Dana Blankenhorn

The Obama Thesis of Consensus

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 5 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Real political transformation consists of defining the center and causing everyone else to realign around that center.

A keen understanding of this point is what makes a President a truly transformative leader.

Consider the history of the last thesis, what I call the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. Richard Nixon defined that Thesis, and injected the poison of his paranoia into it. But it was Ronald Reagan who validated it, by defining his own views as the political center and forcing Democrats to lean against that assumption.

This, and not some greater conspiracy, is the real source of the bitterness felt by what has come to be called the Netroots. Of which I am a card-carrying member by the way.

People like Howard Dean resented being considered "leftist" because in pre-Reagan terms they were not. Dean was for balanced budgets, for simple conservation, for efficiency, and for a foreign policy Arthur Vanderberg would have recognized.

But protest doesn't work, it does not transform. What transforms is leadership:

1. Through organization, as Andrew Jackson practiced it.
2. Through words, as Abraham Lincoln practiced it.
3. Through personal example, as Theodore Roosevelt practiced it.
4. Through actions and calls to unity, as Franklin Roosevelt practiced it.

Reaganism was a synthesis of all these things. He was a master of using a relatively new medium, television, to turn what had been considered right-wing kant into a new American consensus we have lived under from that day to this.

President Obama, to his credit, has studied and intuited all this history. He is already demonstrating how transformation is possible even in the face of cynicism, paranoia, and ideology.

Welcome to the new era. Welcome to the Obama Thesis of Consensus.

Let's take a look inside and see how it works.

The best place to start lies in the current debate over health reform.

Gay Barbie Doll

Apropos of nothing I think it's time we talked about Rachel Maddow.

Maddow, 35, is a very bright, fast-talking Rhodes Scholar who came from Air America to break the glass ceiling of "no libruls on the Teevee." After treating Pat Buchanan with amused respect she got her own show, and it is a hit.

Since its premiere, however, MSNBC has been treating her like their very own gay Barbie doll.

When out on her own, Maddow affects a very butch appearance (right). She wears slacks, lumberjack shirts and thick, thick glasses, along with what look like black Rockports. (Before anyone writes in anger, my wife likes the same look, and we've been happy together for a third of a century.)

I can go with some tarting-up for anyone who makes a living reading a Teleprompter. Even Jon Stewart has to wear a suit when he's on the Teevee, although apparently he wouldn't be caught dead in one on his own time.

The Begging Bubble

Here is a question for my American readers.

Have you noticed a rise in begging lately?

There have always been beggars in my neighborhood. You get on a subway train and someone makes an announcement that they need a few dollars for this-or-that, walks through the car with their hand out, and some people contribute. Or someone knocks on the door, not a teenager, and asks if you have any gardening chores that need doing. Or someone stands at a busy intersection with a sign.

I am used to these people. Many are scammers. One asked to borrow my lawnmower, stole it, and still hangs about the area, smiling at me like nothing's wrong as I drive by. I gave some money for MARTA to one guy and found him at the liquor store a few minutes later when I went out for sugar. That kind of thing.

There have always been homeless. There have always been people standing by the side of the road with their hands out.

What I'm talking about is a sharp, sudden rise in highly aggressive panhandling, people walking up to you, challenging you, blocking your path, looking you in the eye, trying to tell their story, hands out. Face to face.

Post Party Depression

There is a natural tendency, after a great event, to try and go back into the old patterns and assume that, somehow, nothing has really happened.

So it is with the Republicans and their media allies. The party of Barack Obama's inauguration is over. They assume business as usual is about to return.

But it isn't. This is something Netroots bloggers don't understand and don't yet accept.  They are watching Republicans perform the same hissy fits as before, and expecting the same beat-down they always got under Bush.

Recent moves by the President, aimed at gaining some Republican support for his stimulus plan, knowing he will need to stay strong in order to win future fights over health care, are seen by these observers as evidence the President doesn't get it.

In fact he gets plenty. He always has.

