Preparations are under way for the President's visit - thanks to the US Embassy for their excellent info page.
I'm hearing reports that the President will arrive in Britain tonight, instead of tomorrow AM as planned - due to concerns about the Iceland volcanic eruption and the possibility that it might disrupt flights. Either way - tomorrow the First Couple will be here for sure.
... to kick off their 6 day European trip. They'll arrive in Britain tomorrow, for what BBC North America correspondent Mark Mardell refers to as:
"A melange of pageantry and policy, and the political equivalent of both poetry and prose”
Mmm... tasty.
Here's what I know or have heard reported about the President's trip, so far (all subject to change, or just to discovering that I heard wrong):
Monday - Ireland
Tuesday - arrives in U.K. Meetings with Cameron and Miliband (and maybe Clegg? Not sure). State dinner in the evening
Wednesday: Barbecue being hosted at 10 Downing Street. Guests will be British and American service personnel and their families. 15:40 Speech to Parliment in Westminster Hall
A few weeks ago, I blogged an update on the plans for Barack and Michelle's UK visit (which starts tomorrow!), and a commenter took the time to provide some political analysis in the comments, writing:
This time I hope the Obamas do not embarass Americans again with a tackey gift and inappropriate social manners. Michelle will, no doubt, wear outfits that are hidious, inappropriate for a royal visitation. No doubt, her shoes will be a color that absolutely do not match or fight the shade of her outfit. There is no hope for this woman!
Now, I've defended the President and First Lady on a number of occasions - but I have to admit to defeat here. If I'm truthful, I would probably have to confess that my own shoes frequently fight with the shade of my outfit. It's a shame I have had to live with. As for Michelle's, in fairness I think I should fully disclose the horror and embarrassment that the First Lady's shoes have wrought upon this nation.
Shining a silverly light upon this scandal. Shoegate.
What I didn't realise was that there I have been unwittingly overlooking a major undercurrent of the American debate. It turns out that there is a raging national dialogue taking place on the important topic of how very ugly some commentators believe Michelle to be.
You see, startled by the intensity of my commenter's shoe-related disgust, I tried to remember what terrible shoe faux pas Michelle might have made, so did a quick Google search looking for some pictures.
You know that feeling when you turn inoccently overturn a rock and find scurrying, repellent creatures beneath? Well, that's what it's like when you click through on some of these sites - to which I will not link. Because... ew.
But I did find one commentator, referring to Michelle, saying: "She is the ugliest woman in the world bar none!"
Really?
The ugliest women in the world, bar none? Someone, somewhere actually thinks that?
I don't know. Personally, I take the view that the physical appearance of people in general and women in particular is made too important - outside of fashion modelling there's no profession where being beautiful should be a mandatory part of the job. I think Michelle herself would be the first to agree that loving your family, caring for your community, working hard at your job are all more important than just looking amazing in a pair of Jimmy Choos.
On display in the Smithsonian: Our national shame?
But on the plus side, my brief ugly foray into the hate-filled world of Michelle-Is-Ugly-ism (a theory that I find about as implausible as the theory that Barack was secretly born in Kenya) did give me the opportunity to read what I now regard as possible the Stupidest Thing Ever Written On the Internet. And this is not an accolade that I bestow lightly.
Objecting to Michelle's observation that Barack understand the issues that women face in their lives, this blogger writes:
What kind of women is Michelle talking about? Her black sisters? Certainly what she says does not apply to Scandinavian-American women. We have no “issues to face”, we live our lives and try not to create any issues for our community.
OK then! "Scandinavian-American" woman have NO issues to face. They earn equal pay for work, don't have any difficulty in balancing work and child-rearing, never need to fear rape and sexual violence, and always have easy access to quality and affordable health care. Oh, to be a Scandinavian-American woman, but I guess as an Anglo Saxon woman, I'll just have to struggle on.
Michelle beside Carla Bruni. Are we surrendering to France?
On the bright side, not everyone thinks that Michelle is a physically repellent fashion disaster. Googling the phrase "Michelle Obama style icon" returns over 2 million hits - most of them pages gushing about the First Lady's elegant but relatable style.
Personally, I'm just glad she works so hard to encourage kids to eat healthy and live active lifestyles, that she tries to give something back to the families of wounded serviceman and woman, and that she tries to be a role model to young women. I'm not really going to make a judgement on the shoes.
Casually destroying our global reputation with her sneakers?
As the state visit by Barack and Michelle to Britain creeps closer, some of the details of their trip are starting to become clear. One thing that was announced yesterday is that Michelle will be visiting Oxford University on May 25th, in company with a group of London school children.
When the First Couple visited Britain in 2009 for the G20 meeting, Michelle made quite an impression in the British media - if anything, she generated more press coverage than her husband. Certainly, there was at the time an almost freakishly obsessive fixation on Michelle's clothes and hair. But what I remember the most from that last visit was a really lovely moment that she shared with a group of Islington schoolgirls. Here's the video of that encounter:
Sorry for the lack of blogging yesterday. True fact - I was unexpectedly late and excessively wine sloshed from attending the book launch dinner for my husband's former colleague's new book on Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yes, I live exactly the life that the populist right imagine I do.
But you shouldn't be reading my blog anyway - instead, if you haven't already, you should be reading Ryan Lizza's fascinating article taking a close look at the Obama administration's foreign policy.
The piece isn't hagiographic towards the President, nor is it pointlessly critical - just an honest attempt to understand the different forces within the administration and how Obama himself is evolving as a foreign policy thinker.
I do think the piece is interesting and well written - the empty place at the heart of it, to me, is that so much of it seems based on the perceptions of people who witnessed the key events in the decision-making, but weren't themselves the main players. These "sources close to the White House" type articles always seem to me to overplay the degree to which the interpersonal politics is responsible for decision-making. Understandably, since people at that level spend a lot of time frustrated by the interpersonal politics. But I suspect that more often than not these relationship issues are caused by the policy positions, not the other way around. For instance, Lizza writes:
But the Afghanistan decision, like all government work, was driven by politics and ideology. Obama’s eagerness to keep his campaign promise, the military’s view that reducing troops meant a loss of face, Clinton’s decision to align with Gates, and Holbrooke’s inability to influence the White House staff all ultimately conspired to push Obama toward the surge.
OK. But wouldn't another way of putting it be to say that Obama had been persuaded by the need for a surge during the campaign (presumably that's why he made that promise, yes?) and the onus was now on the advisors who disagreed to prove their case. Hillary Clinton seems to have aligned herself with Gates because she agreed with him about a lot of policies, not just to bolster her position - although it may have had that effect. And the article then goes on to show that she had no compuction about strongly disagreeing with Gates later on in calling for Libyan intervention. And as for Holbrooke - another way of saying "inability to influence White House staff" would be "failure to persuade."
Anyway, the article sketches a fascinating fresh portrait of the age-old cross-party dispute between foreign policy realists and interventionists, and makes the case that Obama doesn't align with either party but focusses more on a situation-specific analysis of the plausible outcomes in each case. Lizza calls him "The Consequentialist".
This graph tracks the President's approval rating over the past 6 months. Whenever the black is over the red line, that means more people approve than disapprove of Barack's job performance.
That first little peak in January shows the nation clearly rallying behind him as consoler in chief after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. The most recent spike began just after the death of Osama Bin Laden.
In both cases, I find it interesting that the President's displayed great sensitiviy and excellence at a key aspect of his job more or less exactly corresponding with the Republicans putting on a freak show of unseriousness. In January, Sarah Palin responded to the Giffords shooting as if she herself were the real victom, and of course Donald Trump walked right into Obama's carefully laid trap just in time for him to spring it on him at the White House Correspondence Dinner mere days before the death of Bin Laden.
Will this improvement in the polls last? I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction that it will - that at least the black line will stay over the red for the next couple of months.
It's probably foolish for me to actually put that in writing, though. After all, as the great Yogi Berra used to say, "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."
I feel a bit haunted today. They say all things are connected - certainly all things in the Internet are. The trivial and the profound mushed together into a sometimes nutritious, sometimes nauseating stew. I was reminded of this today by the apparently innocuous act of reviewing my blog stats.
You see, this blog received a big-for-me spike of visits on April 20th - with just over 4,000 people visiting on a day when I hadn't actually posted anything and wasn't really paying attention. It was only today that, out of interest, I dug in a litttle bit deeper and managed to find the source of most of my visits on that particular day. It was this.
