Looking to the Future: America version 44.0

That, as they say, is that. President-elect Barack Obama is correct in saying that, "a defining moment of change has come to America."

As the first president with a minority background, he will always hold a significant place in national history, but his effectiveness in delivering on the promise of change must be measured both in terms of quantity and direction as he assumes the roles of chief executive and commander-in-chief.

Change is not hard-wired to run in only a positive direction. Neither is it a constant that change that causes positive effects for one person or family will not have a negative effect on others. Nor is it like a domesticated pet that can be leashed; unintended consequences are the bane of every change-artist politico.

Despite all of the realities and wildcards - known by way of hindsight - change sounds good. Even when we do not have the benefit of seeing it in legislative form, but only hear the happy populist rhetoric that scintillates crowds on the campaign trail, change makes us feel like good times are just around the bend. The grass is always greener. Yada, yada, yada. Blah, blah, blah.

The question that faces us is to what degree Obama's victory is also a mandate for the changes he will attempt to make, in terms of judicial appointments and cabinet postings, as well as his policy agenda. There are many reasons to suspect that the Democrat wave that swept the country yesterday was a public relations success, not an ideological one, because the ideology has yet to manifest itself in a clear legislative policymaking agenda.

Based on campaign promises, a person voting for Obama may have done so simply because they believed he would lower their taxes. To them, he might represent the values of conservativism in a package that was more appealing than that grumpy ol' John McCain. If not for the fine print that will become the essence of how Obama delivers on his other promises without bankrupting the country, that voter might get what they are expecting. With that in mind, it may not be smart for Obama to rapidly conclude that the results of this election represent a mandate for the liberal objectives that were challenged by his McCain, as well as members of the media, without much in the way of substantive response from Obama.

It is probably unrealistic to expect Democrat politicians - now in cloistered conclave, contemplating what can be accomplished whilst we have one-party rule - to question whether a juggernaut liberal agenda for the first session of 2009 is not the will of the people. No one wants to look a gift horse in the mouth, but ignoring the possibility that the electorate may not have been voicing a mandate, despite the results of the election, could have the effects both of ensuring a pendulum swing back in 2010 to a Republican-dominated Congress and the exacerbation of the country's current economic predicament.

Based on our two year history with the party leadership of Reid and Pelosi, the Democrats will gulp greedily from the chalice handed them without too much concern for why it was given to them in the first place. After all, it would be somewhat rational - although short-sighted - to conclude that yesterday's results were a clear message of animosity toward Republican candidates and the values underpinning their party.

In the presidential race, while several states switched from red to blue, not one flipped in the other direction. The same trend is shaping up in the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races, although the Minnesota race between Coleman and Franken will have to be decided after at least one recount. (Minnesota GOP attorneys should connect with the Washington State GOP for a briefing on lessons learned from having close statewide races slip through their hands. Reference: Gorton/Cantwell, 2000, Rossi/Gregoire, 2004.)

If the election was intended to be a repudiation of the conservative values that are often associated with the Republican party, one might think that traditionally conservative issues should have suffered as well, but, for reasons as yet unknown, rays of conservative light can be seen, if we want to squint really, really hard.

• Bans on gay marriage (as distinguished from civil unions or domestic partnerships) in California, Florida and Arizona are passing, although they will almost certainly face immediate court battles.
• Nebraska voted to end affirmative action policies of the state government by a 58 to 42 percent margin.

On the other hand, 'value of life' issues were losers. Washington state passed Initiative 1000, a law legalizing doctor-prescribed suicide that has been criticized for its failure to provide common sense safeguards. South Dakota and California failed to pass abortion limits propositions, and Colorado's attempt to legally define life as beginning at the moment conception was crushed by voters.

In the weeks and months ahead, Republicans will come to some conclusions about why they lost (psst, get the base on the line and see if they have an alibi for where they all were on Election Night), and the Democrats will come to their own conclusions about why they won. This will all go into the big Mid-term Election Strategy hopper.

Meanwhile, Obama will be naming cabinet nominees, assembling White House staff and mapping out the agenda for his first one hundred days. With a Democrat-controlled Congress, and a media presumably still panting after "The One", maintain a grip on reality will be harder for Republicans and conservatives than any time since 1976.

Nevertheless, after the electoral college convenes and the inauguration takes places in the cold January air of the nation's capital, President-elect Obama will become the President Obama. He will be America's president and my president, despite my having voted for Senator John McCain.

