This Isn't Usual, It's History!

[SPOILER WARNING]: So spoke the speaker of the house in a key scene in Speilberg's Oscar nominated biopic of Abraham Lincoln.  It's January 1865 and The US House of Representatives is voting on the 13th Amendment to the constitution - to abolish Slavery - and with the voting close, he demands a vote.  A Congressman points out that it isn't usual for the Speaker to vote, although conceding it is allowed.  The speaker defends his right with the words, "this isn't usual, it's history."  When asked how he will vote, he replies, "Yes... of course!"
It's a very powerful narrative of what must be one of the most significant and momentous legislative acts of all time.  Not just the liberation of millions of slaves in the South, but also ensuring the freedom  of many millions more not yet born; as Lincoln says in the film, in a surely Oscar-winning performance by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Although two and a half hours long, and quite dry in places as it discusses almost exclusively the passage of this single Bill, this splendid piece of work is quite easy to sit through and does not seem such an onerous investment of time.  Therein perhaps lies its true achievement: to dramatize an episode of history that while enormous, is really just detailed legislative negotiations and their context without much relief.

The content chosen for this biopic of Lincoln's life, versus perhaps the traditional formula of linear chronological narrative, is a near-perfect, as Kennedy would have said, "Portrait of Courage".  Not only courage but also leadership and strength; and therefore the viewer can learn so much more from these 150 minutes than merely a history lesson from the American Civil War. 

Without wishing to spoil it for those that have not yet seen it, the perfect storm that the movie portrays - the confluence of events from hell, in fact - is the horns of a severe moral dilemma that sees Lincoln forced to chose between Freedom and Peace.  The naturally expedient option of Peace, suddenly tangible with a finally exhausted Confederacy, might see the opportunity to abolish slavery recede, perhaps forever.  Ironic, since this is what the war was supposed to be about.  (Early in the film, asked if abolition was desirable, a citizen replies that of course it was because that would end the war.  However, the same (white) citizen admitted that were the war to end first, abolition would not be desirable at all.)

Moreover, abolition was set to make any peace negotiation - and the implied Confederate surrender - that much harder to secure because re-joining a Federal Union where Slavery had been abolished was considered a threat to the South's very economic existence, and therefore unconscionable.

Furthermore, were knowledge of a peace deal in the offing to go public, the vote on abolition was certain to be delayed as peace for a war-weary nation was a far more urgent priority.  But with a new Congress about to take its seats after the 1864 election, the delicate numbers required to stack up the two-thirds majority required for an amendment to the constitution would be even more challenging a month or more later.  But alongside the great importance and moral obligation of Abolition, Lincoln like everyone desperately yearned for Peace at the earliest possible hour.

So how to achieve peace AND Abolition?  (I won't spoil anymore and urge you to see the film to find out if you haven't already.)

Lincoln's skillful leadership as he guides his nation through this critical moment is breathtaking and truly inspirational.  That the character Daniel Day-Lewis tenderly portrays wears the burden with such grace, humour and patience provides yet more inspiration.  It occurs to me that this movie, like Zero Dark Thirty, was something Barack Obama - abolition's greatest beneficiary to date - might have wished quicker through Hollywood's Machinery in time to assist his re-election campaign.  (He has quite loudly modeled himself on Lincoln, for one announcing his election campaign from the same state legislature their respective careers share. )

Admittedly not directly comparable, Obama's Healthcare effort no doubt took some inspiration from Lincoln's example.  Not quite as pivotal as the end of Slavery, Obamacare nevertheless will be seen - once it is up and running - as a turning point in US social history and it's passing seemed just as impossible.  Many great leaders before him had tried and failed to achieve the same and it's tremendous sapping of Obama's unprecedented political capital after the 2008 election was surely painful.

It is sad though when you think that some 150 years later, Mr Obama is still striving - probably in vain - for those same ideals that Lincoln fought for, and of which Emancipation was only a first step.  True equality under the law is still an aspiration in American - as in any - society.  Universal suffrage remained a struggle for African Americans, as for women, in America for far too long a time, and equality of opportunity remains only a dream.  Globally, the principles of fairness Lincoln espoused are as elusive as ever and he would be dismayed at the survival of municipal corruption and the ubiquity political cowardice in government today.

