Barack Obama

Unpublished
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Conservative Republicans "Just Say No" Approach Shortchanges Critical Economic, Sotomayor Debates

President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court hasn’t triggered a conservative firestorm yet; and like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, that’s part of a larger pattern affecting policy well beyond the Supreme Court. Granted, partisan conservatives find themselves facing an engaging, activist, Democratic president with very broad public support at his back. So it's unsurprising that most GOP senators are withholding public judgment on Judge Sotomayor's nomination, and even the RNC has taken the tact, haven't found anything on her -- yet. While Newt Gingrich went glibly over the top by calling the Judge a racist, even Rush Limbaugh couldn't manage anything beyond calling her a hack who would be a disaster on the court.

The problem for partisan conservatives is that nobody listens to them except the bare quarter of the country that already agrees with them. The other three-quarters of us are comprised of partisan progressives, often as sure of their opinions as partisan conservatives, and the great plurality of Americans with views about many things but no unvarying, partisan or ideological take on reality. And every American has fresh memories and often personal feelings about the damage left by the recently departed, partisan conservative Administration. So, almost nobody is interested today in hearing about conservative alternatives to the President's policies and decisions.

Eventually, the not-very-partisan or ideological majority of Americans will accumulate some unhappy memories and personal disappointments about the current Administration, and then they'll be more prepared to at least listen to the conservative message. That could take several years, so for now, the Republican's pitiable default position has become: just say no to the most popular president in a generation. The same partisan conservatives who used to advance fairly radical ideas, many of which became Bush Administration proposals, are now reduced to predictable defenders of the status quo, whatever it happens to be.

Economic policy is suffering from this result. The Administration's approach to the financial market crisis, for example, has been properly questioned as not going far or deep enough into the problem by Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Simon Johnson and other progressives (including myself). But questions from the progressive side have little political significance, since no Administration listens to outside advisors once its proposals have gone public, and everyone knows that friendly critics have no place else to go. The alternatives that matter in politics have to come from the opposition. But the Republican position here has been that government should be involved in the crisis as little as possible, which is as close as they can come to a status quo, when the status itself is a disaster. So the public debate never forced the Administration to sharpen its own thinking and further hone its policies. The result is an economic program which might succeed, or, equally likely, could leave us with a financial system and economy that remain weak for years.

As for the debate over soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor, the Republicans are simply cooked. They can't credibly say she isn't up to the job -- the meme on Harriet Miers -- since her academic record is brilliant. They can't credibly say she doesn't have the requisite experience, since she's been a sitting judge longer than any Supreme Court nominee in a century. And they can't credibly call her a radical, since her opinions place her squarely in the center-left territory occupied by the Justice she's replacing. In this last respect at least, she actually represents the status quo that Republicans currently cling to. But their followers won't hear of it. So they're left with another just-say-no message that's certain to further alienate Hispanics, the largest voting group not yet locked in fully to either of the parties, and many women, the largest voting group period. President Obama can rest easy: It's likely to be a long time before most Americans listen to new ideas from conservative Republicans. The rest of us will have to settle for a debate over a Supreme Court nomination that's likely to be as incoherent and enervating as the recent public discussions of the great economic issues of our time. In both cases, it' a genuine shame.

What Sotomayor Means for Immigration Reform

While it is still early in the effort to put Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, my sense is that if she does make it, the prospects for passing immigration reform this year will improve. 

Part of the reason why has to do with how the White House has introduced her to all of us. The emphasis on her hard-scrabble roots, the classic immigrant struggle, her father who never spoke English, her own incredible success, is itself a deeply powerful repudiation of the other less than flattering narratives about Hispanic immigrants we've seen in the media these past few years.  As I wrote the other day, her nomination - along with many other moments - Bill Richardson's candidacv, President Obama's own story - is one more step in the American people's coming to terms with, and largely accepting, our emerging, much more diverse racial and ethnic demographic construct of the early 21st century.  

The acceptance of these new demographic realities, driven by the vast waves of immigration in the United States in recent years, is at the very core of our ability to pass an immigration reform bill along the lines of what we passed in 2006. As we have reported to you many times, in poll after poll taken over the past four years, a strong majority of Americans, between 55 and 70 percent, are willing to allow the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working among us to stay, and build lives for themselves and their families here. For many Americans, this act of allowing the undocumenteds to stay is not just about fairness, and making sure taxpayers are not unduly burdened, but about accepting another huge traunch of Hispanic immigrants, accelerating even further the already dramatic demographic changes under way. 