Our Greatest Fear is Cynicism

In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt called fear our greatest fear. Two generations later George W. Bush said it was terrorism.

Today what we have most to fear is cynicism.

I say this reluctantly since journalists see cynicism as our stock in trade. Even a 23-year old journalist can sound like a 60-year old seen-it-all hack after a few press conferences or city council meetings, and does.

Skepticism is different, and it's really the stance journalists should be taking. Skepticism says, "prove it." Cynicism says "you can't prove it." Skepticism says "you might be trying to pull a fast one." Cynicism says "you're definitely trying to pull a fast one."

Cynics may ultimately be right, since in the long run we're all dead, as Keynes said. (Well, you are. My mom says she's going to be the exception and at 86 I take her at her word.) But cynicism, when applied to events, is a terribly destructive force.

Cynicism may be the most important legacy the Nixon Thesis gave this country. Nixon was a crook, Ford pardoned him, Carter showed that an honest man can't succeed, and Reagan that ignorance is bliss. By the Clinton years (more appropriately by the Seinfeld years) we had all internalized this to the point where it was our default reaction to everything. Neither the President nor his critics gave us cause to believe any differently than Seinfeld's George Costanza.

George W. Bush used this cynicism to nearly destroy America. We had seen it all, so Bush gave us so many enormous crimes, such brazen crimes, that many of us ceased to believe in anything but crime.

But Barack Obama has a different message, and while most of us voted for that message we still haven't internalized it.

The message is simple.  Believe in yourself. Believe in your neighbors. Believe that change and hope are possible. Just words, and easy to dismiss as mere rhetoric, but if we do that then we, and he, will both fail.

And we'll be left with just cynicism.

The Real Benefits of a Hydrogen Economy

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 4 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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So far we've been selling the idea of a hydrogen cycle (instead of a carbon cycle) as nationalism, as environmentalism, or as a way to make our electrical grid more flexible and robust.

But there is another, even more important argument for the hydrogen economy.

Water.

For thousands of years the history of civilization has been a history of water. Water defines civilization. It can't exist without water.

Read Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence, or watch Michael Wood's The Story of India, and you learn how central Asia, what's now the deserts of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and the "tribal areas" of Pakistan, are the real cradles of civilization.  Those civilizations were destroyed as water sources dried up. That's why the Ganges means life.

To give life water must be clean, and the most important technologies of our last century are those devoting to maintaining supplies of clean water. Water purification, water desalinization, these are the most expensive projects we have. And their reach is very limited. Man can't magically create water. He can only preserve, transport, and purify what he has available around him.

Until now.

The 13th Juror

The new President called us all to service.

So on Inauguration Day I reported for jury duty. I saw his swearing-in at a crowded bar, which had no room to feed me. As he recited the oath I had a peculiar feeling, because that morning I had been chosen. For the first time in my life I was a juror.

It was a civil case. Comforting that no one would go to jail (except, as it turned out, for me).

We heard the evidence over a day and a half, and I was awed with the great majesty of our democracy. Lawyers on both sides put their spin on the facts. The judge kept them moving, sometimes urging a needed objection. The plaintiff and defendant sat at opposite ends of the room, glaring at everyone but each other.

Then there were we 13 "volunteers." Jury duty barely pays you lunch money and while we had been called we had accepted, we had not weaseled out. We listened to everything. Many took notes which were left in the jury room at night. No one discussed the merits of the case, just as we had been told.

Then, as we were about to go decide, just as I was about to go on stage, came the announcement from the bench. I was the alternate juror, the 13th, the extra. I would be taken next morning to an empty room, this room, my cell until the others could come to unanimous agreement, and rescue me.

My cell measures 8 feet by 10 feet. I measured it just as a prisoner would. It contains a table, five chairs, and a set of plastic drawers containing forms. Two small trash cans, a telephone, and a few old newspapers and magazines, along with your humble prisoner-of-the-bar. On the walls are two prints with platitudes, and on the far wall a plastic holder contains some sad forms in Spanish, meant for criminal defendants. Next to me stands a sign which can be placed in the hall, urging quiet.

