Month: February 2009

How do you feel about Obama’s plan to end the war in Iraq?

I took my time and read through Paul Rosenberg’s piece today, entitled Two Frames For Looking At Healthcare Reform-And Beyond. The language is close to impenetrable and the entire piece could have been pared down to a few paragraphs. I’ll do that here so that you don’t have to suffer through trying to decipher Rosenberg’s meaning. Here’s what he’s trying to say.

When it comes to Obama’s health care plan, there are two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, the plan clearly doesn’t go as far as the socialized health systems utilized in other industrialized nations. On the other hand, the plan is pretty aggressive considering the political milieu that prevails in Washington DC, and it seems well planned to actually pass through that system and become law.

Depending on whether you emphasize the plan’s inadequacies in a purely objective sense, or you emphasize the practical difficulties of passing any health care plan, you will come to different conclusions about how good the health care plan and the strategy for passing it are.

When people have political discussions that don’t recognize the reality and validity of these different ways of viewing politics, then confusion can result. In addition, it is not clear whether Obama is stuck in the mode of dealing with what is possible and practical, or if he is actively engaged in expanding what it possible so that it better resembles what is objectively desirable. I am hopeful, but not yet convinced, that Obama is doing the latter.

There are other points that Rosenberg makes but the above is a concise distillation of his main argument. You’ll notice that my distillation doesn’t include the word ‘frames’ or talk about people using different frames to understand politics. That’s because the ‘framing’ aspects of Rosenberg’s piece are totally inappropriate and distract from what he is trying to communicate.

Rosenberg is expanding the meaning of a frame beyond its ability to have explanatory power. I’m not going to get into too much detail on Lakoffician framing here, so we’ll keep it basic by looking at Lafoff’s Introduction to Simple Framing. When Lakoff talks about a frame, he is talking about something fairly concrete, like an elephant, which, when invoked, “is realized in the brain by neural circuitry. Every time a neural circuit is activated, it is strengthened.”

This is an oversimplication, but it works for our purposes. People understand and process political information through neural circuitry that is built up over time. If you want people to build up negative feelings about taxes then you can use a term like ‘tax relief’ which implies that taxes are a burden from which people need relief. This type of analysis is useful when it is kept to its original purpose. But Rosenberg is talking about something much, much less concrete than an elephant or taxes. He’s talking about people’s broad political worldview and dispositions.

Some people are very idealistic and others are rigorously practical. Those are mainly personality traits but they also involve a degree of ideology, including actual conscious intellectual activity. For example, it’s possible to focus your intellectual energies on figuring out the best possible health care system or to use your intellectual energies to figure out the best possible health care plan that can pass through the 111th Congress of United States of America. The difference between these two activities is not one of framing. One is an academic exercise that you might assign to a class of political science students or health professionals and industry lobbyists. The other is a political and legislative exercise. All thinking can be studied by cognitive science and all information processing can be analyzed through a Lakoffian framework, but the difference between academics and legislating is not a suitable subject for Lakoffian analysis. Yes, if you really want to strain the meaning of ‘framing’, you can include the ‘frame’ of being an academic idealist and the ‘frame’ of being a legislator or member of the executive branch. But you’ll be abusing the science.

To be generous to Rosenberg, he is trying to say that different people interpret political information differently depending on whether they are dispositionally inclined to think about objectively good outcomes or politically good (possible) outcomes. That’s not framing, though, because it is information neutral. It doesn’t matter to the academic idealist how the message is crafted because it is their disposition to discount outcomes that fall short of the ideal. The ‘ideal’ isn’t a frame, but the end result of a (hopefully) intellectual exercise aimed at determining the best solution to a problem.

Of course, the reason Rosenberg is writing this piece in the first place is to contribute to the ongoing conversation that was started by Nate Silver in his piece: The Two Progressivisms. In other words, he is trying to find some common ground between the argument laid out by Silver and the rebuttal of David Sirota. And that’s fine. But criticism that Nate Silver, Al Giordano, and I have been leveling at OpenLeft’s analytical work is based on them operating in a strictly academic/idealist mode without due consideration for practical realities. It’s also, at least in my case, about the cringeworthy obsession with message (rhetoric) over organization (action) in the context of the progressive movement. Abusing Lakoff is almost a way of life over there.

I took my time and read through Paul Rosenberg’s piece today, entitled Two Frames For Looking At Healthcare Reform-And Beyond. The language is close to impenetrable and the entire piece could have pared down to a few paragraphs. I’ll do that here so that you don’t have to suffer through trying to decipher Rosenberg’s meaning. Here’s what he’s trying to say.

