POTUS Gets Down to Business

by Joshua H. Liberatore

POTUS jumped right into action after taking office last week and began spending what his predecessor liked to call “political capital,” which in the case of our sitting POTUS, actually means something. What was intriguing about the modest flood of executive orders, memoranda, and signing remarks that came through our office recently is that they hit directly at several campaign promises, though not without some controversy. In the span of just a few days, POTUS issued closure orders for the internationally-loathed Guantánamo Bay detention facility, reversed a Reagan-era restriction on development aid that funds “population planning,” beefed up emissions standards, froze salaries for White House senior staffers, put the kibosh on lobbyists’ entering government via the “revolving door,” and appointed new Special Envoys to South Asia and Israel-Palestine. A few highlights from POTUS’s first fortnight in office reveal a refreshing degree of honesty and courage.

To his senior staff, POTUS pledged to end “business as usual” regarding the spoils system by which lobbyists and lawmakers join forces to garner profits from government contracts and budgetary allocation. But he also invoked a new era of transparency and communication, which will solicit involvement and feedback from ordinary citizens, hopeful residue from his days as a community organizer:

Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people about how decisions are made. It means recognizing that Government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know. And that’s why, as of today, I’m directing members of my administration to find new ways of tapping the knowledge and experience of ordinary Americans – scientists and civic leaders, educators and entrepreneurs – because the way to solve the problem of our time is – the way to solve the problems of our time, as one Nation, is by involving the American people in shaping the policies that affect their lives. (January 21, 2009)

A second theme was restoring the American image of fairness and rule of law around the world, the hallmarks of which will be closing the hated offshore detention center, confirming the absence of “torture” in interrogation practices, and restoration of habeas corpus for “enemy combatants”:

The message that we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals. And all of the individuals who are standing behind me, as well as, I think, the American people, understand that we are not, as I said in the Inauguration, going to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals. We think that it is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and the moral high ground to be able to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that you see emanating from terrorist organizations around the world. (January 22, 2009)

Translation: Even the “world’s policeman” must behave himself. And who better to introduce such a novelty? Our new POTUS is a lawyer to the bone. In his remarks, he even began with a verbatim “readout” of the directives he was about to sign, then explained in plain, intelligible English his rationale behind them and what precisely each in turn would accomplish.

POTUS also seems to understand that patching the fractured economy and addressing our much-needed overhaul in energy procurement and infrastructure improvement can, and indeed must, go hand-in-hand:

It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil, while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs. We hold no illusion about the task that lies ahead. I cannot promise a quick fix; no single technology or set of regulations will get the job done. But we will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America that is free from our energy dependence and empowered by a new energy economy that puts millions of our citizens to work. (January 26, 2009)

And unlike his two immediate predecessors, POTUS decided to begin tackling the thorny brambles of Israeli-Palestinian peace brokering in his first (as opposed to last) weeks of office, a most welcome change. And although POTUS obeyed convention by prefacing his remarks with reassertions of the U.S. commitment to supporting Israel’s “self-defense” (the recent pursuit of which has killed 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis), he also described a picture we haven’t countenanced since the days of Jimmy Carter:

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so too is a future without hope for the Palestinians. I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who have faced suffocating poverty for far too long. (January 22, 2009)

This is promising rhetoric indeed, especially since POTUS assures us that he expects “not just photo ops but progress that is concrete,” as he phrased it in his first exclusive, post-inaugural interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya (to the enduring jealousy of American networks). He also renewed his much-celebrated January 20-offer to engage the Muslim world on the condition that regimes in Iran and Syria “unclench” their fists.

It must be pointed out, however, that despite the unquestionable triumph evident in some of these early actions, POTUS is also taking some grave risks. Little reported in the first week of his administration was the resumption of cross-border airstrikes on Taliban hot-spots in Pakistan, a dubious carryover from the previous Commander in Chief that employs unpiloted, CIA-operated drones dropping bombs in the rugged Federally Administered Tribal Areas that border eastern Afghanistan. Such attacks, illegal by international law, killed 220 people in Pakistan in 2008, and at least 22 in Friday’s fresh strike (between 4 and 7 of whom were considered “militants”), and are understandably very unpopular with the Pakistani public, not to mention the fragile civilian government that took office just a few months ago.

There are some perfectly good reasons, in other words, that some fists appear clenched. We’d be fools to pretend otherwise. As a prominent historian has warned, POTUS would do well to remember the example of another popular President, who came into office with a huge electoral mandate and an ambitious domestic agenda, both of which got swallowed up by an ignoble, inherited war.

