Obama struck a profound note in his inaugural address, in reaching for a Biblical scale of exhortation to “set aside childish things.” The full context is this:

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. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. – President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

When America demonstrates the virtue and vibrancy of its youth, nothing issuing from any other nation can quite compare. But few things to me are sadder than when we demonstrate the failed promise that proceeds from the immaturity of our knowledge, the childish naivety of our ignorance.

The American innocence can sometimes be a charming thing, but not when coupled with the brute power of our empiremaking ambitions. I am struck by the tragic consequences that have followed from our naiveties in the geoplitical world theater, the Iraq misadventure glaring so obviously that it might as well stad for them all, from Cuba to Vietnam.

The story of the neocons and their disappointment in the way their plans turned out is as grotesquely fascinating an illustration of childish fantasy in adult thinkers as one can find.

The most damning assessment of all comes from David Frum: “I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that, although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.” – Neo Culpa

Isit just me, or does this seem like an unrealistic thing to hope for in the first place? That one can conjure reality out of words, without agreement and without action.

I’ve seen much comment about the pay ceilings for White House senior staffers announced at Barack Obama’s first press conference on the 21st, but less about his new code of ethics. Ethics are an operational framework that ensure principles in action, and the leverage of Obama’s principles I believe will have a far-reaching value over the years.

I’ve said before that Obama is practicing an almost invisible, high degree of skill in gathering power through alliance. It would be hard to overestimate – and while it endures impossible to overcome – the enormous power that accrues to him from the people of this country, who are after all the one source of sovereignty in America.

However long we are keepers of the public trust we should never forget that we are here as public servants and public service is a privilege. It’s not about advantaging yourself. It’s not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients. It’s not about advancing an ideological agenda or the special interests of any organization. Public service is, simply and absolutely, about advancing the interests of Americans.
- Obama Announces New Pay, Ethics Rules

Keeping the operation lean and clean will prevent many a stumble over the years. This is shaping up to be an extremely athletic administration, one more interested in action than accretion.

Now, the new rules on lobbying alone, no matter how tough, are not enough to fix a broken system in Washington. That’s why I’m also setting new rules that govern not just lobbyists, but all those who have been selected to serve in my administration.

The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable.
- ibid

I don’t look at any of this as a measure of morality, as such. I think of it in the way I suspect Obama thinks of it, purely as operational efficiency. He is settling to a long game, and to me very much resembles the general in the hills, simply maneuvering for position, battle nowhere near yet, years away maybe. If this analogy is true, we can say that Obama is in the supreme position that most generals cannot create, of being the ruler imbued with the Moral Law.

The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
- Sun Tzu on the Art of War

Adding utility decoupling as a condition of receiving grants from the Obama stimulus package is a last-minute addition that falls into place as a great example of preparation meeting opportunity. And as I mentioned here, this windfall for the nation and the planet didn’t actually just fall out of the air. It comes from the lengthy maneuverings of members of the Democratic Congress.

The utility decoupling provision was inserted by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), as a marvelous first flowering from his win over rival John Dingell for the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. For an instructive and heartening view of leverage at work consider this recent history from November last year.

Democrats this week got all their climate ducks lined up in a row: Four crusaders from California ready to join forces in Congress with President-elect Barack Obama to pass mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Three of the four — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein — had been poised to act and now have a strong House committee chair behind the cause: Rep. Henry Waxman, who on Thursday wrested the Energy and Commerce Committee away from Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.

In a close vote among Democratic lawmakers, Waxman’s climate banner proved more popular than Dingell’s seniority. Dingell’s reputation for putting Detroit’s auto interests above all else also didn’t help his campaign to keep his job.

[...]

