Given a second term, would Obama dare confront Congress?

President George W. Bush (center), meets with (from left) former President George H.W. Bush, President-elect Barack Obama, and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office on January 7, 2009. This picture is in the public domain.

At the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza poses a thoughtful question as the 2012 election campaign proceeds – “What would Obama do if re-elected?”

In November, 1984, President Ronald Reagan was reëlected in a landslide victory over Walter Mondale, taking forty-nine states and fifty-nine per cent of the popular vote. The Reagan revolution was powerfully reaffirmed. Soon after, Donald Regan, the new chief of staff, sent word to a small group of trusted friends and Administration officials seeking advice on how Reagan should approach his last four years in office. It was an unusual moment in the history of the Presidency, and the experience of recent incumbents offered no guidance. No President since Dwight D. Eisenhower had served two full terms. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon Johnson, overwhelmed by the war in Vietnam, had declined to run for reëlection in 1968. Richard Nixon resigned less than seventeen months into his second term. Gerald Ford (who was never elected) and Jimmy Carter were defeated. By the nineteen-eighties, it had become popular to talk about the crisis of the Presidency; a bipartisan group of Washington leaders, with Carter’s support, launched the National Committee for a Single Six-Year Presidential Term.

Regan’s effort to foresee a successful second term is documented in a series of memos at the Reagan Library. President Obama, who in November could face one of the tightest bids for reëlection in history, has periodically spoken of his admiration for Reagan. “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory for America,” he told a Reno, Nevada, newspaper in early 2008. “He just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism.” From the inception of his Presidential bid, Obama has sought to present himself as a leader with far-reaching ideas, and has prided himself on his ability to look past the politics of the moment. To the degree that he is able to ponder his strategy for the next four years, it’s natural to think he might steal a glance at the Reagan playbook. Responding to Regan’s confidential memo, Tom Korologos, an adviser to every Republican President from Nixon to George W. Bush, told the Reagan White House that the second term should be viewed from the standpoint of the President’s intended legacy.

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Calming the fearful mind…

My meditation group recently decided to read and discuss Thich Nhat Hanh’s Calming the Fearful Mind: a Zen response to terrorism. 

I was nearly finished with the book when I decided to get some exercise yesterday afternoon and take a walk in my apartment building. 

I saw my neighbor, a three times per week dialysis patient, seated in the alcove near the elevator. She looked disconsolate, so I stopped to visit with her. 

She had lost her keys and was locked out of her apartment. Her granddaughter had an extra set of keys, but she was without a phone to call her. I happened to have my cell phone in my pocket. 

Another neighbor joined us as we waited until the granddaughter arrived with her grandmother’s extra keys, and we saw her safely enter her apartment.

When I returned to Calming the Fearful Mind, I read the following paragraph:

You can’t feel safe if you’re not in good communication with the people you live with or see regularly. You can’t feel safe if those around you don’t look at you with sympathy and compassion. In the way you speak, sit, and walk, you can show the other person that she is safe in your presence, because you are coming to her in peace… Safety is not an individual matter. Helping the other person feel safe guarantees your safety.

Thich Nhat Hanh continues:

We can bring the spiritual dimension into our daily life, as well as our social, political, and economic life. This is our practice. Jesus had this intention. Buddha had this intention. All of our spiritual ancestors, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist had this intention. We can display the light of wisdom and come together in order to create hope and to prevent society and the younger generation from sinking in despair.

We can learn to speak out so that the voice of the Buddha, the voice of Jesus, the voice of Mohammed, and all our spiritual ancestors can be heard in this dangerous and pivotal moment in our history. We offer this light so that the world will not sink into total darkness…

May it be so.

A blue spot of consolation for Wisconsin Democrats

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jason Stein reports:

Madison - A triumphant Gov. Scott Walker will meet with his cabinet Wednesday on jobs and start planning a Wisconsin-style bipartisan summit with lawmakers over brats and beer.