After Dinner

While all the news shows were covering the Inaugural Balls this evening, Turner Movie Classics (known at my home as the Dead Movie Channel) re-ran a classic from 1967, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

It's a movie that has lived many lives. It won Spencer Tracy his 9th (and last) Oscar nomination -- he died shortly after filming ended. It then killed Sidney Poitier's career as a Big Star, as black folks who had moved from King to Malcolm X decided he was just an "Uncle Tom."

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but the character he played, a brilliant black doctor with honors as long as your arm, was very much in keeping with what critics call the Magic Negro, an incredibly gifted, infinitely patient, almost godlike black figure who is nevertheless not the center of the story, but a means by which some white character finds their own soul.

There are many examples in contemporary cinema. The caddy in "Bagger Vance." Morgan Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," or as God himself in "Bruce Almighty." Queen Latifah in Steve Martin's "Bringing Down the House." (In fact Poitier's characterization is more nuanced. He is, in fact, conflicted about his own choice, and how others will react. It's Katharine Ross' Joanna who is truly unruffled.)

The problem, in other words, was that Sidney Poitier's character was not at the center of the story, but that Spencer Tracy's was. Of course that's the way with drama -- it's the one who changes whom we focus on.

It Scoured

"That speech won't scour." Perhaps the dumbest thing Abraham Lincoln ever said.

He was referring to his own Gettysburg Address, a 3-minute letter following three hours of Edward Everett's best.

What Lincoln didn't realize, what history teaches, is that the importance of a great speech may not be seen close up or right away, even by the speaker.

Barack Obama has called us all to service, so today I was performing a very American service, jury duty. I was chosen, given barely an hour to grab lunch, and let loose into the Decatur, Georgia chill (rushing past a Confederate obelisk shaped like the Washington Monument), in search of a TV.

I knew of a sports bar and ran for it. It was packed to the rafters, every TV on the man at the center. I arrived just before the oath, then watched The Speech.

It was short. It did not seem like much at the time. But as with Lincoln's best, it scoured.

UPDATE: Glad to know someone writing for The New York Times finally agrees with me. "Canonization has already arrived," he concludes. Amen.

Obama used both song lyrics and short quotations to weave our new beginning.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. (Notice the repetition.)

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

Great poetry. Then note how he weaves Vietnam into the American story, and uses one of my favorite phrases in this blog, that we are a nation of makers.

My King Day

Like millions of other Americans I woke up today determined to make this King Day different.

Usually I sleep in. Sometimes I go for a bike ride, if it's warm enough. Often I write, which makes it just like any other work day.

Not this time.

My neighborhood association had chosen to work with Trees Atlanta, so I headed to the address given, fortified by a cup from the local coffee shop and a few treats I had grabbed at home. In the trunk of the car was my pointed shovel, and there was warmth in my heart.

It was a poor neighborhood, just this side of the new color line of Memorial Drive. Small homes, few trees. We were there to change that.

There was a pile of wood chips and some buckets near a truck, so without a word I started shoveling chips into buckets. After a while a few more people came by to do the same, then a few more. When the crowd thinned I looked up to see a Trees Atlanta volunteer explaining what we needed to do. Some two dozen people surrounded him.

A hole had already been dug, but he explained and demonstrated how big the hole needed to be. He showed how to pry the roots out of the root ball, using a shovel and his hands. He showed how to "score" the hole, so the roots would get a good start. He showed how to arrange the tree so that it would not grow toward the street but along the right of way. He showed what the chips were for, building a little moat around the newly-planted tree, to hold water and nutrients.

And with that we were split into small groups. I joined a couple digging across the street from the demonstration. We hacked and hacked the hard ground, then the other man with me went off for an axe. We hacked some more. Holes were dug all around us, trees were going into the ground, but still we hacked at the unyielding soil.