The Twitter stream of photographer, journalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington. Renowned for his work in dangerous parts of Africa, Tim had been nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for a documentary he had made about his time in Afghanistan. Tim hadn't been using Twitter much recently, which is why just three tweets down on his page you can see him retweeting my infamous Sarah Palin blog back in January. Then on February 28, he talks about attending the Oscars and links to a snapshot from the night.
On April 19th, he wrote: "In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO."
On April 20th, he was killed by enemy fire in Libya while travelling with anti-Quaddafi forces.
Soldiers, and other men and women who serve on the front lines of conflicts are routinely described as "brave" when going into battle or, more poignantly, when they don't make it home from battle. Personally, I always think of "bravery" as two separate things. The first is physical courage - the willingness to put yourself in danger irrespective of cost. Soldiers, firefighters and police certainly demonstrate such bravery on many occassions but so can terrorists, murderers and criminals. A frequently useful but not inherently noble attribute.
The second type of bravery doesn't necessarily require physical courage - and that's the strength to do things the hard way because it's the right way. To consider not just your own point of view but what you might learn from those unlike you. To shut up and listen instead of claiming glory to yourself. To turn something painful, complicated and emotionally draining into art.
Tim Hetherington seems to have combined beautifully these two different types of bravery in the person of a man I would have liked to have know. Please take a moment to appreciate his work.
Tim's parent's have posted a message on his website saying that:
So I couldn't be bothered to write about Donald Trump's ridiculous "Presidential Campaign", and now I don't have to! Hurray! If only the other chores that I dread could be dealt with so efficiently. My laundry doesn't seem to get done if I ignore it, the dishes keep sitting in the sink until I wash them, and as for the floors - well, our hoover stubbornly refuses to be self sufficient.
But it turns out, if I ignore Donald Trump, he will in fact go away. Good to know.
Just about three months to the day since he jumped into the presidential fray with his surprise appearance at CPAC, Donald Trump put an end to his crash course through the presidential field by pulling out of the race before he ever officially got in.
Bye bye Donald. Thanks for stopping by. It's been.. interesting. Here's your hat, what's your hurry? Ok, buh bye now. Bye. Off you got. I'm shutting the door. Goodnight.
In 2012 it's not just Barack Obama who will be up for election, but the very notion that hard work, discipline, careful management and a refusal to condescend to the easy or superficial path can beat cynicism, glibness, unseriousness in matters of policy and the notion that politics is just reality TV for the elites.
These are serious times and our President is a serious man. Don't let his big smile, his deft way with a joke, and his willingness to go on Oprah fool you - Barack Obama is an unusual determined, evidence-based and serious minded President.
And since January 2009 he's been faced with the most spectacular barrage of misery inducing news - an economic crisis that he faced by pushing through a massive stimulus package and an innovative, forward-looking budget. (But more was needed, cry the critics.) The economy has begun a process of recovery, but it is far - so tragically far from where we need it to be. Especially in terms of job creation - which has seen record growth lately. (But not enough, I concede. Not enough.)
I'm not going to rehearse today the many institutional constraints and structural problems President Obama personally and the Democratic Party generally faced over the past two years. I'm not going to try and excuse any perceived or real failures of the administration.
Today, I want you to think about the alternatives.
I'm under no illusions about this - President Obama faces a tough reelection fight in 2012. He will - rightly - be asked to defend his record and to make the case for why, where progress has been slow, he should be given the chance to keep trying.
His overall approval rating, while improved somewhat in the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden, is not in the territory that most Presidents would hope for. And his signature achievement - comprehensive healthcare reform - is in a precarious position, having been passed but in a stage where the key provisions have not yet taken effect. Many Americans will be seeing their premiums continue to go up and may be wondering when they'll start to see the meaningful improvement that was promised. (Answer, starting from 2014. Two years into his second term... or someone else's first.)
So the President could lose. And, if he can't make a clear and compelling case for his record, he'll deserve to.
(One possible starting point for such a case to be made is this:
But... for the President to lose, a Republican would have to win.