I hope that those who may despair, or even fear, an Obama presidency will remember that the presidency is the symbol of our nation's strength and the office deserves its own measure of respect, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

I also hope that those who rejoiced last night remember that the greatest strength of our system is in the value we place on keeping a hot furnace of debate stoked. No matter how dire our circumstances may be, or what stakes lay before us, honest and open-minded argument about issues is vital and should be embraced. Brand loyalty might give us warm feelings when choosing a carbonated beverage, but blind partisanship should chill us if it becomes the only factor in how we, as individuals, arrive at our decisions to vote or how we judge the performance of our government.

Answers to tough questions should be demanded from the new president and the congress serving beside him, and we should all be color-blind in that pursuit, focusing only on the merits of proposals, considerate of the effects government actions may have on the fabric of American life.

So, too, should President-elect Obama recognize that he is in uncharted waters. With virtually no executive experience, and absolutely no experience dealing with matters of foreign affairs, he should be careful to avoid catering to the masses. Foreign policy is not an area for ideological experimentation, as so many presidents have learned after it was too late. Poll respondents on the questions of Iraq and Afghanistan do not receive the daily intelligence briefing that Obama will soon begin receiving. As distasteful as it may be, even the most idealistic presidents have to succumb to the harshness of realpolitik.

Obama should also carefully consider the weight of his proposals and the real impact that many would have on American families and individuals. If any set of American values do still exist that cross party lines they would be the desire for freedom, choice and opportunity. When politicians have not been careful to protect those values in our laws and way of life, they have paid the price in mid-term elections and their own bids to stay in office.

We are capable of emerging through the crises ahead - challenges that await us like predators shrouded in a concealing fog - but only if we are willing to be critical, open-minded and involved in the process of government. The media sits in the important position of moderating the conversation. More respect in our culture is needed and the nation's media are uniquely able to present an example to Americans of how issues should discussed and differences resolved. By promoting authentic respect for differing points of view in the newsroom, and a transparent balance in how issues are covered, a more robust and civil conversation can develop.

Less talking and more active listening is required. True, it sounds more like a prescription for couples counseling than political communication, but haven't the last eight years felt a bit like the country is in the throes of a bitter divorce? Would it hurt either side to occasionally acknowledge - publicly - when the opposition has the facts right, instead of simply racing down Diatribe Boulevard?

If we are truly interested in defining our problems or finding solutions, we need to be getting a lot closer to the truth than the current style of political discourse allows.

The first political party, or politician to put down the bullhorn and the pom-poms and speak to all Americans either as one who thinks as they do or as one who respects their beliefs despite disagreement, will reap the enormous benefits of true leadership.

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This piece was subsequently published November 7, 2008 on the Crosscut.com website, with minor editing, under the headline 'Questioniong the promise of change'.

My Predictions: Does McCain Have a Legitimate Chance? Absolutely.

Here's One Analysis That Might Give McCain Voters a Spring in Their Step on Election Day 

There is no doubt that this election will be a close contest and every vote will be important in the final count.  Fear, hope, anxiety, optimism and despair are gripping voters of all backgrounds and the country has been plunged into a cauldron of racial politics, class politics and good old fashioned lying for a year and a half.  If Rasmussen or Zogby could correlate blood pressure and heart rate along with voting preference insurance actuaries would be bracing for a run on the hospitals.

Here's how I justify giving McCain the states that are currently painted blue on most mainstream media maps, states that could tip the election for a McCain victory.

Pennsylvania (21 EV), Minnesota (10 EV) and Wisconsin (10 EV): There is every reason to believe that Obama has failed to secure crucial support among union workers (as differentiated from the union leadership) that is so crucial to these blue collar states.  High democratic turnout in the primaries was at a time when Obama and Senator Clinton were going at each other full force.  There will be a lot of Clinton supporters who will simply stay home or jump the fence to vote for McCain.

Florida (27 EV): In the primaries, the ratio of GOP votes to Dem votes was 1.12:1, and Florida is a state in which party politics still drives electioneering.  Also, in the primary election, McCain got a 5.3% better showing than polls were predicting just before the vote, demonstrating that Team McCain knows how to get out the vote in the Sunshine State.

Three other voting blocs will be critical.

Jewish voters have proven to be difficult to poll accurately.  The issue of how Obama will protect Israel may bring many of these voters to a single issue decision.

Florida is represented largely in the military.  All responsible polling has indicated a heavy McCain vote coming from the armed forces.