The shift from the Michigan mindset to the California crusade started last year, when Pelosi undercut Dingell’s power by creating a special climate panel led by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., to make the case for bigger reductions in greenhouse gases.
- Calif. climate crusaders set to act in Congress

That shift from the Michigan Mindset towards the California Crusade continued a few weeks ago when Waxman moved Markey one jump across the chessboard:

As Kate reported earlier today, new House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is reorganizing the committee, unifying oversight of climate, energy, air quality, and water issues under a single subcommittee: the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. The Boston Globe just broke the news that Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will chair the new subcommittee.

[...]

This gives Markey a one-two punch: he can craft and help pass climate/energy legislation through the Subcommittee while using the Select Committee to educate other committee chairs about how the issue affects their jurisdictions. I can’t think of another committee chair who has the same kind of megaphone with which to drum up support for his own legislation, in the House and among the public.
- Markey to take chairmanship of new Energy and Environment Subcommittee

Things are moving, pieces are being shifted around. Power is accruing to position, and behind it all a great political will towards the betterment of society and the planet is coalescing. These are only the beginnings days of Obama’s presidency, and watchers should settle for the long play. And perhaps, against all odds, the thousand flowers will yet bloom.

The Obama stimulus package contains conditions that introduce the tested California scheme of “utility decoupling” to the rest of the nation, according to Joe Romm, one of the clearest voices on climate change through his blog Climate Progress. Joe explains:

Utilities are the most effective delivery channels for making homes, commercial buildings, and industry more energy-efficient, but the vast majority operate under a regulatory regime that penalizes utilities for promoting efficiency. Indeed, those regulations actually motivate utilities to encourage their customers to overuse electricity, because not only do they make more profits then, but if demand rises enough, they can get the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to approve a new power plant and higher rates — and thus more profits.

I have been assuming that Democrats would wait until the mother of all energy bills later this year to make their big push toward decoupling. But it turns out that Dems have decided to make it one of the conditions for the multi-billion-dollar energy efficiency block grants in the stimulus (see “Details of Obama’s green stimulus plan released“).

That is an outstanding idea.

Describing the politics behind this stimulus measure, Climate Progress offers this quote from its source article at Environment & Energy Daily:

The controversial “decoupling” provision was offered as a part of Chairman Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) substitute amendment during the committee markup of the House Democrats’ $825 billion economic stimulus bill that includes billions of dollars for energy efficiency, smart grid technology and renewable energy.

But this windfall for the nation and the planet didn’t actually just fall out of the air. It comes from the lengthy maneuverings of the Democratic Congress, described more fully here.

Why is this such a great innovation? Joe has previously written at great length to explain how California’s utilities have been making this work brilliantly well for twenty years:

California adopted regulations so that utility company profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. This is called “decoupling.” It also allowed utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve. The bottom line is that California utilities can make money when their customers save money. That puts energy-efficiency investments on the same competitive playing field as generation from new power plants…
- Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively?

The notion of using market incentives to produce a greener world is the heart of how we will change our global economy into a sustainable economy. This small illustration of preparation meeting opportunity is a greatly heartening precursor of the enormous sea change that Obama, the Democrats, and the political will of the American people, in combination with the nations of the world, will produce in the next few short years.

I smiled at Obama’s phrase, “the force of our example,” in his inauguration address. He embeds it in a theme of international coalition, beginning around 12:50 of the following C-Span video:

This recalled the moment from the Democratic Convention on August 27, 2008, when Bill Clinton – having swallowed Hillary’s defeat and turned to the good of the party and the country, speaking as a champion of candidate Obama, and framing the issues of the presidential race more clearly than anyone had yet publicly done – offered this choice, and very Clintonesque, piece of wordplay:

Most important, Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power. – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziABqNaM34c

Barack Obama must have been taken with the turn of phrase also. He had no need to include this reference in his own speech, but its inclusion speaks to me of the man’s natural political skill. Inclusion is what Obama does. He seems to value every scrap of alliance he can generate, and it seems that any time he can give a nod to a stakeholder without diminishing his own hand he does so. Thus by increments small and large he builds power.

More to come on this matter of Obama’s skill.