When it comes to Obama’s health care plan, there are two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, the plan clearly doesn’t go as far as the socialized health systems utilized in other industrialized nations. On the other hand, the plan is pretty aggressive considering the political milieu that prevails in Washington DC, and it seems well planned to actual pass through that system and become law.

Depending on whether you emphasize the plan’s inadequacies in a purely objective sense, or you emphasize the practical difficulties of passing any health care plan, you will come to different conclusions about how good the health care plan and the strategy for passing it are.

When people have political discussions that don’t recognize the reality and validity of these different ways of viewing politics, then confusion can result. In addition, it is not clear whether Obama is stuck in the mode of dealing with was possible and practical, or if he is actively engaged in expanding what it possible so that it better resembles what is objectively desirable. I am hopeful, but not yet convinced, that Obama is doing the latter.

There are other points that Rosenberg makes but the above is a concise distillation of his main argument. You’ll notice that my distillation doesn’t include the word ‘frames’ or talk about people using different frames to understand politics. That’s because the ‘framing’ aspects of Rosenberg’s piece are totally inappropriate and distract for what he is trying to communicate.

Rosenberg is expanding the meaning of a frame beyond its ability to have explanatory power. I’m not going to get into too much detail on Lakoffician framing here, so we’ll keep it basic by looking at Lafoff’s Introduction to Simple Framing. When Lakoff talks about a frame, he is talking about something fairly concrete, like an elephant, which, when invoked, “is realized in the brain by neural circuitry. Every time a neural circuit is activated, it is strengthened.”

This is an oversimplication, but it works for our purposes. People understand and process political information through neural circuitry that is built up over time. If you want people to build up negative feelings about taxes then you can use a term like ‘tax relief’ which implies that taxes are a burden from which people need relief. This type of analysis is useful when it is kept to its original purpose. But Rosenberg is talking about something much, much less concrete than an elephant or taxes. He’s talking about people’s broad political worldview and dispositions.

Some people are very idealistic and others are rigorously practical. Those are mainly personality traits but they also involve a degree of ideology, including actual conscious intellectual activity. For example, it’s possible to focus your intellectual energies on figuring out the best possible health care system or to use your intellectual energies to figure out the best possible health care plan that can pass through the 111th Congress of United States of America. The difference between these two activities is not one of framing. One is an academic exercise that you might assign to a class of political science students or health professionals and industry lobbyists. The other is a political and legislative exercise. All thinking can be studied by cognitive science and all information processing can be analyzed through a Lakoffian framework, but the difference between academics and legislating is not a suitable subject for Lakoffian analysis. Yes, if you really want to strain the meaning of ‘framing’, you can include the ‘frame’ of being an academic idealist and the ‘frame’ of being a legislator or member of the executive branch. But you’ll be abusing the science.

To be generous to Rosenberg, he is trying to say that different people interpret political information differently depending on whether they are dispositionally inclined to think about objectively good outcomes or politically good (possible) outcomes. That’s not framing, though, because it is information neutral. It doesn’t matter to the academic idealist how the message is crafted because it is their disposition to discount outcomes that fall short of the ideal. The ‘ideal’ isn’t a frame, but the end result of a (hopefully) intellectual exercise aimed at determining the best possible solution to a problem.

Of course, the reason Rosenberg is writing this piece in the first place is to contribute to the ongoing conversation that was started by Nate Silver in his

President Obama has reached the second-stage of his presidency. Having largely put the main pieces of his administration in place and addressed the most urgent matters, he is moving on to implementing his campaign promises. He discusses this agenda in this morning’s weekly presidential address (the full text of which is below the fold). What’s most notable is that Obama has dropped the nonconfrontational, bipartisan language he used to open his administration. This is not a bug in the system. His early, conciliatory tone was necessary to teach the American people lessons that would allow them to accept the ambitious and uncompromising tone he is taking now. The Republicans did him a favor by slapping away the olive branch and adopting a harsh, paranoid, dishonest, and delusional stance in opposition. Few people can still see any merit in an inclusionary, bipartisan approach.

Obama’s tone is most striking in the section of this morning’s address where he talks about organized opposition to his budget.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

Even before Obama delivered this warning, the Establishmentarian press was noting the change in Obama’s tone. David Sanger writes in today’s New York Times:

There is a boldness to the strategy — the kind of boldness that worked for Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign — that is breathtaking. He is gambling that the combination of his political capital and the urgency created by the economic crisis gives him a moment that may never come around again.

