My favorite part of the inauguration speech, with my copious emphasis added:

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do. Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

This is the sort of pragmatism I’m looking forward to. Obama seemed to complete the thought I had on Inauguration Day (before hearing the speech). This speech used plenty of language with which conservatives and Republicans would be comfortable, tying together liberal and conservative ideas and saying “let’s see what works”.

[Obama] has taken the idea of increasing gasoline taxes off the table, saying that Americans had enough economic burdens at the moment. Nominees like Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who will become Energy Secretary, dutifully echoed Obama’s view even though in Chu’s case he has long supported higher fuel taxes.

(source, my emphasis)

Politically, this makes a lot of sense, but I’m not sure that it’s pragmatic to take that off the table. Taxing things that we want to discourage makes economic sense, regardless of whether you think taxes should be increasing or decreasing for different demographics.

From the NYT article Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel:

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

Think about it: regardless of who won the 2000 and 2004 elections, can you imagine Bush, Kerry or Gore consulting with their opponent? I can’t. It’s a credit to both Obama and McCain.

So far I’ve been very pleased by what I’ve seen of Obama in the transition and the first days of the administration. They have, for the most part, focused on gathering people who are smart and get things done instead of hiring adherent ideologues. Most of my problems with Bush weren’t that his administration was too conservative, it’s mostly that it was bad.

(click to view)

I’m just waiting for Andy to parody this…

I’m not sure why anyone would need a new president in order to start shutting their lights off…

So, I know this is cliche, but I’m going with Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. I happened to be listening to Bob Dylan yesterday, and this came on, so I couldn’t pass it up, as it’s one of my favorites.

Full lyrics here

Some may hear this as emblematic of the mood of a lot of the country, and the anticipation of the new President, but the more I listen to it, the more I think about the fact that Obama was just over 2 years old when this song was recorded. He’s our first post-Boomer president, and he’s not framed in the context of the Vietnam War. We seem to have to keep fighting the Vietnam War every four years (see: Bill Ayers, Swift Boats, draft dodging), but these divisive themes grow less powerful each year. The difference isn’t just Vietnam itself, but the divisions that it solidified, fomenting the larger-scale “culture war”.

This is part of a larger post I tried to write a couple of times during the campaign and failed. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out what I want to say.

Late at night during my Denver trip in November, we found this Obama mural in a parking lot:

(click for full size)

It says “PREZ” on his ring.

I’ve been alluding to but avoiding the question of culpability in my posts about torture so far. The more I read about the subject, the more unavoidable this aspect becomes, so this is my first attempt to address it.

We know that waterboarding is torture. We’ve prosecuted it as such in the past, for good reason. Republicans such as John McCain (“It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”) and former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge (“There’s just no doubt in my mind — under any set of rules — waterboarding is torture”) have acknowledge this, among countless others.

Additionally, CIA Director Hayden has publicly acknowledged that 3 detainees have been waterboarded. Torture is forbidden by U.S. and international laws, and has serious consequences.

Not surprisingly, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino is continuing the Bush line that we haven’t tortured:

Key quote:

“This president has said that we did interrogate terrorists, and we did so to protect the country from possible imminent terrorist attack. We did not torture.”

Let’s enter a political vacuum for a moment and just examine some issues in theory.

Authorizing torture has criminal penalties for a reason. No branch of the government should be above the law, which is one reason the founders designed the system of checks and balances that has generally served us well over the years. If we fail to investigate and prosecute government officials of crimes because of the virtue of their office or other political reasons, we run the serious risk of a culture of lawlessness among the political class and will increase the likelihood that these crimes will continue to take place.

Some smoke-filled air is seeping in now and we’re leaving the political vacuum…

Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer and blogger I’ve recently started reading recently appeared on Bill Moyers to discuss this issue (among others). He said:

We have laws in place that say that it is a felony punishable by decades in prison to subject detainees in our custody to treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions or that is inhumane or coercive.

We know that the president and his top aides have violated these laws. The facts are indisputable that they’ve done so. And yet as a country, as a political class, we’re deciding basically in unison that the president and our highest political officials are free to break the most serious laws that we have, that our citizens have enacted, with complete impunity, without consequences, without being held accountable under the law.

(full transcript.. the whole interview is worth watching/reading)

This puts the incoming administration in a difficult position. At the very least, it’s clear that there’s enough evidence to warrant the investigation of serious crimes. Doing so would cost Obama political capital, and would distract from the economy and war. It would be viewed by many as a divisive and maybe vindictive move.

Appointing a special prosecutor of some sort, with independent subpoena powers seems like one way to minimize the political effect, but Greenwald points to a larger problem:

“In 2002, as the WASHINGTON POST documented, Nancy Pelosi was brought to the CIA and along with Jane Harman and Bob Graham and Jay Rockefeller, the key Intelligence Committee Senators, were told about the torture program that the CIA had implemented, that we were going to water board and had water boarded certain suspects, that we were going to do things like hypothermia and stress positions and forced nudity and sleep deprivation.

All of the tactics that we’ve always said characterized tyrannies that used torture. That we were going to start using them ourselves, even though they clearly violate both international and domestic law. And according to all public reports, and they’re not denied by the participants, every single Democrat in that session either quietly assented to it or actively approved of it.”

If there’s one word to describe the Democratic party of the last 8 years, I’d say it’s “complicit”. There are people who have spoken out against this in both parties, but the guilt for torture policy is likely not solely Republican (the same goes for illegal wiretaps). This is what a spectacular failure in the leadership of our country looks like.

I’m very much conflicted and undecided about this issue. This article from the AP gives some hints as to what to expect after Jan 20. All of the options are dissatisfying. To allow such grave crimes to be committed and go unpunished sets an ugly precedent. At the same time, serious investigation would cause huge gridlock in Washington, which is certainly not what we need right now. But, it just seems wrong to sacrifice our morals and the rule of law because we have other stuff to work on.

Andrew Sullivan suggested another alternative:

But it might also be feasible for Obama to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that, in return for legal immunity in the US, could at least unearth and publicize the full evidence and records of the past eight years. We would at least know more about who authorized what and when. And in a democracy, we need to know, when such immense power is being exercised on our behalf.

I actually like this idea. I don’t actually care about punishing President Bush for punitive reasons, I simply hate the precedent of not investigating. If we (as a country) can understand the failure that caused this situation, we have a chance to prevent it from happening again. Think of it like the way Japanese internment is handled: we now understand that it was a dark spot in American history, and I think that makes it less likely that we’ll do that again. I don’t really care about punishing FDR or anyone else involved.

This is the last of the “things I’ve been meaning to write about torture” series, though I’m sure that I’ll continue to explore the topic…

Edit: Just as a note, I haven’t had a chance to read the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse yet, so this writing doesn’t take that into account at all (it just came out a few days ago).

Charlie Rows interviewed Lawrence Lessig a few weeks ago on PBS, discussing Barack Obama, copyright, and changing the political system. As always, these are two interesting people to listen to:

Harvard Economist and former Romney advisor Greg Mankiw has some advice for President-elect Obama

A couple of excerpts:

Embrace some Republican ideas. No party has a monopoly on truth. Be ready to take the best Republican policy proposals and make them your own, as Bill Clinton did with welfare reform in 1996.

Pay attention to the government’s budget constraint. The nation faces a long-term imbalance between government spending and tax revenue. The fundamental problem is that the federal government has promised the elderly more benefits than the tax system can support. This fiscal imbalance will become acute as more baby boomers retire and start collecting Social Security and Medicare.

I’m inclined to agree.