record as a cool head on the FOMC, and his proven credential as a provocative, outside-the-box thinker will serve us all, regardless of party affiliation. It promises to be a very difficult assignment, and essentially no one is as qualified to fulfill it right now.

There is at all events a desperate need for a fresh look at the question of regulatory oversight of the financial markets, and on this front as well, Mr. Geithner scores high marks for taking just the sort of pragmatic, centrist approach to such questions that the Obama appointments are receiving so much attention for in general. Clearly, the Bush/Paulson approach has left the nation’s financial system in tatters–but it’s not obvious to even some of the most liberal thinkers on the subject that a return to the days of Glass-Steagall wouldn’t exacerbate the problem by serving as a disincentive to capital. It’s a poignant thought to consider for the pro-regulation crowd that many of the best-performing securities during the current bear market would have been illegal before Glass-Steagall was repealed. However one looks at it, the Geithner nomination is a laudable, perhaps even brilliant decision. Call it two for two, if you must, though there have certainly been others outside the scope of this particular column.

Oh, and there’s one last major element of aplomb to Mr. Obama’s galaxy of selections made thusfar: Geithner, who might otherwise have had one of the most visible (and probably controversial) tenures in the history of the Treasury, doesn’t like publicity. He’s a wonk, just as all the district bank presidents in the Federal Reserve system are wonks. So how does a President who wants the most effective performance from such a key player do his part to help ensure that’s exactly what he gets? How about by nominating an ambitious, headline-hungry formal rival for Secretary of State?

Whither Reaganomics?

Author’s note: Today’s is the first post in the Blue Economist column on the subject of “Blue-State Economics: Viewing Our Most Important Policy Debate Through Progressive Eyes”

On one level, there’s little shock value to be derived from the near total absence of Republican mischief making in the current, lame-duck session of Congress: They did, after all, just get their watches wound in the national election. However, taking a slightly longer view, it’s not clear that this same measure of electoral defeat has stopped them before. Past democratic transitions have been marred by a bull-headed intransigence on the part of the defeated. This has been born of equal parts denial, ideological certitude, and base whipping. Just ask Bill Clinton.

If all is quiet on the right flank in Washington these days, it may just be that the Republican agenda makers, especially on the domestic side of the ledger, have awakened to the bankruptcy of their ideas. However, it is a far more likely scenario is that the right is lying in wait for the sort of substantive policy shifts that Barack Obama has already promised and was assailed for during the campaign. Once this assault has whipped their own base into a frenzy of disdain, Republicans can renew their time-tested formula of overwhelming the national agenda with catch phrases and vitriol. This will inevitably cast the Democrats in a weak light, despite their power.

It is worth considering how things got this way.

The modern discipline of economics is surprisingly neutral on questions of political discourse: Progressive income taxes may be defended on the principal of “diminishing marginal utility,” by which a dollar taken from a wealthy person and given to a poor person has a net-beneficial effect on all of society’s collective happiness, to pick one random but unusually topical example. Another example is where environmental regulations may be defended on the principal of “internalizing social costs,” wherein the non-monetary repercussions of a firm’s activities are converted into monetary ones through fines and regulations. In addition, minimum wage laws may be defended as having negligible effects on the employment of unskilled labor, since the unskilled labor in question is already being used in its smallest possible quantities by the firms employing them.

However, as adaptable as such progressive claims would seem to be to the underlying principles of modern economic thought, the academy is at the same time populated by individuals so ubiquitously and inflexibly conservative as to render them the frequent butt of both merriment and derision at the hands of their would-be colleagues in the other social sciences. “An economist engages someone else’s ideas about the way the world works,” wrote one columnist in a recent edition of The New Yorker, “the way a bulldozer engages a picket fence.”

This phenomenon is largely attributable to the coincidental (and misguided) desire on the part of professional economists to be regarded as objective, physical or “hard” scientists–more like chemists and biologists–and less like their messy-headed brethren down the hall in Psychology and Poly-Sci. If the practitioner has to be clean, then the practice has to be clean too. This in turn means that the rich (progressive) texture of policy debates must melt on contact with the paradigm to prevent it from looking unresolved. The anguish of jobs lost to technological change, the qualitative detriment of polluted air, the elusive tabulation of the spoils of a war on poverty–all of these are matters dismissed with a smug wink and the back of a hand.

As the paradigm has polarized itself to the right, so too has the rhetoric from conservative think tanks been tailored to a world where the cleanliness and simplicity of an answer is its highest virtue. This exists in a perfect synergy with the rank-and-file’s inability to regard any complex idea as anything but a threat. Surely the good people at Americans for Tax Reform don’t really intend for their government to be “drowned in the bathtub”–surely Grover Norquist has been to enough school to know that bridges in the host city of the Republican National Convention will, absent a government that’s just been drowned in someone’s bathtub, fall unceremoniously down. However, with a simple paradigm to claim as their own, the Norquists of the world have all the excuse they need to reduce a messy world to painfully simplistic causes that play perfectly with the low-information voters in swing districts.

It would be tempting to presume a January 20th expiration date on such laments, to believe that some sort of corner has been turned. But the bitter reality of the matter is that Mr. Obama’s performance was at its shakiest when he found himself confronted by a self-appointed Ohio foot soldier so perfect for the slick-sided provincialism of the modern conservative economics that he was drafted by the McCain campaign as its chief spokesman before the sun had set. It won’t get any easier from there.

The Democrats will not win an economics argument in this country on the basis of raw numbers alone; they never do. Now that the electoral battle has been won, the Democrats must take a big-picture approach to winning the larger war. Selling complex, messy ideas like progressive income taxes (to say nothing of the restoration of a modicum of governmental oversight) will require a fresh infusion of street-smart packaging to match such hate-button phrases as “death tax.” To do so will be to fight fire with fire. If the Obama administration dismisses such efforts as quotidian (or, worse, elitist), or if it presumes victory before the fact on the strength of its mandate, they could surely suffer the same fate as wide-eyed Democratic administrations in years past. The good news is that they’re already winning this P.R. battle with cool-headed, pragmatic appointments and centrist views. In other words, they’re winning it the same way they won the election.

Dear President Obama: Don’t Do These

Every pundit with a keyboard and at least one hand is writing about what President-Elect Barack Obama (I’ll never get tired of that) should do in his first fifteen minutes as president. Obviously, he should immediately rescind stupid Bush executive orders: over the weekend, he indicated that he would do as much. Two Bush executive orders are scheduled for the chopping-block: one that placed a moratorium on federally-funded stem cell research from new lines of embryonic stem cells (remember when that was the most our country had to worry about?) and another that prohibits federal funds from being used for overseas family-planning organizations that suggest abortion among their family-planning options. Obama also plans for his new EPA to reverse the Bush EPA’s decision to prohibit California and a dozen other states from enacting their own carbon emissions standards.

These are great! But there are two things that have been bandied about — with varying degrees of sincerity — that are not that great.

The Employee Free Choice Act

Democrats have been trying to get the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800) passed for over a year. Bush promised to veto it. Obama has said he endorses it. EFCA provides another method for workers to form unions. Currently, the process for forming unions is as follows: a group of workers that wishes to unionize submits a petition to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that a “substantial” number of employees wishes to form a union. This is proven by 30% or more of the employees signing a petition indicating that they want to form a union. The NLRB schedules a hearing to determine if a question of representation exists. If NLRB determines that a question does exist, then it directs “an election by secret ballot” to occur.

EFCA would create an alternative method for forming a union: if a majority of employees signs a petition indicating that they wish to form a union, and those employees sign “valid authorizations” indicating as such, then NLRB will bypass the election process mentioned above and immediately certify the union. This is referred to as “card check” legislation.

EFCA contains other provisions, like permitting binding arbitration if management and the new union fail to agree on a contract within 90 days. It also strengthens protections for employees forming a union, more clearly defining what, exactly, an employer cannot do to employees forming a union (threaten to terminate employees or otherwise harass or discriminate against them during or after the union-organizing process, e.g.). The fine for such interference is increased from $5,000 to $20,000.