But along the way, he appears to have shed President Clinton’s fear of being labeled an old-fashioned liberal.

There’s not much old-fashioned about President Obama, but there is an element of return. It’s a return to an attitude about government that prevailed prior to the Reagan Revolution. Sanger expresses it this way:

If Johnson’s rallying cry was an end to poverty in the world’s richest nation, Mr. Obama’s is an end to the Reagan Revolution. With the proposed tax increases on couples making more than $250,000, Mr. Obama has declared that trickle-down economics — the theory that the entire country benefits as the nation’s richest amass and spend — was a fantasy. He denounced it in moral terms, declaring in his budget that “there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few.”

Another way of putting this is is that the era of saying Big Government is the problem is over. A new progressive era has begun. And, in this new era, the government has to do big things and it has to do them well. In the most recent progressive era (that of The New Deal), the country had to create a social safety net, create regulatory frameworks, build up a military-industrial complex capable of safeguarding our victory over fascism and against the influence of Soviet totalitarianism, create a system of international law and collective security, lay down our interstate highway system, and invest in technologies that would lead to advances like the internet and the global positioning system, as well as medical breakthroughs. And it had to advance civil and human rights for all our citizens without tearing the country apart.

Those were all jobs for a big government, and it functioned well so long as the government was led by people that believed in all of these tasks and not just the national defense component.

The main difference between Obama and Clinton is that Obama is not apologetic about being a liberal. And there is more than one reason for that, as Sanger notes in today’s article:

By contrast with Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton was far more cautious. He came to office only four years after Ronald Reagan left Washington, and the rise of the Republican “Contract with America” in the mid-1990s kept the Reagan philosophy alive.

Moreover, Mr. Clinton was, of course, more beholden to the wealthiest Democratic donors. Mr. Obama’s wildly successful campaign strategy of raising hundreds of millions of dollars over the Internet from small donations gives him more political running room. (It also raises the question of whether wealthy voters, who overwhelmingly supported him, will now begin to reconsider their support.)

Yes, the difficult times give Obama breathing room to do big things that Clinton did not enjoy. But Clinton was beholden to the ‘wealthiest Democratic donors’ and Obama is not because he organized a progressive army of small donors. Organization trumps rhetoric. That organization is now gearing up for a fight. And it’s a fight we’re going to win.

Two years ago, we set out on a journey to change the way that Washington works.

We sought a government that served not the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few, but the middle-class Americans I met every day in every community along the campaign trail – responsible men and women who are working harder than ever, worrying about their jobs, and struggling to raise their families. In so many town halls and backyards, they spoke of their hopes for a government that finally confronts the challenges that their families face every day; a government that treats their tax dollars as responsibly as they treat their own hard-earned paychecks.

That is the change I promised as a candidate for president. It is the change the American people voted for in November. And it is the change represented by the budget I sent to Congress this week.

During the campaign, I promised a fair and balanced tax code that would cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, roll back the tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year, and end the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas. This budget does that.

I promised an economy run on clean, renewable energy that will create new American jobs, new American industries, and free us from the dangerous grip of foreign oil. This budget puts us on that path, through a market-based cap on carbon pollution that will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy; through investments in wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient American cars and American trucks.

I promised to bring down the crushing cost of health care – a cost that bankrupts one American every thirty seconds, forces small businesses to close their doors, and saddles our government with more debt. This budget keeps that promise, with a historic commitment to reform that will lead to lower costs and quality, affordable health care for every American.

I promised an education system that will prepare every American to compete, so Americans can win in a global economy. This budget will help us meet that goal, with new incentives for teacher performance and pathways for advancement; new tax credits that will make college more affordable for all who want to go; and new support to ensure that those who do go finish their degree.

This budget also reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession. Given this reality, we’ll have to be more vigilant than ever in eliminating the programs we don’t need in order to make room for the investments we do need. I promised to do this by going through the federal budget page by page, and line by line. That is a process we have already begun, and I am pleased to say that we’ve already identified two trillion dollars worth of deficit-reductions over the next decade. We’ve also restored a sense of honesty and transparency to our budget, which is why this one accounts for spending that was hidden or left out under the old rules.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead – change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began.

Thanks for listening.

President Obama has reached the second-stage of his presidency. Having largely put the main pieces of his administration in place and addressed the most urgent matters, he is moving on to implementing his campaign promises. He discusses this agenda in this morning’s weekly presidential address (the full text of which is below the fold). What’s most notable is that Obama has dropped the nonconfrontational, bipartisan language he used to open his administration. This is not a bug in the system. His early, conciliatory tone was necessary to teach the American people lessons that would allow them to accept the ambitious and uncompromising tone he is taking now. The Republicans did him a favor by slapping away the olive branch and adopting a harsh, paranoid, dishonest, and delusional stance in opposition. Few people can still see any merit in an inclusionary, bipartisan approach.

