Chuck > Recent Status Updates

[people of color] were all accustomed to running the obstacle course necessary to be effective inside of predominantly white institutions. We’d frown skilled at suppressing our reactions to minor slights, ever ready to give white colleagues the benefit of the doubt, remaining mindful that all but the most careful discussion of race risked triggering in them a mild panic.

Still, while no one had been hurt, I found the episode depressing- a vivid reminder that not even the highest level of Black achievement and the most accommodating of white settings could escape the cloud of our racial history.

Quick as they were to mount their high horse, House Dems were also more than willing to protect the status who when it threatened their prerogatives or benefited politically influential constituencies.

Getting somebody confirmed to the Supreme Court has never been a slam dunk, in part because the Court’s role in American government has always been controversial. After all, the idea of giving nine unelected, tenured-for-life lawyers in black robes the last to strike down laws passed by a majority of the people’s representatives doesn’t sound very democratic.

…predetermined course, an endless cycle of fear, hunger and conflict, dominance and weakness?

How useful is it to describe the world as it should be when efforts to achieve that world are bound to fall short?…Was it possible that abstract principles and high-minded ideals were and always would be nothing more than a pretense, a palliative, a way to bear back despair, but no match for the more primal urges that really moved us, so that no matter what we said or did, history was sure to run along it’s

“In some ways, the Soviet’s simplified who the enemy ways,” Havel said. “Today, autocrats are more sophisticated. They stand for election while slowly undermining the institutions that make democracy possible. They champion free markets while engaging in the same corruption, cronyism, and exploitation as it existed in the past.”

E.U. officials had expressed alarm about the rise of far-right parties across Europe and how the economic crisis was causing an uptick in nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and skepticism about integration.

What did have me worried by the end of the trip was less a particular issue than an overall impression: the sense that for a variety of reasons- some of our own making, some beyond our control- the hopeful tide of democratization, liberalization, and integration that had swept the globe after the end of the Cold War was beginning to recede. Older, darker forces were gathering strength…

…the same [dirty little secret] the world has learned following the invasion of Iraq: For all their tough talk, bush administration hakes like Cheney and Rumsfeld had been surprisingly bad at backing up their rhetoric with coherent, effective strategies.

Few nations felt obliged to act beyond narrow self-interest; and those that shared America’s basic commitment to the principles upon which a liberal, market-based system defended…lacked the economic and political jelly, not to mention the army of diplomats and policy experts, to promote those principles on a global scale.

Together, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) represented just over 40 percent of the world’s population but about a quarter of the world’s GDP and only a fraction of its wealth.

In other words, we had beckoned the world to follow us into a paradisiacal land of free markets, global supply chains, internet connections, easy credit, and democratic governance. And for the moment, at least, it felt to them like they might have followed us over a cliff.

A series of smaller financial crises in the 1990s had hinted at structural weaknesses in the global system; the way that trillions of dollars in private capital moving at the speed of light, unchecked by significant international regulation or oversight, could take an economic disturbance in one country and quickly produce a tsunami in markets around the world.

Faith in American leadership had been shaken-not by the 9/11 attacks but by the handling of Iraq, by images of corpses floating down the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and, most of all, by the Wall Street meltdown.

[about exiting Air Force One upon arriving in a foreign country] In all of this, one sensed the faint but indelible reside of ancient rituals- rituals of diplomacy, but also rituals of tribute to an empire.

I saw firsthand the power our example exerted in the hearts and minds of people around the world. But with that came a corollary lesson: an awareness of what we risked when our actions failed to live up to our image and our ideals, the anger and resentment this could breed, the damage that was done.

…my first 100 days in office revealed a basic strand of my political character. I was a reformer, conservative in temperament if not in vision. Whether I was demonstrating wisdom or weakness would be for others to judge.

Almost 9 months after the fall of Lehman Brothers, the panic appeared to be over… Viewed narrowly, it’s hard to argue with the results of our actions… For many thoughtful critics, though, the fact that I had engineered a return to pre-crisis normalcy is precisely the problem- a missed opportunity, if not a flat-out betrayal.

Just as fear had compounded the very real losses the banks had suffered from the subprime lending binge, the stress test-along with massive assurances from the US government-had jolted marked back into rational territory.

I wondered what Toot would make if the bankers who now sat with me in this room, the same kind of men who’d so often been promoted ahead of her-who in a month made more than she’d made in her entire career, at least in part because they were okay with placing billion-dollar bets with other people’s money on what they knew, or should have known, was a pile of bad loans.

Trying to straddle the line between the public’s desire for Old Testament justice and the financial markets need for reassurance, we ended up satisfying no one. ‘It’s like we’ve got a hostage situation,’ Gibbs said to me one morning. ‘We know the banks have explosives strapped to their chests, but to the public it just looks like we’re letting them get away with a robbery.’

“The response to my speech gave me an early preview of what would become a running criticism during my first two years in office: that I was trying to do too much, that to aspire to anything more than a return to the pre-crisis status who, to treat change as anything more than a slogan, was naive and irresponsible at best, and at worst a threat to America.”

“Maintaining this social compact, though, required trust. It required that we see ourselves as bound together, I’d not as a family then at least as a community, each member worthy of concern… Over the years, that trust proved difficult to sustain. In particular, the fault line of race strained it mightily.”

“As our society grew more complex, more and more of the government’s function took the form of social insurance, with each of us chilling in through our tax dollars to protect ourselves collectively… It worked, more or less.”

“Such arguments had nothing to do with facts. They were impervious to analysis. They went deeper, into the realm of myth, redefining what was fair, reassigning victimhood, conferring in people…that most precious of gifts: the conviction of innocence, as well as the righteous indignation that comes with it.”

“I figured that taking in a steady dose of constituent mail would be an efficient way for me to reach outside the presidential bubble and hear directly from those I served. The letters were like an IV drip from the real world, an everyday reminder of the covenant I now had with the American people, the trust I carried, and the human impact of each decision I made.”

“Between Republican attacks and Democratic complaints, I was reminded of the Yeats poem’The Second Coming’: my supporters lacked all conviction, while my opponents were full of passionate intensity.”