To see Lincoln as a history lesson is certainly a good reason to see it once; but it is perhaps also - despite its length - worth a second viewing for its lesson in leadership, courage and human character also.  Not the greatest entertainment ever, and perhaps for that reason not a huge Oscar winner; but Speilberg's Lincoln is a quiet masterpiece nevertheless, if only for its poignant and faithful telling of the story in question.

How Obama Won #election2012.

Phew!  I don't think I could have coped with living in a world where an inspirational humanitarian,  focussed on lifting the fortunes of his fellow man, is swapped out by a management consultant focussed on running the world's most powerful nation like a multi-national.  

But could it have been any closer?  The US was split down the middle more-or-less 50-50 per cent, with only a few tens of thousands voters making the difference.  There is so much analysis now in play about how Romney lost - was it the 47 per cent video, #Sandy or the fact that the Democrats' 2008 coalition of the young, women, Hispanics and African Americans (far many more of whom voted this year than in 2008) shut Romney out.  But it increasingly seems to me now that it is not so much about Romney losing.  I think it is more about how the Democrats managed to prevail on the day - and it is in and of itself a very inspiring story.

You can tell from the moment that a tear rolls down Obama's cheek in this thank you speech to his ground troops the morning after his victory how important he knows their work was.  Obviously Bill Clinton played a very important part - but his role should be seen not as an invidual but as a member of a hard-working and highly effective team (as this terrific story explains).  

It is a fact that became clear to me very early on in the piece watching the results come in, and seemed so key even at the time that I tweeted the comments from CNN's John King: "we have all under-estimated the Democrats ground game" as it became apparent that the ground troops in Ohio and other tight marginals had a far more effective get-the-vote-out ground game than the Republicans.

The Obama team's use of social was as effective on this occasion as last election, with a tweeted picture of Barack and his wife Michelle on the moment of victory becoming the most re-tweeted tweet ever.  But more critically, the @barackobama team ran a campaign around #stayinline as they at some point realised that those still in line when the polls closed still had the right to vote and therefore needed to stay put.

Then this morning, I saw this tweet from my former boss, Marc Benioff, another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

It seems despite Romney's pitch to the nation that it took a businessman to manage the country out of its economic woes, not a big-government-arian; it seems his team couldn't manage itself out of a paper bag.  Their use of technology seems riddled with school-boy errors and ultimately proved not only ineffective but fully counter-productive.  Read this article detailing the unmitigated technology disaster that was the Republican ground game and you'll get a sense of that special brand of business management he would have brought to the American economy had he been elected.  

It is singularly hope-inspiring that while this was the most expensive election of all time, with at least a billion in campaign funds blown in just the last few weeks on attack ads, it was the ground game of a few thousand dedicated and highly-motivated troops just working hard - combined with the commitment of a few tens of thousands of supporters making that effort to get out and vote - that made the difference.  Despite what the cynics say - you can't buy the most important Democratically elected job in the world - you have to earn it.  Barack Obama deserves it not just because of the hope that he inspires in his people; but because of the attention to detail and hard work ethic he instills in his team.

UPDATE: Romney's Digital Director repsonds to criticisms here, saying - amusingly - that he and his team didn't "give up on data" (even though they had given up on 47 per cent of the population).

Aurora: Why oh why oh why?

Listening to the hours and hours and reams and reams of media coverage about the Batman shootings is just infuriating.  I've written about this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how America just doesn't seem to get it.  Hardly anyone seems to ask "isn't there something that can be done about this?" Instead they just wollow in the intenstines of the latest psycho's decent into carnage.

An analogy occurred to me where it feels like one of those cliched scenes where a serial victim of domestic violence throws herself on the sympathies of her friends and family, but over time their sympathies reduce and reduce as the obvious answer to her situation continues to inexplicaby allude her.  "Why don't you just leave him?" they ask in disbelief.  "I can't", she answers, "I just can't".

How many people need to die before someone asks the questions, "why don't we just make guns illegal?"