And the Republican party has been startlingly slow to kick start their Presidential race. You may recal that at this time in 2007, there was already a hot election underway in the respective primary cycles for both parties, with Republican candidates including AZ Senator John McCain, former WI Governor and Cabinet Secretary Tommy Thompson, former VA Governor Jim Gilmore, KS Senator Sam Brownback, former MA Governor Mitt Romney, TX Representative Ron Paul, Former AS Governor Mike Huckabee, former NY Mayor Rudy Guiliani, CO Representative Tom Tancredo and CA Represenative Duncan Hunter. There were also a range of joke or outsider candidates, but let's leave them aside for now.
All of these people, by this point, had declared their candidacy. At the same point in 2011, here is the list of people who have formally declared that they will seek the Republican nomination in 2012:
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson
Political Consultant Fred Karger
Activist Andy Martin
Rent is Too Damn High Party founder Jimmy McMillan
Representative Ron Paul
The following people have formed an exploratory committee to consider running:
Georgia Businessman Herman Cain
Former AL Chief Justice Roy Moore (of "10 Commandments" fame)
Former MN Governor Tim Pawlenty
Former LA Governor Buddy Roemer
Former MA Governor Mitt Romney
Former Senator Rick Santorum
Sorting out the single-issue candidates, perennial candidates, and simply absurd candidates, the list of serious prospects on the Republican side of the aisle looks like this:
Tim Pawlenty
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Gary Johnson
Ron Paul
Rick Santorum
Until yesterday, it looked like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee would be among this list, but he has since announced that he will not be seeking election this year. I feel I would be remiss as a blogger, though, if I didn't nevertheless give you the chance to enjoy his latest commercial project - aimed at teaching American History to kids who have been indoctrinated cruelly with the dangerous liberal curriculum.
Seriously - watch this.
"Some of their morals are just GONE!" "Oh no, it's bad. Really bad."
OK, we're back.
So the invaluable Nate Silver has done a detailed analysis of the primary election prospects of a very wide range of prospective Republican candidates. In almost all of his analyses, the candidate who comes out as most likely to win the nomination is the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Now, Mitt's a pretty decent guy as Republicans go. His signature achievement in Massachusetts was to pass a bipartisan health care law that mandates that all citizens in the Bay State should have converage. This program has proved so successuful that Massachusetts now has the lowest rates of uninsured citizens in the country - and it has maintained its position as the state that delivers some of the best health care in the country. And, frankly, as I have said before, it's a great place to live in a lot of other ways too.
But... well.. how shall I put this? If you want to vote for a candidate who believes in a pragmatic solution to our health care crisis, there's ANOTHER CANDIDATE on the ballot who has a lot of experience with the Presidency. I'm personally kind of loving how the President's team have been spending their energy conspicuously congratulating Mitt on his health care reform right left and center. And this ad produced by the Massachusetts DNC just cracks me up with it's not-so-secret evil plan.
Mitt is, ironically, going to have a hard time still convincing his party that they should enthusiastically support a candidate who himself enthusiastically supported the Heritage-Foundation-drafted, compromise health care proposal that later came to look dangerously like the one that the President and Congressional Democrats passed.
Or, as the Onion puts it, Mitt will have to say:
"My hope is that Republican voters will one day forgive me for making it easier for sick people—especially low-income sick people—to go to the hospital and see a doctor," Romney added. "It was wrong, and I'm sorry."
So who else is there?
I'm still mulling this, trying to work out which of these people makes for the most credible opponent. I'm struggling. What do you think, my blog amigos?
(Note: This is the post that I had written for posting on Thursday before the specactular Blogger FAIL. Thus, the meeting described took place last Thursday. For the historical record.)
Here in Britain, you can always spot the Americans living abroad in the days around major US holidays. We'll be the ones asking for turkeys in November long before the stores put their Christmas food on display. Or we'll be caught traipsing around forlornly asking everyone where we might be able to get pumpkin pie mix. (Hint - Ocado sells it for delivery.)
In summer, you'll spot us looking for red, white and blue bunting, or illegal fireworks, or inventing desperately patriotic desserts. One year I made an American flag out of raisins and blueberries in creme anglais. The point is, some of us - even some who don't normally associate with our fellow expats the rest of the year - get a little homesick.
The reason I bring thus up is that tonight I sat in on an organising meeting for our Democrats Abroad July 4th celebration. And I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.
We've got musicians. Barbershop quartets, folk singers, bands...
