One Hundred Days

A review of the first hundred days of the Obama presidency.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. But I think I will enter a few more entries, at least, before winding it down completely. Or perhaps I may come up with some other use for it, perhaps an annual review or something.

Unfortunately, I have already observed a number of instances in which pundits have lazily accepted the notion that Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience is comparable to that of Barack Obama’s experience. This is simply not true.

There’s a huge difference between some experience and zero experience. Barack Obama has spent four years on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, where he worked on arguably the most potentially dire national security issue facing the world, working with Richard Lugar to pass the Lugar-Obama nonproliferation initiative to secure loose nuclear weapons.

In contrast, not only does Sarah Palin have practically no foreign policy experience, she recently admitted that she had not been focused on the war in Iraq.

Part of being qualified for office is not mere political experience but the time spent planning and thinking about issues, combined with vision and intellect. People like Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan lacked official experience in one way or another — but they had time to plan and think about what kind of presidency they wanted to have. Likewise, Barack Obama has spent a long time thinking about the issues facing the nation, and what he plans to accomplish in the presidency. He has also served eight years in the State Senate of Illinois, a large state facing a diverse set of issues, and four years in the U.S. Senate, including on the Foreign Relations Committee. He is ready.

Meanwhile Sarah Palin most likely genuinely didn’t have any expectation to be selected vice president. I seriously question whether she has spent a serious amount of time thinking about the many complex issues facing America. The fact she has admitted that she hasn’t spent much time thinking about the war in Iraq is troubling. Furthermore, the issues facing Alaska (population: 670,000) are very distinct and relatively narrow, and not generally translatable to the nation as a whole.

McCain Policies Lacks Substance

“While campaigns typically snow reporters with white papers and policy minutiae, many of the domestic policy plans of John McCain have been notably short on details.”

One of the key questions in this campaign is whether we as a nation can collectively discuss controversial topics like race in a mature, sophisticated, and civil manner, or whether we must inevitably decline into immature point scoring, ‘gotcha’ politics, and ad hominem attacks.

I would venture to say that Senator Obama’s campaign has been betting on the former. Meanwhile, the increasing influence of former Karl Rove staffers in Senator McCain’s campaign is a clear sign that the McCain campaign is betting on the latter holding true.

Just because you talk about (let along obliquely mention) race doesn’t mean you are “playing the race card.”

Race is an important issue and a legitimate topic for discussion. Some people may want to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the issue, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does.

The key is how you address race.

Obama was using humor to obliquely reference his own race while addressing the larger issues of some of the rumors and skepticism that have been circulating about him.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign shows its immaturity in talking about race, by immediately categorizing the mere mention of something remotely racial as “playing the race card.” In doing so, they show that they are willing to drag the level and standard of public discourse down to the lowest level.

It was completely legitimate for Obama to raise the specter of attacks against him based on fears related to his race, youth, etc. Obama has already been the subject of widespread racial and ethnically based or racial and ethnically tinged attacks. Here are just a few examples:

- New Yorker cover (yes, they were attempting satire — but that just underscores the point)
- circulated photo of Obama wearing African ceremonial garb
- repeated false rumors that he is a Muslim, or born a Muslim, or educated as a Muslim, etc.
- false rumors that he took the Senate oath of office using the Koran (he used his family bible)

If you’ve closely watched John McCain over the years, it becomes clear
he employs situational ethics when it comes to campaign tactics. He
likes to talk about honor, integrity, and civil discourse, but he’s
perfectly willing to bend the truth or engage in cheap mudslinging if
it suits his political purposes. There appears to be no consistent
logic of what constitutes vigorous but fair campaigning versus uncivil,
dishonorable campaigning except that if it’s done by McCain or a friend
of McCain, it’s the former, and if it’s done by his opponent,
particularly someone he doesn’t like or know very well (e.g. Romney) it’s the
latter.

Plug-in Hybrids

Bottling up science

“Disingenuous demands for proof drown out reasoned calls for precaution
in public health. In field after field, year after year, conclusions
that might support regulation are always disputed. Animal data are
deemed not relevant, human data not representative, and exposure data
not reliable.

“Whatever the story—global warming, sugar and obesity, secondhand smoke,
plastics chemicals that may disrupt endocrine function—scientists in
the “product defense industry” will manufacture uncertainty about it.

“Perhaps it is not surprising, but many of the same scientists who cut
their teeth manufacturing uncertainty for tobacco now battle the
regulatory agencies on behalf of the manufacturers of asbestos,
benzene, bisphenol A (a chemical in hard plastic baby bottles),
chromium and virtually every other toxic chemical in the news today.”

“The mission of our public health and environmental agencies is to
reduce hazards before people get sick or the environment is irreparably
damaged. Regulators don’t need certainty to act.”

The Audacity of Listening

Gail Collins makes the point that if you actually were listening to Obama over the years, you would not be so quick to attribute all of his recent decisions to political expediency, but rather an adherence to two of his common themes, making smart decisions (as opposed to dumb ones) and being willing work out compromise. The only true “flip flop” was his decision to forego public financing.

I have felt for months that the media has not been willing to actually listen and comprehend what Obama was actually saying, because the media has been too impatient and shallow to take the time to actually do their job of journalism by filtering and processing information so that readers and viewers can have a clear, concise, and accurate report of conditions and events.