It is sometimes claimed that history may judge this outgoing adminstration differently from the way we see it now. But in terms of right and wrong I don’t believe history will have anything to show us.

I made a comment on Ezra Klein’s blog the other day to this same effect, namely that, “Just because history gives the ultimate perspective doesn’t mean that people don’t figure it out while it’s happening.”

The discussion was about Bush, and his claim that history will vindicate him. In the comments to Klein’s post, a strange reference to Lincoln came up, that I felt compelled to correct.

Regular commenter and Klein adversary El Viajero made these remarks about history:

The truth is that presidents are judged by history and not in the present.
A great example of this was Lincoln who was hated by both sides to the point of assassination.
Today we feel differently about him.
Bush has his champions as well as detractors.
Bottom line is it is a fool who believes he knows what the future will bring.

But Lincoln was a man who won the entire nation over to his side during his terms in office, and he did it by the great virtues of his actions, and his unrelenting, steady creep forward to success against formidable odds. This was a man who subsumed his passions and indeed all his life force into a superhuman patience, because this was the only way to execute the war, and save the Union.

As I explained:

Lincoln won a huge portion of the country and the political process over to his way DURING his terms.

He was assassinated by a man who took seriously the paid vilification and habitual opposition of the gutter press – this man was immediately hated by the South for having killed the one man they felt would treat them honorably in their surrender. General Lee said he only surrendered because Lincoln had shown himself to be a greatly honorable and compassionate man.

Your history is wrong.

Just because history gives the ultimate perspective doesn’t mean that people don’t figure it out while it’s happening. History is not going to change what we’ve seen come out of this administration, except to reveal depths of damage that haven’t been released from hiding yet.

We think we do know how the future will characterize this outgoing administration that we have spent eight years surviving, just as we knew it for what it was when it began. We didn’t see the events yet to come, but we knew the administration was incompetent, and costly.

I think in the same way we see what Obama is. We don’t see the events yet to come, but we know this incoming administration to be competent, and profitable for America.

I believe also that the parallels with Lincoln will endure, and that during his first term Obama will show the country and the world the measure of his perseverance, fortitude, and greatness of character in ways we can only imagine today.

Along with many, I find parallels between Obama and Lincoln. The tendency is to focus on the challenges facing each man as he came into office, but I tend to see the character and political style of each as the twinned characteristics. Quoting myself from a recent comment on a political blog:

Actually there are some great parallels with the political compromising and manoeuvring that Lincoln did, with incredible patience and stoicism, and as a masterful politician. His every appointment and political action was finely tuned to optimizing resources and allies in the cause of saving the Union.

Sometimes he had to sit down with the devil in order to gain the greater good.

Lincoln was hated and vilified by many for a long time – Limbaugh types paid for hire were common in the newspapers and propaganda events created by business and slavers.

Slowly he gained conversion in the loyalties of many, many hardened hearts, as the nation and world began to see, over the years, that he was incrementally winning, in a task that was becoming visible through Lincoln’s very effort as a goal that had been practically impossible to be attained.

I believe this is what we’re seeing in the character of Obama, and what we will see, over a long period of time, in his sustained actions.

Samantha Power, former Senior Foreign Policy Adviseor to then-candidate Barack Obama, is now back on the Obama team, having been compelled to resign back in March from an unworthy slip of the tongue in which she characterized then-candidate Clinton as a “monster”, alluding to the Clinton campaign’s distortions of the truth.

AP writer Matthew Lee on Friday noted that Power is now part of the Obama transition team responsible for the State Department, which means she’ll be dealing with Hillary Clinton, who will be announced as Obama’s Secretary of State today. According to the AP story, Power made a “gesture to bury the hatchet” with Clinton and it was well received.

Obama’s moves, as he pulls his machine together around him, are a joy to witness, a lean miracle of grace and political heft with no wasted motion anywhere. The man has barely yet come to show himself, so powerful are the team members he has co-opted to his cause.

