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February 5, 2009
NPR.org is running a post of mine that says we should expect e-gov to come from we the people faster and better than what will come from the government. (If it’s not obvious, the post started life intended as a spoken commentary for All Things Considered.)
The National Journal says that Obama has picked Vivek Kundra, DC’s CTO, to fill the national post. This would be fantastic news. Vivek is all about transparency.
It’s just a rumor. But it’s a rumor that makes me happy.
January 24, 2009
James Surowiecki has a piece in the New Yorker that finally got me to understand why Obama is including a tax rebate in his stimulus package. It’s not the mere pandering to the Republicans that I thought it was. It actually sounds pretty smart.
And while you’re there, you might as well read Atul Gawande’s argument for building our health care system on what we have, rather than sweeping it all away and beginning fresh.
Then finish it all off with the dessert wine of Mariana Cook’s 1996 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, in which the future president expresses love’s swing of mystery and familiarity. Just in case you weren’t gushy enough about the two of them.
January 22, 2009
Even if Justice Roberts hadn’t flubbed the oath, I’d still count this as Day 2. The Inaugural day doesn’t count, does it?
So, how’s it going so far? I’d say pretty damn well.
When Hillary Clinton arrives at the State Department she tells the workers that she loves nothing better than a good debate. They cheer, and you realize that on top of everything else, George Bush totally sucked as a manager.
In case there was any doubt about this, I have friends in the Justice Department who have been demoralized for years. Now they’re eager to get to work.
Hillary cheered at State. Holbrooke heading out to Afghanistan and Pakistan. An unabashed preference for science. Closing Gitmo. Planning with the military the withdrawal from Iraq. Making open access to information the default, not the outcome of a lawsuit. Limiting the implicit corruption of the revolving door. The Internet to be kept open.
Obama is making it look easy. As easy as saying, “Yes, waterboarding is torture.”
My daydream: George W. Bush is in in his new home, sitting in his penny loafers, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper’s articles about Obama’s first day. “So that’s how you do it,” he thinks. “So that’s what a president does.”
What’s the opposite of disappointment?
January 21, 2009
Gene Koo has a great post about why Obama’s speeches don’t produce sound bytes. Gene calls them “non-reductive.” The speeches are too complex for soundbytes. Obama’s soundbyte failure is, as Gene says, a strength, although he points out that politically Obama has also benefited from the ability of others — Will.i.am, for example — to produce soundbytes on his behalf.
I loved yesterday’s speech. I’ve loved it each time I’ve heard it. I liked it even more when I heard it on the radio, free of distractions. And Gene gets at why. The speech actually says something. It takes us through a set of gates to get to where we need to be. Gate 1: Yes, times are hard. We have to look at that squarely. But there is hope, based on some real things. Gate 2: We are pushing past the old contradictions that formed our idea of what is possible. Not big government or small government. Not security or liberty. Not Republican or Democract, black or white, Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu or non-believer (yay for the shout out!). Gate 3: Together, we are strong and resourceful and imaginative. Gate 4: We share, and should return to, our abiding values. Call them hope and virtue.
There was more in there. But, there was nothing I would take out. And there was also, therefore, little I would excerpt in pursuit of a soundbyte.
January 20, 2009
This is the poem Derek Walcott wrote for Obama. Read it out loud twice. I dare you. I couldn’t get through it the second time. Too weepy. This is a beautiful, beautiful piece.
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Forty Acres
Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,
parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked
cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is
a tense
court of bespectacled owls and, on the field’s
receding rim —
a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.
The small plough continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado’s
black vengeance,
and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,
heart, muscles, tendons,
till the land lies open like a flag as dawn’s sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.
#1
3 joys: 1. We elected a black man. 2. We love that we did. 3. That man is Barack Obama.
Exec summary of speech: The oldest values beat the old politics. We move ahead together.
Within minutes, the new WhiteHouse.gov went up. (Here’s the before and after.) The first blog post (yes, blog post) promises communication, transparency and participation. At the moment, though, there’s no way to participate, including no comments on the blog. I do admit that it’s not obvious how best to enable conversation on this site. (There’s a page that promises more participation.)
All the original content is copyright free, of course. Third-party content is posted under a CreativeCommons license.
I am delighted to note that I have removed the following from this page’s sidebar. Forever:
I seem to be tweeting away in my eagerness to see the last of Bush and the first of the rest of us. Not to mention That One.
I tweet as dweinberger. Also, you can search for the tag #inaug09 to find a whole bunch o tweeters.
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