POTUS is Also Human

by Joshua H. Liberatore

As all the world witnessed this Tuesday, there is a new POTUS in the House, with a new style, a fresh perspective, and novel rhetorical flourishes to attend to. We at the Office of the Federal Register, like many here and overseas, are watching and listening with wonder and expectation, striving to stay ahead of the learning curve to embrace this remarkable transition. After eight years of misunderestimating our Commander in Chief, we are forgiven perhaps, if either our standards for both leadership and oratory are so diminished that we are too easily impressed or our appetite for Change is so piqued that we fail to recognize continuity. After two years of campaign rhetoric, let’s examine a few choice tidbits from this week’s Inaugural Address to get ourselves on a solid, rational footing as the new administration begins to take shape in the real world.One aspect of POTUS’s speech that simply can’t go unnoticed was the curious blend of sober circumspection and gushing optimism:

And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more. (January 20, 2009)

Although the hopeful timbre of this gesture is admirable and encouraging, honest Americans of all stripes know it is simply not true; those to whom it was directed certainly wish it to be so, but they know better as well. Nagging facts on the ground speak otherwise. Will assurances such as these retain their persuasive power for the Palestinian child who observes her school or the United Nations food warehouse in Gaza leveled by weapons manufactured or paid for by the U.S.? Will the benevolent message reach the African corn farmer who finds himself perennially outcompeted in local markets by government-subsidized supercrops from Iowa and Nebraska? To paraphrase Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, superpowers do not have allies or friends, only clients. Still, in defense of the noble idealism here, POTUS is to be commended for introducing an affable tone, however naïve, to our foreign policy.

True to the history of his office, POTUS also engaged in a portion of necessary self-contradiction. Though his posture remained benign and his message generally congenial, POTUS did not refrain from a little tough talk, which might just have brought a melancholy grin of approval from his predecessor, safely aboard a military plane en route to Texas:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

In fact, it’s conceivable that precisely in order to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America” in addressing “the specter” of climate change, pursuing unwinnable wars on terror, reforming our models of infrastructure, health care, and education, and overhauling the very structure of our economic system – ambitious agenda by all objective criteria – we might have to do just that: apologize for our way of life and begin anew.

Thankfully, we still have God on our side, as POTUS did not hesitate to remind us, invoking His name no fewer than five times in his well-paced, 19-minute, allusion-rich address.

And with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

And like former occupants of the Oval Office, POTUS made sure to quote at least one Founding Father and one well-know passage from Scripture, sometimes in the same phrase:

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In all this, however, POTUS proved his humanity, his mortality, which was often in doubt judging from the eerie chanting of his last name that frequently emanated from the teeming crowds of applauders gazing at the JumboTron screens with an abandon and wonderment that bordered on idolatry. Yes, POTUS’s subtle if down-to-earth familiarity was a most encouraging display, because although America’s problems are indeed gigantic in theory, they become, perforce, human-scale in practice and require human-scale sacrifices, patience, and resolve. POTUS did well to reiterate the point:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility, a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our Nation, and the world. Duties that we do not grudgingly accept but, rather, seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

Thanks to an awkward misprompting from Chief Justice John Roberts – appointed to the Supreme Court, you’ll recall, on the strength of his strict constructionist judicial philosophy – POTUS stumbled briefly during the oath of office, consummating what English teachers around the world recognize as the curious portability of adverbs, one of the great charms of our complex grammar. An imperfection so technical, so minute (but nevertheless necessitating a private redo a day later), is not only forgivable, it brings immense comfort to those of us wary of the potential for mindless loyalty evident in Tuesday morn’s adulating masses.

“Palestine Inside Out” by Saree Makdisi

by Joshua H. Liberatore

In the wake of Israel’s hugely disproportionate and widely condemned, three-week incursion into Gaza that left over a thousand Palestinians (half of them civilians) dead, many more gravely wounded, and tens of thousands homeless, I heartily recommend that all Americans buy and read Saree Makdisi’s Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, a remarkable work of reportage on the daily humiliations of living in occupied Palestine. Makdisi is a literary scholar, a specialist in Romantic English poetry at UCLA, and in many ways, writes in the grand tradition of his uncle and philosophical mentor, the late Edward Said. Although there are many fine books about the Palestinian plight – Noam Chomsky’s The Fateful Triangle and Said’s own The End of the Peace Process come to mind – Makdisi takes a fresh approach to the nagging questions of one of the least-addressed calamities of the post-World Ward II era. Instead of focusing on the broad political and military injustices inherent in Israel’s 60-year occupation of historic Palestine, or the United States’ role as Israel’s financial, material and diplomatic backer in the project, Makdisi focuses on the mundane details of life in Israel’s three lock-and-key bantustans: East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank: property zoning laws, building restrictions, residency regulations, curfews and checkpoints, limits on family reunification, border crossings, visa applications, long lines at the Ministry of Interior, the daily difficulty of movement and commerce.

    The list goes on and on. Makdisi argues persuasively that each tiny aspect of life in the Occupied Territories – even the most basic rituals of birth, marriage, and death – is circumscribed by Israeli authority and administration. Through endless paperwork, repeat application processes, bureaucratic hurdles without cease, Israel not only occupies the physical space that is objectively recognized by the international community – including the United Nations – as belonging to Palestinians, it also systematically demoralizes the rightful occupants of that land through constant logistical hassle and legalistic pressure. In support of its more obvious twin projects of forceful isolation of Palestinian communities (witness the current blockade) and Jewish settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel’s concomitant goal – as broadly articulated by its more frank politicians – is to slowly but surely encourage ordinary Palestinians to back their bags and leave.

    But the strength of Makdisi’s portrait of a Palestine turned inside out – as the book’s title suggests – is not just in its descriptive power and its generous cataloging of rarely-heard Palestinian voices. Makdisi is also making a very convincing argument that the much-lauded two-state solution, which Israel has been lackadaisically brokering for the past 30 years, under pressure from Europe and the United States, is by now a physical and demographic impossibility. The American backed-Road Map is equally a fiction. Despite the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Jewish settlers – coming everywhere from Brooklyn to former Soviet Republics – have been aggressively building barracks communities and hogging resources in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 war. These settlers are well-armed, thoroughly entrenched, and jealously defended by the Israeli army that continues to administer Palestinian land in defiance of international law, several U.N. resolutions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are not leaving. Neither will the millions of Palestinians disappear.

    The Palestinians – who make up a full 20 percent of Israel proper – and, despite Jewish settlement, the overwhelming majority in the Occupied Territories – present a formidable “demographic problem” to the Zionist project, which insists that Israel is not the state of its citizens but the state of the Jewish people. The only reason Israel hasn’t formally annexed the Occupied Territories already – after all, it has shown no qualms about being there and staying – is because the resultant demographic shift would make Palestinians not only a numerical plurality but quite possibly a majority as well. So, the status quo, illegal and immoral as it is, has served the purpose of maintaining the fiction that Israel’s identity is shaped by religion rather than functional citizenship or basic residency. Transferring these respective populations in the interests of achieving a clean, two-state solution (with Gaza and the West Bank separated by Israel and, presumably, a divided Jerusalem on the model of cold-war Berlin) seems far-fetched at best, not to mention inconsistent with the principle assumptions of modern democracy to which both parties lay claim, with hearty applause from the West.

    With the difficulty (and indeed historical failure) of such a solution in mind, Makdisi rather joins the growing chorus of observers who are advancing a one-state solution, a corrupt version of which has already existed since 1967. This idea is anathema to many ideological Jews as well as Evangelical Christians (and even some liberal-leaning Americans), who are apparently loath to see the Holy Land shared by Jews, Muslims, and Maronite Catholics. Is it such a romantic idea, asks Makdisi? Is it less conceivable, less sustainable than the veritable apartheid of the status quo? In practical terms, it’s the most feasible solution, if only Israel can accept the basic tenet of modern civilizations that a nation is made up of citizen-residents not ethno-religious pioneers.

    When I had the chance to hear Makdisi make his case in person this past fall, at a book signing in Washington, DC, he was pummeled with angry questions from local liberals and partisan naysayers who behaved as if he were recommending the Faustian bargain of the century. He looked into his audience and asked, “I’m I too American for believing that this is possible, for two peoples to live together in the same society?” The hiss of skepticism that greeted this question appalled me. Ruffled, but not intimidated, he went on to cite several examples of peoples who once harbored centuries-old animosities toward each other but who eventually laid down the sword and accepted a mutual existence: Irish and Protestant, English and French, southerner and slave. It’s not perfect perhaps, and it’s not easy, but neither is it unprecedented. I found Makdisi – then and in his excellent book – to be a brave advocate for a just, pragmatic solution to the so-called Middle East “peace process,” which has too long focused on the ideological “process” rather than the pragmatic outcome of realizable peace.

A Letter from the Provinces: On Riddance, as in Good

by Patrick Baker                                                             January 19, 2009

The corks are set to pop here in the provinces as the most unpopular president in the history of American empire is set to go back to doing what he does best: clear brush from the Texas version of the Neverland Ranch. Thankfully, his grotesque series of exit interviews has barely touched us on this side of the proverbial pond, but the smugness with which the Bumbler in Chief prepares to relinquish power cannot be ignored. And so we are pleased to take this last chance, on his very last day in office, to mark the scorecard of the Bush presidency for how it has affected life in the provinces of our great empire.

    I will not make the mistake of trying to generalize about all the countries in the American sphere of influence but instead will limit myself to the outpost I have come to call home: Germany. One advantage to this narrow focus is a greater likelihood of accuracy, as my finger lies closer to the German pulse than to any other. But the real benefit will be the opportunity to relish in the nearly universal hatred felt for Bush in Germany, and thus to participate in a quintessentially German emotional experience: Schadenfreude, the joy taken in the suffering of another. One might feel bad for indulging in such a dubious form of catharsis but for the fact that Bush himself obviously enjoys it, considering his satisfaction with the job he has done setting the world aflame. My only regret is an uncertainty about whether Bush’s sociopath psychology allows him to suffer from the suffering he has caused others. Unlike Clinton, he does not appear to feel anyone’s pain.

    Disintegrating decades of goodwill banked from the Marshall Plan, Bush turned adulation into hatred almost overnight by making Germans feel like the unwilling provincials of an oppressive empire. From Colin Powell’s lying to the U.N. to the unspoken extortion involved in assembling the “coalition of the willing,” Germans have detested the heavy hand of American imperialism and unilateralism. They hate Bush for causing them to waste their tax dollars on military action in which they do not believe, money they otherwise devote fanatically to social programs and education. They hate Bush for sending their sons to war, and for the body bags some have come home in. They hate Bush for the tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Germans hate Bush because he is a symbol for all that is vulgar and predatory in America’s image the world over. Although crisis after crisis toned Bush down towards the end, he has traditionally been a big talker and the kind of listener that only a lonely mute could appreciate. “You’re either with us or with the enemy” is a phrase that lacks the nuance Germans are used to from the politicians they expect to lead, not terrorize, them. Bush’s advisedly few diplomatic visits have turned German cities and even unfortunate strips of the countryside into barbed-wire police zones. Germany belongs politically and culturally to the “Old Europe” that Bush belittled and tried to boss around. Germans hate Bush for Guantanamo, for Abu Ghraib, and for the new policy on torture. Germans hate Bush for the Bush Doctrine.