For there should be no mistake about this - any civil society would have a hard time accepting the level of demographic change America is undergoing right now. That only 15-20 percent of the nation is up in arms about it shows once again, at its heart, what a good and generous nation America is.

Months of discussion of Sotomayor's inspiring story will be a daily and powerful antidote to Lou Dobbs and the other racial scapegoaters who have come to occupy the airwaves.  If she joins the court for the fall term, in September, it will be a powerful affirmation of our new direction, and an elegant table setter for a fall effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform before the end of the year. 

Kudos once again to President Obama. Few politicians in recent history have been as comfortable taking risks, of not taking the easy path, as he. And for that I am, once again, very proud of our President, that self described "mutt" we have leading us today, with grace, to a better place.

Unpublished
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Weekly Address: President Obama Honors America's Veterans, Men and Women in Uniform

In his weekly address, President Obama payed tribute to America's servicemen and women, calling on us to remember what Memorial Day is meant to honor -- the sacrifies of those who protect us:

This Memorial Day weekend, Americans will gather on lawns and porches, fire up the grill, and enjoy the company of family, friends, and neighbors. But this is not only a time for celebration, it is also a time to reflect on what this holiday is all about; to pay tribute to our fallen heroes; and to remember the servicemen and women who cannot be with us this year because they are standing post far from home – in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world.

On Friday, I traveled to Annapolis, where I spoke at the Commencement of the United States Naval Academy. It was an honor to address some of America’s newest sailors and Marines as their Commander-in-Chief. Looking out at all of those young men and women, I was reminded of the extraordinary service that they are rendering to our country. And I was reminded, too, of all of the sacrifices that their parents, siblings, and loved ones make each day on their behalf and on our behalf.

The full transcript is available here. Watch the video below:

Thursday New Tools Feature: Federal Digitial Data Dump

In its continuing effort to bring our government into the 21st century along with the rest of us (excepting Republicans, who really put the OLD in G.O.P. these days), the Obama administration today launched a transparency and open government initiative. Check out this video of Valerie Jarrett introducing the initiative today: 

As one of the first "featured innovations" of this initiative, the Obama administration also launched a new Web site, data.gov. According to the introductory blurb on this new site,

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Strictly speaking, there isn't really any *new* information here, but even though it is somewhat limited in scope at this point, data.gov is already a very powerful set of tools that makes it much easier to mine the vast depths of data generated by the government. They have already aggregated and indexed a staggering amount of information, and made it easily and instantly searchable.

Unless you've been desperately searching for all of the most current statistics on marriage and divorce rates in the U.S., you may have trouble getting too excited about this. But here's why it matters:

A former teacher of constitutional law, President Obama has so far received mixed marks on government openness and transparency. In particular, his decisions to keep past abuses covered up (see recent decisions not to release detainee abuse photos or the missing Bush emails), and even to continue controversial Bush-era policies on state-secret privilige, warrantless wiretapping, "national security letters", rendition and the use of black sites, tribunals, and indefinite detention, have been (justly) criticized by progressives.

But Obama has also done a lot to open up government, from his bottom-up campaign style to his virtual press conferences and citizens' briefing book. And while data.gov doesn't tell us anything new per se, it is a very powerful rejoinder to the myth that government need always be an inefficient, bureaucratic nightmare (one of the chief conservative rationales for privatizing everything). The government of the 21st century can be very different from that of the 20th, and with tools like data.gov, Obama is showing us how.

Change.gov Coming to the White House

1/18/09
AFP

"Obama is going to change the game with government the way he changed the game with politics," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Washington-based progressive think-tank.

Obama Readies Call for Service, Unity

1/20/09
Boston Globe

"These are happy times for our politics, but a very tough time for the country," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think tank. "There's both tremendous hope and a great deal of sobriety..."

Inauguration Is a 'Generational Touchstone'

1/20/09
San Francisco Chronicle

"This is their moment to demonstrate to America what they think America's future should be like," said Winograd...

The 100 People Who Are Changing America

3/18/09
Rolling Stone

"He has a capacity to do so much in the next eight years that he'll leave behind a very different understanding of what government can be — and of America itself," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the Democratic think tank NDN.

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