Immigrants who came here seeking asylum from despotic or communist oppression.  This includes tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cuban, Haitian, and other Latin Americans who have made their homes in Florida.  Will McCain's efforts to pin Obama as a socialist be in their minds as they mark their ballots?

Nevada (5 EV): Using the primary turnout to calculate the same 'strength-of-base' ratio as I used to predict Florida for McCain, Nevada shows a 2.11:1 ratio of GOP voters to Dem voters.

Of course, McCain also has to win the races in which he is currently running ahead in the polls.  It's not going to be an easy victory, and at this point he has to be considered an underdog.

It is time to simply go and do our civic duty, come what may.

Make Tonight Family Game Night Until 8:30ET, In Defense of Baseball and the American Way

Potentially the Greatest Baseball Blunder Since Buckner in '86

There is no example in American history of a political showcase preempting the World Series, just as there is no example of a sporting event preempting an election.  They are once-in-a-lifetime events, and we previously, collectively, considered them to be greater than an individual.  Now I wonder if we should just insert 'Obama' between baseball and apple pie.

The very fact that the World Series schedule was already established at the time Team Obama made their media buys shows every indication that they are as out of touch as critics contend, but also that they are showing - again - their predictable ability to take their eye off the ball. 

A virtual cone of silence seems to have descended today within the advertising and entertainment trade press on the subject of Obama's infomercial that will air across several networks and is said to have cost the campaign between $3 and $5 million.  Still, I was able to find commentary from PRWeek's Ted McKenna, offering some take on the obvious downside of Obama's media blitz.

Enjoying a major cash advantage over the John McCain campaign, the Obama campaign has been able to place advertising in all sorts of unexpected places of late, including video games. Some political commentators wonder whether there might be a downside for the campaign in potentially irritating voters by the practically ubiquitous Obama advertising.

McKenna references Jeanne Cummings' 'Obama infomercial: Smart politics or risky overkill?' piece (Politico.com) in which she attempts to make the point that this strategy of a media blitz helps Obama to avoid "the filter of the media".  In fact, it is just as likely that the opposite will occur and that the media will be talking about this for the next few days in the analysis and commentary portion of the story's new cycle. 

Neglecting the realities of the news cycle will not be the greatest effect caused by this larger-than-life blunder.  It will be the backlash of a politicians greatest bugaboo - the loyal sports fan.

I offer the following encapsulated geography lesson for the Democrat nominee's edification.  If anyone has his - or David Axelrod's - email, feel free to forward.

For many baseball fans (the last two World Series games received an a little more than 15 million viewers each) the baseball championship is an destination, not an event - a place to which they have been traveling for months, even years.  Nowhere is that more true than in Philadelphia, a city whose baseball franchise hasn't appeared in a World Series in fifteen years and hasn't been victorious in one since 1980.

The Philadelphia Phillies hail from...  Philadelphia, a large metropolis in the state of Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania is a state in which Senator McCain has been gaining ground in the last week, a state that swung hard for Hillary Clinton and came in weak for Senator Obama in the primaries.

In the opposite dugout are the Tampa Bay Rays, whose fans are clinging on to hope that their team can fend off elimination and possibly play on to win their first championship.  Another point of geographic fact: Tampa Bay is in Florida, a state in which the McCain campaign has been gaining ground in the last week, a state that swung hard for Clinton and came in weak for Obama in the primaries, even though the Democrat Florida primary didn't officially count.

I asked myself a question: If my Seattle Mariners were in the World Series, set to play the clinching game and possibly bring the championship to Jet City, and General Motors showered the broadcasting network with enough cash to bump the baseball game for the airing of a half-hour advertisement for the new Yukon hybrid, I would be furious and it would negatively affect my feelings about GM.

When your name is Lenny Bruce you can get away with showing conceit for your audience, not if your name is Barack Obama.  In battleground states, walking on eggshells is standard operating procedure when you're the front-runner and inconveniencing sports fans just so you can broadcast another political ad that comes following a tsunami of political ads may just be enough of an irritation to sway precious votes.

Or not.  I could be wrong.  But if you were Barack Obama, would you feel like you need to take that chance?   

Senator Obama's has seriously overestimated the public's appetite for political theater, and similar misjudgments have often placed him in hot water during the campaign.  This time, the look for tiny bubbles forming in the pot as the Democrat nominee places himself ahead of the national pastime; and this gives Obama's opponents a chance to drive the temperature to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.  Meanwhile, John McCain will continue to smile and point to left field.

Batter up.

After the Election, How Will We Work to 'Reform' the Media?

