Political Interests

The other day on Politico there was a story about why progressives are upset with Obama. Apparently, he's too centrist. Actually, the story was about "liberals" being upset with Obama. I guess I flipped it to progressives because maybe it sounded fringier to me, or maybe because I consider myself a liberal but I'm not upset with Obama's appointments. Not that I know so much to be upset, but I can work myself up into an uneducated rage as well as the next guy. And if only I were Joe the Plumber I could get a book deal for it.

In any case, Frank Rich made a good case for why everyone should stop weeping with joy over Obama's smarty pants cabinet, at least when it comes to economics, seeing as some smarty pants economists (like Clintonite-I-didn't-make-a-mistake Robert Rubin) kind of got us into this mess. Then again, Paul Volker, not Mr. Rubin, is heading up the economic clean-up team. Got the message, Mr. Rich. I'm no longer reflexively cheerleading. But I'm not weeping into my fair trade coffee, either. I'm not the first to make the point I'm about to make: Obama never hid his pragmatism from the public. Obama, like a good politician, is most interested in getting done what he needs and wants to get done. And so, stories about how people are upset with appointments are jsut so much handwringing and foot stamping and, frankly, I get enough of the latter with my 4-year-olds. All told, though, it has me a little off the news. I can't even find the latest New Yorker. Now I'm wondering if I keep writing this same post in different ways -- I'm off the news! Everyone's too excited or too depressed about Obama! I can't take it anymore! Maybe I'm still in my election hangover. A month out it seems excessive, but it's probably the case. So it goes. I'll get a good night's sleep and wake from this dream one of these days. In the meantime, I'm off to Philadelphia.

Couch to 5K: Week 2 begins!

Today I completed the third workout of the first week of Couch to 5K. Here's why I like it:
1) It tells me what I'm supposed to do.
2) It tells me how long it will take.
3) I can do what I'm supposed to do in the time it takes.

Really, the whole thing is terrific. And today, as I did what I was supposed to do, I watched the gym's bank of TVs and the one tuned to CNN kept showing the same shot of a man pacing in the wings of a very presidential looking stage. Then they ran a ticker (which I needed since I didn't have earphones) and the ticker said, "President-Elect Obama about to make important economic announcement." Or something like that. Never mind how thrilling "President-Elect Obama" remains, how about that he was pacing. I mean, I know he has a cool demeanor, but must be wound pretty tight (the discipline, the cigarettes). And yet, the pacing, it was unnerving. I don't know why. Maybe it's just that I don't want to see my presidents preparing to speak. There's no backstage thrill for me. I just want to see them speak. The pacing could have made me feel less assured by Obama had I watched the actual announcement, never mind listened to it. As it was, though, I just let the stalking steps of the President-Elect knock around my brain until it was time to get off the treadmill and head home.

Friday, week 2 begins. Wish me luck. And have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

My Brother, the Transition, and Me

So yesterday afternoon, while my kids were hovering between calm and chaos, my brother calls. He tells me what he needs to tell me (bring bathing suits home for Thanksgiving!), and then he says this: "And Obama is busy recreating the Clinton administration." Lest you think I'm that much calmer since the election, you should know that this snidely delivered comment created the threat of an exploding skull--my own. Because my brother is one of those weird moderate Republicans at heart with whom I'm supposed to be able to disagree amicably but who in fact drive me a little bananas and ignite my inner three-year-old who wants to stamp her foot and say, "No! I'm right!"

Well, maybe it's just my brother who's that kind of moderate Republicans. Maybe I'd do better with moderate Republicans who didn't spend their eleventh and my eight year giving me wet willies (wet finger in ear) when I was innocently watching MASH reruns while our mother was at the supermarket.

Seriously, though, I think it's pretty facile to say the Obama administration is the Clinton administration relived. Sure, many of the people from Clinton's administration will serve in Obama's. But that doesn't mean the administrations are the same. For example, the selection of Daschle for Health and Human Services speaks to an understanding of the on-the-ground legislating politics that makes Washington go. I don't believe Clinton in his first term had that, and certainly Hillary Clinton in her Health Care Reform efforts didn't have that.

