Such is the madness of the media cycle these days that if you’re going to write about a significant event whose occurrence is predictable (say, an annniversary or a milestone), you have to get in a few days early to get noticed. Gary Younge has been pondering Obama’s first 100 days. Younge is one of the best (British) journos writing about American politics, and his writing has justly been collected in book form. So while an enormous amount of tosh will no doubt be scribbled on Wednesday (and a lot of it will probably refer to Obama’s last 100 seconds instead), I am, in this instance, pleased that Younge has got in early.
If you’re staying up to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration as 44th President of the United States of America, Crikey has a good guide to coverage and commentary on tv, live streaming, live blogging and twitter. Locally, Hoyden About Town is hosting a livechat. Their website also links to YouTube and audio of notable past inaugural addresses. Here’s FDR:
At The Guardian, Ned Temko looks at past inaugurals, and writing in New Matilda, Aron Paul observes:
Obama’s inauguration may well promise republican and democratic renewal. Paradoxically, however, this year’s is the most monarchic and imperial inauguration ritual that America has ever witnessed.
The G20 Summit has come and gone, and if today’s coverage in the Australian press is any indication, the most important of the tea leaves to be read is whether George W. Bush snubbed Kevin Rudd over the “Kirribilli leak”. Yep, a non-story that has burbled along for weeks, now diverted into intra-press gallery trading of accusations and a tedious talking point for the opposition – that’s the most important aspect of the events in Washington according to our “quality” media. As far as I can work out, if Bush is indeed upset that his ignorance of the function and nature of the G20 was revealed to the world, that just confirms what a lot of folks have always known about W – that’s he’s at best unengaged, at worst ignorant. But I suppose our fearless journos aren’t allowed to draw that conclusion lest a global diplomatic crisis add to our woes from the global financial crisis!
But, anyway, the lame duck President made his ritual obeisance to the virtues of American leadership and the glories of the free market. One imagines there’s some personal and political imperative there, but the reality of his governance is better disclosed in the fate of the TARP funds which Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was given by Congress – it appears that crony capitalism and socialism for the rich is the name of the game according to American blogs such as naked capitalism, Obsidian Wings, firedoglake and naked capitalism again.
But Bush will soon be fading into history, and Barack Obama sensibly declined to act at the summit without executive authority, so what emerged from the G20 is more in the nature of a directions statement for the way forward, as The Big Picture foresaw:
Hopefully, a long term agenda for regulatory cooperation and communication can be set with the next meeting’s agenda decided upon. Far better to talk then not, but no real decisions will come out of this meeting. There will be gnashing of teeth and venting of rage at the mess that excess securitization has created, and the international regulation of and accounting for such derivatives will probably be a focus.
It’s all over, red rover, and Barack Obama, with 200 electoral votes in the bag and enough in the bag to come from the West Coast and Midwest to come, has won the presidential election. Lots of interesting stuff still to come, including the all important Senate races and the ballot iniatives, and the size of the victory both in the electoral college and in the popular vote. And the turnout, which is looking huge.
What’s intriguing about this win is that Obama will exercise influence immediately. George W. Bush is the lamest of lame ducks, and arrangements have already been made for the next president to participate in shaping economic policy, and former Times Economics Editor Anatole Kaletsky thinks that influence will make a difference quickly:
If tomorrow’s election delivers a clear economic mandate to a competent new Administration, the financial markets will soon stabilise — and the US economy could recover surprisingly quickly from the blundering incompetence of Henry Paulson and George W. Bush.
Obama will be naming cabinet members and other key administration figures very quickly, and we won’t have the traditional waiting game for policy and names to trickle out before mid January.
How will he govern? One of the most interesting comments he’s made is when he told Jon Stewart that difficult times enable a President to achieve big things. There’s a bit of an FDR game in play, perhaps, with the modest promises of the campaign potentially being eclipsed by the pressure of events. We’ll see – expectations will certainly be high.
Related posts: The archive of all US election 2008 posts at LP can be accessed here.
Update [by Mark]: The text of Obama’s speech is here.
Writing in Salon, Gary Kamiya describes the near hysteria to which “movement conservatives” are reduced in confronting a likely Obama victory:
…typical of the Limbaugh-inflected (or infected) movement as a whole is the apocalyptic attitude of right-wing columnist Mark Steyn, who thundered that an Obama victory “would be a ‘point of no return,’ the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America.”
The ludicrous hyperbole of such Jeremiads is self-refuting. Americans are desperate to fix their economy, end a ruinous, endless war and restore a sense of common purpose to civic life. As they face these challenging real-world goals, the abstract buzzwords trotted out by the right ring hollow.
Of course, Obama hasn’t won the election yet, and it’s vaguely possible that he may not, though highly unlikely if the polls are taken into account.
Kamiya’s analysis of the internal contradictions of the American right is sharp, and it’s certainly true that the movement conservatives’ dogmatic bag of tricks isn’t holding up too well in confrontation with reality. (And there’s some amusement to be gained from observing the cognitive dissonance in the right wing blogosphere.) But I wonder whether the implication – drawn by some – that an Obama victory would represent an epochal end to the culture wars craziness is overstated.
Obama’s election would, more than almost any other Democratic candidate, represent the long-overdue crushing of the barely-disguised racist “Southern Strategy” pursued by the GOP since the time of Richard Nixon. In doing so it would also represent the effective end of the Christian Right as a driving force in US governmental politics.
One point of view that’s been expressed about the financial markets crisis can be summed up by something I read at Crooks & Liars today:
Have you noticed that every person suddenly knows everything there is to know about how the economy works? Wow, it’s all so simple.
Maybe there’s a point there, but not the one John Amato thinks he’s making. I’ve consistently been of the view that the economy should be a subject for civic and political discussion, and that we shouldn’t hold back because of the “not an economist!” cries that sometimes echo around the place. If one of the continuing problems with the US financial sector is the lack of transparency which is causing the crisis of solvency – because no one still knows where all the securitised bodies are buried – so too a bit of transparency in demystifying the fiscal arcana whose complexity was part of the reason for this mess should be welcomed.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to share some links (from econobloggers and non-economists both) I’ve found particularly insightful and interesting over the last few days.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
One point of view that’s been expressed about the financial markets crisis can be summed up by something I read at Crooks & Liars today:
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