We've got kids games, decorations, speeches, voter registration, balloons and - if we get the same turnout as last year - about 1200 fellow Americans to party with.
And the whole thing happens in a beautiful central London park square that is normally off limits to the public.
So if you live in the UK, mark the date of July 3 in you diary and make sure to join Democrats Abroad so you'll get all the info by email.
Sorry all, but Blogger - the system I use to write this blog - has been experiencing some major problems, which meant that I have been unable to post any content to the blog for the past 36 hours or so. Also, they appear to have removed the most recent content posted by all their users, although they say that they are going to work to restore content ASAP. In my case, this means that they have taken down my blog about the prettiness of my commute, with pictures, and the associated comments.
As the British like to say, "I am not best pleased."
Today, on a whim, while I was looking out the window of my morning commuter train, I snapped a picture of Hackney Downs - an urban oasis of greenery in the middle of East London. The place is kind of a miracle, and I had this moment of gratitude that my daily commute just so... beautiful.
So then, I thought - "Heck. Why not try to document the total coolness of my daily commute as it goes along?" So here's Liverpool Street station, where my train arrived...
From there, I exited the station and crossed the street to a bus stop - this picture shows the building my bus stop is in front of. Yes, it's been converted into a supermarket. Gorgeous AND convenient!
I grabbed this shot from the bus as we whizzed through the City (City with a capital C is the term for London's financial district, for you non-locals. Kind of like lower Manhattan.)
This is the Monument to the Great Fire of London - it's 1666 feet high, and that's a clue to the date of said fire, if you're paying attention.
In an effort to pack more walking into my day, and to enjoy the sunshine, I got off a stop early so that I could walk across London Bridge, from which this shot was taken.
Then I walked along the river for a little bit before cutting through Hay's Galleria and passing the world's MOST bizarre and amazing sculpture - the fish shaped boat here is just like something out of Terry Gilliam, and the oars actually row through the water. It's wonderfully odd.
And finally, I stopped at this coffee shop for my utterly-essential morning latte.
So yes, consider this a true confession - I am a foreign dwelling, urban living, train taking, latte sipping LIBERAL.
It's a pretty darn great thing to be, actually.
(Click on any of these pictures to see them larger.)
So a few days ago, in my round up of the many vital things about which Republicans are wrong, I wrote, referring to their then-apparent decision to avoid threatening the US with debt default:
The one Republican achievement this week is their (apparent) willingness to reluctantly agree that they will NOT cause a financial calamity for no apparent reason.
May I take this opportunity to strike this unfounded praise?
Turns out the giant game of chicken Republicans were playing with their economy is back on:
In a speech before a Wall Street crowd on Monday, John Boehner laid out the three legs of the GOP's opening bid on the debt ceiling. They are:
1) "Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase. And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions."
2) "They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future."
3) "With the exception of tax hikes -- which will destroy jobs -- everything is on the table. That includes honest conversations about how best to preserve Medicare."
With the exception of tax hikes. Which will destroy jobs. Everything is on the table.
Forgive me a moment, as my head is currently on fire.
OK. Have dowsed head in bucket of water.
I feel that this line of argument cries out for an analogy and I'm struggling to find one sufficiently vapid.
How about:
1) For curing a fatal disease: "With the exception of taking medication, which will kill unicorns, all options are on the table."
2) For making a baby: "With the exception of heterosexual sex, which will threaten kittens, all options are on the table."
3) For losing weight: "With the exception of eating less food, which will help terorists, all options are on the table."
4) For doing a web search: "With the exception of Google, which bitch-slaps infants, all options are on the table."
I'm not sure any of these fully convey the stupicity of the Boehnerism, though. Further suggestions welcome. Other than that, I just want to say what he said:
As a substantive matter, Boehner has no idea what he’s talking about. His entire schpiel is gibberish. Even a rudimentary understanding of recent events should make clear, even to someone with Boehner’s limited abilities, that his model doesn’t make sense. Reagan raised taxes and the economy grew. Clinton raised taxes and the economy grew. Bush slashed taxes and produced the worst job-creation record of any president in generations.
I feel a bit haunted today. They say all things are connected - certainly all things in the Internet are. The trivial and the profound mushed together into a sometimes nutritious, sometimes nauseating stew. I was reminded of this today by the apparently innocuous act of reviewing my blog stats.