Strengthening penalties is the good part of this legislation. Eliminating the secret ballot is the bad part. Labor organizations like the AFL-CIO have been lobbying for this legislation for a long time, arguing that the union-creation process is long and difficult, and in the time between when employees sign the initial petition and when the NLRB calls for the election, management can attempt to dissuade employees from joining the union. If this is true, it still doesn’t explain why the Express process for forming a union must eliminate the secret ballot. The whole point of having a secret ballot in union elections is to protect employees from intimidation or retaliation, from the union as well as from the management. President Obama should veto this legislation or tell Democrats in the Senate to amend it so as to include a provision for secret ballots. There’s no reason why employees shouldn’t have secret ballots.

The Fairness Doctrine

Prior to 1987, there was a fairness doctrine, also called the equal time rule, present in broadcast television and radio. I’ll quote the above-linked website’s description of it, since it’s simple and good:

Simply put, a station which sells or gives one minute to Candidate A must sell or give the same amount of time with the same audience potential to all other candidates for the particular office. However, a candidate who can not afford time does not receive free time unless his or her opponent is also given free time.

(Upon reading the website linked above, I realized that it was written by Howard Kleiman, the very Miami University communications professor whose class first got me interested in First Amendment law!)

Obama and other Democrats have toyed around with the idea of resurrecting the fairness doctrine. A lot of them blame the rise of conservative talk radio (specifically, Rush Limbaugh) on the elimination of the fairness doctrine. With no requirement for equal time for all sides, the airwaves skewed to the right, creating a pulpit from which people like Rush, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, et al. can spew their Republican talking points. Democrats have attempted, in Air America, to create a similar network of their own, but it isn’t nearly as popular.

Legislating “fairness” is a terrible idea, both in principle and in execution. Just last week, the FCC and Fox Broadcasting duked it out in the Supreme Court over the issue of “indecency.” I can only imagine the tremendous amounts of litigation that would ensue from such a doctrine. That’s just the execution. On the issue of fairness, who is the government to determine “fairness”? The idea that the government exists to provide equity of points of view runs contradictory to the First Amendment. All the government does is guarantee that any side has a platform free from government interference; what the sides choose to do with that platform, or the degree to which they choose to use it, is up to them. The fairness doctrine could also give false dichotomy to scenarios in which there really aren’t two points of view (evolution/intelligent design comes immediately to mind; to suggest that both theories have equal veracity and should be debated equally is ludicrous; intelligent design does not deserve to be legitimized by placing it on par with evolution).

President Obama, please don’t pass the Employee Free Choice Act — not unless it’s altered to specify secret ballot elections. And please, please, please don’t bring back the fairness doctrine; it may work pragmatically to stem the tide of conservative talk radio, but as a theory, it’s broken and could lead to the inclusion of points of view that might otherwise be correctly disdained through the marketplace of ideas.

Illinois Senate Replacements: The Front Runners

As Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, it is important to consider who will be replacing him as the junior senator from the state of Illinois. Under Illinois law, the replacement will be named by Governor Rod Blagojevich and will serve the remaining two years of Obama’s term.

Who are some of the candidates?

Today, we’ll look at two of the front runners:

1. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., 43, Chicago

Jackson, Jr. has been mentioned for several months as someone who is actively seeking this position.

Positives: Jackson, Jr is the only African American front runner. His appointment would ensure that there wasn’t a 100% decline in the number of African Americans serving in the upper chamber. Jackson is also very popular on the south side of Chicago, is a charismatic up and coming leader in the Democratic Party, and was one of Obama’s national co-chairs.

Negatives: Largely because of conservative attacks on his father, Jesse Jackson, Sr., the Jackson name has high negatives in conservative areas outside of Chicago, which some claim may make it difficult for Jackson, Jr. to be reelected statewide in 2010.

2. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, 64, Evanston

Schakowsky, a member of the House Democratic Leadership, also has also been campaigning actively for the position. I had the honor of doing some political work with members of her staff this past year, and they were very much positioning themselves for a possible future in the Senate.