Obama’s tone is most striking in the section of this morning’s address where he talks about organized opposition to his budget.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

Even before Obama delivered this warning, the Establishmentarian press was noting the change in Obama’s tone. David Sanger writes in today’s New York Times:

There is a boldness to the strategy — the kind of boldness that worked for Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign — that is breathtaking. He is gambling that the combination of his political capital and the urgency created by the economic crisis gives him a moment that may never come around again.

But along the way, he appears to have shed President Clinton’s fear of being labeled an old-fashioned liberal.

There’s not much old-fashioned about President Obama, but there is an element of return. It’s a return to an attitude about government that prevailed prior to the Reagan Revolution. Sanger expresses it this way:

If Johnson’s rallying cry was an end to poverty in the world’s richest nation, Mr. Obama’s is an end to the Reagan Revolution. With the proposed tax increases on couples making more than $250,000, Mr. Obama has declared that trickle-down economics — the theory that the entire country benefits as the nation’s richest amass and spend — was a fantasy. He denounced it in moral terms, declaring in his budget that “there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few.”

Another way of putting this is is that the era of saying Big Government is the problem is over. A new progressive era has begun. And, in this new era, the government has to do big things and it has to do them well. In the most recent progressive era (that of The New Deal), the country had to create a social safety net, create regulatory frameworks, build up a military-industrial complex capable of safeguarding our victory of fascism and against the influence of Soviet totalitarianism, create a system of international law and collective security, lay down our interstate highway system, and invest in technologies that would lead to advances like the internet and the global positioning system, as well as medical breakthroughs. And it had it advance civil and human rights for all our citizens without tearing the country apart.

Those were all jobs for a big government, and it functioned well so long as the government was led by people that believed in all of these tasks and not just the national defense component.

Two years ago, we set out on a journey to change the way that Washington works.

We sought a government that served not the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few, but the middle-class Americans I met every day in every community along the campaign trail – responsible men and women who are working harder than ever, worrying about their jobs, and struggling to raise their families. In so many town halls and backyards, they spoke of their hopes for a government that finally confronts the challenges that their families face every day; a government that treats their tax dollars as responsibly as they treat their own hard-earned paychecks.

That is the change I promised as a candidate for president. It is the change the American people voted for in November. And it is the change represented by the budget I sent to Congress this week.

During the campaign, I promised a fair and balanced tax code that would cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, roll back the tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year, and end the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas. This budget does that.

I promised an economy run on clean, renewable energy that will create new American jobs, new American industries, and free us from the dangerous grip of foreign oil. This budget puts us on that path, through a market-based cap on carbon pollution that will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy; through investments in wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient American cars and American trucks.

I promised to bring down the crushing cost of health care – a cost that bankrupts one American every thirty seconds, forces small businesses to close their doors, and saddles our government with more debt. This budget keeps that promise, with a historic commitment to reform that will lead to lower costs and quality, affordable health care for every American.

I promised an education system that will prepare every American to compete, so Americans can win in a global economy. This budget will help us meet that goal, with new incentives for teacher performance and pathways for advancement; new tax credits that will make college more affordable for all who want to go; and new support to ensure that those who do go finish their degree.

This budget also reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession. Given this reality, we’ll have to be more vigilant than ever in eliminating the programs we don’t need in order to make room for the investments we do need. I promised to do this by going through the federal budget page by page, and line by line. That is a process we have already begun, and I am pleased to say that we’ve already identified two trillion dollars worth of deficit-reductions over the next decade. We’ve also restored a sense of honesty and transparency to our budget, which is why this one accounts for spending that was hidden or left out under the old rules.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead – change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began.

Thanks for listening.

.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

How does the corporate media fight progressive governance? Consider the following from CNBC star Larry Kudlow of The Kudlow Report.

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget.

He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.

You don’t have to read the rest of it. Kudlow is doing what he falsely accuses Obama of doing. Kudlow is declaring war on Obama’s administration. Obama, on the other hand, is merely restoring some balance and fairness and sanity to a financial system that is currently redefining the term epic failure.

A real war against bankers and the bourgeoisie would look more like this.

After you torture and kill people and detain them indefinitely even after you discover most of them are innocent of any crime, you sort of lose the moral high ground.

