God, I hate the goo-goos.

It's not that they're literally wrong. Good government and transparency is important. But it's the cart, not the horse.

And we ought to take some lessons from the past.

Jimmy Carter ran for President on a platform of personality and goo-goo-ism. (Remind you of anyone?) He narrowly won in a very Democratic year, and proceeded to govern on personality and goo-goo-ism.

How'd that work out for us?

(And I know we all love Jimmy now, but it's worth remembering that when he left office, he had substantially higher approval ratings among Republicans than Democrats.)

Goo-goo-ism is good. But it's not the basis for a sound Presidential campaign or a sound administration. Politics matters.

Campaign with homophobes.

Non-universal health care.

Crisis in Social Security...

Pandering to the elderly in IA with "no taxes," while those with kids and mortgages...

Look at the policies, not the rhetoric.

I think the point, Petey, is that if you remove avenues for corporate money to get into Congress's pockets, and at the same time create avenues for systems, "politics" won't matter nearly as much.

No?

But I guess "hat[ing]" and trivializing good gov't is somehow seen by you as an argument.

The opposite of what you say is true: fixing gov't is the horse. If you manage to bully your way past, say, the insurance companies, good for you, but the next Congress/President will still have to deal with a system saturated with money, that disempowers citizens.

I wonder what kind of government, good or otherwise, that Obama had in mind when he couldn't be bothered to call even one hearing for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relation's Subcommittee on Europe for which he's chair.

We've seen this kind of lazy abdication of responsibility before, as well as its detrimental effects on a Presidency.

"I think the point, Petey, is that if you remove avenues for corporate money to get into Congress's pockets, and at the same time create avenues for systems, "politics" won't matter nearly as much."

I want politics to matter.

The reasons I hate the goo-goos is that they've spent the last 40 years trying to make politics not matter, with disastrous results for the progressive community.

The goo-goos want to lock technocrats into a room and solve all of our problems. Great. You and David Broder will have a wonderful time imagining your particular vision of heaven.

I want to create a progressive electoral coalition because I know that without that, a bunch of yahoos are going to crash into your technocratic heaven and bust everyone's head in.

All that said, I'm in favor of public financing of elections. I'm in favor of stronger ethics laws.

But the goo-goos' vision wants to sideline politics, which is counterproductive, to say the very least. Running for President on a platform of personality and goo-goo-ism isn't going to serve progressive causes in the short-term or long-term.

Run for President on a platform of good politics, and you can change the world.

That picture is fantastic.

I think you entirely misunderstand what the goo-goos are about (and I count myself one of them): only by changing the underlying structure of political decision-making can you achieve decent policies. Otherwise it will be just more mush coming out the other end.

I have a theory, and Ezra, i'd like your opinion on this. I don't believe that you can have "good", 'transparent" government until, and unless, you have full, public financing of campaigns. Everything else in my opinion, is just nibbling around the edges. Much like "universal healthcare" that keeps insurance companies in play and then mandates that we buy from them.

. We should want good government that's transparent at the bare minimum. What stuns me is that they think the bare minimum is the best we should go for

That they think this is a vision for the future says way, way way more about how far we are fucked psychologicaly as a country and, I suspect, more specifically as liberals and progressives because so many of us walk around as victims without ever thinking about it. Unwrapped all the talk of "hope" and "audacity" and what I am gathering in application is-- we won't suceed so let's lessen our standards. Translation- victimhood.

I asked a similar question at mydd about this regarding Clinton, and the response was that she would be competent. My response was- well when hiring someone most people think of that as the bare minimum not the reason for hiring. The same goes here. It's sad to see that people making these assertions don't get how pathetic that sounds.

There is a lot of space from nothing at all to minimum to seeing what we can really get if we try to fight for it. Those are the three real options, not perfection. Not that we will suceed, but that we will try. That many people have decided trying is out of vogue saddens me a lot. It's the politics of lowered expectations. I grew up with this as a member of the African American community. It's shocking to see this translated to America at large. Are you beat down that much?

That you assume that seeing what we can get is fanciful and that the bare minimum is the most you should want says something really about the Obama supporter's thinking process.

You may be right- but if its that bad, you aren't even going to get the minimum.

"only by changing the underlying structure of political decision-making can you achieve decent policies."

I agree with that completely.

And I think the goo-goos don't have the slightest clue about how to accomplish that.

-----

Tangentially, I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the President from the past 60 years who brought about the largest amount of decent policies was also the most corrupt President of the past 60 years. Though you shouldn't take this to mean I'm actually endorsing more corruption.

Serious campaign finance reform, however, is as hard to pass as universal health care or climate change legislation, so it doesn't really obviate the question -- indeed, how you pass such a bill is the question.

CFR is also not an "open sesame" even if it does pass. Money obviously matters, but it's debatable how much, especially in comparison to the power of incumbency, gerrymandering, and public opinion. I think money matters most when it comes to the specifics and particulars of complex legislation, but not so much in terms of the general direction of politics.