Jamie Holmes seems nothing more than a confused and lonely kid whose dreams were shattered - something that happens to almost everyone at some stage in their lives.  But instead of the usual break-down and at the very worst a case of limited domestic violence that leads to some degree of commital; this kid is able to - over the course of just two months - accumulate the most frightening arsenal of the sort a small resistance army would envy.  Four guns including an assualt rifle and a shot gun and 6,000 - SIX THOUSAND - rounds of amunition were sold to him by what seems like the same retailer with no questions asked.  Apparently this kid even got a briefing on how to use these weapons.  Somewhere along the line he was also able to boobytrap his appartment with a scary array of chemical devices and - get this - mortar rounds!

Then he was able to go out and kill 12 innocent, film lovers including a six year old child, and wound scores of others while shattering the cinema-going inocence of the world.

Who are these people that insist on the right to bare arms?  Why is this arbitary right more important than the peace and harmony of millions of ordinary people?  Why do polititians appease this ridiculously dangerous biggotry?  

Furthermore, why does the right to bare arms for some trump the right of many more to "the right to the pursuit of happiness" which is apparently the very bedrock of the constitution.  Wasn't the former an ammendment to the latter?

I just don't understand.  I really don't.  It's like the frustrated friends and family asking over and over, "why don't you just leave him?"

But even if America continues to indulge this stupid minority, at least bring in some controls for crying out loud.  Bring in psychological profiles of assualt-rifle-buyers.  Require parental escort until the age of 25.  Flag the rapid accumulation of weopons to the police for investigation.  Take some bloody responsibilty because I am so fed up with sitting through these miserable stories of the tragic innocent victims of these easily avoidable horror-scenes.

President Obama - if you win in November, will you try?  Please try.  This stuff has got to become a thing of the past.

Putting the cat amongst the pigeons?

“What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately, I’ve done so because we can’t afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades to achieve peace.”

I must admit I was incredibly surprised by Obama's speech on Middle East Policy last week.  Obviously not the part about the Arab Spring being a good thing, or Osama bin Laden being a bad man.  But the part about the 1967 borders of Israel-Palestine.

But I'm surprised for a number of reasons.  For a start, it was about time he did something impactful about the Palestine question with another election coming up.  With his envoy, George Mitchell exiting stage left recently having achieved nothing, he was going to have a tough time at the polls on this issue.  However, he has chosen an interesting week for it.  Just as the Republican candidacy collapses, he decides to throw away millions of dollars of Jewish lobby funding.  For it's about as politically risky as it gets, canvassing a policy that Israel should revert to the 1967 borders (not to mention asking Hamas to recognise Israel!).  It's about as radical as anything anyone has said on the middle east for more than a decade.  It certainly has put the cat amongst the pigeons. 

I'll never forget my visit to the Golan heights in 1996.  It's a beautiful place, high up above the sea of Gallilee on the Syrian border.  It was Syria before The Six-day war in 1967.  Now it's full of very serious and mostly militant Jewish migrants.  We stopped to help a couple whose car had broken down, and they invited us back to their's for tea to say thanks.  They talked almost exclusively about how they will never leave, how they will fight and die before they let the Syrians have it back.  I don't believe, if they were a good indication, that many of the Jewish settlers in The Golan are going anywhere.

I visited East Jerusalem in 1999.  I visited the highly tense Temple Mount, where the third most important Islamic shrine sits atop the most important Jewish shrine, both only a stone's throw from the most important Christian Shrine.  Security of The Wailing Wall is the raisin d'être of the Jewish State.  They're not going to give up Temple Mount without a fight as intense as the one that won it in 1967.  I don't believe they're going anywhere either.

I walked around the Jewish Quarter.  It's a wonderfully calm place compared to the mayhem and frenetic excitement of the Arab Quarter bazaar.  It's been beautifully renovated since its near destruction in the wars of 1947-8 and 1967.  It's a bastion of Jewish strength.  It's streets are peppered with Orthodox Torah study groups and synagogues.  Its streets are armed ot the teeth with Jewish check points.  I don't see Israel giving that up in a hurry either. 

