Give peace a chance? In Washington too?

The 24/7 strategists on CNN coyly put it as question. Republican cliff dwellers in Congress frame it as a complaint. Wall Street money managers will be screaming it: when is President Obama going to negotiate on the debt ceiling? 

The calculator-who-calculates-forever missed his chance to make war in Syria. When will he make the same mistake in Washington and quietly let his enemies sue for peace — without risking their political lives?

From Peggy Noonan to The Economist, Barack Obama has been scorned for his lack of élan in the Middle East. For his reluctance to spill blood on his "red line" on the use of chemical weapons and his willingness to let the new leadership in Iran trim their belligerent rhetoric without calling them losers and, thereby, increasing their political problems with their touchy Tea Party base in Tehran.

That was last month, they insist. This month — better still, tomorrow — Obama must practice soft-diplomacy in Washington. He can’t carry on as the only adult in the room. Our divided government needs adult majorities in Congress too!

It must be tempting for Democrats to let radical conservatives stew in their own psychobabble about the fussy trimmer in the White House. Nevertheless, Obama must know that Americans are just as tired of warrior rhetoric in Washington as they are of wars abroad.

There are no honeymoons for war right now — or for another showdown in Washington. As elsewhere in the world, American liberal preferences usually win at home when America and its government is at peace.

It’s delusional partisan rhetoric for Democrats to say that Republicans are anti-government. Thirty Republican Governors tax and spend and share those basic public responsibilities in Washington. Next year, they’ll scramble to keep the offices they hold and will start looking for an electable candidate for the Presidential election of 2016.

Republicans are no more anti-politics than Democrats are anti-American. And they won’t be chased out of Washington.

The surest way for Democrats to win next year, and again in 2016, is to keep making those tacky compromises that got America out of recession and made universal healthcare finally a work in progress.

Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Speech

For those of us who see Barack Obama as an exceptional President, it’s grating to listen to claims that he’s a “liberal Reagan” or possibly another Roosevelt. FDR’s inaugural performances made no serious effort to prepare America for war or world leadership. And Reagan’s rhetoric assured that all the big problems were simple and had been over-intellectualized.

It will take time to feel sure that Obama’s speech was effective politically, and that it intelligently spoke to our times. Yesterday, however, may have given us a real flavor of the relaxed affability and hopefulness that reigned in Washington when Jack Kennedy spoke on January 20, 1961.

Obama’s Camelot doesn’t include a famous biographer and liberal historian, a Boston machine, a demanding father, or a team of technical advisors brainstorming just north of Cuba and in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, a beautiful family again occupies the White House; another impeccably dressed hipster is convinced that good things can be done in government.

Obama’s planners, the polls, and nearly a million citizens on the National Mall confirm that the clouds are thinning, that purposeful reform rather than constant fire-fighting may now be possible.

Michael Kinsley caught a touch of Kennedy over-reach:

“The president said, ‘This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience.’ It has? If so, it sure caught me napping. I think we are fairly untested, and it’s hard to share the president’s optimism. But he gets paid to be optimistic."

Lincoln spoke of America’s “better angels” in the midst the industrial world’s first gigantic blood bath. It’s wise for a President to complement the people when he can. And not just warn that he’ll be testing them again.

Kennedy insisted extravagantly that Americans would “pay any price” to assure the survival and success of liberty. Shortly, he introduced the biggest tax cut in US history. Obama only asked that they keep taking their medicine in good cheer. After all, he knows that more will be asked of them.

Newt Gingrich offered the most significant praise so far:

“I thought it was very, very good,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who ran unsuccessfully for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. “I didn’t think it was very liberal. There were one or two sentences obviously conservatives would object to, but 95 percent of the speech I thought was classically American, emphasizing hard work, emphasizing self-reliance, emphasizing doing things together. I thought it was a good speech. My newsletter tomorrow, I’m actually going to send out the whole text of the speech.”

Gingrich is even-handed: he doesn’t like other Republican leaders any less than he doesn’t like Democrats. What may have impressed him was how furiously Obama keeps provoking Republican extremists while, at the same time, offering shelter to that crucial minority of Republican moderates in Congress, dress-rehearsing for the 2014 Congressional and the 2016 Presidential elections.

Whether big deals on immigration, social benefits, guns, and tax loopholes are cut in Congress or not, Obama has delivered to Tea Partiers and Neo-Cons a whole series of policy statements that appeal to majorities in swing states and districts—positions they’ll insist, nevertheless, on decrying. 