Positives: Schakowsky’s district, which includes parts of Chicago’s north side and inner suburbs such as Evanston and Skokie, neighbors Rod Blagojevich’s old district, and the two are apparently fairly close politically. In addition, Schakowsky was one of the first representatives to endorse then state-senator Obama when he ran in the 2004 Illinois Senate primary. What goes around comes around in Illinois politics, and Congresswoman Schakowsky is in better with Obama and Blagojevich than anyone else.

Negatives: Schakowsky’s husband Robert Creamer, former director of the Illinois Public Action Fund, was convicted of one count of failure to collect withholding tax and of bank fraud for writing checks with insufficient funds in 2005. In fairness, it should be noted that the judge said that Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs. Also, Schakowsky had no wrongdoing in this situation. In addition, some commentators claim that Schakowsky’s liberal voting record might not play well in some more conservative areas outside of Chicago.

Full disclosure: Jan Schakowsky is my Congresswoman, and I have had the honor of meeting her on a couple occasions. She is my personal favorite for Obama’s seat.

Grant Park Rally Photos and Video

These Grant Park rally pictures are directly from one of Demockracy’s loyal readers. After the pictures, we’ve included a short video of the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago on Election Night. This video is from when it was announced that Senator Obama was officially elected the next President of the United States.

Enjoy!

The Morning After

National Journal: Barack Obama is the most liberal U.S. senator.

American people: Okay, so what’s the problem?

The mythology that liberals must become more conservative in order to win votes has been successfully body-slammed. This tactic rested on the assumption that America is a right-leaning country, and the only way for a liberal political party to succeed is to cater to those conservative urges. As Daily Kos observes (see link above), however, Americans overwhelmingly voted for a candidate whose message was clearly liberal: yes, let’s give Americans access to government healthcare. Yes, let’s reduces taxes for the middle class while increasing them for the very wealthy. Yes, let’s end preemptive foreign wars. These are all liberal positions, and yet Obama didn’t back down on one of them. (His stance on gay marriage, however, leaves much to be desired.)

It’s time to acknowledge that the United States is becoming more liberal. Everyone agrees that the economic crisis of this fall is what did McCain in. His blustering and sputtering about what to do — combined with revelations of his history as a de-regulator — caused even his supporters to lose confidence in his ability to solve such a problem. You can’t fix the problems caused by capitalism by throwing more capitalism at them. What’s required is a change in ideology: a shift away from the time-honored veneration of The Market and a shift toward more government regulation. The Market can’t solve all our problems, and indeed, it can’t even solve its own.

And what conservatives have failed to realize is that Americans are overwhelmingly against the Iraq War. A CNN poll conducted a week before the election found that 64% of those surveyed opposed the war. In a separate Pew Research poll, 50% thought that it was the “wrong decision” (compared with 39% who thought it was the “right decision”). In a third poll, conducted by CBS News/New York Times, 54% of respondents said they thought we should have stayed out of Iraq. Hindsight is 20/20, but at least there is hindsight. A John McCain administration would have promised only more wars, since war is all McCain knows. With reports coming out for the last two years of veiled threats against Iran, and last week’s incursion into Syria, more war is what McCain would have delivered. A McCain victory would have been interpreted as a mandate for more preemptive war.

Here’s some more news for you: while 22% of the country voted more conservatively than it did in 2004, the rest of the country either stayed the same or voted more liberally. Where has the Republican Party gained power? The South. Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, eastern Texas, Oklahoma. The House and Senate numbers show this, as well. Even Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida were Obama country. Barely Obama country, but his, nonetheless.

As it turns out, Joe the Plumber and Joe Six-Pack may not like the abstract concept of the government taxing people who make more than $250,000, but they don’t make that much money right now, and right now, they could use a tax break. They could also use some health care. Maybe they’ll worry about supply-side economics when they’re making money again.

And that’s the key to this victory: Obama got 65 million voters to believe that the Democrats, not the Republicans, could make their lives better. I recall something he said in his closing argument of the last debate: the question is not “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The answer to that is a resounding no. The question is, “Which party will make you better off four years from now?”

We have our answer.