I did visit the West Bank too.  It's fortified by the seemingly endless compounds of Jewish settlements, many of them built quite illegally.  Then of course there's The Wall.  I don't see those people going anywhere either.  They are as nailed to the spot as those in The Golan.

I think something needed to change to give new life to the peace process.  It took a bold leader to say something controversial and risqué to kick start a negotiation everyone had grown tired of and that had entirely run out of steam.  But I wonder how wise it was to suggest that Israel should revert to the 1967 borders so publicly and so bluntly.  To give up The Golan Heights, which they secured to stop missile attacks on The Galilee and secure its northern border; The West Bank to the Jordan River, which Israel used to secure it's western border and East Jerusalem, which Israel secured in order to claim ownership of it's perceived Biblical inheritance.  I don't see any of these things happening.  I think Israel has given up everything it is prepared to, The Sinai, Gazza, South Lebanon.  There is no more to negotiate.

On that visit in 1999 I had the privilege of meeting with Jewish writer Amos Oz at his home in Arad (Read the interview here on page 92).  It was during the Presidential Election that saw Ehud Barak take power on a wave of peace and optimism, shortly before the withdrawl from South Lebanon.  Arad is a thriving community in the middle of the Negev desert.  His feeling was that unless ways were found for more people to be able to live in the desert, and better ways of distributing water equally among Israelis and Palestinians, the State of Israel would not be sustainable.  Perhaps he is right and until the Jewish occupants of The West Bank and The Golan can be found new homes in the Negev Desert, there is no hope.  (How the problem of Jerusalem is solved though is quite another matter!)

I wish Mr Obama luck, I really do, but the only surrender I can see from this is his surrender of millions of dollars of Jewish lobby funding for his re-election campaign.

A shallow grave for political depth?

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness, we’ve got better stuff to do.  I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve, and I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them, not on this...[sideshows and carnival barkers].” Barack Obama

It's a kooky coincidence that the same week as the most powerful man in the world spat the dummy about media trivialisation of politics, the former Australian Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, launched his book about media trivialisation of politics, called "Sideshow".  Now you can assume this was not co-ordinated.  They may agree, but they don't really operate in the same circles.

And I agree also.  Although he doesn't seem to have refererred  to it in what I've heard, the "silliness" around Obama's birth certificate couldn't have been more timely for Mr Tanner in supporting his point that policy has been subjugated in favour of theatrics.

The infuriating thing about the situation we have reached that both men point out is that, particularly in Donald Trump's case, the media is not doing it's job in putting the microscope on policy proposal and are instead eating up Trump's "sideshow" with a spoon.  I mean, let's face it, Trump is mad!  He wants to tax Chinese imports by 25%!  Has he any idea how dangerous that is?  And yet the media lapped up his hair-brained conspiracy theory instead of taking him down on the issues. Meanwhile Obama is quizzed ad nauseum on his already well-researched origins instead of engaged directly on policy debate.  It's a farce.

Tanner's book makes many useful points it seems from the couple of interviews I've seen him do this week.  His point was usefully underlined by a sad return of the hair scrutiny Gillard is being subjected to, recently beaten up for her hair while she toured the sites of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear-meltdown.  How much more trivial can you get?

While lamenting the media for their shallow nature is nothing new, it seems there's always been a fairly strict convention in the States that no one mention it.  It seems quite unprecedented that the President himself should take them to task on it, complaining as he does that he could never get media "cut-through"on policy but when he makes a statement about the birth certificate issue, they are on him like a shot:

Of course naturally, it's not really the media that is to blame, directly.  Just as parties complain that the media don't talk about the policies and help people understand the issues at stake, so companies complain that the media has no interest in products but only in sensationalising and gossip.  The media respond that people, the people, aren't really interested in that stuff.  Frankly, they are right.  Sadly we can all complain as much as we like, but until we start demonstrating that we want more depth in our media reporting of political issues, they are only going to keep serving up what we ask for. 

A further caveat I think though is this, how is Lindsay Tanner hoping to promote his book?  How is President Obama hoping to get re-elected?  Media campaigns.  It's catch-22. Furthermore, it is worth noting that in every Tanner interview I saw, when asked about his time as a Government Minister, he declined to comment quite steadfastly. While the issues his book raises are very interesting, I wanted him to talk about his role in the overthrow of the last Prime Minister and in the scraping of the emissions-trading scheme - which right now are two of the biggest issues we face.  So he was taking from the media, but not giving back.