If money mattered as much as liberals think, Social Security would long since have been privatized, because the most powerful sector of all, finance, would just love to get its hands on $600 billion in annual cash flow. But the public said "no." Indeed, the most "progressive" era in American political history, the thirty-five years after the election of FDR, occurred during an era when money flowed in far freer fashion than today.

Oh, and in answer to Ezra's question about "how to" pass serious CFR, it's easy: you pass incumbent-friendly CFR. That's the only type of CFR that will ever pass. That's the kind we have now. Think people in Congress are ever going to pass legislation that makes it easier for them to lose their jobs?

Progressives should join me in being First Amendment extremists: no limits on spending or contributions, put in place strict disclosure requirements, and let the voters decide.

"Progressives should join me in being First Amendment extremists: no limits on spending or contributions, put in place strict disclosure requirements, and let the voters decide."

I'm a big fan of the Arizona and NYC campaign finance systems. Small donations are greatly amplified.

It doesn't screw with the 1st amendment, it provides a counterbalance to concentrated wealth, and it doesn't seduce progressives with the siren-song of anti-politics.

What Petey said.

Obama is the best of the goo-goos I've ever seen. But I can only think of one magic transformative victory of goo-goo-ism in US history: the creation of a civil service. Every other goo-goo reform has been fairly quickly coopted by the Man.

The problem with good government types is the same problem so many liberals have. They believe that knowledge and truth is something a tiny few pass out to the masses. They want to make all of the decisions for us, because they know what is best. Thats what technocracy is, a dictatorship of an educated upper class. They pretend to value democracy, but hey have no trust in the people.

"I can only think of one magic transformative victory of goo-goo-ism in US history: the creation of a civil service."

I'm a big fan of Chester A. Arthur. Dude's massively underrated.

I'm pro-good government. I'm only opposed to goo-goo-ism when its proponents offer it as an organizing principle to the left.

Dismissing Obama as a goo-goo type misses the point that the author is making here.

To use Petey's cart/horse analogy, Obama isn't talking about either. He's talking about the road. Infrastructure. It's not sexy, but it's critical to allow you fire breathing fighters to ensure that your voice is not only heard, but that your voice is given equal consideration to the lobbyist (and their corporate masters).

I' mtrying to figure out SOullite, how in the hell do you make the jump from liberals wanting to know as much as possible about the government that they pay for and them wanting to "pass out to the masses". I mean really. It never ceases to amaze me how you regressives pull shit out of your ass and think that we educated,liberal types won't utilize our education, and our intelligence. If you're going to say something, at tleast make sure that it makes sense. Idiot. And Jasper, once again for the short, yellow bus types. MONEY DOES NOT EQUAL SPEECH. Requiring disclosure after you've bought a politician does not solve the problem of someone with a great deal of money giving it to a politician to buy influence. I mean seriously, what site do you think you're on here. Michelle Magalong's?

Online, not all liberals are that way, but many are. That has always been the basis of the antyi-populist wing of the party for years. They believe they know best,and we the people, with our petty passions, just muck it all up. That is very often the same thought process I find lurking lurking inside the heads of the good government technocrats I've met.

I think the key worry is that the corporations and the right are nowhere as stupid as Obama thinks.

As such, transparency laws, ethics reform, lobbyist reform are all going to be just as hard (in fact harder, since they aren't "sexy") to pass as CFR or universal health care.

That's the big worry with Obama, much like Harry Reid at the moment, he doesn't seem to have a plan for what to do when the Republicans just say "no." And they will, they have better party discipline than the Dems.

Fundamentally, if you are only going to propose policy that you can get Republican support for your record is going to look a lot like that of Congress over the last year or so.

There's also the fundamental problem that "compromise" takes you towards the middle of the Overton window and we've seen where that has taken us on the torture issue.

With this comment:

"Infrastructure. It's not sexy, but it's critical."

The politics of lowered expectations is in full force. The GOP really did a number on us.

There are several problems. Sexiness isn't one of them.

The biggest is that it begs the question- "infrastructure for what?"

Closely related and as crucial is the unremarkable nature of what it offers. Governments should function as given and implicit narrative. If you dispute this, then, of course, infrastructure seems important , but you buy into right wing framing because only they assume that governments shouldn't provide this as a bare minimum.

Finally, and, most importantly, it says nothing about how Obama will lead us. Presidencies aren't about infrastructures. If he were applying for a middle level manager- then y ou would have a point.

Online, because that's not really ALL that they want. They do want to pass out their knowledge to the people, but they want to do so in such a way as to make the countries population more like themselves. They want to make the government transparent because they believe they can remove as many political considerations as possible that way. They want a government free of politics, because they do not trust the nature of Democratic politics. They do not trust the people in general. That's my problem with them, and thats what I meant by what I said. They aren't just trying to make this public better informed, they want to try to make a better public. That's a scarier thought than some here will likely admit.

