Taking Note

No Social Security Deal, Ramesh

Ramesh Ponnuru of the conservative National Review proposes a deal for Social Security reform in which Republicans and Democrats each “will have to give up at least one cherished goal.” For Republicans, that concession would be to accept that “Mr. Bush’s dream of letting individuals invest Social Security funds is dead.” Democrats, in return, “will need to take tax increases off the table.”

Ponnuru’s proposal is about as reasonable as Bernard Madoff offering his former investors to get in on his next deal for only half the fees they used to pay. Why would Democrats even consider compromising over the future of the nation’s most successful government program, which is playing an important role in softening the blows of the current economic crisis, when Congressional Republicans have already demonstrated that “saving” Social Security is the last thing they want to do?

Gaza Takes Over the Agenda

While attending a League of Arab States conference on post-conflict justice in the Arab world, I sat and listened as the Iraqi Minister of Justice offered suggestions as his conference counterparts discussed the drafting and phrasing of their official denunciations of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Thoughts of a Mosul-Haifa oil pipeline seemed like a relic from a now bygone, puzzling era.

I had been invited to the conference after submitting a paper discussing the incomplete and flawed, yet historically consequential, Iraqi experience with post-conflict justice following the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the fall of the Ba’athist regime. Yet the more granular and legalistic goals of the conference were quickly overwhelmed by the carnage that dominated news coverage and private discussions. The manner in which Gaza took over the conference was a reminder writ small of how the issue of Palestine has managed to insinuate itself through cynical manipulation and genuine outrage onto all aspects of the political agenda of the Arab world. At this point it is unclear which roads run through where and in what sequence, but the question of Palestine still holds significant sway over the hearts and minds of the Middle East. 

A Writer Becomes President

In the heady days around the Obama ascension and his much anticipated inaugural address, I went back to Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, completed when the president was in his early thirties, to look again at the young writer for insight as to what kind of person he was then and would become. I called my colleagues on the small publishing team that worked with Obama on the book, released in August 1995, and asked them to shake out recollections of what has turned out to be, after all, their brush with history, supporting a memoir already considered a classic and an epic bestseller. What they all remembered was significant for its common theme. Barack Obama combined a writer’s natural gifts for story telling and reflection with a cool professionalism so consistent that the editor, publicist and art director responsible for the now iconic cover say their only regret about the experience is that Obama did not ask more from them. As Henry Ferris, his editor recalls, “I would show him what I thought needed to be done and he would make it better.”

A Mandate for Big Change

Poll after poll shows that the public has very positive feelings toward President Barack Obama and his plans for the country. And that includes the major new programs that he is proposing to bring change to a country that badly needs it. A stunning 71 percent of respondents in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, said that Obama has a mandate to “work for major new economic and social programs” rather than for small policy changes.

How Humanitarian Intervention Began in the 19th Century

          Where did the idea of humanitarian intervention come from? Most people assume that it is a 20^th century phenomenon, growing out of the experiences of the two world wars when the triumphant allies liberated vast populations from Axis control, and that today it is embodied most fully in the peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations of the United Nations.

          But, in his intriguing new book, Freedom’s Battle, author Gary Bass contends that humanitarian interventions actually began in the 19^th century. It was then, he argues, that a number of nations sent forces into conflict zones to rescue individuals from authoritarian crackdowns of various sorts, when it was not in their national interest and for no baser motivations.

Thoughts On President Obama's Inaugural Speech

When President Obama said “The time has come to put away childish things,” I couldn’t help but recall healthcare reformer Don Berwick, sounding discouraged last winter, as he said “Maybe this country just isn’t mature enough for health care reform.”

          Berwick, who is the president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, was referring to the fact that at times, it seems that everyone wants healthcare for all—but no one wants to pay for it. And few want to hear about the trade-offs: that the young, healthy and wealthy will have to help pay for the poor, the old and the sick; that we will have to give up our unreasonable demand  for every test, treatment or drug that we think we want—or have heard of -- even if there is no medical evidence that it works.  Most of all, we have to give up the unreasonable expectation that somehow, we can beat death—that if someone does die it’s because she ate too much, or the doctor made a mistake, or the HMO refused to give her that last miracle treatment.  We have come to think of death as an error. 

High-Voltage Message in Washington's Frigid Air

Yes, I did my part Tuesday to lock in "change." My son and I journeyed to Washington to assume our assigned role as extras -- the two of us constituting one-millionth of the prodigious turnout of Americans who descended on the capital to wrest back their government from the Beltway lobbies and special interests and bilious "think-tanks" that shill for them. (Yes, look hard and you can see us in the photo the New York Times ran on page P2 today--back between the second and third tree from the left.)

That outpouring of humanity-- in sharp contrast to the fleets of stretch limousines that flooded the capital for the Reagan and Bush inaugurations -- represents Barack Obama's strongest hand in exorcising the "false promises" and "worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

The cold yesterday was numbing, but the new president's stern, crisp message was electrifying: Both at home and abroad, Obama's America is reversing the misguided detour of the past quarter century.

Avoiding The Education Reform Trap

In the battle over the future of national education policy, a dangerous dichotomy has developed between those labeling themselves as “reformers” and those being defined as defenders of the status quo. Like most simplistic approaches to complex problems, it reflects more about power and politics than it does about solutions.

After years of frustration with the relative competitiveness of America's high school graduates as measured by results on international tests, and with seemingly endlessly rising costs of K-12 schooling, a decade ago a new set of forces entered the field of public education. Buoyed by the success of the free market model of competition, deregulation and privatization, and fearing the effect of poorly educated workers on their long-run global competitiveness, many business leaders began to take up the cause of public education. Predictably, the approach they turned to was the one they knew – and the one that had served them well – and so began the application of the lessons of the marketplace to public schools.

Gaza, The Seaward Road to Peace?

Barack Obama put "a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians" on his top-priority agenda for Hillary Clinton's State Department last month, but the ferocious war in Gaza that began just after Christmas has reawakened Washington's instinct to default to disengagement from pressing for peace in the Middle East. Yet even in the rubble of this latest explosion lie openings for that long elusive peace, as well as a speedy demonstration of the new president's determination to revitalize America's alliances. Obama's standing both in the region and globally may well depend on how swiftly and adroitly he realizes "hope" and achieves "change" in the dynamic there.

Step Away from the Playstation

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy promised, "Things are moving so fast in race relations, a Negro could be president in forty years."  And just over forty years later, we find America swearing in its first black American president the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The country is abuzz with talk of a "post-racial America" as Time magazine traces the history from Emmett Till to Obama. While it is wonderful to acknowledge the significance of electing a black American to our highest office, the notion of a "post-racial America” is a fallacy that undermines the true gift President-Elect Obama has offered. When folks put those three words together, post-racial America, what many are actually referring to is white Americans patting themselves on the back for voting for a black man. When folks say America has come so far, what many are really saying is, white Americans have come so far in their perception of people who are not white Americans.