Chuck > Recent Status Updates

“After all, those dynamics set the course for so much of what happened in the months and years that followed, a cleaving of America’s political sensibilities that we are still dealing with a decade later.”

“Looking back, it’s hard for me not to fixate in the political dynamics that unfolded in those first weeks of my presidency- how quickly Republican resistance hardened, independent of anything we said or did, and how thoroughly that resistance colored the way the press and ultimately viewed the public viewed the substance of our actions.”

“And they let it be known that Republican politicians without the stomach to resist my policies at every turn would not only find donations drying up but also might find themselves the target of a well-financed primary challenge.”

…of life. They say my victory as a mortal threat- which is why, shortly after my inauguration, they pulled together a conclave of some of America’s wealthiest conservatives in a smartly manicured resort in Indian Wells, California, to map out a strategy to fight back. They didn’t want compromise and consensus. They wanted war.”

“…who had spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars systematically building a network of think tanks, advocacy organizations, media operations, and political operatives, all with the express goal of rolling back every last vestige of the modern welfare state. For them, all races were confiscatory, pacing the way to socialism; all regulations were a betrayal of freemarket principles and the American way…

“Big conservative donors weighed in as well. Panicked by the cratering economy and the impact it was already having on their members’ bottom lines, traditional business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce eventually came out in favor of the Recovery Act. But their influence over the Republican Party had by then been supplanted by billionaire ideologies like David and Charles Koch…”

“You might think that for a political party that has just suffered two cycles of resounding defeat, the GOP strategy of pugnacious, all-out obstruction would carry big risks…[but] for all their talk about wanting politicians to get along, American voters rarely reward the opposition for cooperating with the governing party.”

…”it was hard to miss in [my staff’s] racial makeup the vestiges of an earlier time, when social rank had clear demarcations and those who occupied the office felt most comfortable in their privacy when served by those they assumed were not their equals- and therefore, could not judge them.”

“Without any constitutional basis, public debate, or even the knowledge of most Americans, passing legislation through Congress had come to effectively require 60 votes in the Senate, or what was referred to as a ‘supermajority’.”

“As Axelrod described it, we were about to ask the American public to spend close to a trillion dollars on sandbags for a once-in-a-generation hurricane that only we knew was coming. And once the money was spent, no matter how effective the sandbags proved to be, a whole lot of folks would be flooded out anyway. ‘When things are bad… no one cares that things could’ve been worse.’”

“…and recoup its money through the resulting boost in tax revenue. In large part, this was the principle behind FDR’s New Deal, which took shape after he took office in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression.”

“A government needed to step in as the ‘spender of last resort.’ The idea was to pump money into the economy until the gears started to turn again, until families grew confident enough to trade in old cars for new ones and innovative companies saw enough demand to start making new products again. Once the economy was kickstarted, the government could then turn off the spigot…”

“‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘The presidency is like a new car. It starts depreciating the minute you drive it off the lot.’”

“No one had nuclear war or terrorism on their minds. No one except me. … I realized this was now part of my job: maintaining an outward sense of normalcy, upholding for everyone the fiction that we live in a safe and orderly world, even as I stared down the dark hole of chance and prepared as best I could for the possibility that at any given moment on any given day chaos might break out.”

“What a gift my mother in law was. For us, she became a living, breathing reminder of who we were and where we came from, a keeper of values we’d once thought ordinary but had learned were more rare than we had ever imagined.”

“My foreign policy views- and, indeed, my early opposition to the invasion of Iraq-owed at least as much to the’ realist’ school, an approach that valued restraint, assumed imperfect information and unintended consequences, and tempered a belief in American exceptionalism with a humility about our ability to remake the world in our image.”

“Resolving the economic crisis-not to mention winding down two wars, delivering on healthcare, and trying to save the planet from catastrophic climate change-was going to be a long, hard slog. It would require a cooperative Congress, willing allies, and an informed, mobile citizenry that could sustain pressure on the system-not a solitary savior.”

“But the continuing elevation of me as a symbol ran contrary to my organizer’s instincts, that sense that change involves ‘we’ and not ‘me.’ “

“It felt as though the campaign had moved beyond politics and into the realm of popular culture… That worried me. The inspiration our campaign was providing, the sight of so many young people newly invested in their ability to make change, the bringing together of Americans across racial and socioeconomic lines- it was the realization of everything I’d once dreamed might be possible in politics.”

“I wonder sometimes whether with the benefit of hindsight McCain would still have chosen Palin-knowing how her spectacular rise and her validation as a candidate would provide a template for future politicians, shifting his party’s center and the country’s politics overall in a direction he abhorred.”

“Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking in the edges of the modern Republican Party-xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks-were finding their way to center stage.”

“Looking at the dour faces around the room, I understood that we were gathered not for a substantive negotiation but rather a presidential effort to placate one man.”

“The trouble was that in the midst of a financial panic, in a modern capitalist economy, it was impossible to isolate good businesses from bad, or administer lain only to the reckless or unscrupulous. Like it or not, everybody and everything was connected.”

For the public, it was tempting to see all this as a righteous comeuppance for greedy bankers and hedge fund managers; to want to stand by as firms failed and executives who’d drawn $20 million bonuses were forced to sell off their yachts, jets, and homes in the Hamptons…”

“Beyond any specific policy, I wanted to restore in the minds of the American people the crucial role that government had always played in expanding opportunity, fostering competition and fair dealing, and making sure the marketplace worked for everybody.”

“By 2007, the American economy was not only producing greater intensity than almost every other wealthy nation but also delivering less upward mobility.”

“Low inflation and cheap flat-screen TVs couldn’t compensate for layoffs, fewer hours and temp work, stagnant wages and reduced benefits, especially when both healthcare and education costs (two sectors less subject to cost-saving automation) kept soaring.”

“In this new, winner-take all economy, those controlling capital or possessing specialized, high-demand skills- whether tech entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, LeBron James, or Jerry Seinfeld- could leverage their assets, market globally, and Abbas more wealth than any group in human history. But for ordinary workers, capital mobility and automation meant an ever-weakening bargaining position.”

“It was, of course, a sign of things to come, a larger, darker reality in which partisan affiliation and political expedience would threaten to blot out everything- your previous positions; your stated principles; even what your own senses, your eyes and ears, told you to be true.”