So it seems important to remember that if media is truly a mirror to society, 'perhaps then if you're looking into it you can't really complain about what it reflects back to you.

Patience I wish I could believe in...

As the American mid-terms approach in a few days, and the Democratic party receive what is increasingly looking like a brutal kicking, I can't help but be more than a little despondent.

As with most democracies, elections turn on a segment of the electorate known as swinging voters.  They swing left and right according to the current national mood.  This year, apparently, as in 1994, this group will swing violently to the right after only 20 months of a new regime that promised a great deal but hasn't had a chance to deliver on much.


In 2008 we all remember that elation at the election not only of the first black president, but also the prospect of real and lasting change not only in the character of American politics but also perhaps in world realpolitik.  In the months that have elapsed, President Obama has withdrawn troops from Iraq and delivered an apparent political miracle never before achieved - healthcare reform.  It's already a lot more positive change than George bush achieved in eight years.   

It needs to be remembered the state George W left the US in on his departure.  Two wars, a derelict economy (with or without the GFC) and a completely alienated world.  His trillions of dollars of tax breaks for the rich, and his trillions of dollars of military idiocy are what has brought the US economy to where it is.  It would be almost bankrupt anyway, but is compounded of course by a meltdown in the availability of financial credit - that struck on Bush's watch - that has hurt the US far deeper than most even really appreciate.

Obama arrived with expectations of miracles, somewhat generated by his own campaign, but also somewhat the result of the culmination of a nation's dreams projected onto him.  He arrived amid the worst recession the world has seen since 1929 - requiring two  drastic bail out bills and a major financial reform bill.   Pretty soon too he was hit by the BP oil crisis.  He's worked the halls of The Pentagon to extract his nation from one miserable war, and has worked to execute hopefully the solution to another.  With healthcare reform, a mammoth task in negotiation, I can't begin to imagine how much time and energy just these problems have taken.  I also can't imagine how he is supposed to have solved every other problem the US faces in just 20-odd months.

But yet Americans seem to feel he has failed.  I think the true extent of the disapointment Americans feel struck home for me when Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins lamented on stage here in Sydney how much of a failure he felt Obama had been.

It's depressing.  How is the world ever going to change if we are so unwilling to give someone the room and the patience and the belief they need to even begin to attempt to enact it?

The US is facing a far bigger problem than I think most of it's citizens even appreciate.   I was listening to a fascinating interview last night with Jim Wolfensohn, former World Bank Chief, where he remarked that in 40 years the US/European/Japanese monopoly of the world GDP will move from 80% to just 35%.  In particular he said:

"I think at the moment the US is, I regret to say, in a sad situation at the moment. And it's very tough for the President. You'll see the reaction of the people in the next election as they try to throw people out. And I think what is needed is an understanding in the US jointly between the Republicans and the Democrats that they've gotta come together to get the country moving."

The hitherto most powerful nation in the world is undergoing a painful transition from superpower to has-been just as Britain did from 1914 to 1947. Many of their economic problems are well beyond the immediate grapple range of one man in 20 months.  But given some time and room to move, this transition could be managed a lot more effectively by someone with real vision like Obama than by someone pandering only to short term party political imperatives as Obama's predecessor did.   But, as he said, "I'd rather be a really good one term president than a mediocre two term president".

In view of how difficult the last 20 months have been, I do hope Americans find some patience and some trust to refrain from what seems a strong temptation to take away Obama's control of Congress and make it even harder to get anything done at all.  Clinton recovered from the Newt Gingrich "revolution" in 1994, but I can't help thinking just how much more effective he'd have been in his presidency if he hadn't have lost Congress to the Republicans.

The only optimism I can find in all this is that with the rise of the tea party movement, at least the Republicans are bitterly divided down the middle in a way that may mean they cannot agree on a good candidate for 2012. I'm also finding some comic relief in the Colbert/Stewart rally fun this weekend.  If nothing else, at least liberals are better at laughing.