A Pulitzer prize winner and Harvard professor, Samantha Power is far too good a talent for Obama to waste, and perhaps Hillary Clinton realizes this also. Nothing reveals Obama’s grasp of the 21st Century world like a study of Power’s work, and her actions on his behalf. Listen to some of her pronouncements, for a glimpse of the new foreign policy of our country.

For a sense of the thinking Obama has invested on the correct exit strategy and tactics for Iraq, spend six minutes with Samantha Power and Charlie Rose.

Watch Power as she talks about why she wrote her latest book detailing the life of United Nations legend Sergio Vieira de Mello. She also reveals her reactions to having to leave Obama’s campaign.

And here’s a great demonstration of Obama’s thinking on the realities of global power, and how to negotiate with enemies:

So much is revealed about Obama by the company he keeps. Nothing has reassured me more about our foreign policy than studying Samantha Power’s thinking, and understanding that Obama values this greatly.

Obama’s strength of mind and character are so great that he doesn’t need to compete with his subordinates for limelight. We haven’t really seen the man get tough yet, but always bear in mind this little taste he gave us last week, when he defended his team picks, and reminded us that the force and vision for change don’t need to come from any of his team – he alone is adequate to the task:

One of the greatest political misfortunes to hit America is the phony war between Conservative and Liberal. It’s an unnecessary divide, and it paralyzes reason.

Currently the conservative commentators are the best example of the death of ideas, because they hold the top position in the media. But the same calcification of ideas prevails in the liberal positions also, and we’ll come to witness this more over the next eight years of Obama’s presidency.

The national debate should not be a war for supremacy of either position, conservative and liberal, that results in one side disqualified and the other triumphant. Such a result tilts the debate into an excess that has to be wrong, by its very nature of excess. The truth is sharp-edged and fine, but simple, not extreme.

Instead of a war that posits a winner, the national debate should balance on a cutting edge sharpened by the grinding of two forces on its opposing sides. The challenge for national policy is to develop sufficient character, made up of reason and balance, to stand with poise on this cutting edge.

How can it be that a sharp edge is not an extreme thing? Buddhists know the answer to this in the famous teaching given by the Buddha, explaining the best way to train the mind. Like the string of a musical instrument, the perfect tuning results from holding it not too tight, not too loose.

This may seem a simple thing, but the metric of “not too tight, not too loose” can readily be seen to form the basis of all skill. In the beginning of all mastery, one must venture to the tight extreme, and back to the loose extreme, in order to pinpoint the perfect setting. As a master, of course, one can go unerringly to the perfect point, but this will always lie between its extremes.

Skill in the kind of debate that seeks a truthful result rather than the self-indulgence of battle will turn to the method of not too tight and not too loose. In the national debate this will only come from a free exchange between the extreme of conservatism and the extreme of liberalism.

We’ve seen the thinking of conservatives in the last two decades come to a complete standstill. The current election makes much of the outworn Republican ideas on economic matters, and the current economic crisis shows the barren fruit of these ideas. Conservative economic ideology costs us too much money, something here is too tight or too loose.

Conservative doesn’t mean never changing. Conservatism in its useful form understands that everything is impermanent, and seeks to distil out of the passing times the very best things to renew for the future.

Liberal doesn’t mean always changing. The more things change, the more the timeless qualities of our human life display themselves to our understanding. Liberal thought to be useful should embrace the principles expressed in conservatism and manifest them according to new, often experimental designs.

The best that conservative thought can give us is to deliver an inheritance to our children. The best that liberal thought can give us is to present a future for this legacy to nestle into.

Thus should run the national debate.

The Lexington column in The Economist is always worth reading for its wry insight into close-up American politics, but I am especially grateful for the recent explanation of how and when the long-enduring strain of political opinion called Populism switched from being a device employed by both left and right sides of the spectrum, and became an exclusive tool of the Republican party.