    Germans hate Bush because they view him as the greatest force of destruction in their world. Europeans of all stripes have become the victims of terrorism at home and abroad, terrorism they believe would not exist in this form if Bush had not pursued a reckless program of war and intimidation in the Middle East beginning on September 12, 2001. America’s actions cause reaction the world over. Furthermore, Bush’s willful denial of the climate crisis, and his unwillingness to let the world’s foremost economic, military, and political power play any role whatsoever in finding a solution to it, are seen as the greatest stumbling block to concerted action to save the planet. American inaction enables inaction the world over. Germans hate Bush for serving corporate interests that make money off war and oil rather than serving the greater cause of worldwide peace and prosperity.

    Germans have been waiting to exhale for about seven years now. When Barack Obama takes over tomorrow, their collective sigh might just have the force to reach Bush’s ear. And if he listens closely, he might hear the foghorn blowing: Good riddance, du Arschloch, and don’t ever come back to the provinces.

The Scent of Texas

by Joshua H. Liberatore

POTUS is generally credited with having brought to the White House his special way of speaking, his folksy manner, and his frontier values from his Texas upbringing, with much attendant pride. Never mind that the Bush family hails from a long line of New England bluebloods, what most Americans will remember about Bush the Younger is that he was a right, honorable Texan, who stared down foreign adversaries and pesky journalists with all the swagger and rustic flavor of the Lone Star State. Given that POTUS is heading back to his beloved homeland in just under 5 days, let’s take a moment to walk down memory lane with him before he reenters the warm embrace of that fabled soil.

As a basic tribute to his Texas roots, POTUS often highlighted its distinctive linguistic inflections in an effort to educate his diverse audiences:

I want to thank the mayor, Rick Coleman, of the town of Dallas. That would be Dallas, North Carolina. [Laughter] And I want to thank Mayor Billy Joye of Belmont. Where’s Billy? Billy, you here? Billy, yes. See, Billy, they don’t know our connection, do they? Billy and I flew F-102s at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas. Thank you, Billy. As we used to say, “He was a heck of a stick” – [laughter] – which means you’re probably a heck of a mayor, Billy. Thanks for coming. Appreciate you being here. (July 15, 2005)

With POTUS as its ambassador across the far reaches of the United States, the Texan lexicon achieved national renown once again, and though not as colorfully vulgar as Lyndon B. Johnson’s, POTUS’s remarks paid loving tribute to his rich, inherited vocabulary:

Coach Robinson and others coach the mighty Golden Gophers of Minnesota in the University of Minnesota men’s wrestling team-grapplers. This spring, you earned the third national title in team history. And I appreciate the fact that you train hard, work hard, and as we say in Texas, “out-wrastle ‘em.” [Laughter] Congratulations, and welcome to the White House. (September 21, 2007)

Sometimes he rather cleverly used such language lessons as a pretext to deflect difficult questions in press conferences. When pressed about a photograph documenting an apparently warm meeting between Iran’s firebrand President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – a Middle East reality that nonetheless presents formidable political difficulties for POTUS – POTUS took evasive action:

Jim [Jim Rutenberg, New York Times], I haven’t seen the reports. Before I would like to comment upon how their meetings went, I would like to get a readout from our Embassy, who, of course, will be in touch with the Prime Minister and get his readout. And so it’s a-you’re asking me to be a little speculative on the subject. I haven’t seen the picture. Look, generally the way these things work is you try to be cordial to the person you’re with, and so you don’t want the picture to be kind of, you know, duking it out; okay, put up your dukes. That’s an old boxing expression. (August 9, 2007)

On this occasion, POTUS even took care to illustrate the expression by raising his fists in a mock-fighting stance, and though initially eliciting laughter and light-hearted repartee, he soon got a bit hot under the collar when the subject of the picture brought back associations of his own recent photo-op trouble with indicted “superlobbyist” Jack Ambramoff, whom POTUS claimed never to have met:

THE PRESIDENT: And so, I don’t know, Jim. You’ve obviously followed this a lot. You’ve seen the reports. I’m sure you’re confident that what you’ve asked me is verifiable. I’m not surprised that there’s a picture showing people smiling.

Reporter: However . . .

THE PRESIDENT. Let me finish, please. And so it’s a-anyway, let me get the facts on what happened. Now, if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the Prime Minister, because I don’t believe they are constructive. I don’t think he, in his heart of heart, thinks they’re constructive either. Now maybe he’s hopeful in trying to get them to be constructive by laying out a positive picture. You’re asking me to speculate.

Throughout much of American history, Texas was known to be a land unto itself, its people a breed apart. I remember learning in a high school history class that its state constitution provided for further division into several distinct states, a carryover from that brief period when Texas existed as separatist nation from its former mother country, Mexico. With this complex past in mind, it’s understandable that POTUS sometimes got confused when he visited specific places within that expansive territory. After a visit with wounded troops at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, he remarked:

I am here to highlight one of the world’s top rehabilitation facilities, right here in my home State of San Antonio, Texas. (November 8, 2007)

And non-Texans may understand the potential for confusion. Texas is so vast – geographically and demographically larger than most nations – and its largest cities among the most populous and most sprawling in the country, that it may almost conjure up a sort of multi-layered chauvinism, whereby cities become states, states become sovereign nations, and the rest can all just go to heck.