Now, isn't everyone glad we got this out of the way before Thanksgiving so we won't have this fight and I won't have to upstage my older brother in my rightness and none of the children who will be present will be able to use this particular scene in his or her screenplay of a dysfunctional family gathering? I sure am.

Oh, and there's this: Happy Birthday, Louis!

Re-Orienting

Tonight at dinner I was talking to my husband about my new approach to time with my kids, which is, I try to actually be there when I spend time with my kids. I don't try to talk on the phone, and I only rarely check email.  "Of course," I mused, "this is easier now that the election is over."  Because it's just easier in life not to have to check a blog every five minutes or call a friend to talk about how you have to check the political blogs every five minutes. You know?  But then I checked in with my old blog Andrew Sullivan who has a link to a story on Talking Points Muckraker about Democrats wanting to make sure Cheney's papers are preserved and made public.  Because, of course, Cheney is a war criminal and he must be prosecuted.  (I would link to the story but there was something wrong with the script and trying to get to it crashed my browser.)  Seriously,  if electing Obama went a long way toward repairing America's reputation abroad, then prosecuting Cheney would let us begin to restore the moral compass that should direct how Americans treat others during conflict. Electing Obama meant electing the more competent candidate, prosecuting Cheney reminds the world and American that laws matter, that torture will not stand, and that power has its limits.  That's harder than electing the right guy, actually, and it must be done.

By the way, before I read that thing on Sullivan's blog, I was going to blog about how weird it is to be knitting a bear.  It's still weird, but that's a whole other blog.

Dreams From My Father

You know how when a friend tells you a dream and you can tell that there's something extremely interesting in the dream but somewhere around the time that she's back in her third grade classroom you check right out and you really wish you wouldn't because you know it's important but you just can't help it?  That's the point I've reached in Dreams From My Father.  I know I'll be glad to have read it when it's done. Really, up until two days ago I've been glad to be reading it. But with less than 100 pages to go, I'm ready to move on from the pre-Harvard Law Obama. Honestly, I'm ready to simply read about him in The New Yorker, and I think I'm also, finally, ready for Middlemarch. I hear it's great!

A Photo Album

In the final weeks of the election, I stopped reading Jezebel (do you believe it?), but in high-procrastination mode, I went back to it today and found this photo album of election night with the Obamas.  I couldn't get the Flickr link to work, so I'm simply linking to the Jezebel page.

A Few Days Later

So on Wednesday, as part of my post-election re-adjustment, i was watchng Rachel Maddow, and Rachel Maddow says something about how Obama is thinking of Larry Summers for Treasury Secretary and she's all, "Really? Larry Summers? Who said something like girls can't do math?" She was referring to a comment Summers made when he was President of Harvard in which he mused on some biological difference or brain structure thing that made women less successful in math and science. Granted, it was enraging that he said it and he didn't seem to take into account the machismo culture of those fields or the funding structure that makes family life extremely difficult. But when I heard Maddow's comment, I thought, "C'mon Rachel, that's not fair. The guy's already been Treasury Secretary once...."

Which is to say I'm already sick of people second guessing Obama's decisions. In one of the many postmortems of the Clinton administration, I read that one of the problems with the first administration was that all of Clinton's people came in on this huge high as swashbucklers who didn't know the ways and means of Washington and didn't care. They thought they could do things their own way, and so they did. And what did we get with them doing things their own way? We got: Don't ask don't tell, a doomed health care plan and, in 1992, the Contract with America and a Newt Gingrich-Republican-controlled Congress.

So, you know what I say? I say it would be a change for a new administration, a new Democratic administration, to come in and hit the ground running and work the system effectively. There's change from within and change from without and Rahm Emanuel may be a jerk and Lawrence Summers might have been the wrong guy to run Harvard, but they know their fields, government and the economy respectively, and they've proven they know how to get things done within them.

Granted, this might be a little bit of blind faith on my part, but the change we need is not only an end to hyper-partisanship, it's an end to armchair quarterbacking every single decision from day one. Sure, the blogosphere needs words, but it also needs some thoughts. And some patience. Damnit.