If you like clues, and wonder whose presidency this occurred under, you’ll love the title of September 18th’s column, Richard Milhous McCain. And the subtitle reads, “Americans cannot escape from the shadow of Tricky Dick.”

Nixon’s great contribution to Republican politics was to master the politics of cultural resentment. Before him, populism belonged as much to the left as the right. William Jennings Bryan railed against the eastern elites who wanted to crucify common folk on a “cross of gold”. Franklin Roosevelt dismissed Republicans as “economic royalists”. Nixon’s genius was to discover that the politics of culture could trump the politics of economics—and that populism could become a tool of the right.

Lexington goes on to discuss how these “politics of resentment” are now reappearing in the election contest, against all original hopes that reason and issues might prevail.

I was born into the latter half of the twentieth century, and took an interest in all the history of this land that had gone before: the Depression, Prohibition, the Panics, the Civil War, the landmark decisions of the Supreme Court in the early days of nation, and of course, the Revolution itself, and the great founding of the Union in the Constitution, worth in itself a lifetime of study.

Through all this I became aware of the streams of populist thinking, but I only connected with it personally in the 1980s, in the great tax protest movements that sprang up, and the gold and silver barter-exchange houses that ran interference with the IRS in a game of great daring. I was a legal researcher, and an editor and essayist of some local note.

In those days we the folk were oppressed by the elite establishment along the Eastern Seaboard, and populist thinking lent its support more to Libertarian than Republican, perhaps, and certainly not to Democrat.

A curious shift happened in the last thirty years, whereby the old enemy lost its power somehow, and the new power of the West came to overshadow it. I never thought I’d miss those yankees, but as the Republicans continued their downward spiral of stagnation, at the same time a peculiar power vacuum left Texas – and simultaneously Oil – in the driver’s seat.

This was the hopeless situation that brought such a mediocrity as W. Bush to the White House. Oil and good ol’ Texas politics, as corrupt a union as any could wish for. I wondered at the time how such a large and colorful nation as ours could find such lackluster rascals to run for President, and I think now I’m answered by today’s price of oil, which shows that money doesn’t give a damn about quality, so long as things go its way.

I would only exceptionally cite a Huffington Post opinion piece – admire Arianna though I do – because the shop is simply too chauvinist. But the exception is a piece by James Moore from January of this year, 2007, called The O.J. President.

The article begins to set the oddness of the George W. Bush presidency into the etched relief that we are accustomed to in the considered judgments of history. By contrast to its cooling waters, I understand how panic-stricken we have been through these desolated years of the Bush administration.

Words have not been sufficient to tell of the gasping, the suffocating, the drowning in badness, the sheer death-by-mediocrity of these times. It should be funny, but instead it’s more terrible than I want to look at today. Tomorrow, in history, I’ll look at it and try to sympathize. Today I’m still surviving through it.

I want you to read James Moore’s opinion. It matches my own, and it seems perfectly to sound the ghostly tocsin that tolls out the watches of this adminstration in its crippled, stealthy ways. Let me quote from it for the flavor:

George W. Bush confronts a long and lonely walk down the hallway of history.

…

Fewer and fewer people in government and politics want to be associated with the man who has set these sadnesses rolling and after he is gone from office, Mr. Bush will become almost invisible. His phone won’t be ringing and that’s because almost everybody won’t be calling.

…

He will, of course, still be oblivious to all the wrongs he has done to his country and the global community. Forever, this man’s heart and soul will be separated from the harm he has caused and the lives he has ruined and he will continue to sleep the sleep of a child.

James Moore’s opinion piece is fairly short, a little over 1100 words, and it reads much faster because it is beautifully written. You have time to read it, and when you do, listen for the resonance in yourself, that weirdness again, the faded, hollow, off-key ring of actual madness, all dressed up in suits of course, but utterly gray and lost. These are the times we have been living though.

Link: James Moore, The O.J. President