Visiting Texas on “the people’s business” – whether touring military bases, triaging with hurricane relief command centers, or just whacking weeds at the ranch in Crawford – was always a special time for POTUS. Sometimes these visits provided an experience so intense, in fact, that POTUS went right clear into the ether when trying to describe it:

It’s an amazing experience to come back to a place where you were raised. Laura was raised in Midland; I was raised in Midland. I was – this is one of the three homes I lived in, and I kind of remember it. [Laughter] The bedroom – actually, I do remember the wood on the wall that – in the bedroom. (October 4, 2008)

Even if we can’t quite grasp the specific substance beneath that obvious euphoria, we can surely recognize that POTUS is ready to go home. He’s been talking about it a lot, and for some reason, his deep love for Laura keeps cropping up in close juxtaposition to his affection for Texas:

And I’m going to miss all the folks who have made our life so comfortable here in the White House. On the other hand I am looking forward to going back to Texas. I love Texas. I love my wife. And I’m excited about the next chapter in my life. And so all three of those things, you know, are the sweet part of the – what’s going to take place on January the 20th. (January 11, 2009)

Although he couldn’t muster the term Inauguration there, the subject of Laura’s general excellence was clear as day:

I do want to thank Laura for joining me. She has been an awesome wife and a great First Lady. (January 8, 2009)

And his excitement to establish the Freedom Institute that’s being organized around his Presidential Library, and to be with Laura too:

By the way, these [gifts from State Department staff] are going to be at Southern Methodist University – [laughter] – proudly displayed at the presidential center I will build to remind our country of the timeless values of freedom and liberty. And I am honored to take them back to Texas. I’m honored to take my wife back to Texas, too. (January 15, 2009)

Of course, with so much media and popular attention focused on the incoming POTUS, there have also been a fair number of questions soliciting advice from POTUS to POTUS-elect. But Texas, and POTUS’s imminent return to it, has never been far from the horizon:

And he’s going to have to do what he thinks is right, Jim [Jim Axelrod, CBS News]. And if you don’t, then I don’t see how you can live with yourself. I don’t see how I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be proud of what I see if I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics, to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country. (January 12, 2009)

That’s good advice indeed. After all, POTUS has presided over some very tough choices, and agree or disagree with them, no one can accuse him of taking the easy path politically or riding out his last days in blissful irrelevance. On the contrary, he seems very aware of the difficult matrix of circumstances POTUS-elect will be assuming next Tuesday at noon.

You know, one of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people’s money to help prevent there to be a crisis, and in so doing, some of that money went into Wall Street firms that caused the crisis in the first place. I wasn’t kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover. And – but nevertheless, President-Elect Obama will find the problems and the situations surrounding problems sometimes cause people to have to make decisions that they, you know, weren’t initially comfortable with. And there was such a decision when it came to Wall Street.

I mean, I had a lot of people – when I went out to Midland that time – say, “What the heck are you doing, boy? Those people up East caused the problem.” I said, “I know, but if we hadn’t worked to fix the problem, your situation would be worse. And – anyway, I really do wish him all the best. (January 12, 2009)

We wish him all the best too, POTUS. Expectations are so high, the craving for a political messiah so great, and the weight of the current problems so daunting, wishing him all the best seems to be about the best we can do, from the Commander in Chief down to the humblest civil servant.

I say all that because that’s – this has been – this notion about being briefed and thinking about this issue or that issue has been just a part of my life for eight years. People say, well, there you are in Crawford on vacation. You never escape the presidency. It travels with you everywhere you go. And there’s not a moment where you don’t think about being President – unless you’re riding mountain bikes as hard as you possibly can, trying to forget for the moment. (January 8, 2009)

Ride on into the sun, POTUS. You’ve served your time in the Oval Office. Now the scent of open steppes and plush gated communities beckons.

“The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom

by Joshua H. Liberatore

I first read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind during my sophomore year in college at a time when I was steeped in the very conditions and concerns articulated in this remarkable and apparently timeless critique of American university education. Chief among my first impressions of the book, besides the many pungent insights whose relevance to my undergraduate experience were immediately apparent, was the knowledge that I would be rereading Bloom’s book many times, for many years to come. This is true not just because of the topical acuity of Bloom’s observations – the assault on the classical liberal tradition wrought by the 1960s, the general decline of standards in reading and teaching, the overall anxiety of a tradition giving way to preoccupation with “cultures,” “lifestyles,” and self-serving “ideologies” in American society – but also due to the complexity and richness of the writing, which might well take a lifetime of periodic revisits in order to fully appreciate and digest. Bloom writes exuberant prose, without the trappings of either didactic journalism or academic hyper-specialization, but it’s by no means easy stuff. His argument is erudite but independent; the 382-page book contains fewer direct quotations than even a long New Yorker reportage does. Rather, it depends on an entire career of reading, rereading, and teaching, and thus, absorbs a vast amount of material that goes uncited but organically integrated. Moreover, Bloom is illustrating long-term trends that require time and experience – and in my case, hindsight – to comprehend.