America is “ending,” and not trying to win two wars. America will not act only according to its own conscience. Rather, it will “remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.” 

How tedious.

Obama goes beyond talking about equality of opportunity and asserts that the “country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Wow. There’s an observation that prophets of revolution and now profiteers in America’s greatest business both accept.

A few months ago, Mitt Romney and other Republican pragmatists thought they could get away with calling that "socialism." Today, they’ll keep quiet and probably underline numerous passages in Obama’s speech that offer “partial” victories that they could share in as moderate conservatives.

US Democracy: Voting is the best revenge

This has been a terrible December. Still, it’s been a good year for American democracy. Indeed, it’s been one of the best. The American Dream and two of its pillars—decent jobs for the middle-class and excellent mass education—are harshly questioned. But, it still works in Presidential elections, and that success should again inspire small d-democrats everywhere.

The Dream’s messy companion—the Melting Pot—is not universally admired. It connotes personal compromise and too easy acceptance of upstarts and crude politics. This conservative condescension, of course, is discretely held within conservative circles in America as well. Their pragmatism toward other adult Americans whispers discreetly: “We must do business with them. We need their energy and the kids love their music. It’s not a bad thing, however, that they’re less likely to vote than we are.”

Well, by November 2012, American minorities got the message.

For four years those on the margin—Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, Lesbians, single city women, and individuals who aren’t American Christians—listened while Republicans raged that their “Real America” was being taken away from them by a marginal American.

They took note; and they decided that they wouldn’t give it back.

American minorities don’t get the kind of respect that minorities do in officially multi-cultural societies. They’re not noted for being especially group-conscious either. In mid-term elections, for instance, Republicans can be sure that the minorities will turn out in relatively harmless numbers. In this year’s election, the same Republican strategists hoped they’d stay home and treat Obama just like the other Americans who were struggling with home payments and the job market.

However, American minorities do rise up when their guy, their champion, is in trouble.  The long visceral campaign against Barack Obama generated a visceral response. It’s puzzling how the aroused tribal nature of this election is ducked in most discussions of why Romney lost.

Michael Kranish wrote a widely praised piece called “The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the Presidential campaign to President Obama.”

“Romney’s confidence remained strong as Election Day approached. While public polls showed Obama in control, some of Romney’s internal polls showed him winning.

“But Obama’s field organization was too strong. In Florida, 266,000 more Hispanics voted than four years earlier. ‘They altered the face of the election by driving up the Latino turnout,’ Romney political director Rich Beeson said. ‘They told us they would do it. I didn’t think they would do it, and they did.’

“Ohio was the greatest surprise of all. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse calculated that 209,000 more African-Americans voted this year than in 2008 in Ohio, while 329,000 fewer whites had voted.

‘“I don’t know how that’s possible,’ Newhouse said. ‘If that is what the Obama campaign achieved, hats off to them.’’’

Democrat technocrats outsmarted Republican technocrats. Obama had a better sales force. Really, it’s that simple?  Is that what nearly killed General Motors too?

This thesis is a handy cover for those who observed that Obama supporters weren’t getting as worked up emotionally about their man as they were in 2008—and then decided that without that passion they wouldn’t vote.

As if Republicans rely only on passion to win.

The "Plutocrats" and the US election

This Thursday, party insiders will elect China’s new political leadership. Tomorrow, millions of Americans—after standing in lineups for hours—will elect theirs.

China is becoming the world’s first modern superpower plutocracy. The United States remains a far better place for the super-rich to live, and express themselves. But, its democracy is still more powerful than its pushy "plutocrats."

Whichever way it tips, the 2012 US presidential election can already be celebrated as a democratic success: next to nothing has been excluded from discussion; religion, race, region, family background, and relative privilege haven’t seriously handicapped either campaign—and the influence of a "plutocratic class" hasn’t been decisive either.

Indeed, the interests of surging minorities, workers, radical pensioners, and numerous value issues of little consequence to the pocket books of the rich have dominated the desperate final appeals for votes.

As a 50-50 election, with $billions to help partisans shout out their messages and with the voices of more independent commercial and amateur opinion makers than ever before, it's been wonderful for those who collect American faux pas. Nevertheless, history will probably note that the two national parties were especially effective as inclusive, competitive political organizations.