The New York Times has dropped even the pretense of applying a delicate coat of sophistication to their bias.  Perhaps this is just a strategy born of the Old Grey Lady's survival impulse, that by leaning hard to the left they might hijack the readership of the Village Voice and thus delay their hastening demise.

The picture accompanying this post was a teaser on the New York Times web edition's Politics main page at midday today.  It wasn't an extraordinary experience, finding an example of liberal bias.  No cause to bring in Mulder and Scully, but was it an accident that the photog was lined up perfectly for the shot that placed Senator McCain's head in the middle of the bold red 'X' that is is, in fact, the Florida state flag? 

Plausible deniability will be the order of the day if some of the bigger blogs notice this image and shake the Times for comment, but it is ultimately the photo editor who chose this one image out of hundreds available of the Republican candidate. 

Since the press has advocated the idea that Americans respond to - or even act on - subtle messages embedded within speech and images, we owe it to them to take a moment and consider the potential message being transmitted by the Times' photo. (It is uncredited, so I'm going to assume it belongs to the Times.)

If memory serves me, the bold red 'X' is used most frequently to label something in need of elimination. It is a shorthand, easy for our eye and mind to interpret and store without conscious thought. 

Is the Times sending out subliminal orders that McCain is to be "eliminated"?  Of course not, but this kind of sophomoric camera work used to be relegated to news blooper segments on The Tonight Show, not applied to the sober business of reporting from the campaign trail. 

Does this kind of juvenile antic really rise to a level worth spending a great deal of time talking about?  Were the Times' photographer to have carefully lined up Senator Obama so that his cranium was centered betwixt a red 'X', would the NAACP or the DNC have anything to say about it?  They would label it inflammatory and say that it might be sending a message that Obama should be targeted and eliminated.  My feeling is that such hypothetical charges would be fair and justified.

The media has truly abused its license in its coverage of this election.  We rely on the media for information and context, and we need it to be stripped as cleanly as possible of bias, or labeled appropriately in the case of commentary or opinion.  Our way of life breaks down without a free and responsible press.  This very fact is what makes reform such a challenging proposition.

One would have thought that reform would have been self-imposed, within media organizations, as the market of ideas began to heat up with the ascendancy of Fox News, talk radio and Internet blogging.  Instead, the traditional media have attacked those new media and the people who consult them for news and information.  The mainstream media are championing the cause of the candidate who is most likely to impose federal guidelines for how the media comment on news, much as the British loyalists of Revolutionary America courted the aristocracy in a vain attempt to gain favor with power as a means of protecting their own way of life.

Our system was built with an elegant attention to checks and balances, to prevent the government ascribing enough power to itself that it would cast aside the "negative liberties" Obama lamented in his 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio.  All of the bodies of government were placed under the watchful guard of the press, who the government was specifically not allowed to tamper with.  This is as it should be, but then who stands vigilant over the press to ensure that it does not become drunk with its own power?

With the power to shape opinions, set norms, transmit values - all of that glorious sociological material that you should have been learning in your Communications 101 class - the press is only constrained by how much power the public feeds to them by either being an audience of buying advertisers products.  The question for us now is: Are the press acting responsibly, or are they abusing their power?

Place the journalistic and editorial decisions involved in two stories side by side and make a common sense judgment of whether the press is doing their job. 

In the case of Joe the Plumber, as the substance of a story begins to hurt Senator Obama, Joe, who questioned the candidate on the nature of the candidate's economic views has reporters investigating his past, digging for dirt.  His reputation is sullied; he is smeared.

In another case, a single reporter for a small-town newspaper claims to have heard someone yell, "Kill Him," at a McCain-Palin rally.  Although the reporter gives no description of the alleged hate speaker, no other witnesses have reported hearing the remark and Secret Service on the scene do not report hearing or seeing any such event, the story is reported as fact by a variety of willing media sources with the commentary added to imply that the McCain-Palin campaign is generating and tolerating a dangerous culture of hate and violence.

How do we communicate to the communicators that we want balanced reporting?  The answer is... competition and consolidation.  Maybe an editor or two who don't have Carter campaign buttons in their junk drawer.  It would be a start.  Since many papers are losing readers, I would think it might don on one or two to try something... different?  Who knows?  If it worked it might spread to other papers.  My guess is that's what they're afraid of, but I would think that unemployment would scare editors more than the distaste they might have for working alongside people with different points of view.