But for at least five months, it appears that he could have to accommodate a newly Democratic Senate. Republicans needed to win all four state Senate recall races Tuesday to hold onto that house but were declared winners in only three of those contests.

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Should the right to hate speech be guaranteed?

Anonymous commenters on various message boards across the Internet repeatedly argue that they are entitled to freely express their opinions regardless of how slanderous or hateful they might be. Stanley Fish’s column in the NY Times on this topic effectively rebuts such harmful contentions:

Jeremy Waldron’s new book, “The Harm in Hate Speech,” might well be called “The Harm in Free Speech”; for Waldron, a professor of law and political theory at New York University and Oxford, argues that the expansive First Amendment we now possess allows the flourishing of harms a well-ordered society ought not permit.

Waldron is especially concerned with the harm done by hate speech to the dignity of those who are its object. He is careful to distinguish “dignity harms” from the hurt feelings one might experience in the face of speech that offends. Offense can be given by almost any speech act — in particular circumstances one might offend by saying “hello” — and Waldron agrees with those who say that regulating offensive speech is a bad and unworkable idea.

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Voter suppression reported in Wisconsin

 

I just received this message:

 

Urgent Action Needed: We've confirmed reports of voter suppression calls to recall petition signers. These calls tell signers that their "job is done" and that they don't need to vote on Tuesday.

This is a disgusting attack on our democracy and we need your help to fight back. Post this photo to your Facebook timeline and tell your friends that we need every eligible voter to cast a ballot for Tom Barrett -- including recall petition signers.

I have good friends in Wisconsin who worked hard to gather recall petitions and who will be working hard to get out the vote tomorrow. Do your part - Wisconsin needs you! 

Scott Brown’s efforts to weaken the Dodd-Frank law

Sen. Scott Brown (R), photo via Boston Globe

Scott Brown has by no means served his constituents as a Right-wing extremist/Tea Partier in his first term as Ted Kennedy’s replacement in the Senate; that may explain why he and Elizabeth Warren are currently engaged in such a tight race up there in Massachusetts. Still, the Boston Globe has done voters a favor this morning by revealing how Sen. Brown first voted for the 2010 Wall Street overhaul and then worked to weaken major provisions.

Noah Bierman and Michael Levenson write:

E-mails between Brown’s legislative director and US Treasury Department officials show that Brown advocated for a loose interpretation of the law so that banks could more easily engage in high-risk investments. 

While the law, known as Dodd-Frank, sets broad parameters for how the financial industry must behave, the interpretation of the law, and the rules that follow, will govern Wall Street’s daily business.

At issue in Brown’s e-mails is the Volcker rule, a particularly contentious provision of Dodd-Frank. The rule, championed by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, prevents commercial banks from speculating heavily in higher risk 

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What’s wrong with the President checking a list and deciding whom to kill?

Photo credit: Pete Souza, White House.

It’s hard to even think about it. The way our nation has morphed into a ruthless machine, even finding ways to make it okay to kill noncombatants who stumble into a strike zone. It gets uglier all the time.

Obama’s “kill list” is another step down the road of America becoming the terrorists it is determined to eliminate. Is this what we want? Read Amy Davidson’s post at the New Yorker titled “The President’s Kill List,” and you tell me:

What is wrong with the President sitting in a room, looking at lists and portraits of people—a Somali man, a seventeen-year-old girl, an American citizen—and deciding whom to kill? That, according to long and troubling articles in both the Times and Newsweek, is a job Barack Obama has assigned himself. His aides, notably John Brennan, his counter-terrorism adviser, portray it as a matter of taking responsibility—if we are going to assassinate someone, or call in a drone strike to take out a camp in Yemen, the President should make the call—as if our only alternative were some sort of rogue operation, with generals or C.I.A. agents shooting at will. But responsibility involves accountability, which is something, in this case, that appears to be badly lacking. Obama has not taken on a burden, but instead has given the Presidency a novel power.

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