By the way, real world example- SEC. Provides for disclosure, and yet it's not enough if the leadership isn't there. Clinton failed on leadership. That got us Enron, etc.

I have a question: are those tauting that Obama will provide infrascture, arguing that the other candidates will not?

That email was not very convincing.

The problem with putting so much emphasis on "good government" reforms - besides the fact that many of them would be zapped into oblivion by the Supreme Court - is that those reforms will be history the minute someone else takes office. The next time a business-friendly Republican (or Democrat) takes office, all of those things will go out the window.

Contrast with: universal healthcare. Once you've got that, it's not going away. Unlike purely procedural laws, people are going to notice when you try to take away tangible entitlements. Health care would quickly become untouchable, a la Social Security.

There is a whole lot of brainwashing going on for Edwards. Maybe he bought an ad. Whatever.

Edwards is out of work, so his words mean nothing. Here are his actions when he was in the intelligenc commitee.

January 23, 2004
Edwards | John Edwards in 2002: "Saddam Hussein . . . has weapons of mass destruction and . . . is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons"
Now that he has re-emerged as a serious candidate, it’s worth looking again at where John Edwards stood on the Iraq war when it came to a vote in the fall of 2002. At the time, Edwards - who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus has his own access to our intelligence on Iraq - gave full-throated support for what has become the most controversial justification for the war: that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction. Of course, this puts Edwards seriously at odds with a substantial and vocal faction of his party; I address the potential fallout from this more on my own blog. Here’s Edwards, in his own words:
1. September 12, 2002: Edwards gives a speech on why the “IRAQI DICTATOR MUST GO,” coinciding with Bush’s speech to the UN:
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I firmly believe that the issue of Iraq is not about politics. It’s about national security. We know that for at least 20 years, Saddam Hussein has obsessively sought weapons of mass destruction through every means available. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today. He has used them in the past, and he is doing everything he can to build more. Each day he inches closer to his longtime goal of nuclear capability — a capability that could be less than a year away.
I believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime represents a clear threat to the United States, to our allies, to our interests around the world, and to the values of freedom and democracy we hold dear.
[snip]
What’s more, the terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam’s arsenal, and there is every possibility that he could turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11th had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat, and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror.
2. October 10, 2002: Edwards speaks as not only a supporter but a co-sponsor of the legislation authorizing the use of force in Iraq:
Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.
Iraq has continued to seek nuclear weapons and develop its arsenal in defiance of the collective will of the international community, as expressed through the United Nations Security Council. It is violating the terms of the 1991 cease-fire that ended the Gulf War and as many as 16 Security Council resolutions, including 11 resolutions concerning Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
By ignoring these resolutions, Saddam Hussein is undermining the credibility of the United Nations, openly violating international law, and making a mockery of the very idea of collective action that is so important to the United States and its allies.
We cannot allow Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons in violation of his own commitments, our commitments, and the world’s commitments.
This resolution will send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
[snip]
[W]e must be prepared to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once and for all.
Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts: that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a menace; that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons; that he has supported terrorists; that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States; and that he is thwarting the will of the international community and undermining the United Nations’ credibility.

NOW CAN WE HEAR FROM BARACK OBAMA, WHO YOU CLAIM IS NOT FOR CHANGE.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

Obama has been in the Senate for three years- what has he done to lead on the Iraqi or Iran issue? We know what Edwards fuck ups were-c an you ever admit- ever? that obama has made in since that speech he gave in 2004?

Well, I was leaning towards Edwards, but now that someone cut and pasted interminable transcripts of old speeches, providing me with information I've been aware for three years, I'm convinced: Obama's the candidate for me.

I do wish his speeches nowadays sounded more like those from 2002, though.

I may be idealistic and prone to swooning, but I find what Obama proposes to be genuinely exciting and inspiring, and I am no young `goo-goo'. I do find a few things disappointing in the man-the campaigning with the homophobic gospel singer, the lack of hearings for the Europe/NATO subcommittee, his no vote on Lieberman-Kyl.

However, taken all together, I find his case for office very inspiring and compelling, and was really impressed with `The Audacity of Hope'.

I am less worried about repubs saying no. They are an endangered species in the house and senate, and if e get closer to 60 votes, an Obama presidency won't run up against repub oppositionism as much as before.

Soullite you are shooting your arrows in the wrong direction. The whole point of Obama's good government reforms is to get rid of the influence of money and give "we the people" more power in government. You may want to rant about the evil technocrats who want to keep the passionate people out of politics, but that is just not what is going on here. The only way passionate people like you are going to have any say is by keeping the billionaire hedge fund managers from calling the shots.

Edwards is a populist who wants to change the system. Obama is a progressive who wants to make the system work better. Both are legitimate left of center views that could lead to a better America.

I prefer Edward's focus on inequality over Obama's Politics 2.0 but I understand why others disagree.