What Today Means

Today is not just about voting Barack Obama into office. It’s like a national colon cleansing. Today, hopefully, we will vote to restore the rule of law and the Constitution to their rightful places. Today, we will vote to end the doctrine of preemptive war, dial down the militarism, and begin focusing on fixing the problems we have in this country rather than starting new problems in other countries. John McCain would indeed continue the failed policies of George W. Bush, but voting for Obama is not merely about making sure McCain doesn’t become president. It’s about removing the Republican Party from power and in so doing, sending its operatives a clear message that we will no longer stand idly by as our nation engages in war, terror, and torture in our names, under the moniker of protecting the “homeland.” We will no longer watch as we are told that the government is not here to help us, that we should not help each other, but that we should fend for ourselves, and if we lack the wealth or imagination to do so, then so be it.

For eight years I have not been proud of the United States. It has engaged in atrocities that I had never thought a country as grand as ours could engage in. Most cynically, the president, vice president, and the Republican Party used the spirit of cooperation that existed after September 11 (Karl Rove’s imagined memories to the contrary) as their ticket to pure, unbridled power. In attempting to analyze why things have happened the way they have, this is the conclusion I come to: power. Though we often want to ignore the more animalistic parts of our brains, the limbic systems of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others are alive and well and thirsty for control. I can think of no other explanation.

The machinery that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton designed to prevent the concentration of power is failing us as the executive asserts ever more “powers” that are not to be found in statues or the Constitution. As long as the Republican Party remains in control of the country, that machinery will continue to deteriorate.

This is not to say that the Republican Party has always been bad. It was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. It was once the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who helped create the America we know today. Even Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency; but Nixon’s contempt for the law was his own, not the party’s.

But the Republican Party has mutated into something that none of the above people would recognize today. Even Ronald Reagan, the venerable godfather of modern conservatism, would not recognize the Republican Party. Its sleaze knows no bounds: like a feral dog, it resorts to its most primal responses when threatened. As it has sensed, over the past few weeks, that its time is up, it has tried to associate Barack Obama with terrorists, socialists, Marxists, Muslims, and anyone else it thinks are evil. When that has failed, experience has shown us that it will resort to trying to forcibly stop people from voting, by placing “observers” at polling places to question legitimate voters’ registrations (in swing states only), intentionally delivering too few voting machines to Democratic precincts, or attempting to cut Democrats from voter lists altogether.

Karl Rove’s attempts to create a “permanent majority” have led to an undeniable fact: the Republican Party of 2008 does not care about anyone but itself. It seeks to enrich itself, to place its operatives in positions of power so that those operatives can amass wealth, and most of all, power. The party that clothes itself in patriotism is, underneath the bloody flags it wears, virulently unpatriotic. “Patriotism” involves respect for the nation and its people. The modern Republican Party has nothing but contempt for the nation and its laws, especially when those laws get in the way of its quest for power. And the people? The modern Republican Party doesn’t care about anyone who is not an elite member of the party. George W. Bush would be perfectly happy to throw Joe the Plumber to the sharks — if, that is, he didn’t need Joe’s vote.

And then we come to soldiers. Time and time again, President Bush has shown that he doesn’t care about soldiers. He wants meat that can absorb bullets in his ill-begotten, ill-fated War on Terrorism. Once the meat comes home to its family, brimming with trauma — both physical and mental — from the experience of war, President Bush has fought as hard as he can against paying for that meat, which it turns out, is a living, breathing human being that must now be taken care of.

Today is probably the nation’s most important day in many, many years. A vote for Obama is a tourniquet to stop eight years’ worth of hemorrhaging caused by a party that couldn’t care less about anyone but itself. A vote for McCain is a vote to continue things as they have been, despite his protestations to the contrary. McCain has demonstrated — not the least through the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — that the modern Republican Party will continue to play an intimate role in the operation of the United States, as it has for eight years. Four more years of that will run our country’s veins dry.

Barack Obama does represent change. He represents hope. He represents a return to the Constitution, a return to the values of equal protection under the law, a return to a nation that defends itself when actually threatened and not a nation that attacks other countries due to perceived threats. A President Obama will lead a nation that we can be proud of again.

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