Hello again painting fans.

This week we’ll be continuing with the painting of the 1952 Hudson.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylics ona  9×12.

Seen in a period advertisement directly below is a similar Hudson.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

There are two big changes this week.  The first of these is the chromey detail on the rear roof pillar.  The pillar itself was painted a light blue.  Upon this background I painted the various curved chrome highlights and details, mirroring closely those of the source photo.  I may make a few tiny adjustments but this portion is essentially complete.  Note that the chrome details carry over to the window mouldings.

The other major change is the chrome spear that sweeps across the car doors.  This was difficult to get just right.  Mine curves a bit more than the one in the photo.  Note that the spear’s lower edge is dark bluish gray, the upper is light blue.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

That’s about it for now. Next week I’ll have more progress to show you. See you then. As always, feel free to add photos of your own work in the comments section below.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

Barack Obama has already made a handful of decisions that have proved controversial among progressives.  Some of his supporters have apparently taken criticism to be a personal attack against him, but some recent events show how the office he holds has become dangerously aggrandized.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

On most issues I am firmly in the liberal camp, but have recently voiced disagreements with some on the left I usually agree with.  The responses have been somewhat surprising.  There are issues concerning the presidency and the executive branch in general, and Barack Obama should not be above criticism if he contributes to them.  Defenders have said he is just getting started so it is too early to make even preliminary evaluations, that relatively minor retreats from Bush administration policies are sufficient concessions to civil libertarians, that the economic mess crowds out consideration of other issues, or that we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt as he works out his stance towards the Constitution in the expectation he will eventually end up in the right place.

I understand he has been in office for just over a month but his decisions on detainees at Bagram and the State Secrets privilege should not be ignored.  They are noteworthy in and of themselves; moreover, early decisions give us the best indication of what to expect.  If the first ones are hostile towards human rights and transparency what reason is there to expect better?  Does it make any sense to say that he has been so busy getting the stimulus bill together that he has not had time to think about how we treat those who have been warehoused for years in extrajudicial limbo?  When would that time arrive?  What reason is there to expect additional reflection would change his first thoughts?  While the broad outlines so far sketched out (such as closing Guantánamo in a year) have been good the early details have not.

Even rolling back Bush’s power grabs all the way to January 20th, 2001 would not be sufficient to restore our traditional honoring of civil liberties and human rights.  The environment that Bush inherited was the foundation from which his abuses were launched.  Removing them would just leave the platform on which the next Bush (God help us) could rebuild.  While you could argue that the Clinton administration’s use of rendition was generally valid – though I do not agree – there can be no question that it operated outside of judicial or Congressional oversight.  That in turn forces those defending it to use qualified language, such as saying the Clinton administration “generally used the practice to allow suspects to face criminal prosecutions, rather than solely to undergo interrogation”.  The absence of a formalized extradition treaty creates a loophole big enough to rationalize using it for a much wider variety of purposes.  You “generally use” it one way, we’ll generally use it another.

If we want to reduce the chance of history repeating itself we should look at our assumptions prior to Bush.  We may have had a certain amount of complacency, naïveté or indifference to the precedents that would later be used to justify activities that outraged us.  What we know now should make us willing to question items that have long been considered as settled, and two recent developments are greatly encouraging examples of that.  In the first Steven Aftergood reports (via) that Judge T.S. Ellis, III has overruled an executive branch classification claim in an ongoing lawsuit.  Judges have typically been very deferential towards government classification, allowing it to do so largely unchallenged.  Ellis has ruled that not only will he review the documents but so will the jury, and it will decide whether they remain classified.  It is an almost astonishing display of good sense:  The overwhelming bulk of evidence suggests that secrecy is invoked to quash embarrassing, unethical or criminal behavior.  Finding a way for the courts to check these claims instead of accepting them at face value seems several decades overdue.

The second is the announcement by senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Patrick Leahy that a commission on torture during the Bush years may be formed.  Now, I have been sorely disappointed by Leahy in the past and thought his unwillingness to play Constitutional Hardball with the Bush administration made him look impotent and clownish.  Also, Congressional committees seem to take forever and produce reports instead of action.  Those reservations aside it seems possible the Senate will proceed regardless of the White House’s position.  Whitehouse said “When push comes to shove, we are the legislative branch of government. We have oversight responsibilities. And we don’t need the executive branch’s approval to look into these things just as a constitutional matter.”  If that really is his and the Senate’s position it would mark a welcome return of a kind of principled but adversarial check on the president that has been missing much longer than eight years.  Here’s hoping the attitude is contagious.