I am not saying that liberal voices in media are a cancer that needs to be excised.  America is a fabric of competing ideas, but the ideas must compete honestly in order for the system to properly function.  If the 'debate' consists only of contradiction, but does not contain elements of agreement, it fails miserably to arrive at conclusions and only serves to polarize supporters of propositions pro or con.

The media should, at least, be functioning as an impartial referee, sorting through the partisanship to keep both sides honest.  As they currently operate, the media is furthering the endemic apathy (verging on nihilistic compulsion) in the public-at-large.

Still, there are signs that the public wants something different.  The commencement of a purge in traditional print media begins with the rapid downgrading of New York Times bond issues, this in the same time that non-traditional media are thriving.  There will be advancements in how non-traditional media delivers its content that may make it far easier for "small" media to develop the kind of large circulation that big newspapers had at one time.  In the entrepreneurial period, there are always opportunities for new content and forms of presentation to emerge.  In that phase, the public can have its greatest impact on how news is reported.

The need for reform in our media is great. 

The results of a poll done by the Pew Research Center showed that 70% of respondents believed that the media favors Obama to win the upcoming election versus 9% who believe they favor McCain.  (You might be surprised to learn that only 8% feel that the media supports neither candidate, but that is actually the highest percentage since the first time the poll was taken during the 1992 election.)

When the election is over, and the ballots have been counted, vetted, and possibly recounted, a discussion of how consumers of media can effect reform will have to occupy some of our attention, regardless of who will occupy the White House next year.  The abuses of the media in this election have been committed in pursuit of vengeance against a party they don't like, but with reckless disregard to their ultimate duty in our society, the duty to provide for the "public enlightenment ... by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues." (That's excerpted from the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.  Context intact.)

The media has a conscience and they know in what instances they have fallen down on their responsibilities.  If they feign amnesia, remind them.  If they promise to do better, hold them to that promise.  Organize a letter-writing campaign to the editor of your least favorite newspaper, detailing stories in which context was tipped to favor one ideology over another.  Offer suggestions for creating balance.  Do anything except doing nothing.

Most importantly, don't take no for an answer and let them know that you want to take their newspaper every morning, but not until they take their job seriously.  We have serious - in some cases, deadly serious - issues to grapple with in the coming years and we need our media news system to be functioning at optimal levels to give us clear information so that we can make sound, informed decisions.

Harris Poll: McCain Preferred by One Percent of French

I can think of no better reason to vote for McCain.

Brevity is the shortest path to truth.  This one speaks for itself.  I grabbed the story from Fox News.

If that didn't do it for you, maybe knowing that the speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijiani, would prefer an Obama presidency will tip the scales. You can peruse that tidbit at the Telegraph UK site.

NYT: Please Be Advised that Voting May Be Hazardous to Your Life, and Your Child's

From the same newspaper that has reported eloquently and abundantly on the bogeyman of Republican use of fear politics, the Old Grey Lady raises her cane to deliver a double-whammy of paranoia to those readers still shackled to the carefully crafted words on her faded pages.

Whammy number one: Polling places may become magnets for violence on the day of the election.

Whammy number two: Wait a second, doesn't your child's school serve as a polling place?

They're pulling out all of the stops, reaching into the deepest recesses of the bag of tricks for what can hypereuphemistically be called "election enhancements" for the Democrat cause.

The implication is made clear in the third paragraph of the piece (emphasis added):

“School districts across the country now spend millions of dollars each year on controlling access to buildings with locked doors and surveillance cameras to keep strangers out,” said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, an advocacy group, in Cleveland. “In a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, we shouldn’t be opening the doors at our schools on Election Day, and just hoping everything will be O.K.”

With no evidence indicated in the rest of the article that government law enforcement agencies were in any heightened state of readiness, or had indications of actual planned attacks, this kind of fear-mongering would seem to have only one purpose; to keep people from going to the polls and provide whatever candidate wished to embrace the paranoia a tool to assume a mantle of victimhood for their followers. (If you need a hint to solve the mystery of who might pick it up just do a web search for news items containing terms racial, violence and election to perform your own analysis.)

Then look up "Odinga".

The ability to vote without fear has been what has separated us from less civilized parts of the world where power is consolidated through the manipulation of basic instincts for survival.

Are we to become the "thugocracy" that Michael Barone feels is our future? If the populace responds to the New York Times obvious attempt to spread fear through false mirroring of popular opinion, maybe that is the path we are on.

God save America and her perpetual determination to coddle only one fear - the loss of her freedom - and confront all threats to our liberty.

Cross-posted at Sound Politics Public Blog.