    Recently, I felt moved to reread the book, partly to see if my original assumption was correct, and partly to see if I could understand a bit more now that I’m reading from a safe distance from the University of Michigan of the late 1990s. In short, it more than stood the test of durability. And I understood more, not least because my own experience teaching reading and writing – and dare I say, ideas – for six years have rendered me more sensitive both to the exquisite charms of Bloom’s perspicacity and to his dark diagnosis of an educational tradition in crisis. A new feature of the book also occurred to me this time around: the so-called “culture wars,” though perhaps in abatement, are not over. Bloom wrote his controversial book in 1987, when Reagan ruled the roost, and chaps like William Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, and Kristol the Elder – with whom Bloom has been associated, however narrowly, as part of the early Neoconservatism movement in politics – threw themselves into pitched battle with academics and writers of the Left who represented the continued preeminence of the very trends Bloom was critiquing. Now, of course, we have William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Richard Perle, all struggling for a foothold in the premature aftermath of eight years of policy disasters under the leadership of Regan’s unwanted stepchild, George W. Bush.

    Any thinker who wrote either Bloom or The Closing of the American Mind off as a period-piece or part of a discredited generation might well take the second look the book deserves. Bloom died a few years after the paperback version of Closing hit the shelves, but his words are very much alive and kicking. Bloom’s basic premise is that our obsession with different forms of diversity (racial, ethnic, and sexual) and the concomitant elevation of “culture” and “identity” over tradition, “lifestyles” over the good life, and “ideologies” over ideas have eroded not only our sense of continuity and stability but also the very health of our “selves,” now badly educated and mediocre. The militant “value relativism” that swelled anthropology and ethnic studies departments in the 1960s and destroyed core requirements in philosophy, history, and languages leaves us without a cherished center, the skeletal matter that binds most strong communities and societies together with enduring confidence and dignity. Instead, we’ve converted a once successful melting pot into a confused and isolated amalgam of alienated “subcultures,” a term Bloom debunks for all its specious depravity. Has our self-righteous celebration of equality and diversity brought us great rewards? Have we improved our understanding of the greater, non-Western world? Have we earned wide respect for our cultural achievements? Is our body politic healthy? All of these questions are worth asking, and if we have the courage to explore the answers, we must harness the example of Socrates – who forms a leitmotif in Bloom’s own investigation – and proceed with all deliberate haste and focus.

From POTUS with Love

by Joshua H. Liberatore

POTUS has long rankled his detractors in both parties for appearing to prize loyalty over competence in his staffing decisions. Discredited figures such as Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales – not to mention the egregious Mike “Brownie” Brown, former Administrator of FEMA, who bungled the Federal Hurricane Katrina relief program in 2005 – saw tenures that strained the bounds of common sense and even sound politics, as their policy choices and personal styles invited in turn criticism, scandal, and national embarrassment. Less noted, but equally salient, are POTUS’s cozy relationships with certain foreign leaders and governments who make strange bedfellows with his lofty rhetoric about “the blessings of liberty” and our national project to propagate democracy overseas as “the great alternative” to the “dark ideologies” of the loathsome Other. A brief recapitulation is most instructive.

With its actions in recent days Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations, or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation. (August 15, 2008)

After the spate of scoldings POTUS issued to Russia this summer for invading Georgia with overwhelming force, it may be easy to forget that early in his administration, POTUS piqued our national curiosity when he claimed to have looked into then President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and “saw his soul,” a phrase POTUS still gets asked about in interviews, most recently by Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, on December 18, 2008:

Mr. DeMuth: Let me ask you another one. You caught a lot of flak for saying that you’d looked into Vladimir Putin’s soul and seen a friend.
The President: I looked in his eyes and saw his soul.
Mr. DeMuth: In his eyes and saw his soul.
The President: Right.

Those were the very same eyes in which John McCain later boasted, on national television, to have seen “three letters, ‘K,’ ‘G,’ and ‘B’” – but that’s a discussion for another day. For the record, POTUS always insisted the relationship with Putin and Russia was “complex” – an adjective he normally reserves for precious few nations, the most famous of which is China. Relationships are indeed complex, and so are souls, both visible and inscrutable. The problem is that the relationship with Russia often got so complex that POTUS got things all mixed up when he tried to explain it:

It now appears that an effort may be underway to depose Russia’s [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century. (August 11, 2008)

POTUS was wise to choose his words here carefully; after all, it’s unpleasant but ultimately acceptable, apparently, to invade sovereign states that are not ruled by democratically elected governments. But that’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?

Concerning an earlier crisis – the “elevated rhetoric” surrounding the U.S. effort to locate ballistic missile interceptors in the former Soviet satellites, Poland and the Czech Republic, to protect the Free World from an unnamed rogue regime, presumably Iran – POTUS ran into similar trouble:

I don’t think Vladimir Putin intends to attack Russia – I mean, Europe. So I’ll talk to him about it, but it’s – if he’s saying the missile defense system is a threat to us, our – the need, therefore, is to make clear there is not. (June 6, 2007)

Persuaded are you? During the course of that summer trip to Europe, however, POTUS managed to reassure both “Europe” and Putin at the G-8 sessions in Heiligendamm, Germany that he was not resuming a Cold War posture in this altruistic gesture. In fact, POTUS planned to continue the friendly dialogue later that summer at the Bush family compound in Maine:

I’ve also said it’s important for there to be a personal relationship between me and President Putin so that we can have frank discussions in a way that enables us to more likely deal with the problems we face. That’s why I’ll visit with him here, and that’s why I’m looking forward to welcoming him to my Dad’s house in Kennebunkport. It’s an opportunity to continue to have a serious dialogue with serious players in trying to keep the peace. (June 6, 2007)

As a Texan and a former oil man himself, POTUS understands that Russia – supplier of a full quarter of European natural gas and producer of nearly 10,000 daily barrels of oil – occasionally needs to flex her muscles when worldwide energy supplies and fuel prices require it, just to stay in the game. That Putin relinquished the presidency to his protégé Dmitry Medvedev last March but now reigns as the prime minister of a parliament actively working to extend presidential term limits is nothing to worry about. A soul – once observed – isn’t mutable, is it?

Obviously, we have big differences over Georgia. And I saw Vladimir at the Olympics right as the troops moved into Georgia. And I was – I expressed my concerns, and he expressed his. I would say that our relationship is still friendly, although I haven’t seen him much because there’s a new President. And I really haven’t had that much of a chance to get to know President Medvedev. (December 18, 2008)

But Putin is not the only controversial former President who earned POTUS’s friendship and praise over the years. Let’s take a look at some other “serious players” who are “trying to keep the peace.” We mustn’t forget that stolid old General Musharraf of Pakistan, who came to power via coup d’état in 1999 but was kind enough to let us use his airspace to bomb Afghanistan in October 2002 and share intelligence on Taliban and al-Qaida whereabouts. POTUS almost called that rapport complex too, before finding fresh words:

It’s a very – Pakistan is an important ally in this war against these extremists. As you mentioned, there are some in his country. And I’m convinced that he would like to rout them out. But it’s not easy territory in which to rout people out. We’ve had some successes inside Pakistan, thanks to his leadership. And in terms of the democracy issues, he’s going to have to deal with it. (June 6, 2007)

Fortunately for Pakistan, the aforementioned “democracy issues” are currently being worked out under different leadership, this one democratically elected, but POTUS remains hopeful and affable toward other dark corners in his circle of trusted friends:

And so it’s – we do push for democracy. We push in the context of the reality on the ground, as well. I mentioned Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a close ally in the war on terror. His Majesty has done – and his services have done the world a service, a good service by bringing people to justice. And he is also making some incremental reforms. He will go at a pace slower than some would like to see; nevertheless, he’s moving. And the question is, is there progress? (June 6, 2007)

Well, one certainly hopes that there has been progress since the bad old days when Saudi Arabia produced 15 of the 19 September 11, 2001, hijackers. But like POTUS always reminds us, we must take the “long-term view of the ability of democracies to progress and, therefore, change.” Still, unless one scans the list of countries where capital punishment is still legal and practiced, it can be hard to discern just where POTUS finds such warm kinship and common values with this celebrated triad, but it’s possible that’s just the way complexity works in these uncertain times.

POTUS Analyzed It

by Joshua H. Liberatore

As if to confront the early criticism that plagued POTUS’s management style from the beginning – that he wasn’t well informed, that he wasn’t curious about the details of policymaking, that he was overly idealistic, that he delegated excessively – POTUS has spent a fair amount of time illustrating his own powers of analysis and problem-solving. As the final fortnight of his administration approaches, a topical survey of some of POTUS’s favorite issues seems in order.In the pre-surge days, POTUS faced nearly constant pressure to answer for a failing war in Iraq and defend his decision to engage a two-front war against a diffuse international organization of criminals. Remember the Iraq Study Group and the Baker-Hamilton report?

I do know that we have not succeeded as fast as we wanted to succeed. I do understand that progress is not as rapid as I had hoped. And therefore, it makes sense to analyze the situation and to devise a set of tactics and strategies to achieve the objective that I have stated. (December 7, 2006)

On the potential threat of North Korean missile deployment:

I spoke with Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday. He called me right after the launch, and he said they had preliminary information that they were going to analyze about the trajectory of the larger rocket. The other five rockets that were fired, the scuds, were – their performance was pretty predictable. It’s kind of a routine weapon that some of these nations have. (July 5, 2006)

In contrast, on the strengths of the National Intelligence Estimate, which confirmed that Iraq had suspended its development of weapons of mass destruction in 2003 and that Iran had shuttered its program as well:

Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it’s not disinformation. You want to make sure the piece of intelligence you have is real. And secondly, they want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered. If they think it’s real, then what does it mean? And it wasn’t until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public. (December 4, 2007)

On preparing our children with the skill sets necessary for the demands of the 21st century:

Step five is – on the accountability system is what we call disaggregate results. Do you realize in the old accountability systems, they didn’t bother to look at the African American kids stand-alone? They just kind of looked at everybody and assumed everybody was doing good. That is not good enough for the future of this country. If we expect every child to learn, we got to measure every child and analyze whether or not those children are learning. (January 11, 2006)

So I set up – recognizing that we need to do better in math and in science, I set up what’s called a national math panel. It’s a way to analyze – we got experts coming together, and they’re going to analyze the best teaching methodology for math, the best curriculum for math. We did the same thing for reading, by the way. We set up a group of experts on reading. And they helped States and local districts understand what works, how best to make sure every child can read. And it’s working. I just told you; it’s working because we’re measuring. (April 19, 2006)

On POTUS’s method of preparation for Supreme Court nominations:

Of course, I fully recognize it’s my responsibility to come up with a nominee, and I intend to do so in a – you know, in a period of time that will give me time to fully analyze the different candidates and speak to them. I’m not exactly sure when that process will begin, in terms of the interviews. And probably if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. (July 13, 2005)

On the reasonability of outsourcing U.S. port security to foreign countries, in this case the controversial Dubai Ports World contract that raised some eyebrows in the aftermath of September 11th:

There is a process in place where we analyze – where the Government analyzes many, many business transactions to make sure they meet national security concerns. And I’m sure if you-careful review, this process yielded a result that said, yes, a deal should go forward. (February 21, 2006)

On protecting the nation from the perils of avian flu:

The reporting needs to be not only on the birds that have fallen ill but also on tracing the capacity of the virus to go from bird to person to person. That’s when it gets dangerous, when it goes bird-person-person. And we need to know on a real-time basis, as quickly as possible, the facts, so that the scientific community, the world scientific community can analyze the facts and begin to deal with it. (October 4, 2005)

On the efficacy of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina:

And I know there’s been a lot of second-guessing. I can assure you, I’m not interested in that. What I’m interested in is solving problems. And there will be time to take a step back and to take a sober look at what went right and what didn’t go right. There’s a lot of information floating around that will be analyzed in an objective way, and that’s important. And it’s important for the people of this country to understand that all of us want to learn lessons. If there were to be a biological attack of some kind, we’ve got to make sure we understand the lessons learned, to be able to deal with catastrophe. (September 13, 2005)

We have taken a look at FEMA. We’ve made decisions inside of FEMA. We’re continuing to take a look at FEMA to make sure FEMA is capable of dealing with an emergency of this size. And so there’s a lot of analysis going on, not only to the response in the immediacy of the hurricane but continuing to analyze to make sure our response is a wise response. (October 4, 2005)

On maintaining budgetary restraint through the presidential veto:

And so one way to remedy that is to give the President the capacity to analyze the appropriations process, to remove – approve spending that is necessary, red-line spending that is not, and send back the wasteful and unnecessary spending to Congress for an up-or-down vote. That’s how we define line-item veto. (October 11, 2006)

On the pace of political progress in Iraq:

The answer is, as to when we’ll be able to stand up Iraqis and stand down, when we’ll be able to analyze the situation, depends upon how these people react; how they react to pressure; how they react to forming their Government. This is a brand new democracy. And the problem with the war we have is it requires a certain degree of patience in order to succeed. And we have to be patient here, as this new democracy begins to flourish and has to deal with people like Zarqawi who is trying to stop their advance. (June 9, 2006)

On the promise of much-needed health care reform:

When I first came to Washington, I said, “Well, maybe this isn’t the proper Federal role; we’ll let the States handle it.” And then when I began to analyze the cost to the Federal Government of these junk lawsuits, I determined it was a Federal role to do something about them. I mean, after all, we’re a huge health care provider; we have Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, veterans’ health care. Yet many of the doctors who we hire to provide services practice defensive medicine, so that if they get sued they got a case in the courthouse that can defend them. These junk lawsuits are running up the cost of medicine for you, and they’re running up the cost of medicine for the Federal Government, which is you. (October 31, 2007)

It makes no sense. Somebody gets hurt, there ought to be one exam, not two. The whole purpose is to analyze somebody to make sure that they get that which they’re entitled to as quickly as possible, without confusion. (November 8, 2007)

On the necessity of asserting executive power in legal debates over controversial terrorist surveillance programs:

And I don’t view it as a contest with the legislative branch. Maybe they view it as a contest with the executive; I just don’t. I view it-I view the decisions I’ve made, particularly when it comes to national security, as necessary decisions to protect the American people. That’s how – that’s the lens on which I analyze things, Jonathan [Peterson, Los Angeles Times]. And I understand we’re at war with an enemy that wants to hit us again. Osama bin Laden made that clear the other day, and I take his words very seriously. (January 26, 2006)

On his recent activism to save the free market system:

And so I analyzed that and decided I didn’t want to be the President during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression. So we moved, and moved hard. (December 18, 2008)

On the legacy of POTUS’s achievements measured in the long view:

So there’s been a lot of accomplishment. But the true history of any administration is not going to be written until long after the person is gone. It’s just impossible for short-term history to accurately reflect what has taken place. Most historians, you know, probably had a political preference, and so their view isn’t exactly objective – most short-term historians. And it’s going to take a while for people to analyze mine or any other of my predecessors until down the road when they’re able to take – watch the long march of history and determine whether or not the decisions made during the 8 years I was President have affected history in a positive way. (December 20, 2006)

Sometimes, of course, conventional analysis was not sufficient for the most perplexing issues facing American society. When it came to evaluating the effectiveness of various Federal programs, POTUS had to try something more robust:

I’ll give you one example of what we’re talking about. I’ll give you two examples – one example of money poorly spent, and one example of money well-spent, as a part of this management initiative – the analyzation as to whether or not the programs are actually delivering results we want. (February 8, 2006)

So, in the full humility of this “short-term historian,” I offer a mere sample of POTUS’s analytical record. It will be years before we can undertake a full accounting of its results, but for now, we can rest assured that, as POTUS himself reminded us, “there’s a lot of analysis going on,” right up to the end.