In the closest swing states, their organizations will likely get out two-thirds of eligible voters, as they did in 2008.

Most billionaires favor the Republican Party, but don’t run it; and the Democrats found plenty of money and talent people elsewhere.

As Chrystia Freeland brilliantly reminds us in her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, self-esteem and political ambition grow with the accumulation of great wealth.

However, the titans who’d like to be called "plutocrats" shouldn’t take themselves too seriously. Freeland’s thesis is essentially cautionary: entrenched wealth ultimately is self-serving, will eventually compromise social and economic mobility, and, thereby, enfeeble both America’s democracy and economic vitality—but we’re not there yet.

A working plutocracy—as opposed to a failed democracy—must secure internal cohesion among the rich and have enough talent and time away from the office to run Washington, consciously and intelligently, on behalf of their interests.

Running the American polity, with its free press, secret ballot, independent courts, and dynamic regional differences, is not the same as running one of Disneyworld’s company towns or a high-tech valley in California. Along with a talent for money, the successful plutocrat must have a talent for politics—for picking political fronts that can get elected, and for staffing a political elite that can finesse the interests of the most powerful in each of the country’s contending regions.

The best defense for democrats, however, is not to count on their incompetence. Maintaining an open, dynamic American federation, two ambitious national political parties are still the surest ways to keep the plutocrats at bay.

Mitt Romney’s way of firing people

Mitt Romney wants to fix a troubled economy. That’s supposed to be his ballot advantage. He’s not the ineffectual nice guy—he gets it. Getting it, Republicans know, doesn’t mean waiting around for the next stimulus package. It means actually making all kinds of tough decisions before going home to horse around with the boys.

To be the trouble-shooter president, however, Romney must first demonstrate that he has a ruthless edge.

Behind all the happy talk about job creators and less taxing government, he must leave the impression that he’ll be a more decisive leader, a decent man also able to beat even the Americans he sees in America’s way.

From that angle, his earlier outburst—that he “like’s firing people”—was a contribution to his no-nonsense campaign.  

The problem is: It doesn’t appear that he does. His rough talk about firing people may be more macho invention than the words of a transformative executive. What may have been itching to get out of his mouth was far worse: “I’d like to like firing people, just like the real giants of business I studied at Harvard.”

Some people do lose their jobs working for Romney. But, the process is more akin to devious politics than crisp business decision-making. They lose their jobs for putting Romney in danger, not for failing to perform their duties—and Romney’s hands remain impeccably clean.

This week, Richard Grenell, a 45-year-old Republican foreign policy expert who is openly gay, resigned from the Romney campaign under mounting pressure from conservative bloggers and social conservative groups.  Romney said he doesn’t discriminate and regretted Grenell’s resignation.

Grenell, who was hired to represent Romney and attack Obama on foreign policy, had merely been asked to stop talking to people. So, Grenell wasn’t fired by Romney or asked directly to leave by Romney’s senior team. Instead, as one Republican observed, he was Etch-A-Sketched.

Last week, GQ Magazine’s feature by Jason Zengerle, “Mitt Romney’s Dark Knight,” included this extraordinary story about how Romney managed an awkward p.r./personnel crisis when he was Governor of Massachusetts:

The mandate Romney gave Fehrnstrom extended far beyond dealing with the press. As communications director—a job explicitly created for Fehrnstrom, with the highest staff salary at the time, $150,000—he also waded into political and personnel matters. When William Monahan, Romney's neighbor in Belmont, who'd been nominated by Romney to serve as the chair of the state Civil Service Commission, was discovered by the Globe to have once purchased some real estate from a company linked to organized crime, it was Fehrnstrom who called him and demanded his resignation. "He was very, very forceful and very abrupt," Monahan recalls. "It was just, 'Bang, you're out.' “It was also a message that Romney seemed incapable of delivering himself. Indeed, when Monahan appealed to the governor for mercy, he says Romney implied that Fehrnstrom had given him no choice: "He said his stomach was turning," Monahan recalls, "and that he didn't want to do this, but that his senior staff was unanimous that he had to ask for my resignation. He said he didn't want to do this but that he was outvoted."

Read More www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201205/eric-fehrnstrom-profile-mitt-romney-adviser#ixzz1tnvDPyIx

Who will hold those votes in a Romney presidency? That should flesh out the real ballot question.