Brilliant Politics

This photo essay is a retrospective look at my time on the campaign trail as a blogger during Barack Obama’s campaign for president. I am suspending operation of Brilliant Politics with an eye toward reviving it during the 2012 presidential campaign. I was happy to have my great friend, collaborator, and photographer, Martin Saunders, with me on some of those trips. His political photography of our two trips to Iowa can be seen here and here.

Brilliant Politics was always a part-time and intermittent blog, given my time limitations. But I have to say that our timing was perfect. I was one of the first persons to publicly suggest that Barack Obama should run for president in this commentary on public radio, “My Daughter the First Black President,” although I did so with a heavy dose of irony. About seven months later, I wrote this justification for starting Brilliant Politics:

It might seem oxymoronic to some to seek brilliance in contemporary politics. We will, nevertheless, undertake this daunting task because the United States, now suffering through a bipartisan endarkenment in the early years of the 21st century, so badly needs the light of brilliant ideas and the radiance of brilliant leaders.

Well, I think I hit the bullseye, and that we all got lucky because we elected a brilliant president. Some of us worked harder than others to ensure that outcome. Now let’s make sure he follows through on those ideas.

I have started a new blog, The Unimaginable Life, about the transformation of American culture. Come on over.

-CDP

Matthew Alexander, a senior military interrogator in Iraq, tells the truth about torture:

As a former senior military interrogator, it’s deeply troubling to me after reading the recently released torture memos that we doubted our ability to win the battle of wits in the interrogation booth and resorted to torturing and abusing prisoners. There is no profession that is successful 100 percent of the time. Doctors can’t cure all patients….

As a senior interrogator in Iraq, I conducted more than three hundred interrogations and monitored more than one thousand. I heard numerous foreign fighters state that the reason they came to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our policy of torture and abuse is Al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. These same insurgents have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of our troops in Iraq, not to mention Iraqi civilians. Torture and abuse are counterproductive in the long term and, ultimately, cost us more lives than they save.

The more important argument, however, is the moral one. One of al-Qaeda’s goals is to prove that America does not live up to its principles. They assert that we are a nation of hypocrites. By engaging in torture and abuse, we are playing into their hands. This war has two fronts—protecting our security by thwarting terrorist attacks and preserving American principles. We cannot become our enemy in seeking to defeat him.

This past week Republicans proved that they are very good at at least one thing: high comedy. John Boehner and House Republicans, in a press conference that could have been scripted by Monty Python, offered their alternative to President Obama’s budget.  It had a nice blue cover, but no numbers at all.  That’s right - a budget with no numbers. Students all over America were inspired and wondered if they could start handing in homework with no words. See for yourself:

Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was also busy this week cementing his credentials as a conservative clown. He would consider running for president (you cannot make this stuff up) even as his increasingly buffoonish behavior guarantees he will not last long as head of the RNC. Here he tells us about his genius master plan of playing the fool in order to map out the political landscape. Brilliant!:

A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”

-Frank Rich, New York Times

I’m afraid that Obama and his team do not fully understand the depth and breadth of the tsunami of rage that is just beginning to build up force in America over the bailout of the corporate con men who run the big banks and AIG.  Obama and Geithner’s essential mistake at this point is that they appear to be in league with the bad guys who are ruining the global economy while the rest of us lose our jobs or worry about losing our jobs. There are millions of personal tragedies unfolding across America because of the economic crisis.  A monumental crisis of even greater magnitude is possible if Obama does not act forcefully enough, and soon enough, to prevent the takeover of America by the banking elite.  It threatens to topedo Obama’s agenda and his presidency as a whole. Matt Taibbi, who writes for Rolling Stone, gets to the heart of the matter:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve….

So, what should Obama and Geithner do to prove to the American people that they will not also become wholly owned subsidiaries of AIG, Citibank, and Bank of America? Obama has been using the right words, “transparency and accountability,” but he has not yet put them into action on the bank bailout plan. Frank Rich shows them the way to do it:

To get ahead of the anger, Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable. His administration must start actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.

Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. We need to understand why some of that money was used to bail out foreign banks. And why Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were “immaterial,” nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers’ cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the “retention” jackpots. We must be told why taxpayers have so little control of the bailed-out financial institutions that we now own some or most of. And where are the M.R.I.’s from those “stress tests” the Treasury Department is giving those banks?

Obama’s bold agenda for the country, and his presidency, will be engulfed in flames if he does not start putting his money (our money!!) where his mouth is: full transparency for all parties involved in the bailout plan.  He should also add to that a clear and compelling explanation of what exactly is likely to happen if we do not bail out the banking system. The time for vague half-answers and superficial metaphors is over. As Keith Olbermann would say, “Enough!!!”

-Chuck Pierson

This new ad from Americans United for Change and the union, AFSCME, shows the growing dimness of the GOP and their de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh:

Al Gore has, more than any other single person, brought the need for a green economy to the forefront of the current political discourse. Bold vision is what we need. He lays out the challenge clearly here: