Has Stewart gone soft?
Comedian interviews president–credentials revoked?
After Jon Stewart’s interview of Barack Obama on last night’s Daily Show (the comedian’s first of a sitting president), New York Times blogger Alessandra Stanley asks, “whether a political satirist loses credibility when hobnobbing with a sitting president.”
One of Stewart’s hallmarks is ability, even zeal, to skewer journalists who not only amuse in their incompetence, but enrage in what Stewart often intimates is a total violation of their own standards. Or, as our own Jake Bronsther put it yesterday in a special on Jon Stewart to AskMen.com:
This media criticism is built into the structure of Stewart’s show, which was set up as a satirical take on programs like The O’Reilly Factor. As a result, Stewart sits above the rest of the commentators, somehow more pure, the grinning mandarin who points out our individual and collective misdeeds. It also helps that he might be the smartest person sitting behind a television news desk today, of either the real or fake variety.
Given the niche Stewart has so effectively carved out as incisive media critic and arbiter, the question is not merely whether interviewing President Obama erodes Stewart’s self-styled image. It’s also one of whether he’s violating the expectations he has set for himself. Has Stewart abandoned a self-imposed obligation to be the Critic-in-Chief of American political culture? Read more
Ignore them. They’re insane.
The possible contradiction at the heart of Stewart and Colbert’s rallies.
Jon Stewart’s upcoming “Rally to Restore Sanity” and Stephen Colbert’s mock counter-rally, “March to Keep Fear Alive”—satirical (yet deeply seriously) responses to Glen Beck’s “Restore Honor” rally—are a rare form of politics, and not because comedians are leading the way.
There are, very generally, three types of political concerns or topics of political debate: the structure of the political system, which determines the formal process of creating of a law, and possibly some rights which no law can abridge (e.g. the Constitution); the content of laws (what we normally debate about); and, very rarely, how we should argue within the first two categories.
The latter involves what sort of conceptual and ideological stuff we should bring into the town hall or Congress, and what rules or customs of deliberation and reasoning we should employ when discussing these ideas. The notion, undoubtedly true, is that some such rules and customs will lead to better laws than others.
What’s interesting about Stewart and Colbert is their tacit claim to be involved with this third category of political concern (in addition to the second category). In theory, it is not just the content of the policies that they disagree with (e.g. Tea Party tax cuts), though they do disagree, but rather the deliberative process by which, say, the Tea Partiers have formed their political beliefs, and how they approach and understand those who disagree with them (e.g. moderate Republicans and Democrats).
Do ask, do tell –later, when you’re a little older
Last Thursday, a federal judge in California ruled Don’t Ask Don’t Tell unconstitutional on First and Fifth Amendment grounds for restricting the rights of gay service members to free speech, free association, and due process. The case put the Obama administration in a slightly awkward position, having to defend a standing law that it is already in the process of repealing.
It is clear that Obama, Chairman of the Join Chiefs Mullen, and Secretary of Defense Gates have little love for DADT. The public is not keen about it either. And yet, legal procedure is so important to our form of government that it sometimes means defending or accepting laws that we don’t support.
Procedure allows for consistency and predictability. It is the counterweight to the whim or discretion of leaders, the public, bureaucrats, and other parties – none of whom are everywhere and always right. For example, we have due process and the presumption of innocence to protect people from being punished hastily and wrongfully.
Whether to defend something you believe to be morally wrong because it is the law of the land is one of the most difficult moral quandaries in public philosophy.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user The U.S. Army used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Are you a demand-sider or a supply-sider?
The BBC reports that the Obama administration has designated $50 billion dollars for infrastructure improvements as part of efforts to jump-start the US economy. The claim that the project will help jump-start the economy is contestable, but difficult to prove either way.
Broadly speaking, there are two influential schools of macroeconomic thought. One is the Keynesian or demand-side school, which blames the collapse of demand for economic malaise. During economic downturns, it is the government’s job to make up for the shortfall by employing people, purchasing things, and inducing private actors to do the same. This is the principle behind public works projects, temporary tax cuts, and programs like “cash-for-clunkers.”
By contrast, the neoclassical or supply-side school argues that prolonged economic problems are the result of the economy’s inability to produce an adequate level of goods and services. The government’s response to economic downturn ought to consist of making it easier for individuals to supply labor and firms to supply goods and services. This is the rationale behind permanent tax cuts for all (including corporations and the rich), deregulation, and a reluctance to extend unemployment benefits.
Though economic in nature, these two claims tend to accompany differing assumptions and values about human nature. Put crudely, the Keynesian approach favors the consumer, in hopes that the producers will follow. The neoclassical one favors the producer, in hopes that the consumers will follow.
Of course, all humans are both consumers and producers. But which role is more important? In a crisis, should we try to induce people to buy things, or to induce them to work? Should workers and consumers be favored over entrepreneurs and companies?
There is of course some middle ground between the two extremes. Maybe the answer lies in a bit of both.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user Cain and Todd Benson used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Obama: read this blog
Political consultants ask Obama to do more philosophizing
A lengthy piece in today’s Politico quotes a wide range of political consultants, former high-level White House advisers, and pollsters who all reiterate the same shortcoming about President Obama:
By declining to speak clearly and often about his larger philosophy — and insisting that his actions are guided not by ideology but a results-oriented “pragmatism” — he has bred confusion and disappointment among his allies, and left his agenda and motives vulnerable to distortion by his enemies.
Obama’s predicament highlights an important role for political philosophy that even we here at The Public Philosopher tend to discount: it’s practical capacity to add clarity of vision to the messy business of governing. Read more
It’s the economy, stupid
Equality butts heads with freedom
Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith write at Politico that a new debate about first principles and the role of government has replaced the social issues at stake during the “culture wars” of the last three decades.
This dispute over first principles is deeply entwined with questions of national identity and the appropriate role of the government in the economy.
On one extreme is a minimalist state, in which the government is responsible for little more than upholding the rule of law and providing for a common defense. On the other extreme is a socialist state in which the government manages all facets of economic activity.
Neither extreme applies to any industrialized country today. Rather, the modern world is populated by welfare states of various stripes.
Mosque-ing the the real problem
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Mainstream media lets us down. Again.
Last night’s Daily Show had its usual fun with the political controversy engulfing plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. We’re going wall-to-wall on this topic here at TPP this week, both because it’s an important debate and because it touches so many basic moral and philosophical questions.
Of many pokes at the mainstream media during this clip, one worth noting in particular is Stewart’s scathing attack on news outlets that seem more concerned with the political fallout of what politicians say about the cultural center than whether building the thing is right or wrong. A New York Times headline from today underscores this media focus: “G.O.P. Seizes on Mosque Issue Ahead of Elections.”
Are there any issues where it is simply wrong to play politics? Read more
Sensitivity and principle
Last Friday, President Obama weighed in publicly on the mosque at ground zero. In doing so, he has joined Mayor Bloomberg as one of few major political figures who have openly voiced support for the project on the basis of freedom of religion.
However, polls indicate that Americans as well as New Yorkers overwhelmingly oppose the mosque’s construction to the tune of 68 percent. The poll reaffirms a truism that the writers of the Bill of Rights were grimly aware of: freedom often runs afoul of democracy. As one opponent of the mosque argues: ‘…[Obama]‘s lost sight of the germane issue, which is not about freedom of religion,” she said. “It’s about a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and to the people who were lost.”’
Except the germane issue is exactly the balance between sensitivity and principle, and whether, as Jonathan asked yesterday, something can be “legally harmless but unpleasant enough for us to rightly or morally require legal intervention at the cost of others’ legal rights?” Namely, do people have a right not to be offended? Do they also have a right for their faith, beliefs, or values not to be challenged?
Greg Gutfeld of Fox News clearly believes not. In one of the most creative responses to the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, Gutfeld argues for both supporting the mosque’s construction and opening a gay bar next door. Now that might take equal opportunity offending to an extreme. But in a society in which we value both the principles of religious freedom and the “marketplace of ideas,” should we want it any other way?
-Charles
Image from Flickr user Johnnie Utah used under a Creative Commons Attribution license
The nuclear arsenal and promise-keeping
An article in the L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration plans to greatly increase spending on the nuclear arsenal. Obama has made the reduction of nuclear weapons a serious and oft-repeated promise both during his campaign and throughout his time in office so far. Indeed, the plan calls for a reduction in the amount of weapons in the arsenal. Unfortunately that reduction in number is accompanied by $175 billion over the next twenty years to spend on new weapons, testing facilities, and increasing the longevity of the weapons we already have.
It also comes as a rather unpleasant surprise that administration officials defend the spending by “argu[ing] that even as they reduce the number of U.S. warheads, they need to bolster the government’s ability to increase weapons production quickly if a new threat arises.”
It’s time to proceed with a full program of nuclear disarmament. The current policy and future plans are merely an empty gesture. Those who fear that such a comprehensive program would do irreconcilable damage to our national security should realize that the last time nuclear deterrence was thought of as a sound policy was during the Cold War. More importantly, every promise we break on nuclear policy damages our international reputation.
The Obama administration has consistently taken the stance that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a danger to everyone and vowed to do its fair share in reducing that danger. The new budget is a sign that they have not remained true to that stance. Reducing the number of warheads while drastically increasing the budget and researching new weapons is a hypocrisy that cheapens the value of our voice in the international community, particularly those statements we have made concerning the danger of nuclear weapons and the necessity of their strict control.
This kind of discrepancy between words and action is not only wrong; it will also hurt our credibility as a worldwide, often aggressive advocate for nonproliferation.
As a world leader, the U.S. needs to send a stronger message about the use of nuclear weapons.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user mightyohm
The Obama paradox
How transformational change and buck-passing make odd bedfellows
Despite a tough economy, weakening approval ratings, and a recalcitrant Republican opposition, President Obama has managed to chase down two longtime liberal white whales, and is hot on the heels of a third (or fourth).
Earlier this year he signed into law a health care reform bill that many regard as the biggest piece of social legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s. Congress is about to approve the largest set of financial reforms since the Great Depression. Now Democrats are hard-charging for a new energy bill (which may include a climate-related component). Even immigration reform seems possible.
While many find it surprising the President has been able to pursue such a sweeping agenda, one little discussed key to his (and Democrats’) success has been the consistent practice of front-loading benefits and back-loading costs:
Health care reform cracks down on insurers right away but won’t force people to buy insurance until 2014. A new consumer financial protection agency kicks in almost immediately under the Wall Street reform bill, but banks won’t feel its full force for more than 10 years. And even Democrats’ nascent immigration reforms include at least an eight-year wait before illegal immigrants can apply for permanent residency – after Obama leaves office.
Some say this is good politics, but is it right? Read more
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